Oblivion Adventures Part 4: Free Money and Murders

Last time on our adventures in Tamriel, Shush’Ogar learned the subtleties of armor repair; took a treasure hunting job from a man whose hair could house several families of bird; and delivered a sacred artifact to someone in exchange for an important mission he didn’t really listen to. He then took a boat to the coast to continue his quest. This is arguably cheating because moving boats don’t actually exist in this game, but so what it’s a metaphor for fast travel shut up. Having successfully snuck that one by you, I’m going to get back to Shush before you take issue with it.

It took about a day for Shush to get to de coast city. When de boat got close to de town, Shush saw dere was a guard waiting for dem. When de boat wot Shush took hit land Shush got up, scratched his arm and walked up to de guard guy.

“Greetings citizen, welcome to Anvil. Can I offer you any directions?”

“Uh...did you say Anvil?”

The city of Anvil, where Shush was definitely probably supposed to go.

Oblivion Adventures Part 3: Durability and Destiny

Last time on Oblivion Adventures, smash-hit salesman Shush’Ogar struck scores of skeletons and sketchy sell-swords, taking tons of treasure to trek towards town, prompting a peaceful proprietor to propose probable paths of practicing proficient peddling. And afterwards...

Shush stepped outta de shop feelin pretty gud about all de sellin stuff he did. Shush were gettin lotsa shiny gold pieces for all de glowy stones he found. Shush wasn’t sure what to do wit all de gold doe. Den Shush had an idea. Cause see Shush’s clanky clothes got all banged up from all de skeletons an stuff, an it was real uncomfortable. So Shush found a buildin wit a picture of clanky clothes on it, an he went inside.

The shop in question, notable for looking exactly like every other shop in the imperial city.

Oblivion Adventures Part 2: Dungeons and Dealings

 

Last time we left our supposedly sneaky orc Shush’Ogar, he had stumbled out of jail, collected skulls, stumbled out of goblin caves, witnessed the assassination of an emperor, and stumbled out of a sewer. The moment when you walk out from the tutorial into the light of a wide-open world to explore is always great in Bethesda games. An interesting thing to note about Oblivion is that though you can go anywhere and do as you like at this point, the game starts you off pointed straight at a dungeon. Specifically, an ancient ruin named Vilverin.

There’s a sleeping bandit right out of view behind the wall. I know this dungeon uncomfortably well.

This dungeon was one of the first things I experienced playing an Elder Scrolls game, and I wager the same was true for many others. It’s a good introductory dungeon too, as it has a fair bit of variety and can make you an obscene amount of money for a level one character. As such, it’s been an unofficial tradition of mine to plunder the place as my first independent act with new characters. Now dungeons can be kind of same-y and lacking in unique commentary, so we’ll skip or summarize some in this play-through. But for at least this first one, I’ll make an exception.

On Oblivion Leveling

NOTE: This post is a game design interlude not directly connected to my written Let’s Play of Oblivion. If you don’t care about this sort of thing, you can skip it. But if you like painfully detailed discussions of in-game mechanics, gosh golly gee are you in for a treat.

So before we continue the adventures of Shush’Ogar, there’s something I need to address. In the first episode of this series, as well as future episodes, I’m trying to mix in discussions of game design along with humorous play-by-plays. This is all well and good for most things, as Oblivion has a lot of weird and amusing quirks to it. However, there is one subject in Oblivion that is too massive an issue. There’s one giant, messy problem with the game that I want to dedicate an entire post to properly discuss. This one thing, this near fatal flaw is my biggest issue with Oblivion. It bolsters many of the lesser problems in the game and is the number one reason I can't consider Oblivion the best Elder Scrolls game. So what could this flaw possibly be?

Today, we’re going to talk about leveling up in Oblivion.

Oblivion Adventures, Part 1

When it comes to what I do in my free time and even just the games I play, there’s a lot of content that never gets a proper blog post here. I understand that given my recent update rate, this information has gone from “kind of obvious assumption” to “something so clearly and blatantly apparent that all human children instinctively know it at birth”. But I want to make this clear all the same. I play all sorts of video games that I never see fit to write lengthy articles about. Typically this is some combination of having nothing interesting to say and/or the game being so popular and documented that everything I could say has been said.

