The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
 

Today it was officialy announced the game would be in shops on 20 March for both PC and Xbox 360. I'm a happy man, one day before my birthday =3 Who else is excited over this title? Do you think it'll be the RPG of the year?

Link.

I dunno if I'll be getting this right off the bat. It looks good, but I hated how Morrowind controlled on the pc. it was clunky. And as I don't have an Xbox... Well.. we'll see.

I hope it doesn't come with the thousand bugs Morrowind came with, that was a horror. Even with the patches it was still full of them.

I don't think it'll be the RPG of the year. I know it'll be the RPG of the year. I'm really excited about this too, especially since my new computer will be arriving any time now. I sure hope everyone reading this are willing to give this game a chance, so let the link Grawl posted speak for itself. Morrowind blasted me away, so I'm really excited about Oblivion.

I didnt lpay the PC version of morrowind much, so I didnt run into any bugs (I don't think) I got thruogh the xbox version though, the gold edition that came with bloodmoon and the other expansion. It played fine, I liked the controls.

I'll probably download it if anything

That's actually the best news I've heard all day.. I mean, besides GFF coming back 'n all.

I too hope this doesn't release with as many bugs as it's predecessor. Though, I think the folks at Bethesda learned there lesson with Morrowind and put much more care into this project.

My first character is going to be a thief/ranger and I intend on taking him throughout the main quests. My second will be an evil mage/summoner, whom I'll use to fully explore the giant world.

I'm definitely getting this for the Xbox 360 so I can experience Oblivion in High -Def!

Was the RPG forum deleted or something? And from grawl whhhhaaaaatttttt.

This will be the greatest RPG ever no one can deny it.

And it is the 21st IN STORES by the way and that link did not lead to the announcement.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=249750

Also I will be playing this forever, and who will be like me and know they will be in the character creation screen for hours. It is inevitable.

Check out my gamerpic in my sig. Evil oblvion symbol. I got like 5 gamerpics of oblvion, but using this one for now

Definitely my most anticipated game ever. I absolutely loved Morrowind and I can't wait until this game comes out. I'm going to disappear from the face of the earth after I get this game.

To put it simply, I would viciously murder a complete stranger in cold blood in front of their loved ones if it hastened my acquisition of this game.

I didn't really like Morrowind and never even played the previous 2, but this one looks awesome. Is there any word on the system reqs.? I looked around on the site but couldn't find any. I just hope my computer can run it without looking like turd, the level of graphics doesn't really bother me. The battle system looks fun this time around as well as a better story, that I didn't even know Morrowind had because it was too open-ended.

Requirements:http://www.oblivionportal.com/info/systemreq.php
Oh Grawl, your B-day is 3 days before mine XD

Anyway, I think the game will be fantastic. Definately RPG of the year, if not generation. Afterall, Bethesda is one of the few American video game creators that actually get it right (the others being Valve and Retro). I will pick this up for PC (Once I get a new computer, I can't run this on my Celeron) so I can use all the mods and plugins that will be available.

2GHZ jesus my poor computer is gonna chug like crazy. I got everything else down though, hopefully the minimum doesn't have too much slow-down.

I think it won't be that bad if you disable AA and HDR. That's what makes it all look so fancy. Also, disable the high-details (grass comes to mind) and it might run fine.

Arh... how can you do that? That's ruining high art. I stopped playing games on my computer becuase I didn't want to waste them on low settings.

I am just going the ideal route and getting it for the 360 and playing it for a year or two on that, and then when I buy a new computer I will play it with user mods, etc.

Going to be the best graphical game to date most likely. Kameo on 360 is the king right now.

The only reason I bought my 360 was for Oblivion. If Oblivion had not come out for it I wouldn't have even bought it this early. I bought 2 games on release with it and beat them both in a week, and haven't touched my 360 since december.

I'm a bit wary about this game. Not because I don't expect to love it once the mod community gets going with it, but because one of my friends keeps crushing my hopes by telling me about all the things they've been forced to do to dumb it down. Three guesses why. If you liked the graphics in that pretty 20-minute trailer...well, don't get too used to them.

Still, this is probably my most-anticipated game at the moment. Between this, Dirge of Cerberus, plus a few books I'm looking forward to... The fangirl in me is in for a feast this year, and it looks like Oblivion will be the first course.

Please enlighten us, what did they cut out of the game?

From what I'm hearing, mostly the high-end graphical details. Some of the shadow effects, things like that. Reason? In a nutshell, the optimised PC version would have looked better than the X-Box version. Microsoft demanded that the PC version's graphics be stripped down a bit so that PC didn't seem to out-shine X-Box graphically. Since they're selling 360s at a loss, they're vicious about making the money back through controlling the development of games on the console. The consequence is that if a game is a PC and X-Box release, PC gamers get screwed over in the name of making the X-Box look good.

Someone tell me my friend's just trying to scare me, and that Bethesda wouldn't do that to us. ;_;

That's lame.
At least they're not pulling a Fable on us and giving us merely the wrapping to the chocolate that we were promised.

What Amanda said all is a lie. I mean what her friend said. I don't know where she got that from since I have been following this game like a hawk forever. It was probably made up by PC fanboys who think consoles are always inferior and cause there precious PC games to lack STUFF.

Bethesda has stated in many many interviews that the 360 could handle anything the PC could and vice versa. They have stated that both games play and look exactly the same. You just need a NEW computer for it to look and play like it does on the 360 (360 is the latest technology).

Also the shadows effects on every single OBJECT in the world was taken out. They wanted to do this, but if you think about the sheer size of the world and all the items they said it would be unplayable on PC and 360. There are still shadows on some things however. NOTHING ELSE WAS TAKEN OUT.

From a forum where a few Oblivion developers occasionally post off the record. I'll have to ask him for some links.

Keep in mind that I do take everything with a grain of salt, including that. But if nothing else, it's justified paranoia. If you think that PC games haven't suffered in the past due to being dumbed down in development for the sake of an X-Box release.... Well, you obviously didn't play Thief 3.

Yeah, but it is not even an issue with the 360. Maybe it will be in like two years though.

And writing X-Box is like 3 years old. Why waste pressing an extra key. I mean really.

I APOLOGISE FOR MY WANTON HYPHEN USE. :O

I have been looking foreword to this game after first getting Morrowind last year, and seeing the new screenshots for this game. If they hype and previews of the game play trailers turn out to be exactly what is released (and not another Halo 2) this will be the best RPG of the year, hands down. I have even contemplated doing a major PC upgrade just for this game, but will most likely just buy a 360 on account of the (possibility) mods and patches will be available via Xbox Live.

And I hope to god what Amanda's friend was saying about the game isn't true, that would be the most depressing gaming news I would have heard in a long time. I guess we will just have to wait until both versions are lined up to find out, I guess.

From my understanding of things, those dynamic (?) shadows on things that could be moved were something that was being shown off- they didn't drop it because the 360 couldn't handle it- plainly- it was never going to be in or they went a different route. It’s not like there isn’t any shadows, there just aren’t any on the, what, 9000 (I think that is what heard) objects that are moveable.

At least that is what I got after listening to some interviews; so please correct me if I am wrong. Hey, only three more weeks.

