I think we can safely grant Bethesda the title "Creator of Largest Worlds." Between the Elder Scrolls series and Fallout, they have practically defined the wide-open, go-anywhere, sandbox style of gameplay, which also includes a stupid quantity of sidequests, extreme levels of customization, and the kind of insane detail that lets you, say, steal individual pieces of silverware from every house on the entire planet. It all leads to a sort of sensory overload, but that's where I thrive: as I keep saying, the thing I enjoy the most is living in a fully-constructed world, and Fallout is more fully constructed than just about anything.
I have an emotional attachment to the Fallout franchise that is surprisingly strong when you consider how little of it I've played. Oddly enough, I first came to it not through the video-game angle, but from the role-playing angle. During development, it was hailed at the first game that licensed Steve Jackson Games' GURPS system. I've been a huge fan of Steve Jackson Games since the very early 1990's, and was excited at the thought that their pen-and-paper games would finally make the transition to computer games.
Shortly before the game was released, there was some sort of legal dispute, whose exact nature never became public. The fallout (ha!) of that controversy was that they abandoned the GURPS system and developed their own, which they called SPECIAL. SPECIAL wasn't exactly the same as GURPS... there are some similarities, but every role-playing system shares some of the same DNA; how many systems do you know that don't include a Strength statistic? Anyways, GURPS is most famous for being a truly generic and universal system; you can use one set of game rules, and apply it to cowboy westerns, space combat, cyberpunk, steampunk, feudal Japan, any setting you can consider. What I like most about GURPS, though, is its character creation system. You get a certain number of points, and can spend it to take certain characteristics; maybe you spend a certain number of points and gain night vision, or uncanny reflexes, or a photographic memory. What's really cool (and more unusual) is that some of the characteristics are actually negatives, and rather than spending points on them, you earn points by taking them. So, you might give your character a stutter, arachnaphobia, and epilepsy; all of these can then be rolled over into more positive advantages for you. The end result is really interesting, varied characters with lots of personality. Best of all, there's no such thing as an "ultimate" character, or a perfect build; you gamble on the sorts of situations you'll be in, try to balance out your strengths and weaknesses (both within the individual and, perhaps, within the party), and hope for the best.
SPECIAL lost the cool negative abilities, but otherwise still feels GURPS-ish. The core GURPS stats are replaced by the SPECIAL stats - Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. They also have a set of secondary skills that you can build out. Because of Fallout's setting, they don't need the universal support of skills, so they are limited to the things that will come in useful in the wasteland: big guns, lockpicking, explosives, and more.
Then as now, I read about many more games than I actually played; it was almost a decade before I finally got around to playing Fallout. My favorite thing about it was the setting. Almost all RPGs I play are fantasy, but this was a full-blown science-fiction one. In the mythology of Fallout, World War III has finally occurred, the United States (and probably the whole planet) has been nuked, the mass of human and animal life has been killed or mutated. The only survivors are those who were lucky enough to be in underground fallout shelters. Now, many years later, the worst of the damage is past, and the survivors and their descendants are starting to creep back to the surface. What they find is an incredibly dangerous world, filled with radiation, lacking fresh water, assaulted by giant mutated animals, and largely lawless or under the control of organized gangs of criminals. You could be forgiven for mistaking it for the world of Mad Max. The coolest thing about it is the technology level, and that seems like something tailor-made for GURPS: it's a planet with the artifacts of an advanced technological society (about 100 years above our own), but that has lost the capacity of producing anything from the industrial age. It has become a consumer society, not a producing one, burning through the plastic remnants of its former self.
I played through the original Fallout and generally loved it. It had a cool party system, a nicely bleak plot, plenty of side quests. My biggest complaint was the combat: there was too much of it and it was too slow. The original Fallout and its sequel followed the example of X-COM, with turn-based fighting and action points. More often than not, one final enemy would try to run away, and I would spend several turns just patiently trying to chase it down one square at a time.
I started Fallout 2 soon afterwards - I think I may have picked them both up in a dual pack or something - but didn't get terribly far until I was distracted by something else.
Finally, Fallout 3! It was a real back-from-the-dead story, as Bethesda bought the rights from the defunct developer. I can't think of another case where one company has continued the franchise of another company, so that was pretty remarkable on its own. It also got great reviews and made several "best game of the year" lists, so it has been in my sights for a while. I acquired it as a very thoughtful Christmas gift, and slipped into a fun RPG obsession.
These kinds of games are a blast, and also pretty dangerous. I tend to want to beat every single side-quest that I can find, talk to every person in the world, and generally extract every bit of gaming goodness that I can. That's really deadly in this case. I got the "Game of the Year" edition, with all the expansions, and all told finished about 100 quests. That's the game's official count. It doesn't take into account the many little quests you go on of the "talk to this person" or "find this item" form, which don't get their own quest entry. It also doesn't account for the fact that, often, a single journal quest may contain three or more separate quests tracked under the same title; for example, Moira's quests have you do totally different things, but you don't complete the quest until you finish them all. All that to say, there's a lot to do in this game. And, amazingly, I don't think I did it all. Late in the game you can take an ability that lets you see all the locations in the world, including those that you haven't visited; I was amazed to see that I hadn't even set foot within a third of them by the time I beat the game. Some of these locations probably didn't have any quests associated with them, just encounters; others sounded like full settlements, which probably contained multiple quest-givers.
The other dangerously OCD aspect of this particular game is its economy. Appropriately enough for a post-apocalyptic game, the world has largely reverted to a barter system; you don't collect credits or nuyen, but largely gain wealth by taking stuff that you find lying around, and then exchanging it for other stuff. The closest thing to currency in this world is bottlecaps, which are a lightweight way of transporting wealth. However, you'll never get nearly enough bottlecaps from quests and exploration; you need to trade for them.
Early on, I would take everything that wasn't nailed down. I'd walk into a blasted supermarket and then emerge carrying breakfast cereal, empty soda bottles, batteries, toy cars, paint guns, anything I could lay hands on. Pretty quickly, I learned that I needed to pay attention to the value-to-weight ratio; a fusion battery was worth 50 caps, but it weighted 15 pounds; wonderglue was just worth 10 caps, but it weighed a single pound, and so by dropping the 15 pounds from a fusion battery, I could potentially carry 150 caps' worth of glue.
Throughout the game, I gradually got stronger and able to carry more stuff. The quality of gear I came across improved, my wealth improved, and my standards for carrying things rose. I began turning my nose up at the 1/5 items that I had previously treated as gold, holding out for 1/10 items or higher. Once you get used to the looting and selling cycle, it becomes really pernicious. I would travel to a place in 1 minute, spend 2 minutes clearing it of enemies, and then spend 5 minutes picking up everything of value, getting overloaded, opening my inventory, finding the least-valuable-by-weight things that I carried, dropping those, picking up some more stuff, getting overloaded again, repeating the cycle until I thought I had the best stuff, repairing and consolidating the weapons and armor that I planned to sell, picking up more stuff with the freed weight, then fast-travelling back to Megaton, walking to a merchant, selling as much as I could until they ran out of caps, then walking around to another merchant, selling out from them, fast-travelling to another city, selling off more stuff, until I was finally clear again. Then I'd go back to that location and do the actual quest associated with it.
In retrospect, this wasn't much fun, but I couldn't really help it. Early on in the game, you're desperately poor, and need to extract as much wealth as you can in order to survive. When you've run out of ammunition or out of stimpacks, you're living on borrowed time. Money continues to be useful through much of the game; some ammunition (particularly .308 caliber bullets, if you're a sniper like me) can't easily be found in the world and must be purchased; other times you can use it to advance plots; you can use it to buy schematics for customized weapons, to decorate your home, and so on. Once you get into the habit of obsessively picking over loot, it's really hard to stop. I got to this point when I finished the original storyline (after playing through all the expansions expect for the one that happens after the original main quest), when I realized that I was carrying about 60000 caps, and had gear worth almost that much stashed on my person or in my house, and that there was no way I'd be able to use it all. As a result, I think I enjoyed the final expansion quest far more than I otherwise would have: I could just play the game, and not constantly calculate how much money I was leaving on the floor. In retrospect, I could have abandoned this behavior much earlier, but it's hard to tell when you have enough money, and in any case, it had become a Pavlovian action for me.
In general, though, the economy in the game is actually pretty good. Things are a bit too scarce early on, but that actually contributes to the overall feel of the game: scarcity is both a major part of the game's flavor and a crucial plot point. For most of the game there's useful stuff that you can or need to buy from merchants. You sometimes need to pick between picking something useful now or saving up for something better later; in my book, this is practically the definition of a well-designed economic system. Reselling works pretty well, far better than in Dragon Age, though there's no equivalent system of "trading up"... a 10MM pistol is better than a .35 pistol, but there aren't different ranks of 10MM pistols; you'll use the best-quality one that you find for as long as you're using 10MM pistols, and then sell it when you switch over to, say, assault rifles. When you do, you'll get a decent price for it, one that you can further affect through your Bargaining stat, if that's important to you. Personally, I totally ignored Barter until I had maxed out on most other stats, and by then I had more money than I could spend anyways.
Combat in this game is much better than in the earlier Fallouts. It's generally Oblivion-y, happening in realtime in the main game engine. However, a feature of this game allows you to enter VATS, in an homage to the original game. You can spend a limited number of action points targeting specific parts of an enemy's body; the engine shows your odds of making the shot, and the predicted damage. I spent most of the game within VATS whenever I could; once your points are expired, you need to fight in real-time, which was fine but not as good as VATS.
Like in Oblivion, weapons and armor decline in quality as they are used in combat. Unlike Oblivion, you don't repair your gear with hammers or a replacement all-purpose item. Instead, you use parts from one item to repair a similar item. So, for example, if you have two suits of leather armor, and both are in poor condition, you can take pieces from the first piece, attach them to the second, and end up with a suit in decent condition. Repairs depend on your repair skill, and your ability to find replacement parts. You can also pay certain characters money to repair your gear, which does not require using a replacement part. I almost never did this early in the game; caps were precious, and I could make do with the things I had if I limited myself to common items. (For example, I loved the Sniper Rifle, but spent much of the early-midgame using the Hunting Rifle instead, because they were so much more plentiful and easier to replace.) Late in the game, I spent much more money on repairs, largely because it's difficult or impossible to get replacement parts for some of my favorite gear. One of my favorite weapons is the Backwater Rifle, which appears in the Point Lookout add-on. It does good damage, snipes well, and has a pretty high critical rate, but you can't find any after you return from Point Lookout, so if you want to keep using it you'll need to pay.
Leveling up works pretty well. You can distribute some points among your skills as you like. It's kind of the inverse of Oblivion: instead of leveling up by increasing your skills through practice, you level up by gaining XP (usually by killing enemies or completing quests), then increase your skills as you want; it's totally feasible to, for example, do all your fighting for a level using a hunting rifle, and then upon leveling up to assign all your points to energy weapons. This seems like a good system, since it allows you to take your character in new directions.
The most fun part of leveling up, though, is assigning your talents. These are combinations of flavor pieces, skill boosts, and unusual abilities. Some are pretty straight-forward, like one that gives you a 15 point boost in Big Guns. Others are more interesting, like "Child at Heart," which gives you access to unique dialog options when speaking with children. I'll admit that I turned to gamefaqs when deciding which talents to take; it's really frustrating to build up a character and then realize that he/she is broken. (I don't min/max, but too many RPGs have broken leveling systems. If the consensus is "take what you want," I'll go for flavor, but if some perks are useless and others essential, I'll want to know now.)
My character was named Cirion, natch. One nifty thing about this game is that it lets you pick your character's race, in addition to the standard customization stuff like stats. This actually has a significant impact on the story - no race is better than another, of course, but your father, an important character, will be the same race as you. I decided to play as an African-American. For combat, I specialized in Small Guns, which includes my beloved sniper rifles. I played as a variation on the stealthy character type that I'd used in Oblivion: I focus on stealth, lockpicking, and persuasion; science is also important for me here.
