Reply With QuoteAgreed. Its the game of several years. It far and away eclipses everything.
So I put hundreds of hours, literally, into Oblivion on the 360. I think it was over 200.
On my new PC, I've started up a new character and downloaded a bunch of mods. I'm probably running oh, 20 mods at the moment. None change the game in a crazy way, but add to it. Little things like a snail race, saddlebags for your horse, making levelled enemies a bit more erratic (you can encounter tough enemies and not so tough ones), surprise loot in the lowest reaches of dungeons, maidens that need to be rescued, capes and cloacks, better draw distance, better foliage, better weather effects, much, much better faces, all kinds of things.
I find myself playing it over and over again. I'm doing the Dark Brotherhood quest line again. Even the first Fighter's Guild quest was great, because I prevented any deaths this time, and later one of the town guards, in a random conversation, said "I hear clearing out that mine went really well, and no one got hurt".
I mean, this game is fantastic. As much as people complain about the combat systems, spells, levelling, and all that stuff . . . it's just a fantastic game. The PC version even more so with mods.
I can't see anything beating it for GOTY for PC or 360 (or PS3, if it's launch). Bethesda just did a great job with it.
Agreed. Its the game of several years. It far and away eclipses everything.
Let me cast a quick vote for the Open Cities mod, which embeds the city meshes in the landscape, so there's no loading between them and people can wander freely through... Adds a lot to the atmosphere if you have a decent machine.
What's the difference if they appear outside the door or wander through it? Is that the only difference? If you could fly, I could see the appeal.
I'm not quite as enamored of the game but it is very good. I have been replaying it a little bit lately as it is a nice palate cleanser from WoW. A whole world all to myself. No kiddies chatting about Chuck Norris and falling all over themselves to insult one another. Dungeons that you actually *explore* instead of zooming through at max speed for a drop you researched on thottbot. Realistic rather than stylized graphics; doors you can open rather than just being painted on; havoc physics.
I've just been puttering around on my insanely overpowered character who is Archmage and Hero of Cyrodiil and Champion of the Arena and god knows what else, and has the Chameleon Suit of Doom that renders all battles trivial. Who says it's no fun to be completely overpowered? I wander into McDungeons and summon Dremora Lords to wtfpwn the denizens while I stand back and cackle with sinister glee, tossing the occasional lightning bolt to assist. Then I stack multiple Feather spells on myself so I can haul 900 pounds worth of Daedric/glass gear (woot rubberbanding!) back to town to sell off to a merchant. Just hit the 200,000 gold mark earlier today. Now if only there were something to spend it on...
There's a loadscreen when entering and leaving cities. With the Open Cities
mod, I presume you've just got the dungeons left. If someone could do THAT
as part of the landscape..well, I'm sure I'd definitely have to upgrade then ;)
How'd you like it on the 360 ElG? I'm looking at a stretch of unemployment and I'm contemplating getting back into Oblivion. I've got it on the PC already; but being able to just sit back and play on the HDTV is tempting.
I've never played these games until two days ago (picked up Oblivion for the 360) and I completely agree with this sentiment.Originally Posted by Gordon Cameron
It's nice to dungeon delve without the annoying background noise.
I can't speak for him, but personally I wouldn't bother getting the 360 version if it looks great on your PC. Unless your HDTV is enormous, in which case maybe it would be a cool cinematic experience.
I just don't see any advantages to the 360 version otherwise. The PC version gives you mods, console commands, and potentially better graphics. All the 360 version offers is stability, and from what I gathered and saw, it wasn't much more stable at all in terms of crashes and the like. The only issue I saw with PCs was unreliable framerates on weaker systems, which can only be expected.
I only played it on a 360 because I don't have a gaming-quality PC. :(
I'll say it once, I'll it a thousand times. The appeal of Oblivion is the same as the appeal of GTA. Its a sand box world players can waste time in with token signs of progression. However, anyone who wants or tries to have a deeper experience is going to be disappointed. I know in most circles comparisons to GTA is a type of flattery. I got bored and jaded the one and only time I attempted to play the series (Vice City).
Make sure to get the mod that lets you see across the world by implementing proper distant LOD versions of the polygons (they reduced stupid shit like rocks and trees that render at *full* poly versions even at a distance).
I own it on both, prefer the PC version. 360 one is fine except 1) no fixing the (relatively few) shitty textures that are in the game and 2) load times are ridiculous. My pc is pretty mdoets and the loads were barely noticable. The 360s are pretty noticable.
that said, my current game is on the 360. couch I guess, plus I wanted to do a vanilla run through (my pc playthru was mod-loaded from the getgo)
Who was that guy who kept comparing it to Fallout? I loved that thread.
But I'm with El Guapo on this. I enjoyed Oblivion more than any other game I've played this year and would love to see more games like it. Based on that criteria, it's currently my GOTY pick.
What mods should I be using? I just got my new computer and I'm going to start playing Oblivion again...
Regarding the 360 version, if you already played the PC version with mods, dont' bother. You will miss all the mods and it will feel vanilla. It does however run pretty damn smoothly and looks at least as good as it does on my PC. I game both my 360 and PC on the same couch on the same TV so I can't comment on that portion.
