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.

Oblivion: Remora Politics

While I've still been taking screenshots in Oblivion, there are too many little stories to tell. And many of them feel very much the same. The strong feed on the week. And I, still being quite weak, am mostly like a remora.

When I was a child, we had a book called "Fish Do the Strangest Things". One of the featured animals was the remora. It latches on to a shark using a suction cup on its forehead. When the shark eats, the remora gets the scraps. I feel very much like that fish. Let's list some examples.

Shark	Victim
Some bandits	Porkins
Some skeletons	Some bandits
A werewolf	Some skeletons

Is a pattern becoming evident? I'm not killing anything, just running away from it until something bigger kills it for me. That's not always the case. I do occasionally find manageable enemies. But it's still pretty messed up to realize that most of my best gear has come form corpses of stuff I didn't kill. This was really driven home to me on the road to Kvatch. I barely got out of Skingrad before being set upon by three or four bandits. I might have been able to take them, but it would have been a long and unpleasant fight, and nightfall was coming, so I decided to ran. I kept running by more bandits and having them chase me as well. Then there was some crazy plant monster on my tail. I ran. Eventually, I outdistanced them. However, being unable to further the quest at Kvatch (as I was far too low level) I had to go back. I was unenthused.

The first thing I found on the road was a body. One of the bandits was dead. A little further on, I saw another dead bandit, but before I even reached the body to loot it, the plant creature attacked. Luckily (or thanks to my judicious spending of attribute points on my speed stat) I could outrun it. And thanks to loot menus stopping the clock on the game world, I got to loot the bodies of every bandit that had chased me to Kvetch, as the plant creature had killed them all. I may be quite weak, but I'm also quite wealthy. But I'm tired of running, so I'm going to head back to the starting areas to grind some levels. Fools will be pummeled.

Oblivion: On the Road Again

Meet Porkins. Okay, his name isn't really Porkins. But the game didn't give him a name, so I get call him Porkins after the short lived X-Wing pilot. He's warning me about Daedra (the demons of the game world) being around and to stay on the road. He didn't need to. I was going to anyway. Regardless, it's nice to know there are guards around.



And Magul apparently didn't get too far in the six hours I was asleep. But on closer inspection of her "Paint" horse, it appears to be made of painted concrete, so that's understandable.

[Encounter Not Pictured]
A cat man jumped out of a bush and demanded my money or my life. I have FRAPS taking screenshots automatically every sixty seconds. It took less time than that for me to evaluate his offer, refuse it, watch Porkins, Magul, and the other two nearby guards dispatch him, and loot the body. It's good to have friends (and dedicated civil servants).

After moving further up the road, I came to a small inn.



I talked to the guy sitting out front in the middle of the night. I asked him about the local rumors and he repeatedly told me that province so and so is the breadbasket of Tamriel. I don't know if he didn't like me, didn't really know anything, or just thought that this information was somehow crucial to a lizard man such as myself.

The inn patrons indoors had more interesting things to say.



Apparently there are demon worshipers on some island somewhere. And the innkeeper wants me to kill a Necromancer. I distinctly remember the readme file for Oscuro's saying Necromancers are level 20-25, so we won't be taking her up on that bounty any time soon. Nope it's time to hit the road again.

**Aside**
I downloaded better textures for more than just the scenery. It seems pretty stupid, but I actually found myself admiring the high res food textures. I probably would never have noticed the originals (as being good or bad looking) if I hadn't downloaded a mod specifically for them. I'm concerned about how using the mods has diverted my attention. If I'm spending my time evaluating the aesthetic merits of high resolution cheese instead of killing stuff, how can that possibly be an improvement?

Well, I got to write a sentence that included the phrase "aesthetic merits of high resolution cheese". That was pretty awesome. :D
**End Aside**

Oblivion: Back Inside

While looting the camp of the newly deceased brigands, I come across their bedroll. Great! I needed to level up! So I sleep and get some improved stats. Unfortunately, when I wake up, it looks like this.



Night sucks. I have no night vision and carrying a torch around at night is kind of like carrying around a neon sign saying "free lizard meat buffet". I'm going to explore the door I found under the ruins.



Oh look. Pretty blue stone. What a surprise.

I had gotten no more than a dozen steps into the place when a big jerk popped out and chased me outside. Yep. Jerks persist across load screens. Groo is unamused. After filling him with arrows I came back in and didn't get another dozen steps before I almost triggered a trap.



This picture (made extra bright for those of you with dark monitors) shows me using an arrow to trigger a pressure plate. This is a way of setting off a trap that doesn't involve my head caving in, so I support it's use. But between the jerk and the trap, I'm not feeling very welcome here.



Sure is pretty though. Too bad I eventually come to a large room with at least four jerks in it. I'm not going in there. Dark or not, it's time to hit the road.

Oblivion: Makin' Friends

I creep up to the ruins. Again, since I'm using Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, I have no idea what may be up here. I know there's going to be a point in the game where I need to run for my life, I just don't know when it is. I can hear voices. There are humans up here. Bandits would be a lot higher level than rats and goblins, I'd expect. I creep around a corner to take a look.

Aaah! JERKS!

Even though I was sneaking, this cleric saw me from twenty meters, cast a spell on herself and charged me, with her more heavily armored friend in tow. I ran. I ran a lot. I ran out of the ruins and up the hill. I came to a fork in the road. I looked down the hill and saw my pursuers still doing what pursuers do. I took the right fork and ran. I ran a lot. When I finally looked back and saw this...