The morality system in Fallout is OK, but frankly nowhere near as well evolved as in Dragon Age. It presents an extremely Manichean view of morality: everything is good or evil, right or wrong. Your actions affect your "karma", which you cannot directly view (i.e., you can't view your karma number), but which does affect your reputation. If you're kind to strangers, rescue slaves, and punish criminals, then you will earn a positive title (like "Vault Saint"), and people you run into will talk about how awesome you are. If you kill innocents, steal from peoples' homes, and kick puppies, then you'll earn a negative title ("Vault Devil"), and... well, I don't know exactly what happens, but I assume that people act really scared of you.
Anyways: my big gripe is that there's no nuance. I realized really quickly that I couldn't play a "virtuous thief" type character like the one I'd loved in DA: stealing is always bad here. I could have continued down that vein, and maybe my positive good deeds would have balanced out my larcenous ways and resulted in an overall neutral rating. But... that just didn't seem like much fun. The game actively praises and scolds you, and for whatever reason it bugs me when a game is constantly telling me "YOU ARE A BAD PERSON!", even if I am doing bad stuff.
MINI SPOILERS
Fairly early on in the game, I picked up some armor from Reilly's Rangers. That remained my armor for the rest of the game. I didn't learn Power Armor until close to the end of the game; once I did, the weight was so high that I didn't really want to switch over, plus Reilly's armor has really nice stat bonuses for a stealthy guy like me.
I moved through a series of handguns: I used various pistols in the beginning, focused on the hunting rifle once I began encountering Super Mutants and had a steady supply, then switched to the Backwater Rifle later on. I loved, loved, loved Lincoln's Repeater, and regret having sold it to Abraham Washington. The Sniper Rifle was fun, but took way too many action points; it should have been designed with a much longer range than it had. I didn't do much with weapon creation, but did build and play around with the Railway Rifle and the Dart Gun, both of which were great; the Dart Gun was particularly entertaining, as it was silenced, so I could attack someone and poison them while remaining undetected; they would turn cautious but not hostile. Often my follower would finish them off, other times I would pump them a few more times and let the cumulative poison take them down. This got less fun after I finally picked up The Grim Reaper's Sprint perk, which refills your action points when you kill someone within VATS; once that was in place, along with my perks for improved headshots, extra VATS points, and greater 2-handed VATS accuracy, I could polish off almost any enemy within a single VATS sequence, then use GRS to repeat on the rest.
Other apparel: I picked up the Shady Hat early on; it had no armor, but some nice benefits (I think extra personality?), so I kept it; throughout the game, my goal was to avoid damage, not to absorb it. Along the same lines, the most useful item I ever got was the Ghoul's Mask, which let me avoid fighting an entire class of enemies. This proved so enjoyable that I took a perk I had initially skipped over, Animal Friend, which let me avoid fighting more (but not enough!) species. My only complaint with the Ghoul Mask was that it's darn ugly; since I so often finished killing enemies with critical headshots within VATS, I got tired of looking at that ugly mug in extreme close-up before a slow-motion bullet would travel out of my rifle of the day, float through the air, and then slay my enemy in a comically over-the-top gorefest.
As with other modern RPGs, Fallout 3 falls behind its predecessors when it comes to your party. You can only have a single follower at a time*, so you never get any entertaining cross-party talk like there was in Dragon Age or the earlier Bioware games. I got Charon maybe a quarter or a third of the way through my game, and was really happy with him; if I were to play this again, I'd have gotten him even earlier. By the endgame he had grown somewhat superfluous, but he proved my salvation during the really difficult middle portion when you're often facing a large group of angry Super Mutants. He doesn't really interact with any of your quests or other conversations, which is annoying; in particular, there are some huge missed opportunities for talkback during the luxury apartments quest. But he was a capable fighter, and, even more importantly, capable of sneaking. The AI seems decent - not great, but better than in Oblivion. One thing that did annoy me was that he doesn't apply stimpacks in the middle of fights; this generally isn't an issue, but there were a few times that I needed to reload because of this. Also, he seems to level with you, which is great; he's always less powerful than you, but remains more or less useful. I kept him well-supplied with a variety of weapons and ammunition, just avoiding grenades (visions of Jayne) and my precious .308 caliber bullets. Later in the game I got the ultimate power armor, which I didn't particularly care for but which Charon seemed to appreciate.
Speaking of leveling: I was delighted that Bethesda fixed their awful leveling fiasco from Oblivion. That game was notorious for becoming less fun the more you progressed; smart players tried to beat the game without advancing past the second level. There seems to be some leveling at play here - by the end of the game I was seeing many more Deathclaws and many fewer Molerats - but it's nowhere near as aggravating as in Oblivion. It helps that you spend points after leveling, not before; the thing I hated about Oblivion was how enemies would get tougher after I had improved my lockpicking and persuasion skills. Here, even if you did manage to level primarily by picking locks and hacking into terminals, you could still dump a chunk of your points into your weapon skill and keep pace. More importantly, though, the difficulty curve seems to keep pace much better. It remains challenging throughout, but not incredibly annoying as in Oblivion, where a random-encounter bandit would be wearing Daedric armor and kick the tar out of you more effectively than most bosses.
So, the story: I suppose you can really divide it into two parts, the main plot and everything else. As with other Bethesda games, the main plot is dwarfed by everything else you can do in the game; I'm sure I spent less than 5% of the game time following the primary quest.
The side quests are primarily focused on establishing the mood and setting, and they do a darn fine job at it. As I mentioned before, the overwhelming theme behind the game is that of scarcity; playing Fallout really helps you appreciate how good we have it in real life. The side quests tend to be fairly fun. They're rarely funny, but do often have a sardonic tone to them. There's a decent amount of variety; the game as a whole is just a bit more combat-heavy than I would like, and this is often true of the quests as well, but you do sometimes get a quest that doesn't require any killing, or one where an alternate approach lets you avoid it. I like the flavor of the quests, too... there's one where an old woman asks you to find a Stradivarius, which eventually leads you to explore the remains of a decrepit Vault, where you piece together the story of deliberately created insanity that the vault's administrators unleashed upon the musicians within. There's another one where an incredibly perky woman asks you to collect Nuka-Cola Quantum bottles for her. All well and good, but her boyfriend, who is trying to seduce her, wants to be your middleman. Oh, and one of my favorites was a battle between the forces of the Ant-Agonizer and the, er, robot guy whose name currently escapes me. That was a really fun one, mostly because of the endgame where you could out-talk instead of out-fight them. And don't forget the big quest, probably one of the first that most people will encounter, where you get to choose whether or not to detonate a nuclear bomb and blow Megaton off the map. It was stunning to think that this large, rich town where I spent much of the game would be totally missing from an evil characters' game.
Actually, I'm pretty amazed by how much there is to miss. There's an entire perk called "Puppies!" that I never took, because I never found the character Dogmeat. He's important enough to get his own perk, and yet totally optional to the game itself, and so incidental that our paths never crossed. That's another great bit of flavor from this game: the sense of scope and scale itself is amazing. It's a disintegrating world, and little pockets of people everywhere are trying to follow their best lights and carve out little nests for humanity, and yet they're all separate and independent, broken fragments of shattered civilization.
The main quest is about starting to piece those fragments back together. I put off the main quest until I'd completed all the side quests I'd stumbled across and all the expansion packs (except for Mothership Zeta, which I did between the first and second parts of the main quest). The main storyline concerns Project Purity, which was your father's lifelong dream: creating a source of pure, radiation-free water. Water is critically important in the Wasteland, and is the single thing that most makes outsiders envy the vault-dwellers. Water is a source of misery and tension, so the hope is that by restoring abundant and clean water, society can rise out of barbarism.
MEGA SPOILERS
Of course, the dreams of scientists don't always mesh with the ambition of the powerful. There are a couple of factions at play in Project Purity. One particularly interesting one is the Brotherhood of Steel; apparently they were significant actors in the original Fallout games, though I must admit that I don't really remember them very clearly. The main Brotherhood was formed from remnants of the US military, and is focused on retrieving all pre-disaster technology that it can find. This mission is more important to them than anything so mundane as, say, protecting the innocent; as they state, "We can make more people, but we can't make more laser cannons." In Fallout 3, you encounter a splinter branch of the Brotherhood which has actually started to focus on defending the Wastelanders and fighting the Super Mutants. This has caused considerable dissension within their ranks, and a large contingent of California-aligned knights have formed their own subgroup, the Outcasts, which claims to be the true Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood supports Project Purity, but they have their own style, which makes the scientists nervous. They eventually agree to join forces, and together take the battle against the Enclave, which is descended from the US political elite in the same way that the Brotherhood is descended from the US military. The Enclave is better-equipped (bearing plasma weapons instead of lasers) and has a strong presence; the Wasteland is filled with peaceful flying drones that broadcast the rambling pronouncements of President Eden. Both the Enclave and the Brotherhood want to control Project Purity; the Brotherhood claims to be doing it out of generosity; the Enclave, you eventually learn, sees Project Purity as a chance for racial purity, a chance to eliminate all the biologically mutated humanoids who fill the Wasteland. Even though you've spent most of the game killing these things, you can stand virtuous and reject the Enclave's commands, giving the world the gift of the water of life.
I kind of wish that they'd done a bit more with the Enclave. You can catch some scenes of internal dissension, as there's a power struggle between Eden and his top military commander. Anyways, they were nicely sinister, but it seems like there was some unexplored potential there.
Just about the coolest part of the main quest is Liberty Prime. It's basically Optimus Prime, but even taller, and prone to shouting about "COMMUNISM IS WEAKNESS! DEMOCRACY IS STRENGTH! MUST ANNIHILATE THE CHINESE THREAT!" When he's a-walkin, the buildings are a-rockin'.
The game "ends" once Project Purity comes online. I'd actually heard (with a vague level of detail) about this when the game first came out: some people were a bit surprised and upset that, in an open-ended sandbox game like this, it would just END when you finish the main story. From games like Grand Theft Auto, The Elder Scrolls, etc., we've gotten used to that peaceful post-triumph phase where you can just sort of explore, wrap up some loose ends, and bask in the glory of having saved the world. Making the game actually stop is a bit more dramatic, but also kind of disconcerting if you weren't expecting it.
Fortunately, since I had the GOTY version, the game didn't really end. After the heartwarming closing video, I woke up in the emergency room. The second part of the main quest features the demise of Liberty Prime, which was very sad. After that you chase down the remnants of the Enclave and fight to take them down. The action here was fun - there are some great level designs and good puzzles - but it's a bit disappointing to be missing a personable villain like President Eden or Colonel Auburn (sp). They're just The Enclave, and a bit boring for that.
That said, the final final part of the quest is pretty fun, with lots of nice explosions. When it was over I was like, "Wait, is that it?" I talked to some people in-game, then hopped online to check it out. Yup: that was it. Kind of the inverse of a game that ends when you don't expect it to.
END SPOILERS
Phew! As you can probably guess, there's still a lot more that I COULD do in Fallout. With all the unexplored territory out there, I'm sure there are many more optional sidequests waiting for me. Still, this seems like a great place to say that I'm finished: I've completed the main quest and all the expansions, and even managed to hit Level 30 about halfway through Broken Steel. The Wasteland still needs heroes, and a new generation will be there to serve them. I wrote a book that should help show them the way...
Showing posts with label open world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open world. Show all posts
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Obsessive
I stand tall and proud. I have faced the Daedra of Oblivion and cast them out of Tamriel. Beating a massive RPG like this is a simultaneously exhilarating and deflating experience... I'm delighted with where I've gone, but a bit saddened that the journey is over.
My overall analysis of the game is that it is an incredibly wonderful achievement that, for certain players, will be nearly undone by its leveling system. As I've previously complained, I was forced to stop leveling up in the game because it increases the power of your enemies faster than your own combat prowess. That major flaw aside, however, the world and the plot themselves are excellent, fully worthy of the Elder Scrolls label.
On balance, I'd say that this game is better than Morrowind. If nothing else, its vastly improved system of fast travel means that you spend more of your time actually playing the game and less time moving from point A to point B. That said, you still spend enough time journeying to new destinations to encounter the amazing beauty of Cyrodiil. The graphics are wonderful, even on my standard hardware, and a pleasure to look at, unlike the often ugly design in Morrowind. The natural scenes are the best; when you climb up a mountain, stop periodically to look back down into the valley, and prepare to be impressed at the sweeping vista laid out below. It looks somewhat like my hikes in Northern California, and I can think of no higher praise.
