Oblivion Blog

I just posted a comment about the ESRB’s decision to re-rate Oblivion as M for Mature on my regular blog. Read it here.

Two days ago, Bethesda released the third official module of downloadable content: Wizard’s Tower. The previous two modules didn’t quite catch my interest, but this one sounded too intriguing to resist - particularly to my magic focused new character who was still in need of a house anyway.

Before I talk about the actual content, I would like to mention a few things about the download experience. For the most part, it is a typical e-commerce transaction. I added the content (priced at $1.89) to a shopping cart, clicked on “Checkout”, and typed in my address and credit card information. After the order was successfully processed, I was given a download link and an activation code. I also received an email confirmation with the same details. Next I had to complete the download, run the installer, and type in the activation code I received. After that, the new content was automatically activated. The next time I started the game, I received a message informing me that I had inherited a Wizard’s Tower, along with a new quest to visit it and a corresponding map entry.

While the download experience was certainly very smooth overall, I can’t help but think that it was a bit more involved than it should have been. The procedure strikes me as adequate for a standalone downloadable software purchase, but not for a $1.89 piece of downloadable game content. I believe the following suggestions would constitute significant improvements:

1. At the minimum, the content download website should allow users to register an account in order to avoid having to enter the same information on future transactions. I usually don’t have my wallet with me when I sit at the PC, and having to get up to get it and then manually type in all the credit card information might prevent me from completing what otherwise could have been an impulse purchase, particularly given the low price.
2. While the suggestion above would definitely simplify the purchase of multiple modules of content, each module would still have to be manually downloaded, installed and activated. I think a more integrated experience would be preferable. Users should be able to browse modules from within the game, as well as download and install them, without having to leave the game or enter any activation codes.
3. The solution above would be pretty ideal, but I would still have to enter my personal and credit card information at least once. Downloadable content is clearly the way of the future, and several publishers have developed content streaming and download systems, such as Valve’s Steam. Soon enough, most games will be bought and downloaded online, and this movement is starting now with addon modules as in the case of Oblivion. Once this really takes off, players will likely only have to register with 2 or 3 major download providers, rather than for each individual game. At that point, downloading game content will truly become an impulse purchase, similar to Xbox game content or mobile games, which already benefit in similar ways from an existing customer relationship with Microsoft (in case of downloadable Xbox Live content) or with the carrier, both of which handle billing for downloadable game transactions.

It’ll be interesting to see where this is going in the next few years. I personally can’t wait to stop wasting space with bulky retail game boxes any more…

I haven’t posted an update in a while, so here you go:

After playing for a good week with a Stealth based character, I decided to start over with a more magic heavy character. Playing my first character had been fun, but I realized a few shortcomings. For example, I had originally taken Alchemy and Sneak as major skills. However, both of these skills level up so quickly during regular gameplay that they were responsible for many quick level gains, while my actual offensive and defensive capabilities fell behind. Plus, using fireballs to blow up enemies is just too damn gratifying to resist.

My second character combines the various schools of magic as well as blunt weapon skill (I was getting tired of always using blades). It took a lot longer to level up so far, but that’s a good thing, as my skills have been growing more consistently and I’ve been getting slightly better attribute bonuses (although I’m still not powergaming in order to fully maximize these).

I’m at level 9 now and have started on the main quest several levels ago. I won’t go into too many details in order to avoid spoilers, but I’ve cleared the first Oblivion gate, rescued Martin, and dropped him off at the Blades. I’m very happy with my new character so far. He can defend himself in melee, but really shines when combining melee with magic by summoning creatures to distract enemies, using destructive magic, and more. I haven’t quite gotten into the more subtle arts of magic yet (such as Illusion or Mysticism), which seem to get really cool at later levels. I’m hoping that will change once I get access to a spellmaker to create some practice spells.

Here’s a great Oblivion Optimization Guide. It includes many tips for improving both the performance and the visuals of the game, as well as a few other useful tweaks to enable screenshots, etc. Strongly recommended!

Bethesda has posted the first official Oblivion plugin. The Horse Armor Pack adds armor for your horse and is available for download at the price of $1.99. Two additional plugins are listed as coming soon. Apparently the plugins are also being made available to the Xbox 360 version of the game via Xbox Live.

Gamespot has posted part one of their Oblivion Guide. I haven’t read it yet, but it seems pretty comprehensive and mainly contains a walkthrough of the main quest, as well as information on character creation, skills, magic, and more.

I’ve had the game for a week now, and although I haven’t actually spent all that much time in the game, I thought I’d post about my experiences so far - both in terms of the actual gameplay as well as the technical side of things.