On the other hand, you get achievements. How much of an achievement whore are you?
I'm pretty whorish.
oh almsot forgot, I like melee combat waaaaaaaaay better with the 360 controller. Bows and spells suck though.
Matt, there is one called the BTMod or something which is an interface mod. It is REQUIRED for the PC version. Seriously, required. It makes it so you can see twice as much inventory, makes you able to buy and sell things with the keyboard arrow keys, show percentages for things like breath and time left for spell effects.
The other ones I'm running, off the top of my head, are:
* Saddlebags - self explanatory. Great for keeping an extra sword and bow on your horse in case yours breaks in a dungeon. Plus, you know, extra loot.
* JT's Bar fights - makes bar fights where you can fight with bottles and other stuff in melee fights. Fights can spill out into the street and such, it's awesome.
* Capes and cloaks - just look cool
* Natural Weather and Landscapes - not 100% sure if I like this one, but I can't load a game that doesn't have it now, so no going back. I haven't noticed any HDR effects, really.
* Mods that make items more valuable (gold nuggests, jewelry, gems, silver) are great for a thief character. There is a combined set under a guy named Shadow that does this.
* Leveled lists are great too - Personally I'd avoid the big OOO (Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul), as it does too much. But get one where you can encounter random harder monsters in the wilderness and one that limits bandit levels/loot - I thought getting orcish and glass armor off random bandits in the game was really dumb. I'm only level 10 now so I don't know how this will work out. I'm hoping to be able to one shot bandits eventually when they accost me.
Now that I have played Dark Messiah's melee where you can use different kind of sword swings (especially the stab and yes, the kick), I really miss it in Oblivion.
I didn't want to turn this into a "which mods?" thread, but since so many have been released since the last time we had one of these threads . . . anyone have any other good ones?
You can it all you like, it's not true. I could never get serious about GTA for just that reason, but I've never been so deeply lost in a game as Oblivion. It's not just 'here are a load of mission-threads you can do in any order' like GTA, each faction has a philosophy and a mindset that reflects on your character when you choose to help them. The narrative of what you did over the course of your character's life tells a story about the kind of person you've been. You can fall from grace, rise to be a hero, reinvent your style, find your niche, lose it, become a monster then reform and vow to hunt them down from that day forth. My character's done all these things, and I can recount her tale more readily than the plot of any fantasy book or film.
ElGuapo, I like this list... Definitely be using most of those...probably not the saddlebags one because horse is so useless. :P
I remember some level one where if you went up in a skill at least once, you got the full 5x affect, but I can't seem to find it now (that way I don't feel like I have to game the game).
Thanks for the list!
Gamespot had a Make It Pretty feature about Oblivion mods a while back. I haven't tried any mods with Oblivion (and I've barely played at all so I'm similarly in need of a good list of mods to install beforehand and then the free time to actually play it), but this seemed like as good a place to start as any.
No guarantees as to mod quality, but I thought the list was worth mentioning.
That comparison roll-over on the first page doesn't really sell it to me, though - apart from the blurry ground textures that the mod improves, I think the original picture looks far more natural. It's really down to the translucent water - natural pools generally don't look crystal clear like swimming pools.
[edit] Some of the other individual mods look like good value though - it's nice to see the comparison images, as it's a bit of potluck with some mods whether or not it will improve things, slow things down, break things or whatever.
Last edited by krayzkrok; 11-01-2006 at 05:27 PM.
I played it on the 360 and I very much enjoyed it playing it on the HDTV while sitting on the couch. However, you don't get easy access to mods, so if that's important to you it may not be appealing.
Don't hold out, man.
Link me a good face mod.
One of the major disappointments for me in Oblivion was that 90% of the NPCs looked like they'd just had every bone in their face broken by a guy with a sledgehammer.
This is the one I used in my playthrough. As someone with OC/completist tendencies, I really didn't want to go through Oblivion the same way I did Morrowind i.e. going 80 rounds against a mudcrab while tallying attribute multipliers on a sheet of paper. Sure, it's a cheat, but it's hard enough as it is to find 120+ hours to spend on one game. I envy jeffd's time between jobs, I really do...
I agree with the others about BTMod and the LOD fixes, but no one's brought up the official addons yet. Of the ones released, only the Wizard's Tower plugin seems worthwhile. The upcoming Knights of the Nine looks promising, if only for its much bigger download size. New voiceovers would be much appreciated.
Rens beauty pack might be what you're looking for although I haven't tried it personally yet. I think there are other beauty packs as well if you dig around a bit.
I'm looking for something more along the lines of replacing all of the *NPCs* faces. I don't care if they look like models or not, but honestly, a very good portion of the NPCs in this game simply look *deformed.* Like that pawn-shop owner in the Imperial capital. Ugh.
Someone's working on something like that. He's finished the imperial and breton faces, and is doing the nords now. I'm too lazy to fish you the link, but do a search for "tnr" "imperial" "faces" or something like that on the elderscroll forums or tessource.
Its a great first person shooter.
I played it more as a first person "summoner." Daedroths ftw!
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