Combat, while still not a great system, is more interesting than in Morrowind. There is a greater variety of monsters; delightfully, none of them are airborne this time around. I mainly fought with my bow and arrows, and generally enjoyed it... the game is good at providing good sniping positions, and when facing a single opponent you'll usually have a chance to take them down before meeting them face to face. The AI is better than I was expecting; massive Daedroth and Clannfear will charge at you directly, while hedge wizards will summon defenders and run away. Once you figure out the system, it's a little too easy to abuse - on an open field, I could kill nearly any opponent by firing my bow while running backwards away from them - but it does require a combination of skill and strategy to take someone down, along with a strong understanding of your surroundings.
By the end of the game, actually, I was no longer bothering to fight anyone. You can boost your Stealth to around 120 or higher with various augmentations, and as long as there were some shadows around, I could get around most situations. I had to keep reminding myself that this was OK - there are no experience points in the game, so the only things you gain from killing a monster are their loot and some slight increases in your combat skills.
I liked magic more in this game as well. Specific spells were missing; I would have loved to have Mark and Recall again (though I would not trade fast travel for them), if just to have a quick way to exit a dungeon. I kind of miss Levitation, though I certainly understand why they got rid of it. On the whole, though, this was a better system. You automatically regain magic over time, even without resting, and once you gain access to Arcane University can create your own spells. Your only option for enchanting items this time around is also through the University, but prices are far more reasonable than in Morrowind.
Some of the improvements didn't do anything for me. The idea of horses is cool, but in practice, I just used fast travel everywhere. The minigames were annoying, especially for Lockpicking and Persuasion. Which is a bummer, since I took both of those as major skills. Lockpicking in particular becomes useless as a skill after you finish a quest that grants you an unbreakable lockpick.
That brings up another point: unbalanced skills. I had this problem in Morrowind too, though... most people will end up creating a new character and starting the game over after playing for a few hours, just because what sounds cool and useful in a three-line text description doesn't actually turn out to be what you expect. I guess my criticism comes down to a few things. First are skills that seem to just be useless. Obviously this includes weapons and spells that you don't use, but also things like Lockpicking. Next are skills that go up really quickly. I shouldn't complain, but, for example, I got my Stealth up to 100 very early on in the game, just because if it's a primary skill and you usually sneak, it will rocket higher. Finally are skills that affect the overall gameplay. I really regret not having picked Armorer as a primary skill; at the time, I had planned on avoiding combat and thought I could get by without needing a very high skill. In practice, though, that meant that I could not use enchanted weapons and armor (at least not for long - you need to pay others to repair them between quests if your skill is low). And without it being a primary skill, it went up sloooooooowly... I repaired everything I could, but by the end of the game I was just at skill level 37, far from journeyman level. Now, I could have paid for training... but that would require more leveling, and broken gameplay for me again. Anyways! I shouldn't complain too loudly, but I think they can definitely make improvements in Elder Scrolls V.
Some ideas were intriguing, but insufficiently developed. I loved getting companions who would follow me around; they come late in the game, but are very useful. That said, it's very hard to get a melee fighter as a companion, which would be much more useful to me. If you do get one, then they'll never repair their weapons or armor; after following you for long enough (assuming they survive), the weapon will break, and they'll resort to just using their fists. Mage companions don't have this problem, but they are extremely weak, and without having a melee fighter in the party, will quickly fall to your opponents. On the whole, while the follower system doesn't hold a candle to Bioware's RPGs, it does mark a nice improvement over the more solitary gameplay of Morrowind.
The overall scope of the game was as expansive and amazing as I had hoped. The actual main quest doesn't seem to take terribly long, but I spent months on the side quests before turning to it. It's a great system that allows people to be as obsessive or casual as they want, and play the game in whatever style they like the best. Just be careful not to level up too quickly.
Moving towards the meat of the game, let's finish with some
MINI SPOILERS
I'd complained earlier about the factions; it actually ended up being better than I had thought once I found the Dark Brotherhood and some other minor factions, but it still is a slight step down from Morrowind. A lot of the "factions" you join are really just quest rewards and don't have the same vast plotlines of the major factions.
One thing I really appreciated was how distinct each faction was. This can be seen in the types of quests they send you on, the rewards, the rules and the storyline. For example, most Fighters Guild quests involve some combination of reconnaissance and combat; every quest will give you a few hundred gold pieces; and the overall thrust of the plot has to do with repairing the maligned reputation of the Guild. In contrast, most Dark Brotherhood quests require deep infiltration and sudden deadly force; you are rewarded with rare magical items or occasional stat boosts; and the primary plot circles around identifying a traitor in the Brotherhood. The Mages Guild is an entirely different beast as well, with you running a variety of errands in the first half, then later gaining access to Arcane University and following a more structured quest line as you investigate the necromancer menace.
Thieves Guild was the most fun, of course. You have a standing quest called "Freelance Thievery" that just requires you to steal and fence stolen goods. The "real" quests are far more entertaining, and lead to some unique rewards.
For each guild, once you completely finish the quests and become head of the guild, you get some extra-special rewards. I think that the Mages Guild may be the coolest: you get access to an enchanted chest that can duplicate ingredients, and can order apprentice wizards to follow you. I was initially disappointed with the ultimate reward for the Thieves Guild, which was a single enchanted item; however, as I became more expert at how to use that item, I came to realize what a cool, game-changing system it was. The other two guilds include regular payments as part of their reward, but the sums are so minuscule that it does not seem worthwhile.
Most of the side quests are associated with factions, but there are a plethora of stand-alone quests and mini arcs. Each Daedric lord has a quest that reflects their own particular personality; Sheogorath and Sanguine's were the most entertaining. Each of those quests will grant an artifact with particular power or unusual abilities. There are a ton of random stand-alone quests as well, some of which are rather interesting. Early on I investigated a discount wholesaler in the Imperial City; stumbling across an abandoned farmhouse may lead to a search for a Lovecraftian unspeakable evil; and a kidnapping will force you to confront a ghost town's dark secrets. Again, I was stunned by the vast variety of content that's just floating out there, waiting for you to stumble across it. Even though I've "beaten" the game and all major faction arcs, I'm sure that there are plenty of quests out there that I just never found.
And last but not least, how was the game's story? For that, peek behind the curtain at some
MEGA SPOILERS
The plot was quite good, although personally I have to give a slight edge to Morrowind. Still, Oblivion's tale does have the hallmarks of the truly great RPGs: A vast plot that feels rooted in history, requiring you to learn about the earlier ages of the world as you seek to confront the present threat, making your tasks feel like the culmination of an entire universe's history. The early assassination of the Emperor gives a good impetus for everything that follows, and the way that Oblivion gates continue to open throughout the game adds a sense of urgency and dynamism to the action.
In general, characters aren't as fully fleshed out as in Baldur's Gate (nearly a decade later, still the gold standard for a story-driven RPG), but the most important ones do carry sufficient gravitas and depth for their role. Martin is kind of a stock fantasy character, but a good one: the reluctant, noble person who resists leadership but eventually learns to embrace his role. Except for the climax, he feels much like an Aragorn archetype. The Blades are good as well, although honestly I liked their fortress even more... in all the Elder Scrolls games, the Blades are just a little bit TOO perfect, too pure and selfless to take seriously.
I was pleasantly surprised at the end of the game by the lack of treachery. All along, I had been convinced that Chancellor Ocato was secretly in league with Mehrunes Dagon, and at the critical moment would prevent us from lighting the dragonfires. Similarly, I kept expecting the ally in Paradise to turn me in, and was delighted to find that he could more than keep his own in a fight. So the endgame proved to be a bit more simple than I expected, but there's nothing wrong with simple. (Truthfully, I would have loved to face an ending like that in Planescape: Torment, where you actually have a wide variety of available ways to end the game, but that's a standard complaint I have with everything.)
Interestingly, the faction quests felt at least as strong as the main quest. In particular, I think that the Mages Guild plotline could have served perfectly well as the main plot for an Elder Scrolls game. It even had some parallels with the current one: the Necromancers are similar to the Mythic Dawn (in both cases, people drop out of civilized society to make contact with a dark evil that they try to bring into Tamriel); the King of Worms is roughly equivalent to Mehrunes Dagon; and the black soul gem ritual bears a large resemblance to the Mythic Dawn rituals. The early part of this faction's quests seemed relatively plodding, as you are forced to travel to each Mages Guild and perform tasks; but this does force you to get a feeling for the Guild's nature and health. It is interesting to compare the vibrancy and pride of Arcane University, the guild's center, with the bickering, laziness, and incompetence found in the outlying guild halls. The subplot with the Count of Skingrad, a secret vampire, adds another wrinkle to the guild's battle against the forces of the undead. Oh, and Hannibal Traven is a fine NPC, and has possibly the best voice actor in the game.
I think that the individual quests within the Thieves Guild were the most entertaining in the game, but the overall story felt a tad stale. It's yet another variation on Sleeping Beauty, the story of a nobleman who has fallen upon obscurity. Still, the personalities you meet are entertaining, and you do feel plugged into a fun, vast shadowy network.
Speaking of shadowy networks, my reaction to the Dark Brotherhood was quite similar to the Morag Tong in Morrowind. In both cases, my thoughts of "Wow, this is really cool!" battled with the queasy feeling in my stomach. The game makes no apologies: these are evil quests for evil characters. You must assassinate innocents or good people, often in macabre ways; however, the rewards for doing so are quite tempting. I do give Bethesda props for going all-out on this and not pulling their punches; the game is rated Mature, and the Dark Brotherhood alone earns that title. Some of the best quests in the entire game are for this faction. There's a delightful twist on a horror trope when you have to play the role of a serial killer in a house, killing the guests one by one and keeping suspicion from falling on yourself. The overall storyline here was fascinating as well. My one regret is that the eventual traitor is a stranger to you; the endgame would have been much more compelling if you were more personally vested in the other Speakers.
Fighters Guild... well, it was better than I expected. The individual quests were often dull or frustrating - not at all surprising, given the style of character I played. But the larger conflict against the up-and-coming Blackwood Company was well done. I was especially impressed with the quest where you infiltrate the Company and join them on a raid. As I was halfway through the process of slaughtering the goblins in a village, I got the sinking feeling that something was wrong... why weren't they fighting back? Sure enough, when you return to the village later and see the bodies of townspeople lying where you struck, it's a horrible feeling... it made me think of American soldiers fighting in Vietnam, and other places where the glories of heroic combat are abruptly plunged into the darkest pits of civilian massacre. I do think they glossed over the aftermath a little, but the moment itself will stand as a vivid memory to me.
So, taken as a whole, what is the story of Oblivion about? I think I can identify a couple of themes. On a personal level, it deals with taking responsibility and striving for what's important. This is most obvious in Martin's quest, as he comes to terms with the demands placed upon him; however, throughout the game there's a strong emphasis placed on sacrifice. Think of Hannibal Traven surrendering his soul to stop Mannimarco; or Oreyn accepting the humiliation of removal from the Guild as he strives to save it; even Lucien Lechance is, in a very real and grisly sense, "sacrificed" when he tries to cleanse the Dark Brotherhood. In all these cases, people must surrender rank or their very lives; in return, the organizations they have supported can survive.
On a more political level, it's interesting to think about the "invasion" aspect of the Oblivion gates. This becomes particularly intriguing after you enter Mankar Camoran's Paradise and learn from him that Tamriel itself is just another Plane of Oblivion, and that it is Mehrunes Dagon's rightful realm. To put it crudely, the player cannot accept that first possession to land means eternal ownership. Men and mer may be the original invaders, but it is their territory now, and you have every right to stand against the reconquista. The interplay between Daedra and Mythic Dawn is also worth pondering. Among the rare parts of the game that startled me, walking down a city street and passing a cheerful shopkeeper who suddenly pulled a knife and started attacking me ranks very high. It's a dramatic presentation of a fifth column rising in support of an invading force, sort of the mirror image of the insurgency we faced in Iraq. I don't think you can draw a direct parallel between this game and either the War on Terror or the Iraq War, but there are still some resonances when you consider the images of invasion, assaults on nations, the ruined city of Kvatch, and the subtle collaboration between military invaders and their civilian supporters.
