Oblivion Redux

29 April, 2007. 578 words.

I’ve been woefully negligent in reporting my gaming activities here. Not that anyone reads this anyway. :)

As last reported, I bought a mount for my level 45 Night Elf in World of Warcraft. I spent another week or so playing around with it before realizing that the new, expensive cat that took weeks to save up for did almost nothing to improve my gaming experience. I then concluded that WoW was a complete waste of my time and money. So I cancelled the account in January and haven’t touched it since. I’m happy to report, though, that the total amount of money I spent on WoW came out to about $50, which is typical for a video game. I got two or three months of entertainment out of it, so that was a pretty good deal.

For about a month, I didn’t play anything. Then, in a fit of boredom, I turned to the only other game I had purchased recently. You guessed it: Oblivion.

I’m almost ashamed to admit that, especially after I initially trashed the game in a mini-review back in November. But I ran into one of those “dire emergency” situations and grudgingly tried it again, if for no other reason than to get my money’s worth out of it. (Nothing sucks more than spending $50 on a game and not liking it.)

I’ve been hooked ever since.

Here’s what I like about it:

The game world is HUGE. I mean, it’s unbelievable. Even after playing this game for the better part of February, March and April, I haven’t even exposed a tenth of the points of interest on the map.
There are a bazillion different storylines you can follow if you get bored with the main objective. This game is about as non-linear as you can get. In fact, it’s almost impossible to stay focused on the main storyline.
The outdoor scenary is quite breathtaking for a computer game.

Oblivion reminds me of the first-person role-playing games I liked in the past, back before “action” was much of a component (games like Bard’s Tale, Ultima Underworld, Stonekeep, and Might and Magic VI). Your primary goal in Oblivion is to wander around the countryside talking to people, gathering information, and fulfilling quests which all combine to slowly reveal the storyline. Combat is actually kind of a distraction, and I still find it a little annoying. (Probably because my characters have all sucked at combat.)

My first character was a thief, but, while it was fun sneaking all over the place, after a while I got tired of getting killed all the time. Next I tried a plain old warrior, with which I was able to satisfactorily beat the crap out of monsters, but I don’t really like combat all that much in Oblivion. (It’s a bit sluggish on my system.) So I switched again to a shadowy Dark Elf mage, and I’ve advanced to the point in the story where I’m gathering help from all the town leaders to assist in Bruma’s defense against the hordes pouring forth from the Oblivion gates. Unfortunately I’m getting killed a lot now in the Plains of Oblivion, so I’m a little frustrated with the game again. Maybe I need to go back to my Nord warrior.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Oblivion is pretty cool, once you get past the initial learning curve. It’s like reading a book, except you get to go wherever you want.

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