The 10th Hour 11.27.09: Top Things in Oblivion
Posted by Adam Larck on 11.27.2009
From characters to weapons and more, see what Adam Larck liked about Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion inside.
Welcome back to my last 10th Hour for the month. I hope everyone that celebrates Thanksgiving had a good one. Like always, I'm going to start on a quick update.
- Still into Modern Warfare 2, but already starting to wane on it. If I have a bigger group I don't mind it, but with only me and one other person I don't really like the multiplayer. Strategies are harder to come up with and I often just watch my random teammates run to a pointless death.
Because of this, I've gone back to Ultimate Alliance 2 and have been having fun with it. Hope to finish it soon and move on to another game to beat, but we will see what happens.
Reader Feedback
Last week, I did my picks on action RPGs. Before I touch on some of the comments, I want to explain why Dragon Age: Origins isn't on there, I'm currently waiting on my review copy of the game, so still haven't had any hands on time with it. However, I have been looking forward to this game for a while and have high hopes for it. Judging by your comments, it looks like I won't be disappointed. Now, onto the comments!
First up is regular commenter Deathpool with a good suggestion for a game I've wanted to try.
" Weird for me to say this, considering I own all four KH games and enjoy them, but I don't know if I would have ranked it so high. I think a lot of its rep has to do with its abundance of fan service -- nothing wrong with that, but I feel it makes people think higher of the game than it deserves.
Have you tried Demons Soul yet? I don't blame you for leaving it off your list as it is a new title, but I think its one that you'd enjoy a lot judging from this list, as long as you don't mind painfully hard games. I would suggest giving Torchlight a try too, you can download the demo at www.torchlightgame.com if you're interested."
I want to try Demons Soul, but there's been one problem with getting it: my lack of a PS3. I'm hoping to get one before the end of this year, and that's one of the games at the top of my list. From what I've seen from it, it looks great. I'll definitely be checking that game out when I finally get one.
Next up is Soy with a game that I overlooked.
" Mass Effect needs a mention, so I'll do it. If you haven't played it, DO SO."
I've played Mass Effect, put a lot of exploration hours into it and beat the game, yet somehow forgot about this game when it came to this list. It was an omission on my part that I didn't mean to make and would have made a spot if I had remembered it. Probably somewhere in the middle of the list.
Finally, a list by James C on his favorite ones.
" The Western Action RPGs rarely captured my interest so while I played many of them they don't really make much of an impact on my list.
Honourable Mentions: Rogue Galaxy- Did everything well but nothing particularly stood out to me.
10. KOTOR II- The story wasn't as great as KOTOR which brings it down a peg or two. Otherwise a great game.
9. Kingdom Hearts II- Massacring 1000s of heartless in one battle is a gaming highlight for me.
8. Final Fantasy XII- I consider it a Action RPG. Great game; pity about the characters and the story.
7. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time- Brilliant battle system, one of the best JRPG battle systems ever.
6. Diablo II- Lost many hours playing this game with my mates.
5. Kingdom Hearts- Fun
4. Tales of the Abyss- Enjoyable characters for the most part, great battle system, deep game world to explore.
3. KOTOR- Ultimate "I want to be a Jedi" game.
2. Mass Effect- Ticks just about every box. Somehow managed to create a character who's sex, appearance. actions, attitudes and opinions are completely tailored by the player while still seeming like a real character and not just an avatar.
1. Tales of Symphonia- Great battle system, epic story, and great characters. There's very little about this game that I don't love."
Thanks for the list, and keep them coming!
The 10th Hour – Top Things in Oblivion
After choosing Oblivion as my top game last week, I wanted to do a list over it like I started my column time here doing Fallout 3. So this week is all about Oblivion. While it is an expansive game, these things really caught my attention when I was going through the game. Let's get started. 10. Chameleon Spell - I didn't like this spell simply for the effect that it did when cast, I liked it for what it could do when used to enhance.
After I got the ability to start enhancing my armor, I started to try various spells before I landed on what this one did. Getting a full suit of armor under the Chameleon spell was great for sneaking around in. I could get right up next to an enemy and destroy them with a hit before they would notice me. Definitely a great spell for enhancements.
9. Sneak Skill - Speaking of sneaking skills, I made quite a few characters that revolved around this skill because of the power I found it had late in the game.
I know it may seem that it drags on while you're crouch walking around the area, but the added critical hit chance for getting an undetected shot off more than made up for it for me. Plus, it was one of the easier ones to level up. Just wander around sneaking by an enemy who doesn't detect you and watch your level go up. 8. Wabbajack Staff - Not all items have to have a practical use.