So, again, I give a slight edge to Morrowind's story, which dealt with (to me) more interesting themes of pride and humility, but it sure ain't bad!
What's ahead for the future? My list of requests for the Elder Scrolls V includes:
I still need to play the expansions, but this seems like a good time to take stock of where I landed at the end of this game. Some vital statistics:
My character was a Bosmer named Cirion. His class was a custom-made class called an "Elite Agent"; primary skills included Marksman, Security, Stealth, Speechcraft, Mysticism, Illusion, and Light Armor. By the end of the game I was a Listener in the Dark Brotherhood, Master of the Fighters Guild, Grand Champion of the Arena, Arch-Mage of the Mages Guild, Gray Fox of the Thieves Guild, a member of the Virtuous Blood, the Knights of the Thorn, the Knights of the White Stallion, and the Order of the Dragon. (I was also, briefly, in both the Mythic Dawn and the Blackwood Company.) My favorite faction was the Thieves Guild. At the end of the game, I was using a Glass Bow with either Steel, Silver, or Elven arrows; I wore all Elven armor, except I pull on Nocturnal's Cowl when in a dungeon or carrying out nefarious needs. (I WOULD wear more enchanted equipment, except for the aforementioned problem with my Armorer skill.) My most common spells cast were Restore Health, Life Detection, and either Starlight (early) or Night-Eye (later). I was level 14 at the end, though I'm sure I could have gone much higher by sleeping. Final Fame was 132 and Infamy was 31; actual Infamy would have been much higher, except that I didn't start the Dark Brotherhood until after finishing Thieves Guild, and wore the Cowl when collecting my rewards. My favorite store was the Copious Coinpurse in the Imperial City Market District; far behind in second place was the weaponry store in Anvil. My favorite city was probably Anvil, although I spent the most time in the Imperial City. I bought houses in Bruma, Chorrol, and Lleyawin, but didn't purchase many furnishings for any of them. By the end of the game I had nearly 200,000 surplus gold. That late in the game, the only use I could get from them was buying arrows and (hypothetically) training; that said, I think I may buy the Skingrad house and fully outfit it, just for the heck of it. I briefly became a vampire, but restored my game when I realized it wouldn't be much fun. I became a Master in Stealth, Marksman, and Illusion. I was an Expert in the remainder of my major skills, as well as Alchemy. I most wanted higher values in Armorer and Mercantile, both of which go up far too slowly. My favorite enemy was the Dremora Kynval. Well, unless the Sunken One counts as an enemy. My favorite companion was probably Mazoga the Orc, although keeping her alive was a pain. My favorite mod was the quest item leveler. I never bet on a match in the Arena. My highest stat was Agility, which (with enchantments) got above 90; my lowest stats were Strength and Endurance. I found a grand total of 14 Nirnroots, most stolen from houses. I was only arrested twice, both times for quests, and apparently somehow stole over 10,000 items (!). I had a single murder, to get into the Dark Brotherhood (others showed up on the Gray Fox's rap sheet), but a surprisingly high number of assaults. My highest bounty was only about 50 before Sanguine's quest, and several hundred after. I owned a grand total of two horses throughout the entire game: the Priory horse, which was apparently killed while I was clearing out a mine, and the Dark Brotherhood horse, which I never rode. My Speed was close to 100, so I rarely needed to use a horse to get anywhere or outrun anything.
All in all, I'm pretty content with how things ended up. I'll probably take a break from the game for a few months, possibly wait for the two expansions to drop in price, then plunge back into Cyrodiil. It's an amazing world, and I look forward to spending more time inside it.
My overall analysis of the game is that it is an incredibly wonderful achievement that, for certain players, will be nearly undone by its leveling system. As I've previously complained, I was forced to stop leveling up in the game because it increases the power of your enemies faster than your own combat prowess. That major flaw aside, however, the world and the plot themselves are excellent, fully worthy of the Elder Scrolls label.
On balance, I'd say that this game is better than Morrowind. If nothing else, its vastly improved system of fast travel means that you spend more of your time actually playing the game and less time moving from point A to point B. That said, you still spend enough time journeying to new destinations to encounter the amazing beauty of Cyrodiil. The graphics are wonderful, even on my standard hardware, and a pleasure to look at, unlike the often ugly design in Morrowind. The natural scenes are the best; when you climb up a mountain, stop periodically to look back down into the valley, and prepare to be impressed at the sweeping vista laid out below. It looks somewhat like my hikes in Northern California, and I can think of no higher praise.
Combat, while still not a great system, is more interesting than in Morrowind. There is a greater variety of monsters; delightfully, none of them are airborne this time around. I mainly fought with my bow and arrows, and generally enjoyed it... the game is good at providing good sniping positions, and when facing a single opponent you'll usually have a chance to take them down before meeting them face to face. The AI is better than I was expecting; massive Daedroth and Clannfear will charge at you directly, while hedge wizards will summon defenders and run away. Once you figure out the system, it's a little too easy to abuse - on an open field, I could kill nearly any opponent by firing my bow while running backwards away from them - but it does require a combination of skill and strategy to take someone down, along with a strong understanding of your surroundings.
By the end of the game, actually, I was no longer bothering to fight anyone. You can boost your Stealth to around 120 or higher with various augmentations, and as long as there were some shadows around, I could get around most situations. I had to keep reminding myself that this was OK - there are no experience points in the game, so the only things you gain from killing a monster are their loot and some slight increases in your combat skills.
I liked magic more in this game as well. Specific spells were missing; I would have loved to have Mark and Recall again (though I would not trade fast travel for them), if just to have a quick way to exit a dungeon. I kind of miss Levitation, though I certainly understand why they got rid of it. On the whole, though, this was a better system. You automatically regain magic over time, even without resting, and once you gain access to Arcane University can create your own spells. Your only option for enchanting items this time around is also through the University, but prices are far more reasonable than in Morrowind.
Some of the improvements didn't do anything for me. The idea of horses is cool, but in practice, I just used fast travel everywhere. The minigames were annoying, especially for Lockpicking and Persuasion. Which is a bummer, since I took both of those as major skills. Lockpicking in particular becomes useless as a skill after you finish a quest that grants you an unbreakable lockpick.
That brings up another point: unbalanced skills. I had this problem in Morrowind too, though... most people will end up creating a new character and starting the game over after playing for a few hours, just because what sounds cool and useful in a three-line text description doesn't actually turn out to be what you expect. I guess my criticism comes down to a few things. First are skills that seem to just be useless. Obviously this includes weapons and spells that you don't use, but also things like Lockpicking. Next are skills that go up really quickly. I shouldn't complain, but, for example, I got my Stealth up to 100 very early on in the game, just because if it's a primary skill and you usually sneak, it will rocket higher. Finally are skills that affect the overall gameplay. I really regret not having picked Armorer as a primary skill; at the time, I had planned on avoiding combat and thought I could get by without needing a very high skill. In practice, though, that meant that I could not use enchanted weapons and armor (at least not for long - you need to pay others to repair them between quests if your skill is low). And without it being a primary skill, it went up sloooooooowly... I repaired everything I could, but by the end of the game I was just at skill level 37, far from journeyman level. Now, I could have paid for training... but that would require more leveling, and broken gameplay for me again. Anyways! I shouldn't complain too loudly, but I think they can definitely make improvements in Elder Scrolls V.
Some ideas were intriguing, but insufficiently developed. I loved getting companions who would follow me around; they come late in the game, but are very useful. That said, it's very hard to get a melee fighter as a companion, which would be much more useful to me. If you do get one, then they'll never repair their weapons or armor; after following you for long enough (assuming they survive), the weapon will break, and they'll resort to just using their fists. Mage companions don't have this problem, but they are extremely weak, and without having a melee fighter in the party, will quickly fall to your opponents. On the whole, while the follower system doesn't hold a candle to Bioware's RPGs, it does mark a nice improvement over the more solitary gameplay of Morrowind.
The overall scope of the game was as expansive and amazing as I had hoped. The actual main quest doesn't seem to take terribly long, but I spent months on the side quests before turning to it. It's a great system that allows people to be as obsessive or casual as they want, and play the game in whatever style they like the best. Just be careful not to level up too quickly.
Moving towards the meat of the game, let's finish with some
MINI SPOILERS
I'd complained earlier about the factions; it actually ended up being better than I had thought once I found the Dark Brotherhood and some other minor factions, but it still is a slight step down from Morrowind. A lot of the "factions" you join are really just quest rewards and don't have the same vast plotlines of the major factions.
One thing I really appreciated was how distinct each faction was. This can be seen in the types of quests they send you on, the rewards, the rules and the storyline. For example, most Fighters Guild quests involve some combination of reconnaissance and combat; every quest will give you a few hundred gold pieces; and the overall thrust of the plot has to do with repairing the maligned reputation of the Guild. In contrast, most Dark Brotherhood quests require deep infiltration and sudden deadly force; you are rewarded with rare magical items or occasional stat boosts; and the primary plot circles around identifying a traitor in the Brotherhood. The Mages Guild is an entirely different beast as well, with you running a variety of errands in the first half, then later gaining access to Arcane University and following a more structured quest line as you investigate the necromancer menace.
Thieves Guild was the most fun, of course. You have a standing quest called "Freelance Thievery" that just requires you to steal and fence stolen goods. The "real" quests are far more entertaining, and lead to some unique rewards.
For each guild, once you completely finish the quests and become head of the guild, you get some extra-special rewards. I think that the Mages Guild may be the coolest: you get access to an enchanted chest that can duplicate ingredients, and can order apprentice wizards to follow you. I was initially disappointed with the ultimate reward for the Thieves Guild, which was a single enchanted item; however, as I became more expert at how to use that item, I came to realize what a cool, game-changing system it was. The other two guilds include regular payments as part of their reward, but the sums are so minuscule that it does not seem worthwhile.
Most of the side quests are associated with factions, but there are a plethora of stand-alone quests and mini arcs. Each Daedric lord has a quest that reflects their own particular personality; Sheogorath and Sanguine's were the most entertaining. Each of those quests will grant an artifact with particular power or unusual abilities. There are a ton of random stand-alone quests as well, some of which are rather interesting. Early on I investigated a discount wholesaler in the Imperial City; stumbling across an abandoned farmhouse may lead to a search for a Lovecraftian unspeakable evil; and a kidnapping will force you to confront a ghost town's dark secrets. Again, I was stunned by the vast variety of content that's just floating out there, waiting for you to stumble across it. Even though I've "beaten" the game and all major faction arcs, I'm sure that there are plenty of quests out there that I just never found.
And last but not least, how was the game's story? For that, peek behind the curtain at some
MEGA SPOILERS
The plot was quite good, although personally I have to give a slight edge to Morrowind. Still, Oblivion's tale does have the hallmarks of the truly great RPGs: A vast plot that feels rooted in history, requiring you to learn about the earlier ages of the world as you seek to confront the present threat, making your tasks feel like the culmination of an entire universe's history. The early assassination of the Emperor gives a good impetus for everything that follows, and the way that Oblivion gates continue to open throughout the game adds a sense of urgency and dynamism to the action.
In general, characters aren't as fully fleshed out as in Baldur's Gate (nearly a decade later, still the gold standard for a story-driven RPG), but the most important ones do carry sufficient gravitas and depth for their role. Martin is kind of a stock fantasy character, but a good one: the reluctant, noble person who resists leadership but eventually learns to embrace his role. Except for the climax, he feels much like an Aragorn archetype. The Blades are good as well, although honestly I liked their fortress even more... in all the Elder Scrolls games, the Blades are just a little bit TOO perfect, too pure and selfless to take seriously.
I was pleasantly surprised at the end of the game by the lack of treachery. All along, I had been convinced that Chancellor Ocato was secretly in league with Mehrunes Dagon, and at the critical moment would prevent us from lighting the dragonfires. Similarly, I kept expecting the ally in Paradise to turn me in, and was delighted to find that he could more than keep his own in a fight. So the endgame proved to be a bit more simple than I expected, but there's nothing wrong with simple. (Truthfully, I would have loved to face an ending like that in Planescape: Torment, where you actually have a wide variety of available ways to end the game, but that's a standard complaint I have with everything.)