Purely Correct Yillb, as I mentioned prior. I am trying to get most of my school work done in the coming weeks to make room for this game that it will absorb my face.

For all the PC fans out there without the xbox360 (well I'll never buy it for that even if I did have one), here's an official guide on the hardware requirements to run Oblivion. It goes into some detail listing out various components and then giving a brief overview of what we should expect the game to run like. All I can say is that I'm glad I won't have to upgrade anything for this. Sure it won't run the game if full everything and at the highest rez but should be fine. The only thing left to do for me is go out to buy a decent speaker setup so I can fully enjoy this game (and various other stuff as well :) ). Can't wait.

After the amount of fun I had playing Morrowind, I just HAD to pre-order Oblivious ;) I got a T-shirt which I will never out in public for my troubles, but apparently it means I'll also get a nice extra booklet, and a ?septim coin (and with that coin, I intend to be able to roll it across my knuckles like Belshazzer [or however it's spelt] from Constantine, cos that was just cool :p ).

I chose PC largely because I tend to have more time to play PC games as opposed to console games... plus I can't justify buying a console for top dollar when I'm only really interested in one game that it has (plus I like the TES Construction kit ;))

I've heard that there won't be any "Boots of Blinding Speed" in Oblivion though... pity ;___; I loved those boots (although I have no doubt someone will create an item mod for it :p )

I hope it's more populated. I didn't like how empty and isolated Morrowind made me feel especially since I played it while I played World of Warcraft. I know it's unfair to compare an offline RPG with an MMORPG in terms of population, but even if I hadn't experienced World of Warcraft, I think I'd still find Morrowind empty. The "main" cities in Morrowind only had a handful of NPCs walking the streets and for such "big" cities that were centers for trade, I didn't get a sense of even being in a city. They felt more like ghost towns. I hope Oblivion is different.

It's not very realistic when you find NPCs wandering around in dungeons, is it?

Also, a "handful" of NPCs? The cities were pretty crowded.

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/702/70...g_3442822.html <- <3

^______^ That's more along the lines of what I want to see ^___^ I remember always wishing that Morrowind had more vegetated areas... sometimes walking to obscure locations in the middle of the rocky hilly wastelands could get depressing :p

(Would you just LOOK at the detail on the bark of that tree!! ^o^ ... I really need to save the rest of the money I need for that new graphics card :p:p )

Uh... who said anything about NPCs in dungeons? I'm talking about out in the world where people are supposed to be. That's why I said CITIES. And no, 10 NPCs in a MAJOR CITY doesn't count as a lot. People get so damn defensive if anyone criticizes a game they like...

No, they get defensive when people overexaggerate their point to try and sound like they know what they are talking about. Balmora is a "large city" and it does not have 10 NPCs. Sorry, no matter how many times you say it it isn't going to magically come true.

The freedom of morrowind got to me later on, im one of those people that get crazy if i miss anything in any game so eventually i almost went crazy. But I loved how you could break into houses and make them your own. As long as they have that Im all good :D.

I didn't seem like Balmora was a city to me, just a busy village of sorts. A city doesn't take you a few blocks to reach the end which is Balmora. Something along the size of Vivec would be more of a city.

Balmora was my base co-ordinate. I felt like I was home in the town, everywhere else being foreign or 'overseas' by comparison.

Attests to the game's prodigious immersion.

You can buy a house, this time. Of course you can the money from stealing ;)

I preordered this game a while ago and I'm so excited about it! I didn't like Morrowind that much to be honest, but Daggerfall is one of my all time favourite games, and by far my favourite RPG. And this just looks incredible and... yeah! I'm just excited, haha.

Something just crossed my mind. Do you guys think there is someone crazy enough to re-make Morrowind? It wouldn't surprise me =p

Oh, Balmora... I have so many mods running that Balmora is like a slideshow sometimes (mostly when a magic-heavy battle happens in the town). But it's worth it to have the town full of life, twice as big, and nicely textured.

Any word yet on a direction for Oblivion's expansions? I'm assuming it'll get some eventaully, and it's probably too early yet to really speculate on 'em. But I was sorely disappointed at the fact that there won't be werewolves in the main game, so I'm crossing my fingers for a Bloodmoon-esque expansion eventually.

A new development diary just came out with some screens and stuff of the environment.
http://elderscrolls.com/codex/team_teamprof_nberry.htm

And here is a random one from the link above with focus on just showing the sky.
http://elderscrolls.com/images/codex..._screen11B.jpg

Seems like the game may have been leaked early on usenet. I already ordered the game but if I see it pop up on any of my favorite torrent sites I don't know if I can resist downloading it to play it early. :(

Is it true, that different versions won't be compatible among each other? If that's the case, I'll really think over getting Oblivion, because I could only get the German version for free, not the English one. And it absolutely sucks when you can't play 90% of the upcoming modifications, only because you have another version.

Cool! Looks like I should be able to run it well. My current PC should last me until 2007 at least, it looks like, by which time the new AMD 64-bit chipsets should have been out awhile and should be a bit cheaper...

I'd imagine even if that were the case you could edit your save to be loadable...

I'll be going to get the English version this time, for the sake of modifications, just like DD said. That particular thing really irked me with Morrowind...
Oh, and I hope that the animations have improved vastly. Morrowind had that Poser-Animation feeling to it, which was kinda awkward, to say the least...
Plus, English looks and sounds better overall - Geman tends to get flawed translations, even though Oblivion's predecessor did pretty well in that department.

Whatever, I need to hit the sack.

Yeah, it got to the point where it was pretty ridiculous. The jumping animation was horrible. It didn't really detract too much from the gameplay though, but it did take away some of the realism and in turn affected the immersion the player had with the game.

Well, it was meant to be played in first person... I've heard that the third person hasn't really improved much in Oblivion and is just for novelty, same as in Morrowind, too.

Supposedly, Oblivion PC version got a 93% in PCGamer UK to go along with OXM's 95%.

I think the only negatives were that some of the Actual dialogue was ackward because of the Radiant AI feature and peoples facial expressions were sometimes stale. As well as non attractive NPCS (lol). Supposedly he spoils the game in the review so I am not going to go track down a scan or anything.

Yeah, I understand that since it was pretty hard to play Morrowind in third person view, it's just weird having everything be so realistic and having it be the most impressive graphical achievement (possibly) and then zooming out to third person and seeing animations on par with a title like Goldeneye 64. It feels incomplete.

:confirmed:

I try to get the review pages up later.

edit: pages in attachment. I missnamed the pags, review was only 4 not 5 pages. hope you like :(

Put down the cash for my pre-order today, so it's only a matter of time until Oblivion is mine.

I hope to god my computer runs it well on max settings. I want to experience this in full.

COMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN LIKE WUT. Elder Scrolls for billion hours here I come Collectors Edition too.

You get that JT?

OH and very nice ZIPPER.

Double Post:
A new video clip up at elderscrolls.com. Amazing I must say. The site is not working too well now though because so many people are trying to access it probably.

Yeah, this is just eating me up inside. I can't wait to pick this up on Monday and start playing (even though my system will barely run it as-is.)

