The Elder Scrolls IV: Obsession

Last weekend I had the pleasure of caretaking with my granddad. Always an enjoyable experience. We have a routine set for when I spend a weekend with him. Friday nights we go to a BBQ place (means missing my movie night, though) and we go to a Village Inn for omelets on Sunday morning. Otherwise, I pretty much just heat up pre-arranged meals and make sure he takes his pills.

So I have a lot of free time, but not enough time to make it worthwhile to drive back and forth between my home and my parents (pill schedule difficulties), not to mention that it is a horrible waste of gas.

That means I tend to stop playing World of Warcraft when I go over there. I do have the game installed on their computer, but macros are saved on the client (PCs not servers) and it is a huge pain to reset it every time I switch locations. Further, their computer is set up for Photography and they have a widescreen monitor which just annoys the heck out of me when playing WoW. If I maximize the screen the graphics become short and fat, if I go into window mode I see a lot of distracting icons on the sides.

So considering this, I decided to just take a break from WoW and be anti-social this weekend. Something that I think many people should do. Except for the anti-social part.

I decided to treat myself with a game I've heard much about but haven't bothered to start. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

For Easter: This is a continuation from that game you have mentioned before, Daggerfall.

Oblivion has been widely talked about all over the net, so I'm not going to do a review beyond saying that I love the style of play. It is a standard game in the beginning. You make a character, go through a tutorial and are pointed to the main storyline quest. What differs is that after going through the tutorial you can immediately ignore the main storyline quest and go do whatever the heck you want. Very different from traditional RPGs like Final Fantasy.

Another note, you are given TWO chances to design your character. When you start the tutorial and just as you are about to leave it and go into the wide world. Just before you leave you are asked if you want to change anything and I mean anything. From name to gender, race to class, or even create your own class. Awesome! That means you only have to do that tutorial once if you want to try something else, just save before you leave and don't overwrite that file.

So I created a character with a thief in mind, stealthy and avoids combat when possible. Went through the tutorial, started a bit of the storyline quest and discovered an issue with the leveling system. The leveling system is really counter-intuitive. It turns out that unless you make a pure combat class (boring!) as the game progresses you rapidly become underpowered.

Not being a mod person by nature, I decided to restart and work the system to my advantage. This time I decided to skip the storyline quest and join the Thieves Guild.

OMG! This is where the game has shined the most!

First you have to find the thieves guild. You can't just go up to a city guard and ask, for example. In fact, if I hadn't already started a bit of the game before I might not have known of its existance as you learn about it from the NPCs. So I tracked down some info on the guild and eventually got accepted into the guild. So what happens then? Not a damn thing. When you ask for a "quest" your superior essentially tells you, "you're a thief, go steal stuff." Apparently, after selling enough stolen items to a fence you are contacted for a special mission. How you steal is completely up to you though.

I have successfully avoided reading any spoilers on this game, so I will be enjoying this experience with the guild to the fullest. Not tonight, though. Tonight is reserved for corned beef and cabbage, I understand there will also be some colcannon served as well. However, I will probably be very absent from WoW for an extended time while I savor this new game.