Interestingly, the faction quests felt at least as strong as the main quest. In particular, I think that the Mages Guild plotline could have served perfectly well as the main plot for an Elder Scrolls game. It even had some parallels with the current one: the Necromancers are similar to the Mythic Dawn (in both cases, people drop out of civilized society to make contact with a dark evil that they try to bring into Tamriel); the King of Worms is roughly equivalent to Mehrunes Dagon; and the black soul gem ritual bears a large resemblance to the Mythic Dawn rituals. The early part of this faction's quests seemed relatively plodding, as you are forced to travel to each Mages Guild and perform tasks; but this does force you to get a feeling for the Guild's nature and health. It is interesting to compare the vibrancy and pride of Arcane University, the guild's center, with the bickering, laziness, and incompetence found in the outlying guild halls. The subplot with the Count of Skingrad, a secret vampire, adds another wrinkle to the guild's battle against the forces of the undead. Oh, and Hannibal Traven is a fine NPC, and has possibly the best voice actor in the game.
I think that the individual quests within the Thieves Guild were the most entertaining in the game, but the overall story felt a tad stale. It's yet another variation on Sleeping Beauty, the story of a nobleman who has fallen upon obscurity. Still, the personalities you meet are entertaining, and you do feel plugged into a fun, vast shadowy network.
Speaking of shadowy networks, my reaction to the Dark Brotherhood was quite similar to the Morag Tong in Morrowind. In both cases, my thoughts of "Wow, this is really cool!" battled with the queasy feeling in my stomach. The game makes no apologies: these are evil quests for evil characters. You must assassinate innocents or good people, often in macabre ways; however, the rewards for doing so are quite tempting. I do give Bethesda props for going all-out on this and not pulling their punches; the game is rated Mature, and the Dark Brotherhood alone earns that title. Some of the best quests in the entire game are for this faction. There's a delightful twist on a horror trope when you have to play the role of a serial killer in a house, killing the guests one by one and keeping suspicion from falling on yourself. The overall storyline here was fascinating as well. My one regret is that the eventual traitor is a stranger to you; the endgame would have been much more compelling if you were more personally vested in the other Speakers.
Fighters Guild... well, it was better than I expected. The individual quests were often dull or frustrating - not at all surprising, given the style of character I played. But the larger conflict against the up-and-coming Blackwood Company was well done. I was especially impressed with the quest where you infiltrate the Company and join them on a raid. As I was halfway through the process of slaughtering the goblins in a village, I got the sinking feeling that something was wrong... why weren't they fighting back? Sure enough, when you return to the village later and see the bodies of townspeople lying where you struck, it's a horrible feeling... it made me think of American soldiers fighting in Vietnam, and other places where the glories of heroic combat are abruptly plunged into the darkest pits of civilian massacre. I do think they glossed over the aftermath a little, but the moment itself will stand as a vivid memory to me.
So, taken as a whole, what is the story of Oblivion about? I think I can identify a couple of themes. On a personal level, it deals with taking responsibility and striving for what's important. This is most obvious in Martin's quest, as he comes to terms with the demands placed upon him; however, throughout the game there's a strong emphasis placed on sacrifice. Think of Hannibal Traven surrendering his soul to stop Mannimarco; or Oreyn accepting the humiliation of removal from the Guild as he strives to save it; even Lucien Lechance is, in a very real and grisly sense, "sacrificed" when he tries to cleanse the Dark Brotherhood. In all these cases, people must surrender rank or their very lives; in return, the organizations they have supported can survive.
On a more political level, it's interesting to think about the "invasion" aspect of the Oblivion gates. This becomes particularly intriguing after you enter Mankar Camoran's Paradise and learn from him that Tamriel itself is just another Plane of Oblivion, and that it is Mehrunes Dagon's rightful realm. To put it crudely, the player cannot accept that first possession to land means eternal ownership. Men and mer may be the original invaders, but it is their territory now, and you have every right to stand against the reconquista. The interplay between Daedra and Mythic Dawn is also worth pondering. Among the rare parts of the game that startled me, walking down a city street and passing a cheerful shopkeeper who suddenly pulled a knife and started attacking me ranks very high. It's a dramatic presentation of a fifth column rising in support of an invading force, sort of the mirror image of the insurgency we faced in Iraq. I don't think you can draw a direct parallel between this game and either the War on Terror or the Iraq War, but there are still some resonances when you consider the images of invasion, assaults on nations, the ruined city of Kvatch, and the subtle collaboration between military invaders and their civilian supporters.
So, again, I give a slight edge to Morrowind's story, which dealt with (to me) more interesting themes of pride and humility, but it sure ain't bad!
What's ahead for the future? My list of requests for the Elder Scrolls V includes:
- More balanced and useful skills.
- More interesting content for thieves.
- More interesting and varied characters.
- A better follower/party system.
- Better leveling system that scales difficulty to combat prowess and not overall level.
- More opportunities to make permanent impacts on the persistent world.
I still need to play the expansions, but this seems like a good time to take stock of where I landed at the end of this game. Some vital statistics:
My character was a Bosmer named Cirion. His class was a custom-made class called an "Elite Agent"; primary skills included Marksman, Security, Stealth, Speechcraft, Mysticism, Illusion, and Light Armor. By the end of the game I was a Listener in the Dark Brotherhood, Master of the Fighters Guild, Grand Champion of the Arena, Arch-Mage of the Mages Guild, Gray Fox of the Thieves Guild, a member of the Virtuous Blood, the Knights of the Thorn, the Knights of the White Stallion, and the Order of the Dragon. (I was also, briefly, in both the Mythic Dawn and the Blackwood Company.) My favorite faction was the Thieves Guild. At the end of the game, I was using a Glass Bow with either Steel, Silver, or Elven arrows; I wore all Elven armor, except I pull on Nocturnal's Cowl when in a dungeon or carrying out nefarious needs. (I WOULD wear more enchanted equipment, except for the aforementioned problem with my Armorer skill.) My most common spells cast were Restore Health, Life Detection, and either Starlight (early) or Night-Eye (later). I was level 14 at the end, though I'm sure I could have gone much higher by sleeping. Final Fame was 132 and Infamy was 31; actual Infamy would have been much higher, except that I didn't start the Dark Brotherhood until after finishing Thieves Guild, and wore the Cowl when collecting my rewards. My favorite store was the Copious Coinpurse in the Imperial City Market District; far behind in second place was the weaponry store in Anvil. My favorite city was probably Anvil, although I spent the most time in the Imperial City. I bought houses in Bruma, Chorrol, and Lleyawin, but didn't purchase many furnishings for any of them. By the end of the game I had nearly 200,000 surplus gold. That late in the game, the only use I could get from them was buying arrows and (hypothetically) training; that said, I think I may buy the Skingrad house and fully outfit it, just for the heck of it. I briefly became a vampire, but restored my game when I realized it wouldn't be much fun. I became a Master in Stealth, Marksman, and Illusion. I was an Expert in the remainder of my major skills, as well as Alchemy. I most wanted higher values in Armorer and Mercantile, both of which go up far too slowly. My favorite enemy was the Dremora Kynval. Well, unless the Sunken One counts as an enemy. My favorite companion was probably Mazoga the Orc, although keeping her alive was a pain. My favorite mod was the quest item leveler. I never bet on a match in the Arena. My highest stat was Agility, which (with enchantments) got above 90; my lowest stats were Strength and Endurance. I found a grand total of 14 Nirnroots, most stolen from houses. I was only arrested twice, both times for quests, and apparently somehow stole over 10,000 items (!). I had a single murder, to get into the Dark Brotherhood (others showed up on the Gray Fox's rap sheet), but a surprisingly high number of assaults. My highest bounty was only about 50 before Sanguine's quest, and several hundred after. I owned a grand total of two horses throughout the entire game: the Priory horse, which was apparently killed while I was clearing out a mine, and the Dark Brotherhood horse, which I never rode. My Speed was close to 100, so I rarely needed to use a horse to get anywhere or outrun anything.
All in all, I'm pretty content with how things ended up. I'll probably take a break from the game for a few months, possibly wait for the two expansions to drop in price, then plunge back into Cyrodiil. It's an amazing world, and I look forward to spending more time inside it.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Oblivious
Ahhh, working on Saturday. Yes, I remember what this feels like...
Coming up for air - I wanted to share a few thoughts on Oblivion. Expect a more comprehensive review when I beat the game... possibly sometime in 2009.
Wow, this game is gorgeous. I don't have an amazing graphics card - just an nvidia 8600 GT - but it still looks lovely. Not just lovely in the terms of well-done graphics; lovely in that it's something I want to look at. This is in stark contrast to Morrowind, which also ran great on my computer at the time, but where much of the world looked ugly.
There are exceptions to the visual appeal, though. The biggest that I can think of is faces... virtually everyone you meet in Tamriel is somewhere between plain and hideous. I suppose it's nice to not have everyone in a game look beautiful, but it does feel particularly ugly.
My character in this game is similar to the one I played in Morrowind: primarily a thief character with some magic skills (in this case Illusion and Mysticism) and Speechcraft. It's a fun character, but the game's leveling system is kicking my rear. I spent the first part of the game sneaking around, breaking into houses, stealing stuff, running errands, and generally having fun. It's a strategy I enjoy - I generally don't like combat, so I like focusing on more stealth-oriented activities. However, Oblivion is an interesting game in that the enemies you meet are "leveled". When entering a ruined temple at level 1, you might meet a skeleton. Entering that same temple at level 5 may present a zombie. Go back at level 10 and you'll face a powerful ghost; I assume that at even higher levels you would be staring down a lich or something similar.
I get what Bethesda is doing here. They want to keep the game challenging, making sure that wherever you are and how powerful your character is, the fighting is still interesting but winnable. The problem is that for a lot of players like myself, one's level does not reflect their combat abilities. I may be a master thief, but I am a novice at using most weapons, and so I can't face some of these creatures. Often times you need to defeat monsters to complete a quest, as opposed to being able to sneak around them or find other solutions. Needless to say this can be very frustrating.
The situation is better now, but only because I've purposely stopped leveling. In Oblivion as with Morrowind, you need to sleep in a bed to gain a level; my character has now gone for over a month without any sleep. Because of this I've been able to gradually build up his Marskman, Light Armor and Blade skills, while at the same time keeping my level at 11 and so not facing harder opponents. As a result I now can finally, generally, hold my own in a one-on-one fight. Still, I'd rather just be able to play the game and level normally, without worrying about it becoming unplayable.
On the bright side, there is a mod to fix this situation. Actually, there are several mods. Actually, there is a huge modding community that has offerings that tweak any aspect of the game you can imagine. This is a big part of why I deliberately waited for over two years before starting the game: I knew that the Elder Scrolls had a great community, and their offerings would only get better with time. I've installed a few small mods that help with specific annoyances, and have been pleased at the results. Changes to the leveling system are far more sweeping, so I'm holding off on that for now. Ideally I would have installed one before starting the game; now that I'm dozens of hours into it, I'm being careful not to mess anything up or upset the balance.
Speaking of messing things up: I started playing the game in Vista, and now am actually running it in Ubuntu. I have to say, I'm very impressed with how the Wine project has come along. The last time I seriously tried to use it a few years ago, it would work with specific titles, but even then you would need to jump through hoops and be left with a game missing some features. It's still more complicated than installing in Windows, but an order of magnitude less complicated than it was before, thanks in large part to some very well-written wikis out there. It took less than an hour for me to get everything installed and running.
And what did I find? Not only does Linux rule: Vista really does suck! The game actually runs BETTER in Ubuntu than Vista, which startled me. For example: I did not realize until playing in Linux that there was speech in the game. In Windows, I heard sound effects, and could read what characters said, but for some reason, the actual speech never ever played. (This actually ticks me off, since it means that I missed 90% of the Patrick Stewart voice-overs.) There are other individual sounds that didn't play for me: doors opening and lockpicking are two I can think of. Anyways, that was a really pleasant surprise. The one thing I had to give up was water animations, which is a shame - the water in Vista looked wonderful - but it's a small price to pay for better performance.
