Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

[Ethric]

Nice review there

Not much of a review, more of a fanboys raving

I haven't seen any werewolves yet. Plenty of regular wolves though. And bears. And those ¤#&%/&%# panthers that rip you to shreds in 2 seconds

[Angelspit]

A topless mod has just been released for Oblivion. I'm sure Nival is taking notes right now.

[Vlad976]

Shouldn't take much redrawing in some cases.

[ThunderTitan]

Shouldn't take much redrawing in some cases.

Redrawing? More like switching a color or two.

[Ethric]

Really, now... *sidles inconspicuously away... to, umm, do... stuff. Yeah, important stuff*

[Suleman]

I started playing it today. After hours of adjusting and modifying, I finally got it to work. Unfortunately, it looks very ugly thanks to my old video card. To the store I go!

[Justice]

Well I'm buying myself a new PC tomorrow... this one is to old to have a good go at it... is jumpy when I'm in battles.

[HodgePodge]

I have a 3.0 GHz processor and a 200 Gb Hard Drive. I don't know what kind of video card I have but I bought my computer 1½ years ago … do you peeps think Oblivion will run okay on my machine? I'd kinda like to get it … unless it's really buggy.

[Justice]

RAM and video cards are the great sinners. If you have a gig or more of RAMs and a videcard like Geforce6200 or better all should be ok... I have geforce 5600 and 512 RAMs... it is just to little for desent playing. goes ok with everything as low as possibly, but it gets to choppy in the battles with more than one foe... it's 2 years old. You'll see your RAMs and then system under control pannel.
and your video card is just to right clik on your my PC, or the place were wallpapers are, desktop or what it is in english and you'll find it there under something like... ehm, Forgott the english word. but it is placed on the top all the way right on mine PC... if not then just try everything that you can push in that pannel, there are only eight things to push, so you'll find it.

[Wildbear]

I have a 3.0 GHz processor and a 200 Gb Hard Drive. I don't know what kind of video card I have but I bought my computer 1½ years ago … do you peeps think Oblivion will run okay on my machine? I'd kinda like to get it … unless it's really buggy.

I began to play it after seeing it running, it is not the bug-nest morrowind was but it does have bugs. Now telling if it will be playable on your pc without knowing your video card and the amount of ram you have is about impossible. However it looks like it'll be ok on the cpu side.

Now on my own little comments...
I enjoy the game a lot until now (I'm only lvl8 but still, it matters a lot), but there are a few big design flaws. The most annoying one is a technical issue: the complete lack of optimization. I had to tweak the ini file for hours before I get something visually acceptable. For example, all reflections but terrain are off by default, so you see the reflection of the terrain in the water, but not that of the bridge over the river, it looked dumb enough to make me forget the goblin which was attacking me when I noticed.
The second technical issue is some weird ability people have to see you and speak to you when you aren't on the same floor. You just hear "hello friend, how are you?" from somewhere behind you, turn the head, look around, and nothing, then you hear foot steps above you.
Then more on the gameplay, there's that... "user" interface, I bet it wasn't thought with the user in mind. There's a mod available to increase the list's size but it isn't enough to correct all issues about its use.
Now completely on the gameplay, there are things so dumb that it is annoying to me. For example there's a "level scale" or something, making all your opponents about as strong as you, not even talking about the full glass-armored bandits, it made it possible for me to become the Grand Champion of the Arena... at level 3
Another annoying thing is the horse. It's great to use as long as there is no enemy nearby, but as soon as one of them appears, you have to get off the horse (about 3 seconds), draw your sword (1.5 seconds) turn around your horse, because the enemy is always on the other side attacking your 5k Septims horse (2 seconds), get the camera back to 1st person view (0.1 seconds unless you meet the "face bug that lets you see your own face frome the inside, then it's 1 more second to fix it) and finally attack the horrible, terrible, armaggeddonible rat that had been following you for about 5 minutes. You can't attack while riding your horse, and can't cast spells either. You can harvest flower seeds and speak to people however...

