I should be spending this weekend previewing Guild Wars: Factions yet I cannot draw myself away from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion long enough to spend any length of time playing Factions.

Addictive doesn’t even begin to describe it. I have a horse now, and can move around much faster as a result, but the lands are still so huge. I haven’t even begun on the main storyline yet, too busy I have been doing stuff for the various Guilds I’m a member of. I am almost able to join the Arcane University, but its taking a long time to achieve such a thing because I need to get the leaders of each Guild Hall in each city to give me a Recommendation. To do that, I need to perform a quest for said leader.

I have managed to join the Thieves guild too now. That wasn’t easy. I had to get beggers to trust me first, and they’re a greedy lot. Lots of gold spent there. But it does mean that any stolen items I ‘gather’ ;-) I’ll be able to sell to a fence to get rid of. Getting caught by guards with stolen items is not a good thing. The guards take all your stolen items off you and if you spend time in gaol, you lose skill points, depending on how long you’re in there.

The fighters guild is one way to make money. Run tasks for them, mostly killing stuff so far, and then get a bit of coin at the end of it.

What strikes me the most is that there is no experience in the usual sense of the term.

Experience is not gained by completing tasks or finishing quests, its gained by using your skills. You can’t level up until your main skills are at a particular level. You have 7 main skills, so your style of play becomes rather important to advancing. If you spend a lot of time casting, but the types of spells you use the most aren’t one of your main skills, it will take a very long time to level up. But if you spend a lot of time using your bladed weapons instead (swords, daggers and so on) and thats one of your main skills, that will speed up your leveling. But you’ve gotta get all 7 main skills advancing.

For me its a little more interesting. I use destruction spells a lot, and thats a main skill, but I find myself using my bow more than my blades. Problem is that Marksmanship is not a main skill for my toon, but blades are. So I have to spend a significant period of time getting in close to advance my blade skill level. Because marksmanship isn’t a main skill, it progresses slower which really doesn’t help things much. ;-)

Combat is another that I’m finding really weird. :-) Using my bow and my spells is a lot easier for me than trying to use my sword and shield. In fact, I still haven’t gotten used to using my sword and shield at all yet. I’ll get there I guess, but its going to take a lot of practice. Especially given that its all First Person. :-) I’m very much not used to playing an RPG in first person. Morrowwind was the same, but even then I spent more time using bows and spells. Am thinking I made a mistake picking blades. ;-)

I’m loving stealth in this game. :-) I’ve got my stealth to a level now where if I attack a target while stealthed (and they haven’t detected me yet) I get a 3x damage bonus to that first strike. :-) In many cases, thats enough to kill them first attack. :-) Even applies to using my bow. So I can often take out a target from across the room while stealthed without having to worry about health. :-)

The default keymappings are a little weird to get used to. Space activates things, E jumps. F sheaths/readies your weapons and Q is autorun. Left mouse is attack and right mouse is block. Its very much unusual to me and I’m taking a lot of time getting used to it.

I very much like the way you get quests and the like. :-) None of the NPCs have indicators that suggest they have quests. You pick up quests by talking to characters or listening in to their conversations and getting conversation pointers. When you overhear someone talking about something, often they’re good clues and indicators of whats going on in the area and allow you to figure out where you might pick up quests.

Of course, this has its down sides. I find myself talking to every NPC I encounter just to find quests or whatever. Some NPCs are not friendly at all, which means I need to persuade them to chat with me. This uses the Speechcraft skill (one of my mains) or I can spend gold to try and bribe them. Completing quests also improves the way NPCs think of and react to you.

You can buy houses in the game! :-) I like that. :-) It means you have a place to store your junk that you don’t want to sell, but can’t carry. :-) Its also safe as there are no other players that might break in and steal your items. I don’t know if NPCs will do so, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

The hardest thing for me at the moment is that I’m traveling between cities a lot and there are so many quests in each place that I’m not finishing an area before moving on. Even more frustrating is that there are just sooo many quests. :-)

The explorable land area is Massive. I mean, really huge. It takes a long time to travel from one place to another by going along the roads. Going cross country can take even longer because you’ve gotta stop and fight all the time.

You can immediately ‘fast travel’ between all the major cities on the map. Thats easily done. But there are so many little towns and hamlets you discover as you wander around. These are important because often the best trainers are only found in these little towns. Then there are all the ruins and caves and other places of interest you stumble upon. At one such discovered place, I found a shrine and upon activating it a god gave me a quest. :-) Go figure. ;-)

The graphics are just outstanding. But the age of my machine really does show itself in this game. I’ve had to dial nearly all the graphics right down so that I can play at any sort of a reasonable frame rate. No cool grass effects for me I’m afraid. But even dialed down the game still looks spectacular. It’d be frightening to see what it looks like with an X1900 doing the gruntwork. :-)

Addictive is the only way I can describe Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. From about 9am Saturday all the way through till about 1:15am Sunday morning. The only break I took was to watch part of the Warriors game and cook dinner. The rest of the day really was spent doing nothing but play this game.

I can promise you its an acquired taste for many. If you’re not an RPG fan, you’re going to struggle to get in to this game. And even then, if you’re used to other games such as World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, Fable or even Baldurs Gate 2, you’ll probably need to be a real RPG fan to get used to it. The depth of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is staggering. The fact that you can’t just rock up to a toon with an icon over their head to get a quest is a major part of it. The fact that your reputation/fame and so many other factors have a lot to do with how NPCs react to you also has a lot to do with it.

There should be a new RPG genre for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Massive Single-player Role Playing Game. Because so far it feels like it really does dwarf Guild Wars, and that is bigger than World of Warcraft for explorable area.

This game is huge. I’ve spent nearly 2 full days playing it now and I haven’t even begun to go near the main storyline. I’m afraid to in a way. I want to get as much of the rest of the world done as I can before I start down that path. I want to get my character leveled as high as I can before I start to take on the spawns from Oblivion. Its hard enough fighting mobs in the forests. ;-)

I think it would take a very long time to achieve everything in this game. You can follow the main story if you want to just play that part of it, or you could never do the story itself and still spend nearly forever just playing the side quests. The fact that in each city and town there are so many quests you can do will keep you busy for weeks.

This isn’t going to be some 40 hour game that you finish and then rarely play again. I can’t speak for the main quest yet, but I’ve spent at least 20 hours so far on just one city and the area around it. And I’ve still not finished in that region yet.

If you are a fan of RPGs, and I do mean real RPGs, then this is definitely a game you have to try out. Once you get over the initial shell shock of how it works and start to actually get in to the game itself, you’ll find yourself being seriously addicted. I definitely am.

By far the best RPG since Baldurs Gate 2 and in my opinion it nudges even that work of art off the top rung.

Seriously, if you consider yourself a fan of the Fantasy genre of stories, and you consider yourself a fan of the RPG computer games, you really must give Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion a go. I can almost assure you that once you get in to it, you’ll be just as addicted as I am.

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