I haven't picked up Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles yet. Not sure yet whether or not to install them before beating the main quest... you can tackle them in either order.
There seem to be fewer factions this time around than in the prequel... either that or I just haven't found them all. In Morrowind, I think I belonged to around 10 factions by the end of the game, including religious orders and the Imperial army. Right now I'm just in four: the standard three guilds (Fighters, Mages, and Thieves) plus the Blades. Ah well... even if there aren't many factions in the game, I'm confident there are mods out there to add more.
Oh, the best thing about the game so far? Fast travel. This was by far my biggest annoyance in Morrowind: it took FOREVER to get most places, since you had this enormous map and only a finite number of places to which you could travel. Oblivion has an entirely rational system in place: after you visit an interesting location, it appears on your map, and after it is on your map, you can just click on it to travel there. Poof! It isn't magic... if the location is on the other side of the country, it will take you days to appear there, but that's fine. The game simulates you walking (or riding) that whole distance so you don't need to do it yourself. So I really like this new system... it keeps things balanced and challenging, since you need to travel to a place first before you can fast-travel, but it cuts the repetitiveness way down.
One minor related annoyance: there is no equivalent of Recall, Almislvi (sp?) Intervention, or Divine Intervention. These were incredibly useful spells in Morrowind that let you warp instantly out of any place. It saved my skin in some situations when I was deep in a lair and couldn't face a powerful opponent. Fast travel in Oblivion is much more flexible (and cheaper) than these spells, but it is also very limited: you can't use it inside caves, castles, when underwater, when enemies are around, when trespassing, etc. Again, it does sort of make sense - being able to escape anytime is arguably quite unbalanced, especially if you can heal/repair/upgrade and then fast travel right back to where you were - but I still miss it. A nice compromise would be the ability to, say, immediately leave a dungeon after you've fought your way down five levels, killed every monster in there and taken all the treasure. Spending five minutes running back to the entrance is not my idea of a fun game.
Oh, there's plenty more that I could write, but that would cut into valuable time that I could be spending playing this game. Expect plenty more in a future post!
Coming up for air - I wanted to share a few thoughts on Oblivion. Expect a more comprehensive review when I beat the game... possibly sometime in 2009.
Wow, this game is gorgeous. I don't have an amazing graphics card - just an nvidia 8600 GT - but it still looks lovely. Not just lovely in the terms of well-done graphics; lovely in that it's something I want to look at. This is in stark contrast to Morrowind, which also ran great on my computer at the time, but where much of the world looked ugly.
There are exceptions to the visual appeal, though. The biggest that I can think of is faces... virtually everyone you meet in Tamriel is somewhere between plain and hideous. I suppose it's nice to not have everyone in a game look beautiful, but it does feel particularly ugly.
My character in this game is similar to the one I played in Morrowind: primarily a thief character with some magic skills (in this case Illusion and Mysticism) and Speechcraft. It's a fun character, but the game's leveling system is kicking my rear. I spent the first part of the game sneaking around, breaking into houses, stealing stuff, running errands, and generally having fun. It's a strategy I enjoy - I generally don't like combat, so I like focusing on more stealth-oriented activities. However, Oblivion is an interesting game in that the enemies you meet are "leveled". When entering a ruined temple at level 1, you might meet a skeleton. Entering that same temple at level 5 may present a zombie. Go back at level 10 and you'll face a powerful ghost; I assume that at even higher levels you would be staring down a lich or something similar.
I get what Bethesda is doing here. They want to keep the game challenging, making sure that wherever you are and how powerful your character is, the fighting is still interesting but winnable. The problem is that for a lot of players like myself, one's level does not reflect their combat abilities. I may be a master thief, but I am a novice at using most weapons, and so I can't face some of these creatures. Often times you need to defeat monsters to complete a quest, as opposed to being able to sneak around them or find other solutions. Needless to say this can be very frustrating.
The situation is better now, but only because I've purposely stopped leveling. In Oblivion as with Morrowind, you need to sleep in a bed to gain a level; my character has now gone for over a month without any sleep. Because of this I've been able to gradually build up his Marskman, Light Armor and Blade skills, while at the same time keeping my level at 11 and so not facing harder opponents. As a result I now can finally, generally, hold my own in a one-on-one fight. Still, I'd rather just be able to play the game and level normally, without worrying about it becoming unplayable.
On the bright side, there is a mod to fix this situation. Actually, there are several mods. Actually, there is a huge modding community that has offerings that tweak any aspect of the game you can imagine. This is a big part of why I deliberately waited for over two years before starting the game: I knew that the Elder Scrolls had a great community, and their offerings would only get better with time. I've installed a few small mods that help with specific annoyances, and have been pleased at the results. Changes to the leveling system are far more sweeping, so I'm holding off on that for now. Ideally I would have installed one before starting the game; now that I'm dozens of hours into it, I'm being careful not to mess anything up or upset the balance.
Speaking of messing things up: I started playing the game in Vista, and now am actually running it in Ubuntu. I have to say, I'm very impressed with how the Wine project has come along. The last time I seriously tried to use it a few years ago, it would work with specific titles, but even then you would need to jump through hoops and be left with a game missing some features. It's still more complicated than installing in Windows, but an order of magnitude less complicated than it was before, thanks in large part to some very well-written wikis out there. It took less than an hour for me to get everything installed and running.
And what did I find? Not only does Linux rule: Vista really does suck! The game actually runs BETTER in Ubuntu than Vista, which startled me. For example: I did not realize until playing in Linux that there was speech in the game. In Windows, I heard sound effects, and could read what characters said, but for some reason, the actual speech never ever played. (This actually ticks me off, since it means that I missed 90% of the Patrick Stewart voice-overs.) There are other individual sounds that didn't play for me: doors opening and lockpicking are two I can think of. Anyways, that was a really pleasant surprise. The one thing I had to give up was water animations, which is a shame - the water in Vista looked wonderful - but it's a small price to pay for better performance.
I haven't picked up Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles yet. Not sure yet whether or not to install them before beating the main quest... you can tackle them in either order.
There seem to be fewer factions this time around than in the prequel... either that or I just haven't found them all. In Morrowind, I think I belonged to around 10 factions by the end of the game, including religious orders and the Imperial army. Right now I'm just in four: the standard three guilds (Fighters, Mages, and Thieves) plus the Blades. Ah well... even if there aren't many factions in the game, I'm confident there are mods out there to add more.
Oh, the best thing about the game so far? Fast travel. This was by far my biggest annoyance in Morrowind: it took FOREVER to get most places, since you had this enormous map and only a finite number of places to which you could travel. Oblivion has an entirely rational system in place: after you visit an interesting location, it appears on your map, and after it is on your map, you can just click on it to travel there. Poof! It isn't magic... if the location is on the other side of the country, it will take you days to appear there, but that's fine. The game simulates you walking (or riding) that whole distance so you don't need to do it yourself. So I really like this new system... it keeps things balanced and challenging, since you need to travel to a place first before you can fast-travel, but it cuts the repetitiveness way down.
One minor related annoyance: there is no equivalent of Recall, Almislvi (sp?) Intervention, or Divine Intervention. These were incredibly useful spells in Morrowind that let you warp instantly out of any place. It saved my skin in some situations when I was deep in a lair and couldn't face a powerful opponent. Fast travel in Oblivion is much more flexible (and cheaper) than these spells, but it is also very limited: you can't use it inside caves, castles, when underwater, when enemies are around, when trespassing, etc. Again, it does sort of make sense - being able to escape anytime is arguably quite unbalanced, especially if you can heal/repair/upgrade and then fast travel right back to where you were - but I still miss it. A nice compromise would be the ability to, say, immediately leave a dungeon after you've fought your way down five levels, killed every monster in there and taken all the treasure. Spending five minutes running back to the entrance is not my idea of a fun game.
Oh, there's plenty more that I could write, but that would cut into valuable time that I could be spending playing this game. Expect plenty more in a future post!
Sunday, February 05, 2006
There's a Bloodmoon on the rise
More than six months after I started playing Morrowind, I've beaten the final official expansion pack: Bloodmoon. While the storyline wasn't as compelling as Morrowind's main quest or Tribunal, it still offered some good gameplay enhancements that made it worthwhile.
Bloodmoon takes place on Solstheim, a Greenland-esque island mainly covered in ice and tundra. Incidentally, what is it with fantasy RPG franchises and snowy expansions? First we had "Baldur's Gate: Icewind Dale," now we have this. Anyways. On the whole the terrain looks more attractive on Solstheim than on the mainland, maybe because it's harder to mess up snow than to mess up mountains or trees (though Solstheim has both of these as well).
One big change for this was that, in addition to playing the expansion, I was also playing with several fan-created plugins. The Elder Scrolls series has a wonderful history of releasing its own development tools to the player community, and as a result, there's an incredible plethora of mods available for it. I'm not exaggerating; go to a place like Planet Elder Scrolls and look at the mods available for download: more than 3500 by my count. A lot of them are simple little patches, perhaps adding a new set of armor or a new race to the game. Many, though, are far more ambitious, changing the core behavior of the game or acting as standalone expansions.
The most impressive ones to me were "Better Bodies" and "Better Faces." I really, really wish I had installed these before starting to play the game in the first place, as it makes the inhabitants of Morrowind look much more like actual living creatures and less like hideous paper dolls.
What I liked most about the expansion was the strong Nordic flavor to it. The ebb and flow of the main quest is vaguely reminiscent of something like Beowulf, with mysterious monsters attacking from the darkness eventually being confronted in their lairs. There's also a continuation of the assimilation theme that is so common in all of TES; this time you must integrate with the Skaal tribe, an ancient clan of Nords who have held this island for generations. Again, this has a Northern feel about it; the plane between the physical world and the spiritual world is thin, and you prove your worth to the tribe by demonstrating your ability to face spiritual danger.
As always, there are more sidequests than main quests, though here the ratio is probably 2:1 rather than 5:1. (I've grown convinced that you could probably beat the main quest of Morrowind in a single afternoon if you cheated to give yourself all the stats, spells and items you need, yet it still took me several months of obsessive playing to rise through the ranks, gradually define and build up my character, investigate the living mythology and eventually confront Dagoth Ur.) The sidequests are pretty rote. There's a new faction here, the East Empire Trading Company. These quests are also of middling creativity, but what's really cool is seeing the EETC colony grow as you continue to help it out; it starts as just a few people standing around in the woods, and ends up as an impressively large, functioning community and mine.
Perhaps inevitably, the end of the main quest is a bit anti-climactic. (Spoiler alert.) After all, how do you top defeating Dagoth Ur and literally killing a goddess? The main villain here, whose name is something like Hircene, has a cool ominous background/prophecy, but is basically just a Daedra who appears once every age to, um, kill some people. It turns out that this time around he has his eye on you and three other people. So, either kill him, or you'll be dead! Which is a good motivation, I guess, but it feels pretty insular; you really aren't helping anyone besides yourself.
Now, it does do some stuff with werewolves. They're the only enemy in the whole game that actually impressed me. (Ascended Sleepers were a cool idea but impossible to take seriously.) They're fast and incredibly powerful. What's worst is when they hunt in packs; it's kind of chilling to hear a howl and then suddenly be attacked from four sides. There's a great attack/dream sequence, where you lie down in bed, then wake up surrounded by werewolves. I immediately pressed F and started swinging my mouse arround, but there was no response. It took a few minutes for my brain to register that they weren't actually attacking me, I was that strongly conditioned to fear them.
And the endgame is by far the most difficult part of the game. Well, not the literal final two battles; all boss battles are pretty easy because you can just do some summoning and carelessly drink all your potions. The two stages before that, though, were crazy hard; you navigate an extremely narrow maze filled with werewolves. The reason WHY this is hard is because you need to kill every single one of those beasts, since it's too narrow to sneak around them; each one probably takes 20-30 or so hits from a Daedric Wakazashi to kill; and as a result my weapons were almost totally blunted by the time I got through the first of the two levels. I was considering going way back to an earlier save just so I could stock up on everything before starting the endgame. This was the first time in any of the games that I've actually regretted not taking Armorer skill.
