Welcome to Cyrodiil : land of Tamriel

Have you played Morrowind? Well, I did... It’s the most revolutionary gaming I ever did. It was 3 years ago. Now, there’s oblivion … The 4th numbered game in the legendary Elder Scrolls series. So, when it became available in the store, I grab it without thinking another minute. It’s not a very wise move, you know. But I did it anyway… I was lucky… The game worked fine, and when I start exploring the vast world of Cyrodiil, I knew that the game was worth my 80 buck.

Okay before we get into the game let check the computer requirement for the game …

Minimum:
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Windows XP
512 MB System RAM
1.8 Ghz Intel Pentium Processor (or Equivalent)
128MB Direct3D Compatible Graphic Card DirectX 9.0 Compatible Driver
8x DVD ROM Drive
4.6 GB Free Hard Drive Space
DirectX 8.1 Compatible Sound Card

Recommended:
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Windows XP (with Service Pack 2)
1 GB System RAM
2.7 Ghz Intel Pentium Processor (or Equivalent)
ATI X800 Series, Nvidia Geforce 6800 Series or Higher Graphic Card
8x DVD ROM Drive
5 GB Free Hard Drive Space
DirectX 8.1 Compatible Sound Card

If your PC does not meet the minimum requirement, you may want to consider spending your 80 buck in a new hardware before buying this game. If you want a better performance, then upgrading your Graphic Processor would be the first in the list. When it comes to the main processor, if you already met the recommended requirement, than you good to go. You might wanna consider upgrading the RAM department, for a decent performance increase.

The Genre…

Walking the path that the legendary Elder Scrolls “Arena” laid, Oblivion is still an open-ended first person RPG, with massive world and limitless freedom on how to play the game. It still does have a main quest for you to follow, but you have a choice on how and when to finish the quest. You can always wait, while enjoying a romantic sunset in the mountain, or if you want to, you can ignore the main quest, and start killing all the living thing in Cyrodiil. It’s really your call. Full freedom …

It’s sad that I don’t have the chance to play Arena and Daggerfall. It was said that, they’re the pioneer of open ended RPG. Is that true? Well, it’s doesn’t matter now. Because their grandchildren was making it’s way to becoming the king of RPGs.

By the way, have I told you how I become the king of Winning Eleven in my neighborhood? Errr … nope? Don’t wanna know? Okay, carry on.

The Oblivion Story …

The game starts with the emperor try to escape from an attempt of assassination in the royal palace, through the secret passage that is located in your prison cell. Sadly, the emperor and the guard were dead before they escape from the tunnel. Before he died, the emperor gave you “amulet of the kings” and told you to his find illegitimate son so he can save the world, because apparently his dead opened the gates of oblivion, full of crazy daedra from hell, and they are trying to invade this world …

Oblivion is your typical “save the world from destruction” kind of game. And there’s a catch, to find whoever killed the emperor and kick his/her butt …

From my point of view, Oblivion has a very good story telling, very smooth plot transition and a very huge stock of side story. Expect a 100 hours of gameplay from the game …

The Game …

In character creation, you get the usual races in Morrowind, there are Argonian, Breton, Dark Elf, High Elf, Imperial, Khajiit, Nord, Orc, Redguard, and Wood Elf. Whatever race you pick, you can always customize their appearance. After that, you get to pick their class, their birth sign, their attributes, their skills.

After creating your first character, you will notice, that all of the process of the character creation, were brought to you with some kind of tutorial quest. The quest will guide you, from learning how to walk, how to sneak, how to repair, how to lock pick, to learning how to do your combat. It’s simple and entertaining … well, for the first time it did. But for the fifth time … it’s become unnecessary … maybe, if there’s an option to skip the tutorial quest, it would been a good addition. Anyway, it’s only me …

When you exit the tunnel, this is when your adventure begins. You may notice that your map is way cooler than Morrowind. Oblivion has fix Morrowind flaw, that’s, depending what quest is active in your journal, the map will you give the exact direction of the quest location. If it the green arrow, than it’s the right place. If it’s the red arrow, then you have to find the right door to get to the location…

But, even after the quest direction improvement, Oblivion just doesn’t stop. It gives you the fast travel system! It’s kind of like the Silt Strider services in Morrowind, the difference is. You can access it from everywhere from the map, and you can travel to all the places that you have visited before. The major cities are available from the start, though.

In case you haven’t play Morrowind before, you might want to know that, Oblivion doesn’t use experience system to level up. Instead, you have to increase your skill individually through the use of the skill. Example, if you run all the time, then it will increase the level of your Athletic skill thus increasing your Speed attributes.