Gameplay

First off, I have to admit that I haven’t even begun the main quest yet… As with the previous Elder Scrolls games, I immediately got distracted by various side quests. As I mentioned in my previous post, I decided to go for a stealth based Wood Elf character. I really like the way the character creation has been combined with the tutorial, with the ability to completely change the character before leaving the prison sewers. Afterwards, I went across the river to kill some bandits and mud crabs. I then discovered a dungeon (Sideways Cavern), but the low level imps were no match for my bow, and a single stealth attack usually killed them. After clearing the dungeon, picking up as much loot as I could carry (unfortunately not much, on account of my character’s starting strength being rather low), and levelling up two levels, I exited the dungeon and followed the path to Imperial City. There, I checked out the various merchants, completed a few side quests, and fought a few fights in the Arena to improve my melee skills. I also made some money by selling potions that I made from the many ingredients that can be found in containers across town as well as in the wilderness. Last not least, I practiced my stealth skills by stealing a bunch of stuff, only to realize that I couldn’t sell it anywhere. Since I kept bumping into my encumbrance limit and didn’t want to lose any of my loot, I had to get into the Thieves Guild to get access to a fence. That’s where I left the game yesterday. At this point I have levelled up to level 8, and once I have sold all my loot (and maybe completed a few Thieves Guild quests), I will finally be ready to start on the main quest.

So even though I can’t speak to the main story line yet, the gameplay so far has been a lot of fun. The quests are very varied and not your typical “fetch item X” quests. Aside from quest specific topics, NPC dialogue is still mostly limited to basic topics (e.g. “Rumors”, “Imperial City”, etc.) and not all that interesting, but in an improvement over Morrowind all of it is spoken now.

As for my character: I am now at the point where I have gotten a good feel for my character as well as for the game itself, but at the same time am not advanced enough that it would be a huge deal to start over with another character… So that’s what I’m trying to figure out now. On the one hand I really like playing a stealth based character, but on the other hand it’s a very slow and deliberate style of gameplay and it could be fun to play with a quicker and more aggressive style. I am also still tempted by a more magic oriented character, as particularly the offensive spells are simply a lot of fun to use, and the more subtle types of spells could add a lot variety and depth. The main thing that’s been holding me back from a more magic heavy approach is the user interface, which only supports 8 hotkeys and therefore requires the user to constantly switch to the spell interface in order to select the active spell - a major annoyance. There’s no good reason that the PC version shouldn’t be able to support multiple banks of hotkeys, although I expect that this was a deliberate design decision in order to come up with an interface that works both for the PC and for the Xbox 360 (although arguably, it doesn’t…). But now I’m getting into technical issues.

Technical

On the technical side, my experience has been mediocre. My PC is below par (Athlon64 3000+, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB), so I wasn’t expecting a perfect experience. Then again, the same PC plays pretty much any first persion shooter without any issues. I am currently running at 800×600 (I can’t remember when I last had to drop to that low a resolution) at medium detail settings. The biggest setting that made the game playable for me was to slightly drop the view distance, which has a huge impact on game performance. I also made sure to install the latest video, chipset, Athlon, and soundcard drivers. Last not least I slightly improved my frame rate with some INI tweaks from the various forum posts. At this point I generally get decent frames, although it fluctuates a lot between very good FPS (> 60) and very low FPS (about 20). However, things completely break down when I’m around NPCs. If one NPC is close by, things are still manageable (around 20 FPS), but as soon as there are two or more NPCs, the FPS quickly drop to below 10. Obviously this mostly happens in combat, where it is also most annoying…

Like many people on the various Elder Scrolls forums, I am hoping that an official patch will soon address some of these issues - the same thing happened with Morrowind. But in the end I gave in and decided to order a new video card. My motherboard only supports AGP, which severely limits my choice of cards. As I cannot justify the expense of a high end AGP card (since I first of all don’t have the money and second am likely to buy a new motherboard next year, at which point I’ll have to buy a new PCI-Express based video card), I went for a Geforce 6800GS with 256MB of GDDR3 RAM. It should arrive by the middle of next week and will hopefully allow me to slightly crank up my resolution (1024×768 would be perfectly fine) and detail settings without things coming to a crawl. I’ll keep you updated.

In addition the walkthrough I previously mentioned, the following new walkthroughs and FAQs have been posted at GameFAQs and other gaming sites.

Update: Unfortunately the direct links to articles hosted at GameFAQs don’t work, so you’ll need to navigate there from the GameFAQs Oblivion page. Also, a whole bunch of additional guides and FAQs have been posted in the mean time, so I encourage you to check them out. I removed the GameFAQs links below, but I’ll continue to link to other articles.

• GameFAQs Oblivion Page: Many walkthroughs, character creation guides, FAQs, and more.
• Walkthrough (IGN): Very well done. Contains information about character creation, cheats, guild quests, a tutorial for the entire main quest, and a nice section on vampirism.

The first Oblivion walkthrough has appeared on the web. I haven’t read it; let me know if it is any good.

This guy’s got way too much time on his hands, but the results are absolutely hilarious. Apparently he figured out that by stripping dead bodies of their clothes and rearranging the corpses using the “Grab” button, he could create amazingly funny scenes of simulated sex.

Check it out: Sexy Oblivion.

(Warning: not quite worksafe…)