So, that's that. There are still a few EETC missions I could do, and I ought to report back to the inventor in Ald'ruhn about how his expedition went. I'm even more tempted to check out one of the highly-rated community expansions. Realistically, though, I think I'll declare this to be a good stopping point and will wait for Oblivion.
Which is another topic altogether. Now that the system requirements have been released, I'm going to need to decide how to approach getting this game. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm about 1/3 behind where I need to be on all fronts: a 2Ghz CPU instead of 3; 768MB of RAM instead of 1GB; and a 6600 instead of a 6800 video card. A lot of people would point out that I could get an XBox 360 for less money than a top-of-the-line video card. Very true, but I have moral issues with getting a 360, plus Oblivion's the only game I'm really interested in for it, while a PC would let me do more stuff. Right now I'm contemplating doing something like I did for Morrowind: wait until 4 years after it is released, then pick it up in a cheap bundle and find that it runs effortlessly on my PC. Best of all, that'll give them a chance to patch up the game and the mod community will further buff out any annoying aspects of the game. RPGs probably age better than any other genre; I recently replayed FFVII since I never got Vincent the first time through, and was impressed again by the power that game packs. Oblivion is going to wow lots of people on the technical front when it is released later this year, but I'm content to wait and allow it to wow me with its story and atmosphere.
Bloodmoon takes place on Solstheim, a Greenland-esque island mainly covered in ice and tundra. Incidentally, what is it with fantasy RPG franchises and snowy expansions? First we had "Baldur's Gate: Icewind Dale," now we have this. Anyways. On the whole the terrain looks more attractive on Solstheim than on the mainland, maybe because it's harder to mess up snow than to mess up mountains or trees (though Solstheim has both of these as well).
One big change for this was that, in addition to playing the expansion, I was also playing with several fan-created plugins. The Elder Scrolls series has a wonderful history of releasing its own development tools to the player community, and as a result, there's an incredible plethora of mods available for it. I'm not exaggerating; go to a place like Planet Elder Scrolls and look at the mods available for download: more than 3500 by my count. A lot of them are simple little patches, perhaps adding a new set of armor or a new race to the game. Many, though, are far more ambitious, changing the core behavior of the game or acting as standalone expansions.
The most impressive ones to me were "Better Bodies" and "Better Faces." I really, really wish I had installed these before starting to play the game in the first place, as it makes the inhabitants of Morrowind look much more like actual living creatures and less like hideous paper dolls.
What I liked most about the expansion was the strong Nordic flavor to it. The ebb and flow of the main quest is vaguely reminiscent of something like Beowulf, with mysterious monsters attacking from the darkness eventually being confronted in their lairs. There's also a continuation of the assimilation theme that is so common in all of TES; this time you must integrate with the Skaal tribe, an ancient clan of Nords who have held this island for generations. Again, this has a Northern feel about it; the plane between the physical world and the spiritual world is thin, and you prove your worth to the tribe by demonstrating your ability to face spiritual danger.
As always, there are more sidequests than main quests, though here the ratio is probably 2:1 rather than 5:1. (I've grown convinced that you could probably beat the main quest of Morrowind in a single afternoon if you cheated to give yourself all the stats, spells and items you need, yet it still took me several months of obsessive playing to rise through the ranks, gradually define and build up my character, investigate the living mythology and eventually confront Dagoth Ur.) The sidequests are pretty rote. There's a new faction here, the East Empire Trading Company. These quests are also of middling creativity, but what's really cool is seeing the EETC colony grow as you continue to help it out; it starts as just a few people standing around in the woods, and ends up as an impressively large, functioning community and mine.
Perhaps inevitably, the end of the main quest is a bit anti-climactic. (Spoiler alert.) After all, how do you top defeating Dagoth Ur and literally killing a goddess? The main villain here, whose name is something like Hircene, has a cool ominous background/prophecy, but is basically just a Daedra who appears once every age to, um, kill some people. It turns out that this time around he has his eye on you and three other people. So, either kill him, or you'll be dead! Which is a good motivation, I guess, but it feels pretty insular; you really aren't helping anyone besides yourself.
Now, it does do some stuff with werewolves. They're the only enemy in the whole game that actually impressed me. (Ascended Sleepers were a cool idea but impossible to take seriously.) They're fast and incredibly powerful. What's worst is when they hunt in packs; it's kind of chilling to hear a howl and then suddenly be attacked from four sides. There's a great attack/dream sequence, where you lie down in bed, then wake up surrounded by werewolves. I immediately pressed F and started swinging my mouse arround, but there was no response. It took a few minutes for my brain to register that they weren't actually attacking me, I was that strongly conditioned to fear them.
And the endgame is by far the most difficult part of the game. Well, not the literal final two battles; all boss battles are pretty easy because you can just do some summoning and carelessly drink all your potions. The two stages before that, though, were crazy hard; you navigate an extremely narrow maze filled with werewolves. The reason WHY this is hard is because you need to kill every single one of those beasts, since it's too narrow to sneak around them; each one probably takes 20-30 or so hits from a Daedric Wakazashi to kill; and as a result my weapons were almost totally blunted by the time I got through the first of the two levels. I was considering going way back to an earlier save just so I could stock up on everything before starting the endgame. This was the first time in any of the games that I've actually regretted not taking Armorer skill.
So, that's that. There are still a few EETC missions I could do, and I ought to report back to the inventor in Ald'ruhn about how his expedition went. I'm even more tempted to check out one of the highly-rated community expansions. Realistically, though, I think I'll declare this to be a good stopping point and will wait for Oblivion.
Which is another topic altogether. Now that the system requirements have been released, I'm going to need to decide how to approach getting this game. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm about 1/3 behind where I need to be on all fronts: a 2Ghz CPU instead of 3; 768MB of RAM instead of 1GB; and a 6600 instead of a 6800 video card. A lot of people would point out that I could get an XBox 360 for less money than a top-of-the-line video card. Very true, but I have moral issues with getting a 360, plus Oblivion's the only game I'm really interested in for it, while a PC would let me do more stuff. Right now I'm contemplating doing something like I did for Morrowind: wait until 4 years after it is released, then pick it up in a cheap bundle and find that it runs effortlessly on my PC. Best of all, that'll give them a chance to patch up the game and the mod community will further buff out any annoying aspects of the game. RPGs probably age better than any other genre; I recently replayed FFVII since I never got Vincent the first time through, and was impressed again by the power that game packs. Oblivion is going to wow lots of people on the technical front when it is released later this year, but I'm content to wait and allow it to wow me with its story and atmosphere.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Kill Vivec
I "beat" Morrowind last Thursday. Hooray! Thought I'd put down some thoughts while it's still fresh.
This is the first Elder Scrolls game I've played. I heard a lot about Daggerfall when it came out but never played it; I remember hearing that it was a huge, long game and you could become a werewolf. More recently, I was kind of surprised after Bioware released Neverwinter Nights to hear almost all RPG praise for the year directed towards Morrowind. Finally, I saw my friend David play it for a little while when I visited Minnesota this July, and was sufficiently intrigued to pick up the game-of-the-year edition from Best Buy.
"Immersive" is certainly a valid word to use. The game is incredibly broad and deep. When you walk into a house, you can interact with individual spoons, pieces of paper, and so on. Beyond the physical world, though, the mythology of the game is incredible. They didn't just create a fully-realized culture; they created a plethora of cultures, coexisting on the same world. As you progress through the game and move the plot forward, you also come to understand how Vvardenfell (the large island the game takes place on) came to be this way, and eventually come to absorb the history of its migrating peoples, the cultural differences between rural and urban Dunmer that led to their disparate (though still familiar) religions, the present political influence exerted by the Empire, and so on.
In the Ultima games, I always loved going to libraries and reading through the books. That kind of backstory really helped the world come alive for me. Here, I only read the books I was really interested in. Once again, the sheer volume of material feels overwhelming. All of it related somehow to the Elder Scrolls universe, but only some has any real bearing on your life. Still, every book was well-written and fairly self-contained, even though it might spill over in five or more volumes.
One of the best examples of the richness of the game backstory is coming to grips with the Tribunal. This collection of three gods dominates the course of Vvardenfell, but there is a surprising degree of dispute and interpretation over even the factual aspects of their rule. As you continue in the game, you encounter written records and oral traditions that paint vastly different impressions of Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil. Different factions believe fervently in their own accounts; many citizens of Morrowind do not know exactly what to believe, but revere or despise them anyways. Late in the game you actually encounter Vivec. I was expecting to finally get the straight story, but as he recounted the story, it was obvious that I was still getting just one interpretation of events. Much like in "Rashomon," it is impossible to arrive at the absolute truth of an event.
Now, this isn't really broadcast as a "point" or a moral, but rather this sort of sensibility is what gives Morrowind its sense of authenticity. You're left with the impression of a vast, complicated world, one that you can move around within and influence, but never come to absolutely dominate.
In this regard, it reminded me of my favorite RPGs, Ultimas VI and VII. This is in contrast to Square style RPGs like Final Fantasy, which tell incredible stories but limit you to acting out within that story; you inevitably become the single most important force in the universe by your actions. It also stands in contrast to the excellent Bioware RPGs, which feature incredibly intricate plots and characters and offers the same scope of freedom offered by Morrowind, but not the same level of detail or history. In the Ultima book, Richard Garriot describes how whenever they created a new Ultima, they would first build the world, and then create the characters, and only then worry about the plot. Morrowind is the successor to this legacy, and once again demonstrates that by building a solid world you imbue everything happening on that world with much more import. Tolkien taught this lesson well, and people would do well to follow.
Moving briefly on to complaints. I've been spoiled by the Baldur's Gate games, but I would have liked better-written characters in this game. It often felt like the characters written down in those books were much more interesting and unpredictable than the many quest-givers in the game. They weren't bad, exactly, and there were some bright spots (I especially liked the de Medici-esque manipulations of House Hlaalu), but many of the side quests were completely outshone by the enormously creative quests in Baldur's Gate. Most of the quests involve finding and returning an item, killing a certain person, or talking to someone. There was enough variety within these broad categories to keep it from becoming a grind. Still, I think I've been spoiled by the incredible array of quests in games like, say, GTA: San Andreas.
The graphics are so obviously poor they're hardly worth discussing. Beyond that, though, the art design felt lacking. I did appreciate the incredible variety you see in different parts of the world, from architecture to foliage, yet so much of the world is dark and ugly. I don't want the whole world to look like the Ascadian Isles, necessarily, but I'd have liked for that level of beauty to be present in the parts of Vvardenfell where you spend a lot of time outdoors. I think of this as the "Alpha Centauri" problem, after a great game that was almost single-handedly done in by its ugly color scheme.
Dialog was annoying as well. Again, the story and background was great, but the designers populated the world with thousands of individual characters without bothering to differentiate them. Every scout, everywhere, tells you exactly the same thing about every topic. It got especially jarring when, for example, you would ask a Khajit about a unique topic relating to your quest, and they answer it with the idiom and pronunciation of their race. Then you would ask them about a more common topic, like "Balmora," and they would answer in perfect Imperial English, with the exact same words as everyone else in the entire game. Variety, folks! It amazes me that they went to such great lengths to come up with different cultures and then lost their differentiation.
This is a common complaint for RPGs, but the money system is messed up. You don't have enough money early in the game for anything decent, and late in the game you'll have so much that it ceases to have any real meaning. Still, I have two complaints about money that are unique to this game. First, the game is filled with artifacts that are valued at 50,000 GP or higher, and yet few shopkeepers have more than 2,000 GP on them. I fail to understand the point of bothering to list something as being so valuable when nobody on the whole continent will buy it for that amount. This would lead to annoying contortions where you would gradually sell Creeper 45,000 worth of stuff over a month so that you could buy it all back so that he'd have enough money to buy the 50,000 item. Again, though, by late in the game you won't bother because you'll have enough money for everything. EXCEPT enchanting. Enchanting is something I got into late in the game, it's a theoretically cool system that allows you to create customized versions of items with their own unique powers, but you need to either do it yourself or pay someone else. Paying someone else will cost you more money than you have (which is a LOT of money, enchanting is the one truly expensive thing in the game). Doing it yourself is impossible - for a high-level item, even with a maximized Intelligence statistic and Enchanting skill, I was unable to do it after ten tries. Quite frustrating.
