Be Excellent To Each Other

I wish I could bring you all into Oblivion with me.

If you didn't bend to my will on our quests I could murder you and take off your armour and look at you on the floor in your underpants. For about 5 minutes.

Have you spent much time stripping your female victims and moving them into a 69 position yet? Not that I have of course...

Only the furries and lizard chicks.

I noticed last night that I've spent over 80hrs playing it so far.

Yeah, I had 138 on my first playthrough. It can get very cluttered on the map when you get the exploring habit.

I got 1000/1000 (my only maxed out 360 game in fact) on one playthrough, which took about 160 hours. Thoroughly enjoyed it too.

80hrs in so far and still loving it. There's SO MUCH to it!

Whopping game world. Monsters, magic, interesting missions & side quests, murdering, stripping, jumping into paintings, nicking cups, setting fire to gobblers.....

It's the game I always dreamed of existing when I was a kid.

I could never get into it, really. I enjoyed the exploring, but it was often annoyingly curtailed by stupid people or wolves attacking me.

It was good, but I'm hoping for some changes for ESV.

CHANGE THE FIRST! Targetted damage. The amount of times I've been killed by a bandit with 2 arrows sticking out of his face just isn't funny. Unless you're using poison, being an archer sucks donkey's balls.

CHANGE THE SECOND! Dismemberment. I wanna chop off someone's limbs and have it affect their combat abilities.

CHANGE THE THIRD! Not so cluttered on the map. I stood on top of the road from Chorrol to the Imp City looking towards Skingrad and Kvatch without the grass and trees turned on, and was appalled at how many caves and ruins I could see within spitting distance of each other.

I've split some stuff out from the CoD thread - hope you don't mind Zardies.

Oblivion deserves praise for being the first fantasy beards n' swords RPG that I've played and ENJOYED since Dragon Warrior on the NES back in 1990.

I might have to dig my copy out this weekend as I've saved it not long after getting out of the starting underground bit and just left it at that. Even got a spare copy of the game now too in my recent phase of 'buying cheap 360 games on Ebay' phase' as it was only a fiver.

I take it you'll be buying Fallout 3 then, as that's pretty much what you're asking for.

CHANGE THE FOURTH - drop the stupid monster levelling system of baddies. Forgot about that annoying annoyance. At least some kind soul made a spiffing mod for the PC version to do it reet proper, like.

I lost interest as soon as I realised the monsters were going to scale with me.

Surely it'd have been better to have 'safer' areas where you could explore at your leisure without having to worry about being attacked by a Level 348 Hobgoblin or something? Then have the more difficult to access areas teaming with nastiness.

Mmmmm. Fallout.... I'm replaying 2 at the moment, and am very happy.

I am very much hoping that 3 is not an Oblivion-in-the-future, though. I found Oblivion to be okay, but surprisingly linear, given its supposedly "wooo, everything" set-up. I may just need to give it more of a go. But leveling up by jumping? Cuh.

Oh, and: STOP HAVING TUNNELY SHIT AT THE BEGINNING OF ALL RPGs, PLEASE.

Isn't that a tradition, though? Although saying that, if there's a tunnelly bit at the start of Mass Effect, I might scream.

The problem with the system wasn't so much the monsters between towns getting harder - though that is a real pain - but the fact that fifty hours in everybody is wearing the best armor in the game, so you enchant some of that and then never get anything better for the other fifty hours you play.

My solution would have been to keep the monsters and bandits the same easy level as when you start throughout the eastern side of the map, so you can get to all the towns without much of a problem. Except, have a few extra tough bandit strongholds and monster lairs in that area, so if you do come across a very tough bad guy wandering around you know there's going to be a challenging and worthwhile dungeon near by.

Then make the pretty much unused forest on the eastern side of the map full of harder monsters, getting tougher and tougher the further you get from the civilized areas of the game world. And have lairs with decent loot really deep in that area, which you have to be a fucking hard bastard to get to.

After hours and hours and hours of leveling my character I want to be able to walk between towns with ease, batting aside any interference with a quick flick of my sword. I don't want to still be struggling past bastard hard monsters when I've saved the fucking world and I'm out for a walk.