The new 15 second teaser trailer alone was enough to have me going crazy, despite the visible grass drawing (which is hopefully due to the the detail of the backgroud.)

It seriously is not big of a deal. And they say that happens throughout in those spaces, but its not liek you are going to be running around that often and exactly looking at the grass. You will be looking at other things.

And some people did not even notice that and I can guarantee you that you will go so used to it that it won't even bother you. I know I will be able to live with it, the way the game looks.

What was wrong with the grass? I didn't notice anything since the video was so small. I don't know what grass drawing is. It sounds like a technical term regarding graphics. Could someone explain?

Just that you basically can't see the major grass details until a certain distance. Like, for example, seeing individual blades of grass. They want to keep a steady framerate so they do not keep the grass at full detail until you are at a decent length to it. Because its not like it really matters to see in depth detail at long range. It is not like you could make it out anyway.

ALSO 6 DAYS LEFT VIDEO NOW UP

http://elderscrolls.com/downloads/media_movies.htm

Ah, awesome. Thanks BZ.

http://www.star-force.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=576

Starforce angry at Bethesda and its customers for not wanting the Starforce protection

HA!

I had totally forgotten about starforce, so happy that oblivion doesnt have it.

I watched a old 20 min trailer (they said it would be out for xmas lol) and it was really dark and scary :o.
I might not be able to play this :(. I dont like dark things. I'll probably just stalk around towns and steal houses.

Here is another preview.

More.

Isn't that UK PC gamer where they spoil everything like I mentioned above? If so, I will not read.

No idea, didn't read it myself. =p

it spoils some quests and stuff. especially the assasins part. But knowing how big this game is i doubt it's big. It also shows pics of Oblivion.

The new video up today show combat without the interface. Looks to be quite nifty.

Yea, I love the arrows they use against the Tauren (yea... Tauren!), and the fight with the goblin looks amazing too.

Did anyone notice that most recent screenshots and video's are all taken around the city with the big tower?

I am gonna buy this on release day. I know some places that sell these that're well passed over. I bought GTA: San Andreas on opening day there with no pre-order, late in the afternoon =p

The intriguing stealth elements have me sold on this baby. Looks very sleek. But the reviewer seemed a bit strict on it despite how nice/revolutionary it looked. Way too strict of a review, really.

Yeah that is the Imperial City Grawl. The home of the emperor himself. The capital city. Not just oblivion, but all of Tamriel.

They say it is twice the size of Vivec, but the pics they have shown of it are really small scale.

The problem with Vivec wasn't how big it was, but how annoying it was to navigate through.

Also, doesn anyone know if the "cell-loading" thing still exists in Oblivion?

Hmmm... I've preordered this game (not long now!! ^o^ ), but after reviewing my system specs and having good long think, I've decided that I won't get stuck into it until I make a little bit of an upgrade. I can't do a big upgrade yet, because I simply don't have the funds, and won't have them for a while...

I'm wanting to buy a GeForce 6600GT graphics card, and add an extra 1GB stick of RAM :p (just to keep me going until next year when I will probably do my next major system overhaul ^___^ ). For the moment my CPU should be fine ^^; (Athlon 2600+)

Don't get me wrong, I WILL definitely install and fiddle with this game when I get it next week.. I just want to make sure I have a system that can run it decently and do it some justice :p (because expecting to play the game seriously on my current FX5600 and measley 512MB of RAM would be a travesty :p ;) )... Till I get the upgrades, I guess I'll at least have the bonus booklet to read :p

I have 1 gig of RAM, 6800 GeForce OC, & Athlon 64 as my main highlights of my system. I could run FEAR on medium settings but I'm worried about this. Given, FEAR wasn't polished up to run smoothly and compatible-like, like, say, Half-life 2 which I could run smooth as butter on my old build. I'm hoping this is polished up and isn't as hardware-killing as it appears. If it is like FEAR, I'll be lucky if I can even deal with medium... ;_;

You meet the recommended system requirements and you're way past the minimum requirements. I wouldn't be too worried about it.

It's becoming harder and harder to run new games at max graphical capabilities o__o I remember the days when I could. My GeForce 4400 was a wonder, truly, unto itself~

I still know when I bought a 1 GHz CPU and it was brand new, and state-of-the-art. It could play Max Payne!

Just checking in.

I can't wait!

So. Uhm. I reserved a copy at Hastings (four copies, all up for grabs =p Reserved one o'course). Are all of these DVD? I don't wanna get a ten-CD installation package ;__; DVDs are so much easier...

It is a DVD only release.

Just pre-ordered the Collector's edition

Right before realising it doesn't support my Geforce 4 graphics card.
Looks like i wont be playing this for a while :(

Sweet =D Painful enough to install Half-life 2 on CDs as it is ;__;

Double Post:
Read up on Newegg.com for something in your price ballpark =( Maybe you can snag something a little above minimum?

I can get a cheap Geforce 6200 for £30, but i'm a poor schoolboy so i'll have to wait another week or so until I can afford it

Just go a bit higher and get a 6600GT. It's a much, much, much better deal for the money.

I wouldn't even consider bothering with this game for the PC if you don't at least have a 9800/6600 equivalent graphics card. Sure, it might run, but will it be worth it? No, probably not.

If you don't at least have a high 2GHZ (2.6+) machine with a gig of ram and a decent card you are really wasting your time. It would be more fruitful to just save your cash for a 360 and get it that way.

For anyone interested:
Gamespot is apparently hosting a marathon play session of Oblivion with a live feed (for Complete members only, fags) starting this Monday at 6pm and ending Tuesday morning 6am.

Might as well wait a day or two and experience it first hand IMO.

If it's clear, it'd be worth watching (but not worth paying for a Complete membership just to watch). If you're already a Complete member, why not? I have a feeling it's going to be low res and choppy though. =\

::noonecares:: gamespot. At least the true fans who experience the game fully by not seeing real gameplay in action.

Oblivion
 

http://www.elderscrolls.com/

This game actually looks nice.

It looks like a first/third person RPG, but apparently the AI is suppose to be the selling point. The NPC have their "own personalities" so depending on the event, their actions will vary.

Nevertheless, the visuals look VERY nice. The downside is that the PC requirements are insane.

Recommended:

* 3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* 1 GB System RAM
* ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

Minimum System Requirements: New!

* Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows XP 64-bit
* 512MB System RAM
* 2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* 128MB Direct3D compatible video card
* and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver;
* 8x DVD-ROM drive
* 4.6 GB free hard disk space
* DirectX 9.0c (included)
* DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
* Keyboard, Mouse

http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/a...c/obliv03B.jpg

http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/a...c/obliv24B.jpg






Edit: Damn. I placed this in the PC Gaming forum.

It is alright I made sure the mods moved it quickly.

As always the new 3 DAYS LEFT video is up. http://elderscrolls.com/downloads/media_movies.htm

My favorite countdown video yet. I love talking to townfolk in Rpgs. It is my favorite thing to do and it looks fucking awesome. Fuck that one review where supposively said the characters looked ugly. Sure some of them look ugly (even that one guy mentioned his appearance), but they look great nonetheless.

Also is that guy talking about being a priest Sean Beans voice. He is supposed to be THE Heir to the throne though.

