Well I’ve never done one of these before!
It should be rather self explanatory from both the URL and the title of the page what this is to be, but why may be a slightly more mysterious question. Well, first off, I’ve never played Oblivion properly before. By properly, I mean modded up the wazoo and resembling the original about as closely as I resemble the 1986 winner of Miss. Universe.
I do not look like this.
And I don’t plan to. More on that in a bit. I’ve also never done a game diary before, and have big problems with sticking with things for large amounts of time, due to being an incredibly unfocused and slightly stupid teenager. This will be changed (in the spirit of the new British government) in a manner that involves killing lots of people and stealing their stuff.
I'm so fucking edgy and up on current affairs.
On the subject of the game itself: Oblivion was released in 2006 to the general praise reserved for AAA titles. A friend of mine purchased it, discovered it wouldn’t run worth shit on his computer and hastened to my abode. We dicked around, played it a little, had some fun.
I actually quite like it as a game – the main quest is pretty much a pile of bollocks, but the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild lines are brilliant. Many people think it is too easy and the complaints about the levelling system could stretch from now until the sun explodes.
Personally, I enjoyed the simple combat and consistent difficulty. I have never reached the maximum level and thus have not experienced the horror of Daedric homeless bandits, so that will be a novel experience should we get there. Thus, the mods I have installed do the following:
I think I'm ready now.
- Sounds/Textures – Oblivion was the Crysis of its time: the prettiest, graphics-card-murdering game available. Now, however, it’s actually got a little ugly. These mods change that, including one that is half as big as the game itself. Hopefully my mediocre PC can keep up, otherwise one or two will be disabled. The additional music and sounds just happened to be on a list of mods I was looking at. They will almost certainly not effect your experience of this diary, unless I decide I want to do video.
- Quest Award Leveler – The quest rewards in Oblivion are, on the whole, pretty fucking awesome. Unfortunetly, while they scale with your level when you acquire them, they do not continue to do so. This mod fixes that. Some might call it cheating, I call it having fun.
- Harvest – A couple of mods that make it more obvious when a herb or container has been looted. Very simple, very awesome.
- Non-psychic Guards – Fuck those guys, seriously. It’s like the Knights of the Round Table all suddenly standing up in the middle of a meeting and running off to the middle east because of some arcane link telling them there were crimes being committed in Jeruselum. And that’d just be stupid, so I’m using this.
- New UI – The old one was consolified crap! Damn casuals, etc! This is better, apparently. We’ll see.
- Oblivion Mod Manager – Makes all that stuff you just read actually work, and work well.
Our device has been modified.
Stuff I’m not using that you might think I should:
- Obscuro’s Oblivion Overhall (OOO)/Francesco’s – I enjoy playing the game the way I play the game, which pretty much involves doing whatever the dick I like, whenever I like. These mods make the game an incredible amount harder (and, probably, better) which while I’m sure is fun and brilliant, not for me!
- Any kind of levelling modification – I liked Oblivion’s levelling system and don’t really want to learn a new one. Plus the kind of character I intend to play (stealthy archer bullshit), I believe, has the lowest number of issues with it.
- Nude mods – Fap elsewhere. I can suggest a few places.
This is as hot as it's going to get.
If anyone has any suggestions, they can go right ahead and propose them through any of a million different channels of communication including the comments section and twitter.
Tune in for the next update, in which I make a character and begin MyAdventure(tm).