The stupid thing is, it actually gets harder the higher level you are. At the beginning I was stealthing through dungeons and taking out enemies with one arrow each when their backs were turned. It was fucking awesome. Then after leveling a bit I was stronger, but so were the bandits, so one arrow in the back of the head wasn't enough any more. Very, very annoying.

Oblivion is in my top ten favourite games of all time, no doubt, but it would replace Doom at number one if it wasn't for the stupid enemy-levelling system.

"Would you start nailing your knob to a plank of wood just because everyone else was doing it, Wilson?"

The start of Mass Effect is in the corridors of a Spacechip, Myp, so near enough, really.

MMMM! The PC mod that I mentioned basically did that. The plains were populated by easy wolves and bears with the occasional troll, whereas the mountain ranges had easyish lions and bastard minotaurs.

Of course, the easy way to win the game was to avoid levelling all together. I completed it the first time through at level 5 or 6, and when they're much easier to deal with due to not seeing any fucking Spider Daedra.

One of my favourite gaming moments was in Oblivion, after modding it to the high heavens.

Trotting through the countryside on my jet black horse, in the dark dead of night with the wind howling and rain absolutely bucketing down and only a dim, flickering torch to see where I'm going.

I leave my steed by the side of the path and make my way into an area infested with hundreds of goblins. They're quite weedy, and my sword has no trouble making quick work of them one-by-one, but their sheer number forces me to use defensive tactics and healing to survive. I'm fighting for so long my weapons break several times, but I eventually slay the last one and make my battered way back through a field of corpses to my horse.

I love Oblivion, but unmodded it's very boring and broken.

Very much . Just simply replacing simple things like bottle and coin textures with proper ones makes it so much more worth it. After replacing the bottles I made it my quest to collect every single on I could find, bought some shelves from another mod shop to dump in my Frostcrag spire, and had a HOOOOOOJ wine cellar. It was so hooj that the frame rate dropped to slideshow levels when I walked in that room

I couldn't get into it. I don't know if it's the occasionally iffy voice acting, the frequent appearance of stupid tiger-faced people or if it was just too open for me to get my head around. I really enjoyed some of the quests down in the dungeons, but as soon as they were over I just got very bored exploring. It's a shame, because before buying it I'd convinced myself that it was going to be the best thing ever and that I was going to be magically transported to another world or something.

The game got very fun as soon as I downloaded a mod to stop guards from hearing everything, too. And one to give you a bounty level, which depletes over time.

Damnit, I really want to play this again now. Fucking arm.

YES! Bloody hell that one's essential! Stupid psychic guards, I'd actually forgotten about them since it's ingrained as instinct to install that mod first.

I greatly enjoyed it on the 360 with no mods. Am I broken or something?

I loved this game right up until I went in some cave and got repeatedly killed by some zombie skeleton things, then I just turned it off and never played it again. I really do need to work on my patience with games, it's actually non-existent.

We've already discussed that. Get back to throwing shapes in Granny's church of petrol, you.

You've never explained that to me.

Oh, We All Know. Yes indeed.

Back to Oblivion though, it is quite good vanilla, but with enough annoyances that make you realise how better it can be with just a few minor tweaks. If Bethehhedhdhsda would actually allow for some of the mods to be available as DLC for the 360 version I'd probably buy it.

It's a cleeky in-joke for people who play CoD4. I have no idea what he's on about either.

I hate Oblivion. It results in me staring at the ceiling at night wondering at the futility of existence.

I also worry about the fact that there's just void after you die.

Ah ha!

No, but seriously, folks. I really hate oblivion. As for the game, played a while, got a bit bored 'cos of low frame rate thwarting me.

I'm just sat here eating spaghetti with an old tyre round my neck.

It would be immeasurably improved by having group multiplayer, like whatsit on the PC. Neverwinter Nights.

You can finish Oblivion (the main quest, at least) with a level 1 character...



The whole levelling thing is indeed rubbish, apparently the key is to not up your major skills until you get the +5 bonus when levelling up, as otherwise you might completely gimp your character and be a weedy useless fool facing down Spider Daedra.

The whole 'oblivion gates' thing pissed me off so much that I had to just get the main quest over with so I wouldn't constantly be stumbling across gates and been harassed as I was exploring.

My house in Bruma is also a treasure trove of rare books, items and enchanted weapons.

I've not encountered anything I consider game breaking in the 80hrs I've played it on the 360.

You're all little whiney bitches.