Also megalith spoke as a black fellow in this. Hilarious am I rite.
And fucking Patrick stewart owns at the end.

What a kick in the face, the first non-nuked leak of the game and it's apparently in French. Oh well, it was still a good way to bench the game so I guess I won't stop the d/l.

I'm going to lose my life when I get this game. I remember when I got Morrowind, I didn't leave my house for like 3 days. What's better than ordering food, kicking it back and going all out on an RPG?

Nothing.

Lies.

I built my new PC a couple months ago specifically so I could play this game on full tilt.

AMD64 Athlon 4000+ (single core)
GeForce 7800GT 256mb PCI-e
2gb OCZ dual-channel RAM

All this upgrade talk makes me want to kick myself in the face for buying an AGP-only mobo.
Why didn't they tell me PCI-e was gonna be the norm in a year?! :(

Also:
If anyone wants to save a few bucks, Amazon.com has the PC Collector's Edition on "sale" for $54.99.

Same thing happened to me ;_; In about October or November, I paid ~$300 to get an Athlon 64 and an MSI MoBo with AGP since my vid card is that. I then noticed shortly afterwards that AGP card stop at 6800 (which I bought and have installed).

I'll have to re-gut my computer once I have enough cash. But I'll see how a 6800 holds up on Morrowind Oblivion. Damn. I keep referring to it as Morrowind (typo left for the hell of it). If games in the future surpass FEAR, then I'll be in trouble soonish D=

The only thing lacking on my computer is the speed. It's only at 2.6 ghz comp. Bah. Hopefully that won't be a problem considering I have 1.5 gigs of ram (dual channel) and a GeForce 6600. I think I barely meet the minimum requirements. -_-

Are you kidding? The minimum is 2.0 Ghz, 512MB RAM and a Radeon 9500.

I have a 2.7ghz machine with a gig of ram... but my video card.. Nvidia Quadro 980XGL. 128megs I have no clue what that is >.> (came with the pc) but it can support doom3 and Q4 on 1280 x 1024 on 32bit with all the details at highest. Think it'll handle Oblivion?

Always troublesome, but you'll be alright. If you want the *full* experience, a better card would be ideal.

This is the only game I've ever wanted for the PC. You know, besides Morrowind.

My computer though..;___; Just a couple years ago I bought some RAM and a new video card just so my computer could (barely) handle Morrowind, and I sitll have that same terrible PC now :(

It's 700 MHZ, 256 MB RAM, and a Radeon 7500. I don't know why I'm saying all this, I guess it's just so you can feel bad for me.

I'm pretty sure it'll do just fine. I'll play it in 1.8 Ghz, 512MB RAM and a Radeon 9700. The CPU-speed is 0.2 Ghz below the minimum requirements, but the rest is good enough. I'm sure it'll work.

I have a question about my setup. I'm wondering if I can play Oblivion with CLOSE to maximum settings or not with this rig:

I have a Sager 9860 Desktop Replacement custom laptop and the specs are:
Desktop Pentium IV 3.0 GHz with HT
1GB of DDR3 Ram
Mobility Radeon X800 256MB

It's the same laptop as the Alienware m770, but made by Sager. They both get their laptops from the same manufacturer and add in their custom stuff (like Alienware adds custom software and the custom cover), but other than that they're identical. I want to know if I can run Oblivion at close to max settings or if I'll only be able to run it on medium settings.

I had a loooong, heated debate with my brother about whether or not to get this for my Xbox 360 or our PC. I was trying to explain to him that our computer would choke, fizzle, then EXPLODE if it tried to run Oblivion. However, I also told him I fully plan on logging 200+ hours in the game, a comment he didn't take too lightly.

The PC requirements are obviously hefty, but I think the overwhelming support the PC community provides will more than make up for any shortcomings.

In one of the interviews it was hinted at that Oblivion was designed to scale upwards with technology, meaning that even top of the line systems currently wouldn't be able to run it at complete max settings (view distance being the biggest factor in question). However, there is no doubt that the game will look absolutely beautiful on that setup.

Two days video is out, and Bethsoft's servers are once again crying in agony. Get it while it's hot.

Oh okay. I'm just not much of a technical guy and I wasn't sure how outdated my video card was. And hooray for 2 days video. Didn't realize it was out. =) It really sucks that Oblivion will get here during test week though. Either I'll have to wait til this weekend to play it or I'll have to sacrifice some studying time to play it a few days early. =P

It is pointless anyway to really think anyone can give you an answer on spec issues. No one knows. All you do is look at the minumum and recommended specs and decide for yourself. Nothing else can help.

Luckily, I don't need to worry about that.

Funny, someone was able to give me an answer. And there are people out there who may have connections and have seen footage of the game being run on different hardware configurations and can give insight to those that have less knowledge with Oblivion and computers in general.

Just guessing really, but everything you have is fairly high end so unless this game has some horrible optimization (and all signs point to no) it should look great and run fast.

Someone has it out there:

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/6900/dscf00055xz.jpg

Yeah reviewers, even reviewers for little sites get them beforehand. Although some RARE stores could sell it. I will call my EB tomorrow to make sure they are not selling it. Cause they shouldnt be till tuesday

I know the webmaster of planetelderscrolls.com didn't, and that's a pretty big community.

I'm kind of hoping EB gives me a call to pick it up tomorrow, personally.

I'm working Tuesday night, so I won't be able to play much if I get it on Tuesday.

I have never known that EB stores call you when you preorder a game and it arrives. At least the stores in my area never seem too. Hoping for one though.

I also heard a rumor that game stores are sold out of the game in preorders, but the fact that its out for Pc and 360 will make plenty to go around.

It seems like I'll get the CE version, which is something I love. Too bad I'll have to wait around a week for it :(

All I have to say is...

WHERE THE FUCK IS THE LEAK? I WANNA PLAY THIS DAMN GAME ALREADY!

Hey, this is not the request forum! >=O

And no idea =\ I think the protection is somewhat funky (new Securom from what I've heard).

This game deserves a purchase.

It deserves a download while I wait for my game to be shipped :p

Star Wars: Empire at War also has the new version of SecuROM on it aswell but you can bypass it if you use the program Secur-ROM 7 with a pre made profile off the net and then mount the image via Dameon Tools and that should do the trick.

Too bad it wasn't as easy to pirate for the 360.

I'm not going to buy a game I don't even know will run well on my computer.

I wouldn't be surprised if they blacklisted the common tools as CureROM, Anti-Blaxx, Daemon-Tools and Alcohol 120%. If it's so easy to play, then why didn't anyone release it yet?

Empire at War has been released on a lot of torrent sites. All you need is CureROM Lite.

Did you even read what I just said?

Grawl: They do blacklist Dameon Tools, hence why you need CureROM to get around that as well as the copy protection. And CureROM isn't blacklisted because they rebuild the program per each version of SecuROM.

As for your second question, there just might not be a profile yet. I don't know, I haven't really looked into it because I'm getting the game for the 360 not the PC.

My point is, so far there can't be a version that's been rebuilt yet, since the last build was on 19 March. If Oblivion (= Securom 7) blacklists CureROM, or at least has a way to annoy CureROM, it first has to be fixed before any release can be made.

