Into Oblivion...
I've been playing Oblivion in almost every free hour I've had since I bought it. It's been years since a game has grabbed me like this. The game itself is an amazing accomplishment - the world seems to live and breath on it's own, even moreso than the "persistant" worlds of MMOs. Days turns to night, storms come and pass, people go about their business. If you spend a couple of days in one of the towns and you will actually start to get to know the residents, their patterns, where the live. The amount of detail is staggering.
Oblivion sports a brand of open-endedness that makes Grand Theft Auto feel like it's on rails. I'm just over 10 hours into the game, and I have yet to complete the first step in the main quest. In the meantime, I've explored half a dozen dungeons, been arrested for petty theft (and unfortunate misunderstanding), liberated a town from its oppressive head-of-the-watch, freed a painter from within one of his paintings (a high point so far), and rescued an entire hamlet that had been accidentally turned invisible. There is definately no lack of things to do in this game.
Instead of picking one of the game's standard classes, I chose to build my own custom class. Basically, it's a variation of the Crusader class, modeled after a D&D-style Paladin. The game uses a simple system of major skills and favored attributes that lets you effectively put together almost any classic high-fantasy architype you can think of. I've dropped in a little screen shot below, so you can see my build. He's an Imperial (for the speechcraft bonuses) and born under the sign of the Ritual (for the big heal spell and the turn dead ability).
There are so many potential ways to put together and advance a character in this game, that I would love to see some of the way other players would put together the same type of character. Drop me a comment if you have a particularly cool build.
Anyway, it's pretty clear that I'm impressed with the game. Hell, I'm more than impressed. This is the type of game that transends "gaming" as a hobby, and becomes a hobby all it's own. If anything is going to lay down a challenge to Warcraft's stranglehold on RPG gamers, this is it. And, I'm apperantly not the only one who thinks so.
Oblivion sports a brand of open-endedness that makes Grand Theft Auto feel like it's on rails. I'm just over 10 hours into the game, and I have yet to complete the first step in the main quest. In the meantime, I've explored half a dozen dungeons, been arrested for petty theft (and unfortunate misunderstanding), liberated a town from its oppressive head-of-the-watch, freed a painter from within one of his paintings (a high point so far), and rescued an entire hamlet that had been accidentally turned invisible. There is definately no lack of things to do in this game.
Instead of picking one of the game's standard classes, I chose to build my own custom class. Basically, it's a variation of the Crusader class, modeled after a D&D-style Paladin. The game uses a simple system of major skills and favored attributes that lets you effectively put together almost any classic high-fantasy architype you can think of. I've dropped in a little screen shot below, so you can see my build. He's an Imperial (for the speechcraft bonuses) and born under the sign of the Ritual (for the big heal spell and the turn dead ability).
There are so many potential ways to put together and advance a character in this game, that I would love to see some of the way other players would put together the same type of character. Drop me a comment if you have a particularly cool build.
Anyway, it's pretty clear that I'm impressed with the game. Hell, I'm more than impressed. This is the type of game that transends "gaming" as a hobby, and becomes a hobby all it's own. If anything is going to lay down a challenge to Warcraft's stranglehold on RPG gamers, this is it. And, I'm apperantly not the only one who thinks so.
Labels: MMORPGs, PC games, RPGs, video games
