Put the game in my drive, spent 3 hours in heaven, crashed while fighting a dremora. So yeah, while this certainly seems more stable than Morrowind on release, it's still got all those odd Bethesda quirks. In addition to this, my opening movie is royally screwed up. First there's a still shot of the Emperor while he talks, then it zooms in on his face and freezes for a split second, then it transitions to footage of Oblivion in a tiny corner of the screen, then The footage appears fullscreen all garbled, then I hit spacebar and skip it.

Apart from that (and the fact that I can't figure out how the hell to actually win the thieve's guild contest) this game is mindblowing. After spending a few hours just fast travelling and doing the main quest (I undertook my first mission in the Plane of Oblivion at level 1, it was a rush.) I decided to just trot around on my horse and take in some of the beauty of this game. As it happened, I had to hop off the pony a few times to teach some bandits manners and thin down the local wolf population, but I'd still recommend the Cyrodil province for all equestrian enthusiasts.

Edit: Forgot I was going to add some specs for comparison purposes.

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (Slightly below recommended)
1gb DDR Ram
Geforce 6800 (softmodded to enable extra pipelines so it's basically an underclocked ultra)

The game defaulted to High Settings for me, which actually suprised me a bit and warranted some celebration. It runs great indoors and out, though there is some noticeable slowdown when lots of NPCs are out and fighting each other. Far away mountains and forests do show some noticable pixelation, but I don't really see how you can expect better seeing as how that's actual landscape instead of a backdrop and extending level of detail that far would turn the game into a slideshow even on current top of the line machines.

I got the game and have a few questions in relation to the guidebook.

1. The guide says you can't get certain equips until you reach specific levels. Like daedric for level 20. Does that mean they don't appear in the game or if you try to equip them it says "need to be level 20 to use"? If it's the former, I don't understand how they would be able to do that since certain people in the game wear daedric armor. If it isn't in the game AT ALL until you are level 20, then that would require the people who wear it to not be in it either, right?

2. My second question. The guide lists all the equips and their attributes. However, a lot of the attributes in the guidebook don't match the attributes in the game. Just to make sure, the column for weapons and armor equips with the sword and shield icons is the strength for that piece of equipment, correct?

I'm really tempted to buy this game, but I would like to try it first before... because i'm not sure if I'll really like it (the graphique are great technically but I don't really like the style)

so I think i'll try downloading it, anyone have download and are playing? because I want to know what you have to do to be able to play it. I just hope you don,t to do anything stupid like unplug your cd/dvd drive to play it >.> I may wait that the price drop to buy it too...

AMD64 Athlon 4000+ Clawhammer (Single core)
2gb OCZ Dual-Channel RAM
GeForce 7800GT/OC 256mb PCI-e
ASUS A8N-SLi Deluxe mobo
600W BFGtech PSU


Defaulted to ultra-high, i turned some sliders up from the default values in game though. Runs from 20fps (outside with grass and all the fun shadows of doom + 4xAA) to 160fps. Hooray for bethesda and randomness :)

Gah! Can anyone actually get this game to run? If so I'm amazed... So many problems on the official forums' tech support that I can't even keep a thread bumped to page 3 after 10 seconds...

Anyways, specs:

Athlon XP @ 2.4Ghz
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
Abit NF7S rev 2.0 (on-board nVidia Soundstorm audio)
ATI x850XT 256MB @ 520/540
NEC DVD dual-layer burner

After 7 minutes of playing, the game crashes to desktop. NO error messages, and only about 1-2 seconds of HD thrashing, then a clean crash. NO hanging at all, and no residual effects. It's like the game says, "Well, you've been at it for 7 minutes, so now it's time for my coffee break." I have the CE version because it's all they had left for PC at the local shop.

So frustrating... Game plays just fine while it's going, but crashing every 7 minutes, wtf?

I get a crash maybe once every 5 hours, and it doesnt seem to like alt-tabbing... other than that I've had no problems.

Anyone know which is the real torrent? There's like 5 different ones posted on mininova.

I doubt you'd get it any time soon even if you found the real one on mininova. Almost every single one has 1-3 seeds and like 5k leechers.

College connection for the win!

I'll be able to finish my 4.18 gig file in 8 hours.

But I just want to make sure I have the right one. I'm currently getting this one.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/259028

All the bandwidth in the world isn't going to help you if everyone but 3 people are stuck at something like 1%.

Also, that doesn't look like the real one

I got dibbs on not using spoiler tags if I finish the game before their downloads finish. :D

First gate shut! Wewt.

What makes you say that? I thought that http://www.Demonoid.com was a reliable place to get games.

Reloaded one is for real, but the leech to seed ratio is crazy. It doesn't matter if you have the fastest connection in the world, you won't finish it anytime soon. I'm thinking about downloading since my game won't get here til Friday, but I bet the download wouldn't even finish before then so I'm just going to wait for the real deal to arrive.

Thanks for the heads up. Downloading at 130 kb/s.

oh fuck this. I said before the freedom got to me, same here, ive been wasting all my time exploring every freaking part of the world i arrive to. Gfx is nice tho.

and reloaded released a good version!! *orgasmo*

^ Haha, but that is the coolest part of the game. Why even bother having such an awesome game world if you don't explore it?

Ugh, I got another 10 hours till I play this bad boy. Bleh. Back to FF XII for a while.

And check this for the seeds/peers for the Reloaded version.

SEEDS: 218

PEERS: 22025

That's bloody insane!

oh well I just bought it >.> the game had a 10$ sale on it so why not, and the f**king torrent even with 20000 peers and 200 seeds was downloading at 0.3k/sec >.>

I just hope it will run great on my computer

Installing it now <3

I bet you already have the template for your Oblivion walkthrough/guide all written up =p

Yup =p

I downloaded the reloaded version, and i'm 90% into Japanese Console RPG and 10% on PC (i like diablo or baldurs gate)

but this game is so boring, i've played it for about 2 hours, the combat system is not really exciting, the voice acting is like the worst EVER, the story telling is quite bad

what i hate the most about these "serious" PC RPGs is that they are filled with totally useless details, like you can hit people in the street and you'll go to prison, or you can lockpick some doors and go into people's bedroom to steal their pants or pyjamas or eat their food

or you can go into a shop and buy books about legends and stuff, you can read like tons of pages of useless and uninteresting stories, but i guess people will like that

but the gaphics are quite good, the sense of freedom is great, the inventory is simple, as all the menus are too :)

i think this game is for people who can easily identify themselves to a medieval character, like people who like to go into forests disguised as thiefs or barbarians, this is the virtual version

Will post a mini-review later.

A big positive fat point: not much loading, mainly not when you're outside.

Haha, the voice acting in this game is great. I know different people have different opinions... and not enjoying a western RPG is totally understandable but please don't insult something that completely owns most, if not all, console voice acting. Oblivion = actual hired VA talent; Most console RPGs = no name nobodies who sound completely unenthused or overract so bad it makes your ears bleed. Hell, I am 80% into Japanese RPGs but it doesn't blind me to the fact that 95% of the time the VA is terrible.

Oblivion's VA = awesome, period.

Also, some people enjoy freedom in their games. It is totally up to you how you play Oblivion. If you don't like going to jail then don't purposely draw your weapon and smack someone to death. It isn't as if this can actually happen on accident anyway.