French version was leaked... it has a few stability problems but it bypassed the securom7 protection, obviously, because it started and runs through the tutorial just fine. If the French version can get dumped I don't see why an English copy can't. I'm sure we'll see a leak later tonight as people are already getting their copies from some places.

Also, I am a weak man. I broke down and charged 7800GS to get the most out of my outdated, AGP only motherboard to fully enjoy this game. After seeing the low resolution screenshots of this game I really had no choice. It looks like ass on low settings.

They claim the French release has been around since yesterday, yet where is it then? No torrent, no screenshots, no nothing.

People aren't getting this from the internet, as it's simply not out yet.

The latest build of CureROM was made before the latest build of SecuROM 7 therefore it's not blacklisted. And just because Oblivion comes out on the 20th doesn't mean that SecuROM 7 was rebuilt to blacklist the latest build of CureROM. The SecuROM 7 that's on Oblivion is the same build that's on Empire at War.

That isn't true. I have the french dump and the reason it isn't publically available is because it was nuked due to instability. It crashes right after the tutorial. Try getting a valid account at some private trackers... public trackers always get things last.

=/ Will it play or not?

Don't worry, it most likely will. As you can see for yourself, your videocard can handle all the things it needs:

edit: wait, I didn't read it properly ._. You better download it it first before trying.

I just found out my own notebook has one flaw ._. I wonder if the 64MB really matter to a point where the game won't run?

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/5908/oops7mr.png

Man that sucks. It may be more trouble than its worth just for this game, but it is possible to upgrade the VPU on a laptop depending on what brand it is. I know from the various Dell laptops I have had experience with dismantling that this is a simple procedure (if you know what you are doing of course.) Granted you will void your warranty if its still covered, it just may be worth it, given how beefy the rest of your system specs are.

Or you could just try installing it anyway and see what happens. Who knows, maybe the installer won't check for minimum system requirements.

If you listen to the IGN podcast on the game they were saying that they did some comparisons themselves and the minumum requirements are REALLY minimum. But obviously you never know until you try it yourself. But from the looks of the game there is no way that a 64MB video card will be able to run this game. I have a 512MB Radeon X800 and Half-Life two pushes that card to the max, and I can only imagine the horrible frame rate that I would get with Oblivion.

For anyone who has a 360 though, don't bother with the PC version because you know that you'll be able to play it with the best looks and that it willwork next to perfectly. But if people are worried about this game, wait till you see the specs for UT2K7, it needs a video card with a gig of ram on it in order to generate it. (when I was talking about HL2 I meant on the highest of settings.)

There isn't much a point to mentioning them. The one I got it from isn't accepting new members right now and it's a pretty small ISO community. Torrentit had it for a little while til it got nuked, then they removed it.

64MB is pretty bad. It won't effect the overall performance but the vram is vital to keeping the game stable and avoid stuttering issues. You can assume that your FPS won't be very consistant even on low settings with such low VRAM. IMO anyway.

Edit: Oh yeah, expect sound stuttering in addition to jumpy FPS. it reminds me of when I tried to play Half-Life 2 with a 64MB card. Ha, ha...

THE DAY IS ALMOST HERE. My EB said they wont sell them until tomorrow though. I know other stores are said fuck to the release date as seen by a lot of 360ers playing it. You can see their gamercards.

Anyone I will worry about the PC version in a couple years. All about 360 tomorrow baby.

Half-Life 2 runs fine as long as I keep things civil. I can play it with HDR on and all.

Yeah it really sucks that some stores won't sell the game and others will. But I've head that the 22nd was the release date for so long that not getting the game on the accelerated release date doesn't bug me too much. But it'll just be another day that I'll be able to play the game before I beat it.

Grawl: Now divide that frame rate by 4 and that's about what you'll get. I'm not trying to be cruel, I'm just trying to convey the truth. And to tell the truth your system is pretty darn good for a laptop ^^

Game is leaked now... it's up on usenet. Expect it on some trackers soon.

The.Elder.Scrolls.Oblivion.AlcoholClone-iND

I'll be buying it, m'self ;D Got a copy sitting tomorrow. Won't download it, since by the time it is done transferring, I'll have my hands on a copy.

By the by, what's the difference between regular and LE? I read the whole thread a few days ago and don't remember seeing any mention of the differences. I could get a LE but it'd run me $15 more than my regular copy. Anything intriguing or nah?

It's now up on torrentspy: http://ts.searching.com/torrent/6155...blivion_DVD_PC

However, read the user comments becuase there is some contraversy on whether or not it's the realy thing. Here is the NFo file from the completed torrent:

_ _
/=/ ____ ___ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ___ ____ ____ ___\=\
|=| [__ |__] |__| | |___ | | | |__] |__/ |__| [__ |=|
|=| ___] | | | |___ |___ |___ |__| |__] | \ | | ___]|=|
|=| |=|
|=|<<-------------------------------Space Cobras------>> |=|
|=| GAME.......== Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (c) Bethesda |=|
|=| GENRE......== Role Playing Game |=|
|=| RELEASE....== 03/20/2006 |=|
|=| SIZE.......== 4.6 GiB |=|
|=| PROTECTION.== SecuROM 7 |=|
|=|<<-------------------------------------------------->> |=|
|====.. . ={GAME INFO}= . ..====|
/= = . http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_overview.htm .


/=--. .--= |= -.. ..- =|
|==-- . ={I N S T A L L A T I O N}= . --==|
|=| |=|
|=| 1. Unrar the iso |=|
|=| 2. Burn to DVD with Blindwrite or Nero |=|
|=| 3. Hide all virtual drives |=|
|=| 4. Insert into drive and click "OK" at prompt |=|
|=| 4. Install,Play, and enjoy! |=|
|=| 5. If you like the game, buy it |=|
|=| |=|
|====-- . . --====|
/== ={G R E E T S}= == - -

To all our friends, in the past, present, and future

To the "scene" groups: not fast enough on this one

. To the Elder Scrolls Team for making such a great game. .
/- Keep up the good work! - |===- -===|
|= ===- -=== =|
| =====- ____ ___ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ___ ____ ____ ____ -===== |
.\=----= ==== |--' |--| |___ |=== |___ [__] |==] |--< |--| ==== =-----=/.

SpaceCobras 2006 SpaceCobras

You still don't understand. It's okay.

That's a fake. The one I posted is the only real one and it was released today. Spacecobras are the ones who released all the fake versions earlier this week so I really wouldn't trust them.

The.Elder.Scrolls.Oblivion.AlcoholClone-iND

I bought it anyway though... I only wanted to pirate it to get it early. Turns out I was able to get a legit copy first, so eh.

Man 2 more days... I'm guessing there is already a legit copy of the English one out?

Game shipped :D It'll be here on Wednesday~

Lol i hate alchol releases but it's really hard to resist since i got scene accsess... oh what the hell
*downloads*

I'm downloading the iND release that's on Usenet, but I'm missing a few files on the server.

does anyone know if this game will have some protection? ( I'm thinking about starforce or something)

Ive heard that all it has is some new version of SecureROM or something along those lines.

Securom.

