I spent a fairly lengthy chunk fo time on Sunday playing Oblivion. I finished the “Intro Quest” where I escape fromt he sewers mostly. I’ve ended up as a Male Nord Assassin born under the sign of the Thief. The quest was a bit long just to essentially create a character and I’m hoping there is a way to skip it for future play throughs. I primarily used the Katana I found for most of the mission but it was taken from me at the end of the story arc by the other guard. That Jackass.
My first goal after exiting the sewer was to find a town to sell my collection of junk. Fortunately I could easily return to the imperial city (which i had just escaped from). I’ve dumped all the extra junk for gold and picked up a new quest. I have to investigate some guy who is undercuttin the other shop keepers in price. They think he’s part of some thief ring since he can sell things cheap and won’t join thier union. I don’t recall the name of the Shopkeeper but I think it was something along the lines of “Wally Martin”.
Unfortunately the woman didn’t give me the shop keeper’s shop name so I had to wander aimlessly in and out of every building looking for him. That’s pretty much where I am. I experimented with a few ideas such as killing the guy outright (he doesn’t die). I even managed to kill the guard that came for me, though the second guard didn’t give me the option of resisting arrest.
My plan is to return at night and break into his shop.
A few other notes based on my experience with ES3: Morrowind.
Combat seems more streamlined. There is less repeated bashing and more quick death. Abilities seem to increase faster.
The NPCs don’t each have a book long exposition to give. My prime beef with Morrowind was that the dialogue was long, boring, and confusing. This put me in a position where I didn’t care to finish the quests, or do them at all really.
I actually want to do the quests this time around. At the same time I want to beef up my character with cheats and rampage across the land as a feared demi-god.
The pace of the game in general seems quicker. This is a huge bonus.
The graphics are REALLY nice. It defaulted to “Low settings” based on my hardware but it still looks pretty amazing. I’d love to see what “High settings” are if this is low. I get generally good frame rates too. In Morrowind I had to quit my first try because I got something like 1/3rd frame per second (on my old video card).
Character models are not as ugly as Morrowind.