That's the things though. I played at least 1/2 of the way through the first time without installing any mods. When I did, it made me realise how really quite rubbish the things were before I modded them.

Well....

Stop whining you little bitch.

It's superb and I can't alter it.

WIMINS UNDERPANTS!

It's not game breaking, but it's immersion breaking to encounter an army of bandits, all wearing enchanted glass armour. When they could simply sell said armour and live like Nazis.

Likewise, why Minotaurs suddenly appear where there weren't any before doesn't make sense.

Perhaps they wanted a change of scenery?

I've spent most my time playing the sub quests... not actually made it to the end of the main quest as I also got bummed by skeletons and decided to give it up... I'd like to go back and finish it but just can't quite bring myself to.

Anybody else got the unbearably creeping feeling that they'd rather just read a book or something instead than play a computer game? (Aside from Company of Heroes which is still crack.)

No? Just me then?

No, I'm getting there actually. Of an evening I'm more inclined to watch a DVD or read than fire up the PC or Eggbox (unless I'm playing with Bezzies).

I'm ordering CoH, though... I'm going to request you review everything that I may conceivably want to buy, from now on.

Been there for years. I rarely bother with games these days.

When I found myself struggling earlier on I played most of the subquests I encountered and made sure I did as many guild missions as possible too.

Character wise I went for a Spellsword to have a 'best of both' approach.

He's quite 'nails' now.

W



T



F

Excellent. /Burns voice

I do advise buying the expansion at the same time, if you have the brass, as it means less hassle patching. That's the one flaw with Company of Heroes, the nightmarish patching process which can take ages. Fortunately, Opposing Y-Fronts has a recent build.

So if you buy Opposing Y-Fronts, which is also ace, and CoH, you:

Install Y-Fronts. Add CoH key to installation as Y-Fronts contains the main game's data too. Patch!

If you just get CoH then you get to play against the Brits and the Panzer Elite, and skirmish with them, but you don't get the unit voices or campaign. I think. And you have to patch loads and loads. But seriously, get them both. Then I can play you and train you up like some sort of mentor!

There's fun to be had, but you have to basically scam the game to have a really enjoyable experience after a while, because it's so poorly designed with the levelling and combat. Combt is improved over morrowind, but still repetitive and often annoying, and the lack of locational damage is utterly fucking embarassing. Also, archery skills were poorly implemented - even with no skill at all, you shoot with 100% accuracy, but simply do no damage.

Levelled baddies and to a lesser extent treasure are idiotically done - after a few levels, every two-bit bandit in the world is carrying a king's ransom in armour and weapons, but still tries to rob you, while a wolf or boar can run around with 17 arrows sticking out of its face without any problems.

The hell levels are too samey and after the first, get old fast. The AI is shit, the missions, while some are imaginative and reasonably varied, are totally linear, and the script and voice acting are fucking atrocious.

I can believe a lot of this flaws can be fixed or i mproved with PC mods, though I've not had the chance to try. But that's not the point - a game shouldn't have to be modded by third parties to be great.

Overall... ih. I enjoy playing it a fair bit, if only as it's oddly relaxing (though wandering through the forests and hills makes me strangely sad quite often. It's probably because I first picked the game up and started playing it while I was supposed to be on holiday wandering through real forests and hills) and there's nothing else like it yet - vaguely modern first person explorey/fighty games with swords and bows just don't exist, and the older ones are shit and/or horrible to control. It's one of those games that's made to look a lot worse than it is by frequently highlighting how much of its potential was wasted.

I do like how the leveling systems makes exploring better though.

I hated that in morrowind I would set off over a hill to find monsters that I couldn't hit, couldn't outrun and couldn't beat. And then have to repeat over the next hill and so on until I found an area I was alowed to explore. Which got very frustrating.

The fallout 3 leveling sounds a reasonable comprimise. A region is given a level range, so if a zone was lvl 5 - 9 then if you went there between the levels of 1 - 4 you would see lvl 5 baddies. Then they would match you till lvl 9, at witch point they would stop getting better as you went up levels.

In oblivion if I'm getting beaten all the time then I just lower the difficulty bar, as I'm not trying to master it I just want to explore exciting ruins and the like.

I didn't realise Fallout's release was so close. I'll have to keep my eye on it, and hopefully it won't be a disappointment.