I remember reading about there not being Starforce. Fans rejoiced =o

is this real?

http://www.mininova.org/tor/258693

Ahahahahahha:

Seeds:
7
Leechers:
3684

Just buy the game.

Man, the internet is going crazy cause theres no confirmed working release. Its hilarious

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product_id=200123

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product_id=646003

zomg~

My EB fucked up. They got the Xbox 360 regular and Collector's Edition, and the PC regular edition, but they forgot the one I pre-ordered, the PC Collector's Edition.

Needless to say, I'm pretty goddamn pissed off. How in the holy fuck do you do that?

I'm seriously considering no longer pre-ordering games from them anymore because of this (Not that it'll hurt them much, since I'm only planning to pre-order Zelda right now.) This is major-league bullshit.

(They did say they should be getting them later today, but I have work, and by the time I'm done they will be closed. If they don't have it by tomorrow morning, I'm gonna call their district manager or something. I'm really pissed.)

Horrible. I have the game, collector's edition. But I'm having installation issues. Popped in my DVD and the drive just keeps on loading never stopping. Lots of folks are having this problem. I'm going to check my drivers and hope that'll fix things.

Double Post:
Works on a DVD loading laptop so I'm going to assume my Combo is screwy. Gonna buy a DVD player at best buy real quick.

Gech, I had the same problem with Farcry on the PC. My workaround was networking my laptop to my PC, sharing the laptop's DVD drive, and running the game off of that. It was whacky.


I'm waiting to get the CE right now, Amazon.com hasn't even emailed me a shipping confirmation yet. But I don't mind, I got it for $55 w/ free 2-day shipping. I should have it no later than Friday.

Well, I've normally had a brother or a friend put in the parts for me. I put in the CD drive and it works like a charm. All installed.

A small joke around here is that whenever someone opens this computer, a problem arises. I haven't seen one and this is the smoothest new part installation I've ever seen. Installed Oblivion in 10 minutes.

I'm off to sample it ;D If I am not back in five hours, assume I'm enjoying it still. If not back in ten, order pizza for me.

See this is why I love consoles.

Anyways Best Game Ever PERIOD. Probably the best collectors edition ever too. I mean you can just tell how much effort they put into both. Astonishing.

Fag. I want Oblivion. GIMME!

Ya I'm currently downloading the torrent from Mininova. 15 seeds, 10,000 leechers. I like those odds.

Have fun with no MODS :XBOX:

Or the editor. Or the fact its a port to the 360, not the other way around. :D

Haha, as if they would even pretend to use starforce knowing at least 30% of the fanbase would flip them off and pass the game over if they did. (or pirate it) Even Ubisoft has dropped starforce now so, yeah, that doesn't bid well for them.

New card is the sex BTW. HDR is running with most things on high detail (keeping shadows down a bit cause they always hit game performance pretty hard) with a consistant 35~45 fps. I am happy.

It's nice looking but at times (ie: rain), I get TREMENDOUS lag spurts. I usually have to load or zone to ditch it. Some points it runs like butter. Other points? Not so much... What makes people and things glow? Kinda hurts my eyes ;__;

HDR does that... you can disable it if you want but it effects the environment in a large way too. I lagged a bit at the very start, but once I got outside the first dungeon everything ran great (even in the rain;l though rain+huge city drops my FPS but never past an acceptable level). I was pretty surprised. I am pretty sure the game has a memory leak, though. Some people are having problems where the game starts to stutter really bad after about 2 hours. Hopefully they will patch that up quickly.

Well, I get laggy in the city. Once I got outside the sewers, I turned on the map while standing on the docks at the exit from them. Huge lag.

Get another on occasion in the arena.

Arena is quite lengthy ^__^ I've fought probably about 10 battles and they keep oooon comin'.

Oh. And two elven sisters who fight you pissed me off so I tried the old god code (tgm). It works xD I'll disable it. But it's too much fun in the arena to cheat it. Plus, more money =d

haha... I should try some of the older cheat stuff then if that one worked. I thought the guy in the live feed just sucked when he got owned by the two sisters. You're the third person who has complained about them, though, so I guess not.

I have already stated my opinion on the PC version and why I bought the 360 version. So I don't need to bother to explain it again to the two fools above.

Are we grown ups here?

Bear in mind the lag, sir ;_;

Yeah, but I just thought I'd make a comment (Xbox version has no mods), if that's ok with you...
Ass.

Best. Game. Ever. See sig for screenshots (lipid domain banner)

Hey Lipid, would you mind posting your specs? I'm interested to see what they are in regards to the screenshots you've taken.

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.

Yeah i shouldnt have said "the worst ever" but what i meant is i don't like how things are set up

some characters will talk to you for hours like they learned their text by heart,

i'm not speaking about the voices themselves, some are really good, i'm mostly dissapointed by the dialogues

also, i'm often dissapointed by PC RPG's as they all have the same graphic signature, they pretty much all look the same except Blizzard Games which are fun and original (i don't play wow and i don't want to start a war between those games^^)



and the fact that you can kill NPC in villages is useless, and some people will be like "wow this is soo realistic" but useless...


Btw, this game is absolutely not for me but it should be a great game for people who have time to dive into it, people who like realistic, people who think they had a life in the medieval times :p

HELLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SPOILERS!

You know, that's pretty basic story-line stuff. You discover that within the first 30 minutes.

Well fuck, if EB hadn't fucked up my pre-order, I would KNOW THIS.

I just got the game from a friend, and I'm going to check it out when I get home tonight. I'll be able to play on Medium Settings apparently :)

>.> I just saw that the game will be release tomorow in canada >.> this mean if i'm lucky i'll have it friday and if i'm not, next monday >.>

I really hope it will be worth it, well at least the gameplay and all seem interesting(just dont like the old medieval style)

Most people should know you can equip swords before they buy Oblivion.

Some people, however, tried very hard to NOT be spoiled about the storyline of the game before it came out.

So fuck you very much, sir.

The AI is so good! ._.

Woo! Just got the game today, I'll try it out in a bit. The Game said it would be at "Medium" Video Settings, which I guess is in the middle.

My PC's specs:
CPU: 2.8Ghz Pentium 4
Ram: 1GB Ram
Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 9700

--edit--
I'll be trying it out in a few minutes, just as soon as I get done burning the ISO to a disc, which should be about done.

Its done! Time to try it out =D

Since Morrowind was awesome, I have great faith in this one.

Geez, my monitor sucks so hard, even if I'd have my new PC already, I wouldn't be able to play it. For example, take this screen. I can't see anything besides the interface. ;_;

In addition to this, I'm still unsure if I'd get the English or the German versions. It seems as if the place where I could get the game for free will also get the English version. Some sources say, that the German translation of Oblivion's dialogues is totally screwed. While the voice actors did a good job, items have names like Schw. Tr. d. Le.en.-W. and the first spell to heal is called Fireball. :tpg:

The screenshots appear darker than they look in game, and there's also a gamma slider. Not to mention a host of Light spells :)

Well, even so, my monitor wouldn't be able to display dark colors. If I'd use the gamma slider, all those bright colors would look really awkward. After all it's a permanent error and the problem also arises while watching animes, playing games and so on.

