Oblivion Mechanics

[Darakein]

I am a programmer and an avid Elder Scrolls player. I am absolutely in love with TES3: Morrowind, and have played my main character for over 2000 hours. It is quite difficult for me, with bills and such, to make large investments, and as such, I would like to know a bit more about Oblivion before I purchase a 360 to run it on.

The questions I have for the community here are as follows:

- What changes, if any, have been made to the actual mechanics of combat? I understand that new features, such as the poisoning of blades, and non-modal casting have been added, but those are more... interface tweaks. But, have there been any particularily noticeable engine changes?

- Is the total number of factions in the game actually four? That seems redicilously low to me. I have heard of Dunmer faction houses being present in Oblivion. Could someone fill me in on this?

- Though I have tried to avoid running in to spoilers, I have run in to a few in my obsessive collection of information on the game. Is Oblvion *very* plot-dependant, or is it more fun in its own right? (Do note that I considered seeing a screenshot of a Dunmer character to be "spoiler," because I had been looking forward to seeing them in-game. ;D)

Thanks, to anyone who helps out.[/list]

[Vook]

1) The fighting mechanics have changed significantly. The biggest change is making "block" an actual action. This is performed both by you and by the enemy, requiring reflexes and skill. If you are hit strong with shield down, you have a good chance of getting "staggered", efficiently paralysed by the enemy for a second or so. If you hit the shield, similar, you recoil giving the enemy a chance to counterattack. This applies to both sides, making the fight much more of "arcade" skill. Block, from one of useless spams becomes one of the most significant skills. Add to that various "power attacks" that add special effects (disarm, trip), dodging, and you have a powerful arcade-style fighting system. Parameters aren't that significant anymore - with reasonable equipment and enough skill (player, not character) at timing block and attack you can easily beat the master of the Arena with little effort. Fight is Arcade, but good at that.

2) Yes, there are 4 factions (mages, fighters, thieves guild, and Dark Brotherhood), additionally a pseudo-faction of Arena, some "join-and-done" non-levelling factions like Knights Of Something (generally the title/membership being a reward in a quest without any large-scale consequences - actually Blades is one of them) and one non-faction "questline" related to collecting ancient relics. Lots of short, simple quests and the main quest, about half as long as in Morrowind. No dunmer faction houses, no other factions. Generally the estimate amount of role-playing content in Oblivion (quests, factions, tasks) is about 1/4 of what was present in Morrowind. The game is simply way "smaller".

3) I'm not sure what you mean by that question. Oblivion offers similar degree of freedom when it comes to your fate as Morrowind - you may leave any questline at any time and go freelancing or working for other faction. Most of fun of freelancing has been spoiled by "levelled everything", every place has loot depending on your level and not on the place, so exploration is pointless, raiding the same 5 ruins over and over waiting for respawn wil yield the same rewards as trying to explore 5 completely new, obscure ruins. Additionally the questlines are extremely linear, offering you very little choice as to how to proceed - you can't even kill "quest characters" so if you feel stupidity of some quest offends your intelligence, you're stuck with it and can't slaughter everyone involved straight away.

If you have a decent PC, visit the Pirate Bay. If you don't... pass it. It's a decent hack&slash with beautiful graphics, but not much of a story, not much of role-play and quite extreme system requirements.

Is Oblvion *very* plot-dependant, or is it more fun in its own right? (

[Akela]

If you buy a 360 you will not
- benefit from the abundance of mods that enhance your gaming experience
- be able to use console commands when stuck somewhere

Read the forum and consider the frustration of the 360 owners before you make your purchase. Unfortunately, a good PC will cost you quite a lot, but if you know how you can build it yourself and save some money.

[GenghisJohn]

If you buy a 360 you will not
- benefit from the abundance of mods that enhance your gaming experience
- be able to use console commands when stuck somewhere

You should probably add:

- have to deal with lots of bugs and system crashes

I have a 360 and have had a total of 2 system crashes over about 50 hours of playing. I've had no problems completing any quests, the Xbox 360 controller is relatively intuitive (although sometimes I go into sneak mode when I get really excited during combat), the load times are generally bearable, and I don't need to fight with my wife over who gets to use the Xbox. I've completed a lot of quests that other people have said they've encountered bugs on and haven't had any troubles. The Xbox is half the price and, if you get the game at certain stores (I think I got mine at Electronics Boutique), they'll give you "insurance" for like $3 that lets you exchange the game at any time for 12 months with no questions asked.

I dunno. A lot of people seem to really bash the Xbox as a gaming platform, and I'll give you that a $2000 PC is going to outperform it almost every time, but my old roommate and I had our original XBox hooked up to a projector that projected onto a 10' screen on our wall and had THX surround sound, and the whole system cost about $2000. If he didn't run off to join the marines and I didn't run off to get married, we'd be playing Oblivion on that same system.

I'm not going to say that I'm an XBox fanboy, but as far as gaming goes it's not a bad way to go. Granted, I think some of the mods might be fun, but I've been having an awesome time playing on the 360 without them. There are a couple of mods that I've heard about that I'd love to try that I probably will never get a chance to, but I think it's an okay tradeoff.

About the console commands ... yeah, I can't use them. I also haven't needed to. Perhaps I'm just really lucky.

One thing that really, really sucks to do on the XBox is name things. This especially comes into play when you create magic items because you MUST give them a name, it doesn't let you keep the default name. My names are all lowercase because it's a pain in the butt to switch to capital letters, type one letter, and then switch back. Naming things is NO FUN on the xbox.

There are some ups and some downs to getting an xbox. It sounds like your original question is "Is Oblivion good enough to warrant buying an XBox 360", I felt the answer is "yes." Of course, I always buy the Madden games when they come out, so Madden 2007 + Oblivion both coming out this year was enough to justify the expense in my mind.

I'm a programmer, too, and the idea of blowing off steam is easier when I'm not a computer. Computer = work to me, and I'm okay with separating those things.

Sorry this was so long.

[Akela]

An $800 PC will do the job just fine.

My comp
Intel Pentium 4, 2400 MHz non-HT
RAM 768 MB, DDR400
Sapphire Radeon 9800 XT (256 MB)
Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1
Logitec MX510
19" AOC CRT-monitor that we found in the garbage room

The comp is basically quite old. My husband keeps improving it when he upgrades his own stuff. And it's nowhere near $800. The video card is the youngest part of it.

[i9ub]

Bugs and crashes vary from person to person and PC to PC. I have played Oblivion over 130 hours since launch and have yet to crash. Not even once. I have only encountered one bug, which I quickly fixed with the console. That being said, I am not taking anything away from XBox or gaming consoles in general, just clearing up the false impression that Oblivion crashes constantly on the PC.

[Vook]

Well, if you're asking if Oblivion is worth spending about $400-500, then the answer is definitely no. If you plan some other xbox games... uh, buy a Wii and the new Zelda instead

[i9ub]

I'm really looking forward to Wii. PS3 is too expensive and in my opinion XBox games are utter [&@%!]. I am hoping that Nintendo or a third party makes a traditional controller to use with it, I am kind of scared of their uber controller.

[Vook]

Their uber controller rotaded 90 degrees becomes the old classic from original NES.

[i9ub]

Well, I did not know that. That makes me happy though. Can always count on Vook the fountain of knowledge.