Oblivion: Training Montage

The theme song for this post.

There's was much punching.

Rats


Spiders


Boars


Bandits (with magic axes)


And there was blocking practice.


This made me very sad. First, the fact that I have to "farm" blocking skill is lame. But worse than that, I was level nine or ten, and between blocking and healing spells, I could not hold off a rat indefinitely. I believe a level nine character should no longer have to think at all about rats. But that's just the tip of the sad iceberg. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul mod was supposed to make certain areas more dangerous, and certain areas less so. But it doesn't seem to be working that way at all. Instead of rats. The low level areas are spawning packs of boars and half a dozen bandits. Dungeons that used to have Implings now have Trolls. I thought the whole point of Oscuro's was to make it so that old areas could be sailed through and new ones would force stealth and cunning. But since stealth in the game is broken, I guess it doesn't make much difference.

It's evenly broken. Once an enemy sees you outside, they always know where you are. But I can often stealth attack an enemy indoors, back off a couple meters, then move in and do it again. It's broken and stupid and no fun. That's becoming the mantra for the game. It crashes randomly. The video randomly goes blank apparently somehow related to where I'm standing and what direction I'm facing. The way many skills level up is ridiculous and, far more damning, boring.

Originally I wanted to level up because I wanted to advance the story, but the process has been so tedious and unrewarding I really don't want to play the game anymore. Finding out that only silver weapons hurt certain foes (whom I will undoubtedly see many more of if I try to go through that gate again) also made me feel like trying to continue the game as a monk would be a waste of time. Oblivion gave me a few good stories, and I appreciated the extra mod content. But in the end, the game isn't baked. Bethesda bit off more than they could chew, and not even years of devoted fan support could compensate for it. I hope Fallout 3 is using the Unreal engine, or something more stable than Oblivion.