That screenshot is really dark, and my computer screen is on "Doom 3" brightness settings. The game should generally be quite a bit brighter than that, I hope.

<shrug> I can see it fine. Non-LCD monitors ftw.

ok im so stupid, i cant figure out how to fast travel on the pc version.
someone help me.

I have a CRT monitor as well.~
Perhaps this screen was a bad choice to demonstrate you my monitor's suckiness. Let's try another example: There's no difference between my sig color and Gamingforce's background color, although I know that my signature should be a lot darker.

Then why don't you adjust your monitor?

There are brightness/contrast/color controls, you know. And GFF's background color is blue, your sig is black. Why not fix your colors first?

And my monitor shows that screenshot as all black with just a HUD and bright orange spot in the center.

Brightness: 100%
Contrast: 100%

Trust me, I have to get a new monitor. :tpg:

Press TAB, then open the map (click on the compass) and click on the place you want to go when you are outside (inside it won't work).

Well, I got fucked over by Amazon's sluggish supply chain for my Oblivion CE order. The esitmated shipping date was today (I had preordered on the 11th), but I still haven't had any updates to the order and they usually start shipping it in the early to mid-morning.

So i'm just going to download the thing and start early, they have no one to blame but themselves.

What I would like to know is: how are you people getting this game to work? Still no fix for the CTD problems, which are game-breaking. The official tech support forums are seeing 200+ new threads per hour and god knows how many actual posts...

I actually have the same problem as David Deluxe, though not quite as extreme. I've found the only fix is changing color settings on the graphics card, but in order to get it to a level where you can actually see dark pictures, movies, and games you have to move it to where everything else is terribly washed out. It's quite a drag having a dying monitor.

I dont have any CTD problems that make the game in any sense unplayable. When I alt-tab, it gets screwey sometimes, but thats usually it. Maybe once every 3-5 hours will i CTD. And that's fine by me :)

thx, i just came out of the sewers but i cant find the city im supposed to go to :(. Dont tell me i have to go their by foot :(.

No. Just get to the nearest city. From there you can fast travel. Actually I accidentally stole a horse too. Hehe.

Man I'm still level 1 though. Is it that hard to level? I get like blade skill ups, but my base level is still 1. Even after

You only level up if you advance your major skills a certain amount of times. I think 10, cumulative.

My character is level 7 and im not sure how far into the story i even am, atm. I'd check the guide but i refuse to ruin anything.

That's good to hear. The game won't let me uninstall; just gives an error message. I tried deleting everything and wiping the registry of entries, so we'll see if that does anything. Already have the latest drivers for all hardware, so not much I can do there. For me, the game is unplayable in its present state, and I far exceed the minimum specs...

They suggest uninstalling it from the launcher as opposed to your control panel. I know it's a shitty suggestion but it's the best I can think of ATM. :/

Wow, I just installed the game and got through the the dungeon/sewers and had absolutely no problems with crashing and very minimal slowdown (mainly when there were enemies present) with my oh so humble system that detected high settings right off the bat (Athlon XP 2000+ 1.6GHz, 768MB Ram, Radeon X800XT, running at 2048x1536 with Firefox opened in the backgroud.) Overall, this is a beautiful game, which features very smooth gameplay (I especially liked the mouse gestures for different attacks with the katana, and how the gameplay physics were spot on.) Granted my card dosen't support HDR so the overall image quality is degraded when using Bloom.

This should run even better at 1024x768 like the game suggested.

After a bit of inital faggotry, I managed to get Oblivion to work on my comp.

And boy did it work. This easily has some of the best graphics I have ever seen, and it's a hell of an improvement from Morrowind. The full voice acting and generally improved interface and pacing have really helped me get into the game in ways Morrowind never could. I love the concept of a free overworld where you can explore and such, but I like having a bit of guidance for things to do for the main quest. Morrowind just dumps you on a dock, but this has an actual narrative to follow.

Anyway, I'm currently

For you guys wondering about different configs, here's mine.

Graphics settings: Ultra High Quality (Everything max except AA, because you can't use it with HDR for some reason.)

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4200+
RAM: 2GB Corsair XMS Pro
Video Card: BFG 7800 GT OC

I didn't check my framerates, but I'm not having any issues with it. Seems pretty damn smooth to me.

haha man this game is so glitched. I fell down through the ground twice and Ive seen monsters in the middle of the city =D.

I like the game though. I dont care about the story, all im doing is looting houses haha.
Oh the amulet, it's gonna be sold soon xDD. Evul.

You need the amulet for the main quest.

Just got the game and played a few hours. The game runs fine on my hardware (AMD 3000+, 1G RAM, 6600gt) at medium to high settings and looks great. Haven't gotten into any big battles yet but areas with many NPCs is OK.

Unless I totally overlooked it, one thing I don't like is the interface and how it won't let you display any of the windows ontop of the actual game like in Morrowind. I usually like to have a tiny map in the corner, and even maybe several other windows open depending on the case. But now it looks like to me the interface was designed especially for the xbox in mind. Just because a TV screen would handle all this detail like crap is no way to take it away from the PC version. There's also no map zoom (well not that I have seen) which I thought would be standard. I hope a patch or mod gets released so I can do exactly these things.

Another thing which I thought was odd was the boundaries of the game world. Morrowind was good since it was surrounded by water and I don't think I ever tested the boundaries. In this one going to the boundary gives me a message saying I can't go there. Why not???? Would have been better if they made it somehow impossible to reach that boundary to make it somewhat more realistic.

Other than these few quirks I have (which are probably pointless anyway), I think the game is great and I can see many hours being wasted. I don't see any PC game on the horizion which will gain my attention for a while.

Got my copy from IGN. Best part is, the game won't be out here until tomorrow =D

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/1...once9ih.th.jpg

edit: the coin rocks.

what does the coin do?
And is there anyway to get rid of your bounty? I went on a theif sprea and stole tons of stuff from imperial city (the prison, armoury, inn etc etc). and to my surprise someone had called the guards without any msg from the game :(. So while was sneaking around a guard just came from behind and molested me.
I manged to escape but hey how fun is it to be hunted in the biggest city >_>.

Turn yourself in or pay off the bounty.
You will continue to drift from Vverdenfell but you will never ever actually "reach" a new land mass. Also the design of the ocean floor stoppped being nicely detailed and you only have this sand colored floor that looks like it has floor tiles.

i ment like other ways. Maybe bribe someone.
I watched my friend play Oblivion and he had turned into a vampire and he was so pissed off :(. But i thought it waas kinda cool, feed on humans and stuff. He's going mad trying to mix diffrent stuff to make a anti-vampire potion.

Lol... The launcher just gives you an error message. They couldn't even ge the installer right! The game doesn't work and there's no way to uninstall it. I just bought a $60 paperweight until a patch comes out...

The total Collector's Edition package.

http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/6...otal7dw.th.jpg

The map that comes with the game. I'm pretty dissapointed, because the one that came with Morrowind was much more detailed. This map makes the game looks small, which it's not.

http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/5...nmap7wd.th.jpg

One side of the coin.

