After years of it sitting at the top of my backlog, I've finally started playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Yeah, Skyrim just came out, but I have some unfinished business in Cyrodiil.
My history with this game literally spans years. Way back in 2006 the original game was released to stellar reviews, and I became intrigued with the Elder Scrolls series. I picked up Morrowind on the cheap (I got the pack that includes all of the expansions), started up a character, and became active on the Bethesda forums.
While Morrowind never really grabbed me - with its clunky graphics engine and lack of anything resembling fast travel making it a chore to play - I was eagerly anticipating Oblivion on PS3. As I had just bought Sony's console shortly after its launch (and didn't own an Xbox 360), it was to be my platform of choice for the game.
When the PS3 version was released, I bought it but didn't open it right away, as I had recently discovered that Bethesda was having trouble with memory management on PS3 (sound familiar Skyrim fans?) and might not make the game's expansion packs available for the system. Being the completist that I am, this was a huge potential turnoff and I wound up selling the game on eBay. Knights of the Nine and The Shivering Isles would come to PS3 eventually, but I had no regrets.
By this time it was mid-2007 and the Oblivion Game of the Year Edition was looming. As an owner of a semi-competent PC, I picked it up cheap shortly after its fall release and gave it another go. In my mind the PC version was the "definitive" version anyways, with the modding community giving you the ability to muck with the vanilla game to your heart's content.
There was one problem, however: I wasn't that into it. I wasn't a big PC gamer at the time (2008's Warhammer Online, and later Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft, would permanently change that), and the game didn't really run that well on my machine to begin with. The keyboard/mouse controls were somewhat unwieldy for a PC gaming novice like myself, and the character build system was downright arcane. These barriers to entry caused me to abandon the game a second time on a second platform.
Fast forward a few years. Somewhere along the line I had picked up the Xbox 360 Game of the Year Edition of Oblivion for a stupidly cheap price ($20, as I recall), figuring I'd eventually take one more shot at the title.
Fast forward a few more years; in fact, fast forward to Saturday, February 18, 2012. It was a long weekend for me, with President's Day being celebrated on Monday the 20th. I'd been in game backlog-tackling mode for a while, after finally finishing Chrono Trigger (the top entry in my Hall of Shame) a few months prior. I had recently beaten God of War III as well, and was looking to downshift from its breakneck pace and ultra-violence. It was time for Oblivion. This time there would be no excuses.
The fact that I was playing it on my 360 removed any graphical issues, and made the game much more comfortable to control as well (spell hotkeys aside). The only obstacle left was building a character.
This required some research. I knew that Oblivion has a goofy leveling system that levels skills only if they're used, and also levels all monsters in the world along with your character. This means that not leveling the proper stat can result in you fighting Level 10 monsters with the health of a Level 4 character, which is a recipe for frustration. I hit the Wikis and vowed to learn the ins and outs of character builds and the leveling process.
Hours later I had settled on a build, a High Elf spellcaster that would be difficult to play early but a magic-wielding juggernaut later. I named him and finally entered the world of Cyrodiil.
One last thing, though: I had to learn the technique of what the Oblivion community calls "Efficient Leveling". The technique is grindy, but allows you to systematically maximize all stats as quickly as possible, focusing on what benefits you most at any point in the game. In a nutshell it's "Optimization Grinding", and it equired the creation of a spreadsheet on my part to track it. While that doesn't sound fun, investing dozens of hours into a game only to find yourself stonewalled for no sensible reason sounds even less fun.
With all of these former obstacles removed, I could finally start playing. And you know what? Leveling/Attribute/Skill madness aside, Oblivion is a great game. Bethesda's ability to flesh out what truly feels like a living, breathing world is a joy to behold. I can't wait to jump back in to see what happens next.
Well, that's not entirely true. Based on historical precedent, I could wait. I could wait about five years. Yeah, that sounds about right.
/le sigh
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