After flexing my manhood with DS, I decided to get back to a mastodontic game I never cared to finish even after having spent more than 40 hours in my first playthrough. TES: Oblivion. I wasn't having fun with my imperial anymore so I decided to ditch that character and reroll with a breton lady. I tried to make her somewhat attractive, failing miserably. Oh well, at least I never have to look at her face again. Except for menus.
I'm 10 hours or so into the game, dabbled a bit with the main quest to get my feet wet again, freed Kvatch and took Boromir to that hideout in the asshole of the mountains. After that, I said "fuck the main quest", joined the mages guild and started working on those quests. I'm trying to keep quest burden to a minimum, to avoid excesses like it happened to me in my first playthrough. So far I've succeeded in keeping things streamlined, which means I get to savor each quest in a continuous fashion, instead of hopping here and there. My plan is to do the mages, then fighters guild, and leave thieves and dark brotherhood for last. After that I'll give the expansions a try.
I'm also having a blast making potions, something I never tried in my first run, and now I keep an eye on every single herb, fungus and flower that I stumble upon.
55 solid hours of good fun. I finally completed the Mages Guild quests. I have slain the King of Worms, and am now Arch-Mage of the guild. I'm in the mood for a change, though, so I just joined the Fighter's Guild.
Yup. I had to enter vanity mode and press the camera button with my phallus.
I have beaten the main story, and so the case goes back onto the shelf.
I was 15 hours into the game before I:
- Sold anything to a store
- Mixed a potion
- Used a spell
- Fixed any armor or weaponry
(that was all in the last hour of the game). I was able to get through the game without doing a single sidequest.
The two most important things I can say about the game is:
- The game froze on me once. Today, as I was loading it (not while playing). I did not experience any form of glitch or any other problem with the game at all, so I don't know where all the complaints come from.
- The main story is one of the very best I've had in a game, certainly in an RPG (J or otherwise). I loved almost every minute of it. There was a time when Martin turned into a GTA-like boss sending me for this or that, but besides that I fully enjoyed the main quest. If you have spent time in the game purely sidequesting I'd encourage you to do the main story, it's not easy but it is not cheap either.
Thanks for inspiring this playthrough Steel, I never thought I'd play this game (though it was the first I bought for the 360).
Pretty sweet, man. Glad you enjoyed your time with the game. You know, for a genre that usually gets ragged on because of being all loose and unfocused because of its open nature, Oblivion handles itself pretty well in the plot department, both in the main quest line and in many of the optional ones.
I thought I made a post saying how much the main storyline sucked? Oh well.
You did, but nobody paid any attention to it. That's what you get for not liking anything ever except shitty Ico and the such.
Really? Actually, no it either didn't post or someone deleted it which was my point.
Mediocre fantasy fluff poorly told meh. It's decent, but nothing more than that. I preferred the main story in Morrowind. It was very slightly less generic, and told in a more mysterious way. Plus it made better use of settings. Dremora gates. :X
There were only a couple of side quests with memorable stories; most were memorable for reasons other than stories. The Dark Brotherhood and final magician and thief's guild missions spring to mind. They were all awesome, though the Dark Brotherhood could have been completely amazing if they'd had a tad more ambition.
P.S. I like De Blob, that means you like a shitty game.
And Oblivion for that matter...
Yeah, well, I'd be the first to acknowledge that writing in videogames is shit all across the board, with very, very few exceptions. However, that doesn't prevent me from enjoying even mediocre or poorly written stories as long as they're somewhat coherent. Maybe it's because I have low standards, or maybe because I tend to pay little attention to plot lines outside the general details of them. As they say, ignorance is bliss. Whatever the reason, I'm pretty comfortable with that.
Coherent. That is my standard as well.
Crap, I just ate my own post. Anyway, Steel said it better anyway. Coherent and Memorable. The only games that were as satisfying as this, in terms of story completion, were Infamous and Yakuza (any).
I greatly enjoy JRPGs! Hell, I loved FFX I'm not some snobbish bastard, I just didn't find anything memorable about Oblivion's story.
Hell, I loved Morrowind's main story, but I'm not going to say it was because it was written a great deal better. Though it was told a fair bit better IMO, though that had a great deal to do with the bettter setting of Morrowind.
Coherent? Snob, MGS's story FTW.