The design for the combat system is quite good … surely it’s better than Morrowind, you got the slash and block action, so you have to time your attack to win. So, it’s not the same slash, slash, and slash again attack, as Morrowind. The spells, pretty much the same as Morrowind, you pick the spell in your spell list and then activate it. The difference is, you now have a rechargeable manna, so you don’t have to drink manna potion every time you use your spell. Because of this improvement, now you have the choice to becoming a pure mage…

Freedom …, remember the word I used before to describe Oblivion. Yes. Freedom. There are various styles to play the game. You wanna be a stealthy assassin who prefer backstabbing instead of frontal battle, you wanna be a crossbowman who prefer sniping from the far, you wanna be a spellcaster mage who rely heavily in spells, or you wanna be a pure action swordman? Freedom …

There’s is a flaw, though. Despite all the freedom Oblivion giving you, it still doesn’t give you a freedom to talk your way out of your battle. There’s no the pacifist way of doing things. You pretty much, left the speaking in the nearest town. Heck, even a thug in a real world give you chance to talk once in a while.

Errr … by the way, you may want to check Vampire: Bloodlines. It’s an interesting game, despite its outdated graphic. The game gives you greater chance to utilize your persuasion skill. Which is kind of fun… You can lie, manipulate, and flirt your way out of battle … most of the time. Cool, huh?

Oh … yeah, one more thing! Where the heck is the levitation spell? I want it, BAD!!! It’s seem Oblivion forgot too add it to the game. I cross my finger for the next expansion … Hear my prayer …Ooo great Bethesda…

The control…

Oblivion has a good control. The default setting is, you use the mouse to look around and A,W, S, D key for moving around. But don’t even bother to use the third person view setting. It’s kind of hard to fight with the camera pulled behind your back….

There are 8 hot keys for shortcut to the power, spell, and item. The good thing, for us PC gamer, the hot keys setting are quite comfortable, while the XBox 360 user struggle with the D-Pad.

The learning curve : about 1 hour …

The Graphic…

Oblivion has amazing graphic. Yup, a very amazing graphic, that it’s just so damn beautiful that I spend my first hour in the game (after escape from the prison quest) just walking, enjoying the beautiful graphic. The smooth movement of the trees sway, or the top notch detail of the unique building architecture. The lightning and shadowing are great. And you have hand drawings artwork for the sky in oblivion, that dynamically changing according to the season, weather, and time …

The graphic of all the character and the creature in oblivion is very detailed. The face, the body, the skin texture, the movement, it all have a very realistic display. And for the extra, oblivion gives you, the Physics System!!! You might notice it, when you kill a man in the edge of a mountain. You will see the poor guy roll down the mountain. It’s something you don’t have in Morrowind, while Deus Ex sequel, try to implement this in their game, it doesn’t even have the realistic system that oblivion has. But it’s not perfect yet, its still doesn’t give you a perfect realistic sense of weight in their game, but it’s a good breakthrough in this genre …

Anyway, I have a suspicion, but I didn’t test it yet, because my graphic card limitation. But, I’m pretty sure if you have a 2000 USD graphic card, you may notice a mole in some of the NPC. Errr… is it true? Weeelll, even if I don’t have enough evidence to back up my mole theory, I’m sure they were out there. It’s up to u to find it. You may get lucky …

The Sound …

You probably have notice that, all the characters in Oblivion have a voice over. Yup, that’s right. All of it! While, Morrowind implement the conversation with written dialog, Oblivion choose to do the voice over. Which, is okay … it’s a nice a treat to ear. But the real treat is the musical score. That’s right! The music. Hey, don’t act so surprise. I have a dream of becoming a musician. That’s why I know it’s really hard to come up with music like this. It has this “John William” quality in it. Hey, it’s not that I’m thinking voice over is an easy work… it’s not that…it just that … hey, stop talking, stop talking, stop talking!

…….. …… ……

Err…anyway, the overall sound of Oblivion is great. I hope they can keep up the good work and maybe even do better than great in the Elder Scrolls 5.

The People …

What about the AI in Oblivion?

Even though the story, the graphic, the gameplay, the sound of oblivion were a top notch, the AI is somewhat great…but not that great. Yes, all the characters in oblivion have their own life. They walk, eat, chat, go to work, sleep, they even sometimes steal when they run out of money (by the way, there’s a rumor that Gothic 3 is.creating a better AI, you might want to check them out when they finally release the game). But heck, why is that when I broke to someone house, they chat like there’s nothing happen. Why is, if I use the invisible spell, even if I push and walk through a guy, he doesn’t even notice… It’s disturbing … and there are tons of other stupid little things, that if try to explain all to you, this is gonna be a very very long review…

To put it short, Oblivion has a good AI, but a lot of improvement can be made. Nevertheless, it’s a lot better than our good old Morrowind…so, who am I to complain?

The Other Thing… (The Conclusion?)

There a long list of “other cool things in Oblivion”, like the guilds, the persuasion minigame, the lockpicking minigame, the investment system, the horses, the perks and many more… Better to experience it yourself. Yes, Oblivion did have a couple of bugs in the game, and yes the loading time is a pain in the neck! But, considering how great this game is it certainly worth the buy. Even if you’re not that in to the RPG kind of game...it may worth a try …