Oblivion Adventures Part 6: Home is Where the Hearse Is

On the last installment of Oblivion Adventures, escort exterminator Shush’Ogar stomped stalking strumpets to stop them stealing stupendous amounts of gold. We rejoin him after this encounter, as he rolls back into town.

Shush was kinda tired on account of not sleepin de past few days. He was especially tired cause he had like fifty of dese skulls to carry around.  It was okay doe, Shush had a special condition dat let him not sleep way longer den normal, somethin about most of his brain bein in-sul-a-tion. But Shush figured he could use a break. So Shush sat down at de bar an ate an drank some stuff for a bit. While Shush was doin dat, a guy came over to Shush lookin kinda nervous. De guy kept givin quick looks to Shush’s belt, which was where Shush were keepin all de big bags a gold he kept gettin.

Oblivion Adventures Part 5: Muscular Orc Hammers Trio of Sultry Sirens [HD]

Last time we saw Shush’Ogar, he came to the coast city of Anvil, wandered into the mage’s guild, secured a membership, secured all their stuff, secured all their riches by selling their stuff back to them, then secured a job to defeat a rogue mage. The task was quickly completed, securing him a recommendation. We rejoin our protagonist outside the guild hall...

Shush wasn’t sure wot ting he was gonna do next. Shush knew dat he needed to visit a buncha places to get more better mage-y stuff, but dose other places were far away. Plus, Shush felt like dere was another ting he was s’posed to do dat he was forgettin. Shush were walkin down de street tryin to figure out wot dat was when he overheard some people talkin.

“Yeah, it sounds like Maelona is getting pretty desperate about it.”

“Well I would be too, if I were her. ‘Course I’d probably try and get money out of a divorce settlement rather than paying strangers from my own pocket.”

Shush wasn’t always de best at listenin, but he was real gud at hearin about people payin him. Shush walked up to de people talkin.

“Did you say somethin about people payin strangers for stuff?” Shush said.

“Oh, um, hello sir. Yes, the couple down the street” de man pointed as he talked “was having some trouble with the local gang. You know...the all-female one? They’re willing to pay-“

“Dat’s all Shush needed to hear.”

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.