One of the ones that I always tell is about the time when one of my friends whilst he was backseat gaming his way through Oblivion. As my character ventured down a darkened corridor at the bottom of a mine my friend suddenly told me that I had to turn back and look at a ledge on the wall that I hadn't even noticed. There was two gold pieces on it that I obviously needed.
He has that kind of eagle eye vision, attention to detail, etcetera. The kind of attention to detail that allows him to concentrate on the tiny things, like the rat jumping up and down in his face, whilst ignoring the big things. Like the horde of Skeleton Heroes about to smash his face in.
One of my favourite things about the series is that it can be modded. To hell and back. And probably again. Want your characters to resemble smurfs? There's a mod. Want your smurfs to have violent sex with a horse? I've not checked, but I'd lay money on there being, somewhere, some sadist who spent a couple of hours of his life getting round to making it. I wouldn't want that kind of thing, but, presumably, there is someone somewhere who can jerk off to video games doing violently wrong things.
This is the world of gaming where if it isn't possible, you're doing it wrong.
I run quite a fair few mods myself.
The unofficial Oblivion patch is up there, along with all Max Tael's natural environment mods. Oscuro Oblivions Overhaul is on there, BT-Oblivion optimisation is up there on the list for the inventory stuff. Spawn rates are ramped up using the SpawnElement AdrenalineOblivion. There's a couple of new factions to join, and the Dark Brotherhood has been revamped to have all kinds of cool gear, better shops, new spells, that kind of thing.
Oh, and there's another 300-400 spells, about another 2000 items, at least another 9 sets of armour, and a very large number of things that, whilst they sounded cool on the mod description, I'll never get to see because I'll distracted by something shiny.
Given I have all these mods, and that I've played with these mods for sometime, I thought I would do something fun for Summer.
First thing to go was all my saved games.
Gone is the level 55 Imperial Heavy Armour/Blunt master, whose armour gives him 100% resists to magic. Gone is the level 48 Wood Elf thief, with the 100% chameleon armour and weight 1 boots, as a master of Sneak, rendering him completely invisible to anything and anyone (with the exception of vampires, which detect life, but who cares about the undead?). Gone is that level 32 account I used for jumping off of tall buildings and seeing how long it took me to suicide myself against guards.
Instead I have a brand new character. He's called Gareth. He's a Dark Elf. He's brand new to Cyrodil, and he arrived at night.
As you probably can't tell, the skies have been retextured. And I arrive in Anvil, not the Imperial City. And I immediately remove all my map markers. I'm a new arrival, here for an adventure.
So I start killing people. 20 minute later, I've been asked to kill a certain Rufio, and my aim to set out on my quest of despair, darkness and destruction (before saving Cyrodil as an all-conquering hero) is started. It's nothing new, it's nothing special. Neither is my idea for making it more fun, but I've not tried it before.
Amongst those people who are used to somewhat older RPG games (the ASCII ones especially) there sits one of my friends who bitches, non-stop, about the fact that you can save your game in Oblivion. He refers to it as save-scumming. So, just to rub it in his face that I'm better than him, I've ramped difficulty up (to about midway, I'm not TOTALLY insane, as there are level 50 monsters running round thanks to the AdrenalineOblivion mod) and will refuse to 'save-scum.'
One save, which gets deleted when I load it, and in which, if I die, I die. No reloading. No second chances. No going 'oh, but...' or anything. Just like in the old games.
Needless to say, it makes me a little nervous. Which is why I'm doing the Dark Brotherhood first. Shiny magical items, very few dangerous quests, ridiculous pay-outs and more besides.
I steal a horse from Anvil Stables and start riding (yes, riding, because I removed all my map markers remember?) across the world.
Suddenly, my horse collapse underneath me and one of the new factions ambushes me on the road. Those mods that seemed like a great idea, suddenly don't seem like quite so much fun. I accept my steed's noble death with equanimity, apologise to the real owner, who is undoubtedly stumbling out of the pub and wondering where he left it, and run like hell. Pissed off woman with big spells, big swords and pointy sticks that glow-in-the-dark doesn't sound like my idea of fun.
Unfortunately, a Level 1 Dark Elf is right up their street.
Thinking 'screw it, this could be the shortest save on Oblivion yet' I turn round and start firing my pitiful fireball at them. When it turns out that it only takes me about 10 minutes to kill each one, I spend 40 minutes wiping them out. Looting them, I see just why it might be an idea to come back here in the future.
For those of you who can't do the math, I've just loooted about 5000 gold worth of armour and jewellery, and I'm not even halfway near completing my first quest. For a level 1, this works out as being able to afford to buy just about any of the low-level items in the shops. I start running towards Skingrad (the closest town) with no magicka, a slow rate of recharge and some more 'Sylvan Warmasters' chasing after me, and finally get to the gates, where the guards prove their worth by promptly dying as I run into the city. The Sylvan Warmasters obviously don't consider declaring war on the city to be in their plans, because they don't follow.
So far, all going according to plan. Ish.
About 30 minutes real time later, I finally get to remeet the guy who told me to kill an absolute stranger with some weird magical weapon that I can't get rid of. It's probably cursed.
He doesn't expect me to say much, so I don't. He tells me to head to Cheydinal. Another long trek later, I meet some more guys. They aren't very friendly, so I stab them too, and carry on walking. I wander past this place. It looks vaguely familiar.
It looks like it's say... a good place for the end of the world to kick off. Wonder why.
Cheydinal goes without incident. I meet my new boss
And her friends
With their shiny new armour and weapons! I don't have one of Marie Estemaire with her Shadowmail armour (which is chainmail stats, +0.5 or so, same weight, slightly harder to bust and in black, which makes it awesome. If it's in black, it's awesome. That goes withotu saying), but I figure that she's probably out running down some deer. Having accidentally killed her once whilst training destruction magic in the forest near Cheydinal in a previous character, I'm not too fussed about hunting her down. Knowing my luck, she'd get her own back and kill me.
So, It's back to the imperial city to deal with another stranger, with the cursed blade again. It's getting to be a trend.
Gareth has been in the country less than 48 hours, and is already a mass murderer. I think that's pretty damn good.
So I let him have a tea break.
Do you remember that 5000 gold I had earlier? I spend it all here:
5000 gold of potions, alchemical ingredients and various bits of potion-making kit. Like the stuff for kids, but massively more expensive.
It doesn't up my Alchemy skill by much, but the potions I get from it will hopefully let me survive another ambush by crazy level 40 rangers with high-value armour. I need the gold.
I think I'll finsh up the Dark Brotherhood tomorrow and try and get to the Dead Drops. I want to be kitted out in Marie's Shadowmail. I want a bloodleather Cuirass. Where's my ridiculously big sword that I can call Rebellion? And a red cape! And the ability to recolour my guys hair to white, so that he can kill demons and look like the real Dante.
I think I need some more modpacks...
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