Take the Wabbajack Staff for example. I had fun carrying and using it just to see what transformation I would get. Sometimes, it would be greatly helpful, such as turning a Daedroth into a Rat. However, I ran into just as many problems of using it on a weak creature just to get a tougher one. It was still just fun to use and transform things in front of people. 7. Vampire Disease - Personally, I really liked how becoming a vampire in the game had its own perks and even a few quests.
Being able to get such skills like Hunter's Sight and Reign of Terror, among others, along with some increased attributes almost made the curse worth getting for me. I didn't want to always have to worry about feeding to be able to walk in sunlight, though. The extra missions that became available to help make a cure to get rid of the vampire disease were also good to go through to become just a regular person again. Bethesda did a good job with the risk/reward system of being a vampire in my opinion. 6. Skeleton Key - If you couldn't tell by my above description of many of my characters, stealth was a big thing for me and so was lock picking.
A lot of the lock picks were easy to do, but having the Skeleton Key made all of them a breeze. Having a pick that never broke and could continue to be used was great. After getting this, I just spammed auto-unlock to try and unlock whatever I needed opened. If it succeeded, I got it open. If I didn't, I still got more experience. It was a win-win situation for me. 5. Gray Fox Cowl - For all the people who wanted to get away with anything, this was the equipment to get.
While this does have some good attribute and effects, it was the second personality it gave you that was worth it. Being able to put the cowl on, kill everyone in a castle, and then take it off without having your character get any repercussions was great. After getting the cowl, however, if you got caught you could still pay off the bounty on its head. Unfortunately, on mine, that bounty was $40,000, so I just did quick hit and runs with it. Still, a great item to cause trouble with. 4. Patrick Stewart - Getting Stewart to play the original emperor in the game was a great touch.
Hearing him for the first time while in the jail cell was unexpected, and following him and his group through the dungeon was a good introduction to the game. Stewart did a good job with the personality of Uriel Septim VII, and gave the character a good personality, even if it was short lived. In fact, my main complaint was the fact that it was short lived. Bethesda seems to like killing off big name talent early, and it's always disappointing. 3. Oblivion DLC - Oblivion had a great amount of DLC, even if some of it was short lived or pointless.
The first DLC that came out, the horse armor, I still consider one of the most pointless content out there. Paying to make your horse look better? I'll pass. However, the smaller mission areas to go through that were cheap to buy, and the two bigger content packs were fun to play. I especially liked the Shivering Isles. It was a fun add-on that gave a new area of the game and some good places to explore. 2. Guilds - I could have probably done each one of these individually, but wanted to group the various guilds together to save a bit of space.
Whether it was the fights, mages, thieves, arena or dark brotherhood, the quests and benefits you got from each of these guilds were great. I especially liked the dark brotherhood. The assassination quests with interesting ways to pull them off were a good touch. No matter what guild you did, you could still do the other ones and reap all the benefits. I wish they would have touched more on these when they did some DLC. 1. Size of Map - For me, most of the fun just came from wandering around the land and finding what was there to be seen.
Seeing the various places to change your skills or the various people worshipping a god was interesting to see while wandering about. Not only that, but some of the rare giant monsters that you could find were worth the trip it was to get there. Even now, I know there are still a lot of things that I haven't seen that I may never get to see just because of the time it would take. Still, there's more than enough things to keep a player busy for months.
Well, that's all I have for this week. Like or hate what I said? Shoot me an email at adamant_l_87@yahoo.com or leave a comment below. Any feedback is appreciated.
Personally I'd add area-effect destruction spells in there. It's an endless source of fun to spam some lightningstrikes at your enemies and send them flying (more so when they're dead... one of my favorite moments ever was to accidently fling the unicorn into outer space and never find where it landed!). Even further fun if you could paralyze your enemies, since then you could just knock them around in the sky and see how long you'd keep em airbourne. Or go to Oblivion, paralyze every draemora you run into, and knock em into the surrounding sea of lava.
Posted By: Achoom (Guest) on November 27, 2009 at 01:19 PM
crafting your own spells and enhancing armor and weapons
Posted By: K. Bett (Guest) on November 27, 2009 at 03:17 PM
Didn't matter how large the size of the map was or that it was an open world with the poor level and item scaling in the game.
How can there be a sense of danger and excitement when everything was leveling up with you? Morrowind did a much better job with this.
Just kills the immersion factor when you could be Grand Champion of the Arena at level 2.
And exploring was pointless as well - fight your way through a dungeon to find a treasure chest with leveled loot?