Now on the good side of things, the game is really immersive and I could play many hours in a row without noticing it. There are some huge dungeons which can take a few hours to complete, and the experience system is just as good as in morrowind. I still can't manage to understand the alchemy and magic systems however, so I keep wandering with my 5ft two handed enchanted sword cutting through everything that tries to approach or flee, and it's great fun

[HodgePodge]

RAM and video cards are the great sinners. If you have a gig or more of RAMs and a videcard like Geforce6200 or better all should be ok... I have geforce 5600 and 512 RAMs...

Yeah, I only got 512 of RAM too.

[Wildbear]

The problem with ram is that the game may take an horrible time to load when you're running (especially with the horse). But closing all other applications may be enough to make it run smoothly (it's necessary if you don't want it to crash anyway ).

[Ethric]

Yeah that leveling encounter-system is daft. Not in itself, but it's applied to too much. For example the arena, as you mentioned. Those enemies should have a fixed level. But seeing people in your guilds etc get better gear as you go up in level is sort of nice, as it gives the impression they aren't slacking while you are out there getting fame and glory.

But about the worst part of it for me is that all bandits and random riffraff gets super-gear just because you are high in level. Like the aforementioned glassclad bandits. Glass being the best light armour, also described ingame in a book about armour to be super-rare. Sure, make them go up in level, but don't give them more than modest gear. Oh well.

I restarted now and have made an effort to get high stat-increases at level-ups and being carful not to level to fast. That is to exsercise my minor skills every level and not just powerlevel my major skills. Makes sense in an rp-perspective too so it's not damaging for the gamepaly.

[Wildbear]

There is a mod to remove all rare equipments (glass, daedric, etc) from bandits. Here

[innokenti]

Right. When you get the game and play it - you forget all the problems that have been mentioned by anyone. Anything you feel a bit iffy about - a mod has been released to fix it.

Just immerse yourself, the game really lets you do that - then... float... bliss... gameage, yes. So if you've held back - go buy it.

As to running the game -

I can play it very comfortably on medium settings with the following:

2.4 GHz P4
512mb RAM
Radeon 9600XT

So there we go, and it looks very pretty even at mediumish settings!

[Derek]

I'm not much of a computer guy, so I figure I'll just post this here(in an obligatory fashion no less.) Can my computer run Oblivion? I bought it(the computer) online, and here's the link for the specs.

Even if it doesn't have all the bells and whistles on I would hope I can, though I doubt it at this point.

[Wildbear]

There look to be options on the page you show us. Looks like it's ok to play if you have the version with the nvidia graphics, the intel graphic chipset wouldn't work.

You can go on this website to test: http://www.srtest.com/referrer/srtest
(The title is "the elder scrolls IV") But don't care about the cpu speed, you look to have a pentium M, those are clocked lower but are very powerful, and that website doesn't take that into account.

[Derek]

Nice, I do have the nVidia card. Now all I have to do is save up some money to get it.

[Ethric]

Right. When you get the game and play it - you forget all the problems that have been mentioned by anyone. Anything you feel a bit iffy about - a mod has been released to fix it.

Just immerse yourself, the game really lets you do that - then... float... bliss... gameage, yes. So if you've held back - go buy it.

You're not one of those people that are paid to promote games etc on forums, are you?

Sure it's a good game, else I wouldn't bother taking time to complain about the stuff I dislike. I for one can't shake the disappontement of all the stuff "missing" compared to Morrowind (amount of weapon and armour skills halved, lot less options when enchanting stuff, half the number of individual armour-parts etc etc.). The thought is "Sure it's a good game, but it could have been great if they had kept the good bits from earlier."

Ah well, think I'll have to fire up Morrowind again when I tire of Oblivion, as others have suggested earlier

[Corribus]

@Ethric:

Is it possible that some of these things will be reinstated/fixed with expansions?