Oblivion

So I’ve been playing Oblivion for a while. Second time actually, first time was last year but I couldn’t get into it. Partly, I think, because my character kind of sucked. I tried to be cleaver and make a custom-made character that was good at everything, or at least those things that interested me the most. The result was a mess, I wasn’t good enough in anything specific battle-wise so I just lost and lost.

Plus it’s a pretty deep game that takes time to get into, so when losing that initial motivation because of suckage I shelved the game for later continuation. But instead of continuing I started anew, and this time with a better character. A warrior, and I’m also committed to improving precisely the warriors aspects (mostly anyway) rather than diverting the development.

Being a warrior in this game is also good for another reason: the game is very slow. I like that, but I don’t necessarily want to make it even slower by going mage or a sneaking thief. Plus, these traits can be developed later in the game when I’m secure in my warrior-identity. Until them I’m mage- and thief-phobic.

Okay, but enough about that. What about other aspects? Well, huge game world, lots of things to do, so much that you have to avoid doing a lot of things because it would take too much time otherwise. And those are not “meaningless” things like collecting stuff only get a trophy (the game doesn’t even have trophies btw, too old). For example, I don’t do any alchemy. That involves picking plants of various kinds and combining them into potentially potent potions. And like I said I don’t yet try to develop my magical side, although this can be a huge part of the game if you go that route.

Not only is the world huge, it’s also beautiful. The graphic is good but not super, but the aesthetics is definitely great. I can understand people preferring the look of this game to the post-apocalyptic landscape of Fallout 3 (aka “Oblivion with guns”), although they’re wrong when they say the graphics is better.

There is not much to say about the battles. They’re not very demanding in terms of reaction time or anything, instead it depends a lot on the character and gear. Which is good, an RPG should depend more on the character in the game than the player playing the character. The battles are fun, and there’s an arena in which you can compete gladiator-style and rise in ranks and get some cash with each victory.

While I do like the game a lot this time around (but even now it took several hours to get into it), I still like Fallout 3 more. A least so far. A lot can be said about the similarities and differences between these two, but I think I’ll save that for another post.

I leave you with my favorite song from the game:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uCDgiRClYs]