My final complaint is the enemies. Again, with so much detail in the rest of the game, it's just puzzling that they only bothered to come up with ten actual monsters, and that fully 90% of your battles late in the game will be with Cliff Racers. I don't really mind the simplistic combat system, I just want to look at something else once in a while.
The definition of a good game is not a game without faults, and Morrowind's good aspects more than overcome its many deficiencies. One feature I particularly liked was that if you join one of the great houses, you will get to build your own stronghold. This was also one of my favorite aspects of Baldur's Gate II, and it was fun to go through a similar process. In my rise in House Hlaalu, I first purchased the land, then secured permission to build. As it grew bigger I strengthened my estate by establishing mining operations and clearing bandits out of the area. The whole process was fun, although the end was somewhat anti-climactic. You're left with a cool-looking house and your personal retainers, but unlike in BG2 it does not generate any revenue for you, and at least the Hlaalu one is located so far away from everything else that it's not practical to visit or use as a much-needed item storage location.
Oh, that's a complaint I forgot to mention: travel. Early on, it seems very cool that it takes fifteen minutes to walk between two cities. Later on it becomes deadly aggravating. You come to make use of the various forms of fast transportation, including teleportation, boats and silt striders, but these can only drop you to a limited number of locations. The really annoying thing is that with just one minor tweak, they could have made travel far less annoying while preserving the sense of scope. The game already has a "recall" spell that can take you back to a previous spot you have "mark"ed previously. If they had only allowed you to mark even two spots, it would have become practical to shuttle between two points on the map and saved a great deal of time and aggravation.
Like so many RPGs, at the end of Morrowind you need to Confront an Ancient Evil. The main plotline borrows heavily from the car'a'carn story in Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time," while the finale is straight from Lord of the Rings. Despite the broad arcs feeling like plagiarism, though, the game as a whole has a strong integrity of its own.
What is the message of the game? It doesn't broadcast its ideology in the way that, say, a Final Fantasy game would. It's much more content to let you glean your own meaning from the mass of events within it. I take Morrowind to be a story of the importance of humility. In all of the various versions of the truth you receive, the problems always start when someone overreaches their bounds, whether it means seeking after immortality or wanting new lands or seeking dominion over others. The role you take on as the Nerevarine is ultimately not one of claiming power or building a better society. It is ultimately a negative role, as you tear down those who have risen higher than they should.
I do feel a sense of accomplishment from having beaten it. I have not yet started either of the two expansions, Tribunal and Bloodmoon. I'll likely at least start one of them soon, though if my experiences in Morrowind are any indication, I will not be close to beating them before Civilization 4 comes out on October 25th. And once Civ4 comes out, my life as I know it will cease to exist.
Oh, my final standings in the factions are as follows.
If I were working on this game, my single biggest suggestion would have been to enhance the quests. In particular, I feel there were many possibilities with the strongholds that were not explored.
The three things I most hope to see in Oblivion (the sequel out later this year) are: more believable individuals, a better transportation system, and more dynamic realignments between factions (alliances, guild wars, etc.). Basically, keep it the same but make it better.
This is the first Elder Scrolls game I've played. I heard a lot about Daggerfall when it came out but never played it; I remember hearing that it was a huge, long game and you could become a werewolf. More recently, I was kind of surprised after Bioware released Neverwinter Nights to hear almost all RPG praise for the year directed towards Morrowind. Finally, I saw my friend David play it for a little while when I visited Minnesota this July, and was sufficiently intrigued to pick up the game-of-the-year edition from Best Buy.
"Immersive" is certainly a valid word to use. The game is incredibly broad and deep. When you walk into a house, you can interact with individual spoons, pieces of paper, and so on. Beyond the physical world, though, the mythology of the game is incredible. They didn't just create a fully-realized culture; they created a plethora of cultures, coexisting on the same world. As you progress through the game and move the plot forward, you also come to understand how Vvardenfell (the large island the game takes place on) came to be this way, and eventually come to absorb the history of its migrating peoples, the cultural differences between rural and urban Dunmer that led to their disparate (though still familiar) religions, the present political influence exerted by the Empire, and so on.
In the Ultima games, I always loved going to libraries and reading through the books. That kind of backstory really helped the world come alive for me. Here, I only read the books I was really interested in. Once again, the sheer volume of material feels overwhelming. All of it related somehow to the Elder Scrolls universe, but only some has any real bearing on your life. Still, every book was well-written and fairly self-contained, even though it might spill over in five or more volumes.
One of the best examples of the richness of the game backstory is coming to grips with the Tribunal. This collection of three gods dominates the course of Vvardenfell, but there is a surprising degree of dispute and interpretation over even the factual aspects of their rule. As you continue in the game, you encounter written records and oral traditions that paint vastly different impressions of Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil. Different factions believe fervently in their own accounts; many citizens of Morrowind do not know exactly what to believe, but revere or despise them anyways. Late in the game you actually encounter Vivec. I was expecting to finally get the straight story, but as he recounted the story, it was obvious that I was still getting just one interpretation of events. Much like in "Rashomon," it is impossible to arrive at the absolute truth of an event.
Now, this isn't really broadcast as a "point" or a moral, but rather this sort of sensibility is what gives Morrowind its sense of authenticity. You're left with the impression of a vast, complicated world, one that you can move around within and influence, but never come to absolutely dominate.
In this regard, it reminded me of my favorite RPGs, Ultimas VI and VII. This is in contrast to Square style RPGs like Final Fantasy, which tell incredible stories but limit you to acting out within that story; you inevitably become the single most important force in the universe by your actions. It also stands in contrast to the excellent Bioware RPGs, which feature incredibly intricate plots and characters and offers the same scope of freedom offered by Morrowind, but not the same level of detail or history. In the Ultima book, Richard Garriot describes how whenever they created a new Ultima, they would first build the world, and then create the characters, and only then worry about the plot. Morrowind is the successor to this legacy, and once again demonstrates that by building a solid world you imbue everything happening on that world with much more import. Tolkien taught this lesson well, and people would do well to follow.
Moving briefly on to complaints. I've been spoiled by the Baldur's Gate games, but I would have liked better-written characters in this game. It often felt like the characters written down in those books were much more interesting and unpredictable than the many quest-givers in the game. They weren't bad, exactly, and there were some bright spots (I especially liked the de Medici-esque manipulations of House Hlaalu), but many of the side quests were completely outshone by the enormously creative quests in Baldur's Gate. Most of the quests involve finding and returning an item, killing a certain person, or talking to someone. There was enough variety within these broad categories to keep it from becoming a grind. Still, I think I've been spoiled by the incredible array of quests in games like, say, GTA: San Andreas.
The graphics are so obviously poor they're hardly worth discussing. Beyond that, though, the art design felt lacking. I did appreciate the incredible variety you see in different parts of the world, from architecture to foliage, yet so much of the world is dark and ugly. I don't want the whole world to look like the Ascadian Isles, necessarily, but I'd have liked for that level of beauty to be present in the parts of Vvardenfell where you spend a lot of time outdoors. I think of this as the "Alpha Centauri" problem, after a great game that was almost single-handedly done in by its ugly color scheme.
Dialog was annoying as well. Again, the story and background was great, but the designers populated the world with thousands of individual characters without bothering to differentiate them. Every scout, everywhere, tells you exactly the same thing about every topic. It got especially jarring when, for example, you would ask a Khajit about a unique topic relating to your quest, and they answer it with the idiom and pronunciation of their race. Then you would ask them about a more common topic, like "Balmora," and they would answer in perfect Imperial English, with the exact same words as everyone else in the entire game. Variety, folks! It amazes me that they went to such great lengths to come up with different cultures and then lost their differentiation.
This is a common complaint for RPGs, but the money system is messed up. You don't have enough money early in the game for anything decent, and late in the game you'll have so much that it ceases to have any real meaning. Still, I have two complaints about money that are unique to this game. First, the game is filled with artifacts that are valued at 50,000 GP or higher, and yet few shopkeepers have more than 2,000 GP on them. I fail to understand the point of bothering to list something as being so valuable when nobody on the whole continent will buy it for that amount. This would lead to annoying contortions where you would gradually sell Creeper 45,000 worth of stuff over a month so that you could buy it all back so that he'd have enough money to buy the 50,000 item. Again, though, by late in the game you won't bother because you'll have enough money for everything. EXCEPT enchanting. Enchanting is something I got into late in the game, it's a theoretically cool system that allows you to create customized versions of items with their own unique powers, but you need to either do it yourself or pay someone else. Paying someone else will cost you more money than you have (which is a LOT of money, enchanting is the one truly expensive thing in the game). Doing it yourself is impossible - for a high-level item, even with a maximized Intelligence statistic and Enchanting skill, I was unable to do it after ten tries. Quite frustrating.
My final complaint is the enemies. Again, with so much detail in the rest of the game, it's just puzzling that they only bothered to come up with ten actual monsters, and that fully 90% of your battles late in the game will be with Cliff Racers. I don't really mind the simplistic combat system, I just want to look at something else once in a while.
The definition of a good game is not a game without faults, and Morrowind's good aspects more than overcome its many deficiencies. One feature I particularly liked was that if you join one of the great houses, you will get to build your own stronghold. This was also one of my favorite aspects of Baldur's Gate II, and it was fun to go through a similar process. In my rise in House Hlaalu, I first purchased the land, then secured permission to build. As it grew bigger I strengthened my estate by establishing mining operations and clearing bandits out of the area. The whole process was fun, although the end was somewhat anti-climactic. You're left with a cool-looking house and your personal retainers, but unlike in BG2 it does not generate any revenue for you, and at least the Hlaalu one is located so far away from everything else that it's not practical to visit or use as a much-needed item storage location.
Oh, that's a complaint I forgot to mention: travel. Early on, it seems very cool that it takes fifteen minutes to walk between two cities. Later on it becomes deadly aggravating. You come to make use of the various forms of fast transportation, including teleportation, boats and silt striders, but these can only drop you to a limited number of locations. The really annoying thing is that with just one minor tweak, they could have made travel far less annoying while preserving the sense of scope. The game already has a "recall" spell that can take you back to a previous spot you have "mark"ed previously. If they had only allowed you to mark even two spots, it would have become practical to shuttle between two points on the map and saved a great deal of time and aggravation.
Like so many RPGs, at the end of Morrowind you need to Confront an Ancient Evil. The main plotline borrows heavily from the car'a'carn story in Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time," while the finale is straight from Lord of the Rings. Despite the broad arcs feeling like plagiarism, though, the game as a whole has a strong integrity of its own.
What is the message of the game? It doesn't broadcast its ideology in the way that, say, a Final Fantasy game would. It's much more content to let you glean your own meaning from the mass of events within it. I take Morrowind to be a story of the importance of humility. In all of the various versions of the truth you receive, the problems always start when someone overreaches their bounds, whether it means seeking after immortality or wanting new lands or seeking dominion over others. The role you take on as the Nerevarine is ultimately not one of claiming power or building a better society. It is ultimately a negative role, as you tear down those who have risen higher than they should.
I do feel a sense of accomplishment from having beaten it. I have not yet started either of the two expansions, Tribunal and Bloodmoon. I'll likely at least start one of them soon, though if my experiences in Morrowind are any indication, I will not be close to beating them before Civilization 4 comes out on October 25th. And once Civ4 comes out, my life as I know it will cease to exist.
Oh, my final standings in the factions are as follows.
- Ashlanders: Hearthfriend
- Blades: Agent
- Fighters Guild: Master
- House Hlaalu: Grandmaster
- Imperial Cult: Primate
- Imperial Legion: Knight Protector
- Mages Guild: Arch-Mage
- Morag Tong: Grandmaster
- Temple of the Tribunal: Adept
- Thieves Guild: Master Thief
If I were working on this game, my single biggest suggestion would have been to enhance the quests. In particular, I feel there were many possibilities with the strongholds that were not explored.
The three things I most hope to see in Oblivion (the sequel out later this year) are: more believable individuals, a better transportation system, and more dynamic realignments between factions (alliances, guild wars, etc.). Basically, keep it the same but make it better.
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