I finally relaxed and stopped running.


Aaah! Orc lady on a horse!

Oh wait. She's nice. I can talk to her. What's this bribe button for? Oh! She likes me now! Great! At least one person in the kingdom of Tamriel doesn't want to kill me. Boss. Wait. Did I hire her? Is she my adventuring buddy now? No. She's just riding off down the road. Okay. I guess I should go back and see what those jerks in the ruins are up to now that it's getting light out again.



Now imagine yourself in my place. Hiding behind a rock looking down into the ruins, not knowing where the bad guys are, and not wanting to get any closer for fear that you might find out. The hard way.

You see something on your right. Oh no! It's the cleric! No. It's Magul. What's she doing here? She's headed right into the ruins. She's got a sword out. She's running in.

Oh crap! I better back her up!

I see the cleric. Time for some thunk thunk.



So here's me, trying to shoot arrows into the cleric faster than she can heal herself while my new orc friend is chasing her armored companion around like he was an unruly orc child.



And she beat him down!

Wow.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my profound regret at not having purchased this game sooner.

Oblivion: Patch List

After patching Oblivion to version 1.2 something something, here are the additional patches I'm applying.

Unofficial Patch 3.0
There were still a lot of bugs left in the game after the 1.2 patch. This patch includes fixes for things like "game crashes on level up". It's not very heartening to think that a bug that bad wasn't worth an official patch.

Quest Popup Remover
Apparently Oblivion likes to remind you of what quests you're on. By remind I mean nag. I'll have none of that. I'll find the quest log when I need it.

Oblivion Script Extender
Some other mods need this.

Wrye Bash
Ditto. Also WryeBash uses Python and some Python modules I had to download as well.

BTMod
It was at the top of a top ten list of Oblivion mods. Apparently it improves the UI significantly. I downloaded a couple other interface mods, but I'm trying to keep this blog post semi-readable. So let's skip ahead to the big stuff.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
So Oblivion sucks by default. You can beat the final boss at level three. And once you hit level 20, roadside bandits wear some of the best armor in the game. That is because Oblivion always makes your enemies the same level as you to even out the challenge. It's also because they didn't have time to put in any content after level 20, so they just had the player fight the same monsters, but tougher. In Oscuro's, certain levels and types of monsters live in certain areas. This means certain areas are inaccessible until the player can fight, sneak, or run through them. It also modifies a lot of other elements, like game economy, weapon timing, AI, and more stuff than I understand.

Part of me doesn't like the idea that I won't be playing what the designers intended, but I also don't want to be fighting brigands with armor so expensive there would be no possible reason for them to need to rob people.

Martigen's Monster Mod
As I mentioned, the game only has content for twenty levels, but goes to level 50. Martigen's monsters are integrated with Oscuro's mod to give me a lot more stuff to fight.

All +5
When you level up in Oblivion, the player can raise three attributes of their character. But they can only be raised the maximum amount (five points) if the character has been doing appropriate actions. This lead to bizarre behaviors like knights in full armor hopping across the landscape to improve their agility and mages carrying heavy shields around to improve their health. In other words, it made no sense. This mod makes it so that I'll be able to add a full plus five to any attribute my character has used in the last level. Considering all the warnings Oscuro's has in its text files about how difficult things are going to be, I'm thinking this will be a simple and effective way to go.

Unique Landscapes
A lot of Oblivion looks generically beautiful. With these, it should look more specifically beautiful, or at least the 13 areas the project has currently managed to cover should.

NPC Faces
It takes some tweaking with WryeBash to make it work, but since these selfless modders updated 1,201 NPC faces to make them more distinct, it seemed like the least I could do.

Seasonal Weather for More Sky Climates
Yeah. Crazy name. There are half a dozen recommended weather replacements for the game. SWfMSC, combined with OC Darker Nights and Phinix Waterfix, seemed the best compromise. This will probably be one of the first things I disable if I have stability issues. Oscuro's has a cool feature where I'll automatically drop my torch when I pull out my weapon, so I think the darker nights will be great for atmosphere. And the Phinix Waterfix was the recommendation of dev/akm who also has a very nice web site with Oblivion mod lists.

Almost Everything Visible when Distant
It'll be a performance hit, but when I'm on top of a mountain, I want to see stuff!

Qarl's texture pack 3 (Redimized)
This is the bulk of my downloading. Gigs of high resolution textures which add a lot of detail to the world. Unfortunately, it has to be repacked in a special Oblivion format before I can use it. Oh well. I can finish this article while I wait.

Oblivion Stereo Sound Overhaul
Among some other sound mods, this should make the sound in Oblivion significantly better. I'm particularly looking forward to the improved bow sounds. I wanna thwack a fool. The addition of appropriate weather sounds indoors should also be a nice touch.

Now the only question is, can I actually get Oblivion running with all these mods installed. :P

Oblivion: Pre Game

I finally decided to grab a used copy of Oblivion. I've installed it and patched it and downloaded mods for it. Actually, I'm still downloading mods. Oblivion was a large and ambitious game, as such, the mod community has vastly improved the game over the two years since it's release, from such small things as a keyring to help me not have to hunt through my inventory for keys, to such large things as expanding the games stock 7 weather types to 41 different types. Just to give you an idea, I'm downloading 3 gigs of add-ons to a 4.4 gig game.

I probably won't install all of them. Luckily there's a nice guide to help me know which of the most important mods tread on each other's toes. I'll produce a full list of what I'm using when I'm ready to get started.