An example of this phenomenon is Bethesda games. Bethesda is probably best known for The Elder Scrolls series; a succession of massive open-world action RPGs most recently featuring the extremely popular Skyrim. I’ve sunk many hundreds of hours into the company’s more recent games, starting with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Even though this game is the second most recent in the series it’s already almost a decade old. Bethesda made games before this, but they’ve generally been rated M and when I was younger I had what was less of a computer and more one of Charles Babbages new-fangled abacuses.

Let’s Play Sphinx #7: Pokemon Sphinx/Mummy Version

            Ancient legends tell of a treasure, lost to the annals of time. They tell of a sacred text that was buried beneath the sands for untold generations. Some weeks ago, our world’s top archeologists unearthed these very ancient texts. They marveled at them, estimating that they’re surely dating back to thousands of years ago, at least! They carefully placed them in an exhibit at a local museum, and news spread and eventually reached the papers. Some days after, a young man was browsing through the newspaper when an article caught his eye. “Oh”, he said, “they’ve found the Sphinx Let’s Play series. I should really consider updating that again.”

Hey! Do you get it?! Do you get the joke?! Do you get that the joke is that I haven’t updated in a long period of time?! Huh?! Do you?!

Let’s Play Sphinx #6: The Mummy Formerly Known As Prince

            Well it’s been a while, hasn’t it reader(s)? I actually played this segment back before I even posted the last entry in this series, so given that historians have yet to uncover intelligible recordings from that era I think we could all use a refresher on what the heck is happening. Sphinx had recently discovered from Mojo Monkey Man that via a magical artifact, they can temporarily revive the dead prince and have him scout out the enemies fortress. The Man of Monkey Magic then uses his powers to…give sentience to a basket, because that’s apparently the only way to transport items to and from the dead prince, via poorly explained teleportation magic. We can now return to our regularly scheduled Let’s Play that I’m sure my obedient legion of readers has been positively clamoring for.

Pictured: Obvious visual gag denoting inferior number of readers despite previous comments to the contrary

Let’s Play Sphinx #5: Exposition, Eagles and Evil Ecosystems

            So our hero Sphinx was last seen hiring a ship in Abydos bound for Heliopolis. While he presumably has a fascinating trip on the empty ocean with only one other boring NPCs company, however, our point of view shifts. What we see next is a scene taking place inside Castle Uruk. In case you’d forgotten, that’s the one with the giant laser sticking out the top.

Can’t miss it, first building on the right, just past the land of eternal darkness

Let’s Play Sphinx #4: Visit Scenic Abydos Sewers

            When last our adventure left off, we were yet again jumping into the hideous jaw of the portal god en route to a mysterious place called Abydos. Our eventual goal at the time is to get from there to Heliopolis, where Monkey Man is waiting for us. So the portal god spits us up like some type of picky lava worm and we find ourselves in a sewer. Pleasant. There isn't anything we can really do down here except walk down the passage to the door, so that’s what happens.

            As we emerge from the sewers we see the waterside city of Abydos. Near the entrance is a lady who grabs our attention to mention that the waters around the city are electrified due to an unusual infestation of electric eels. I understand the need to put walls around your game world, but really…electric eels?

For those unaware, it’s kind of hard to continuously electrify an entire ocean.

Let’s Play Sphinx #3: Back in Action

            When we last left off, we were doing absolutely nothing interesting gameplay wise. Thankfully that’s about to change, as right after the Prince is captured by his brother there’s a transition back to Sphinx, who thankfully was released from the portal gods mouth into some unknown location.

Here’s another picture of the portal god in case you could still sleep at night

Where has Sphinx’s mysterious amulet taken him? What will he do now? Is the Prince really dead? Do we care? Let’s find out!

Let’s Play Sphinx #2: Prince of the Fetch Quests

            When we last left our intrepid hero, he had vaulted over lava, acquired a mighty blade, slain enemies and dodged giant lasers, all before taking a magical portal to some unknown location. Coming up next in our engaging tale of heroics, we have…something completely unrelated.

Seems this kid just woke up! Presumably from dreaming he was in a segment with better gameplay

Let’s Play Sphinx #1: Land of Lava and Lasers

            In my first review on this blog, I made a reference to a game called Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. Since then I have no doubt that my legions of voracious readers have been frothing at the mouth to hear more of the game.

Pictured: My legions of voracious readers