I do agree that the guilds were a highlight, specifically the Dark Brotherhood, easily the best quest line in the game. But the main flaw with the guilds? Didn't make sense that you could join ALL of them.
BUt the whole game was one step forward, 3 steps back.
In Morrowind you're eased in to the main quest in a realistic and logical way. In Oblivion, not so much. I mean the Emperor's Elite Guard couldn't protect him and you a simple level one prisoner are charged with blah blah blah?
Then there is supposed to be an INVASION... but someone forgot to tell the invading forces to do any actual invading (well except for one town at the beginning - which WAS well done I admit) - and the townsfolk go on about their lives like nothing is happening.
Patrick Stewart - another highlight of the game but as you pointed out, over before it begins. Shame about it is the voice acting in the game is HORRENDOUS. Add to that the fact that several different voices can be used for a SINGLE NPC (which is jarring) and add to THAT the fact that the dialogue seems like it was written by 12 year olds (no offense kids) and read as if to a class of 2nd graders.
And the dialogue "mini-game" was horrendous.
They could have called this "Oblivion: My First RPG". Not only were the number of useable skills reduced from the previous games in the series but NPC/Quest GPS?
Pop Up windows telling you what you just did and what you should do next?
Simplistic dialogue responses that barely change anything in the game?
All that being said, it was still a decent action/adventure game - with the open world it was along the lines of GTA's mindlessly fun diversions.
But as an RPG (a Western RPG at that) it was an epic fail and I can't think of 10 things, let alone 5 Oblivion did right.
1) Graphics
2) Game size/length
3) Accessibility (both bad and good I suppose)
Posted By: Relayer71 (Guest) on November 27, 2009 at 03:28 PM
Oh, and the Dark Brotherhood quests.
Posted By: Relayer71 (Guest) on November 27, 2009 at 03:29 PM
I would have said the Dark Brotherhood missions, or more specifically the one where you have to kill the people in the house one by one like in a whodunnit. One of my favorite missions ever, and seeing as how you love stealth in the game, I'm surprised you missed it.
Posted By: Denton56 (Guest) on November 27, 2009 at 05:35 PM
I couldnt possibly do a top list but there were so many awesome things in this game.
Just a few off the top of my head would include RockMilk Cave (think that was the name and every day when you entered it triggered a battle between bandits and theives which left some great loot once they killed each other).
By far my favourite 'guild' was the Dark Brotherhood and some of the missions in their were brilliant including my personal favourite where you had to hunt down a khajit.
The best fun I had though was during one of the mages quests where there was an attack launched on Bruma. I managed to get some undead warrior skeletons to follow me out of the building into the town and it ended up in a massive battle which killed about 20 guards. I just stood on a building roof watching it all unfurl.
Posted By: Ste (Guest) on November 27, 2009 at 06:13 PM
Worst Game Ever, Worst Series Ever = Elder Scrolls!
Posted By: Guest#0034 (Guest) on November 27, 2009 at 10:56 PM
Emerging form the sewers for the first time, SIMPLY AMAZING!!!
Try casting a 100% Chameleon Spell on a horse, click to first person then back to third person. Basically you become a ghost.
Posted By: Daedric Lord (Guest) on November 28, 2009 at 04:56 PM
Map exploration was definitely the absolute best part of Oblivion (Morrowind and Fallout 3, as well) - for me, at least. I played through Oblivion 4 times and I STILL found new areas/dungeons on the last playthrough.
Exploration easily outshined all of Oblivion's flaws.
Making your own spells was also hours upon hours of fun for me.
Posted By: Guest#4438 (Guest) on December 01, 2009 at 05:15 PM
Yeah but exploration was pointless when most enemies were scaled to your level - how much fun can you have with fights that are tailored to your level? You never really obliterate anything and you never really get destroyed, I guess unless you attack too many enemies at one time.
But the leveled loot also made exploration pointless. There just wasn't much worth plundering in those dungeons.
Now, I'm talking about Oblivion, Morrowind wasn't as bad. And I didn't like Fallout 3 much (for some of the same reasons as Oblivion, namely the terrible voice acting/dialogue) but exploration was a high point.
Posted By: Relayer71 (Guest) on December 01, 2009 at 09:25 PM
don't worry lewt qqboy, wow:nerdaclysm will be out soon and you can masturbate to your purps all over again.
But me, I'd rather explore a map for the sake of exploring it. If you can't be motivated to crawl through a dungeon for anything less than uber new gear than you probably won't enjoy any Bethesda game.
Posted By: Guest#0434 (Guest) on December 03, 2009 at 01:55 AM
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