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6...oin17wh.th.jpg

And the other one, since they tend to have two sides.

http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/457...oin28jq.th.jpg

You're also immune to all diseases, you are super strong, sunlight can kick your ass. NPC's will always either run or charge at you, and the worst of all - your progress in the story comes to a screaching halt for as long as you're a vampire. So yea I don't blame him for freaking out.

oh.
well uh... then on his behalf, how do you get cured? cuz he still havent figured it out.

I can't answer that one - different game = different method of getting it cured. I only know about Morrowinds method.

I'm still early in, but I need a play to stay, where I can store my stuff and get a good night's sleep. I can't afford a house yet, so does anyone have any recommendations?

If I pick any old place NPCs will loot my stuff or it'll disappear. Where can I store my weapons?

Will the blade's guild work?

I dumped all my stuff at the room on the second floor on the east wing. Im kinda curious to see if they are still there when i return.

In the beginning of the main quest I dumped some equipment near the guy that takes the amulet, because I couldn't carry it with me. When I returned days later, it was still there.

Man I didnt' know you had to sleep before you can level up. Also, the inn fee, it seems that you can only sleep in intervals of 3 hours or something. Do they charge extra if you keep on sleeping in? I forgot to check my gold level before and after I did this.

Why would you sleep longer than an hour?

So it's daylight when you go travelling? I do it all the time. Walking around at night is ok but it's easier to see if you're outside wlaking around at 10 AM instead of midnight.

Also, the thieves guild missions are a riot and a half. Especially since you can't kill anyone on them, it makes sneaking into and out of houses and castles pretty intense at times.

Sleep is only good for recovery. If I need to do something at a particular time then I use 'wait'. Why bother trying to find a place to sleep when I can do the same thing at the destination I want.

I purchased this game yesterday for the PC and it's been running pretty well for such an old computer. I've been running it on medium settings and I expected it to look bad because of this. But even at medium or low settings it looks really nice.

I would like to up a few things but since I lack the ram or processor power my system is bottlenecked.

However.. I did encounter one problem. Whenever I see some kind of invisible person or enemy the whole screen goes completely weird. I'm not sure how to explain it. I guess it's artifacting. It just gets all grainy, pixely, and blocky around the object. While the invisible object looks just fine.

Which doesn't make me feel very good because that leads me to believe something is wrong with my card. That or something wierd is going on.

Oh also is there any easy way to make a little bit of money? Its embarassing but ive been having trouble making it

Your card isn't failing, it just doesn't support what's needed to be supported. What card is it?

Also, join the Thieves Guild and sell your good to a fence to make some good money. The arena is quite fun too, and gets you more money every fight you do.

i made my own class with some sneaking skills but mainly up front brawling, is it worth joing the theifs guild? Or is the missions like too hard to do unless you have some sort of backstab attack.

You're not even allowed to kill during missions of the Thieves Guild.

As long as you have a decent sneak and security skills, you should be fine for the thieve's guild stuff. Be prepared to use lots of lockpicks if you're not good at that security minigame though.

Woah this game is so awesome. The sheer amount of stuff you get to do is just blowing me away.

I got something like that too:

hmm i dont think that's the quest im doing

All i have done so far is been in Choral and the beginning area, but I played forever. However, I make money for easily because when you join a guild, you seem to be able to just take whatever is inside the guild and sell it right back to the trader within the guild area. So basically I picked up ton of alchemy devices and bartered for a ton of gold.

I don't really know why Bethesda made that once you join the guild you can just take whatever yyou want and sell it back to them. But what you gonna do, still greatest game ever.

Funny thing i saw when i was searching for a cave, two guards were shooting eachother with arrows, it looked damn funny. I dont know why they were doing it though,,,,

It's a Geforce 6600GT. If it just doesn't support something then that takes a load off me. I really dont have the money to go buy a new card. Not to mention AGP cards are starting to get hard to find around here. They're all PCIe.

But Im still worried there's something wrong with the card..

Mm, it should work. Did you try to update the drivers?

Double Post:
One thing I find annoying in the TES adventures is how NPCs would suddenly stop walking and say "what is it citizen?" as if I even asked them something.

Where is a good place to store some shti? I got tons of stuff that I want to store.

Also, where can I buy a house? How much is it?

Gotta talk to the right folks for a house 10,000-25,000 are the only two I've found. Can't recall the cities >__>; hafta talk to then bribe the right folks. Bribing is a frequent method you need. I don't know why, but the Persuasion system (four-quadrant circle with Joke/Flatter/etc on it) is god-fuckin' awful. You have to pick one of each and often end up with lower score than you had beforehand. I just bribe. Much easier.

Oh. And the Thieves & Assasins guilds are just fantastic.

And the oblivion gate? ;___; Soooooo damn cool. Cinematic, to boot. Oblivion is worlds superior to Morrowind. After playing this, I won't be able to bring myself to enjoying Morrowind again =p I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Thus far, I'm just doing Thieves Guild, Assassins Guild (forget the name. Tired), and the Arena for now. I HIGHLY recommend the Assasins guild. Murder an innocent and a note will pop up at the top of the screen saying your killing was witnessed by unknown forces or something like that. You'll be visited in your sleep.

All the missions are very Hitman-ish. Gotta kill a person. If you do it a certain way under certain restrictions, you get a bonus item (which are always fantastic).

The thieves guild requires you to freelance and collect stolen items, and sell to a fence. Once you reach a certain level of cash you've received from the fences, you meet with your boss-type fella and he'll give you special missions.

Any real easy way to handle Discussion & Lock-Picking minigames? When I get to lock picking minigames, I just hit tab (to enable mouse/console) and choose Auto Attempt. The mouse is god-awful for picking. You nudge one tumbler up and it comes down a moment later. How do you get multiple?! O_o;

Also, any clues on how to invest in a store? I see it on the statistics chart (Far right menu if you hit F1).

For store investments I think you need to be journeyman in mercantile.

o snap

Any way to train it or work it up? Haven't seen any trainers for it.

What's with the random people on GF and the official Oblivion boards bitching about the major/minor skill system and levelling? A bunch of people are writing shit like unless you know exactly what you're doing, you'll level too fast and then get smoked by even the low powered enemies.

I picked up this game, and I was wondering... I was big fan of older scroll, but I loved how I was able to abuse glitches. Anyone think that there are going to be major glitch? (Like infinite summoning.)

I'm a warrior right now. What's the easiest way to make gold? I barely bought myself a shack with a closet inside. -_-

I don't understand how I'll save 25k+ for a good house. (I found you have to talk to the head of the town usually to buy a house, like the count or duke of it)

There's a few confirmed exploits, one where you can pick up 8g off a body over and over and over...and another regarding stealing from stores in broad daylight.

Then there are of course cheats. Just play it through legit first before you cheatzors.

Ok, well I pretty much gave up on trying to get into the thieve's guild since


I decided to make my own class, and I'm balancing myself between blade/heavy armor with a bit of athletics along with Destruction and Healing Magic.

The only downside with the Oblivion gates missions is that it gives me slowdown if a lot of enemies are on screen >_> Of course I only have a ATI Radeon Mobility 9700, so that's partially to blame.

The game is fun overall though, I like the Arena fighting especially. Get paid to Kick Ass :D

About how long does it take before you can start doing stuff at the arena?

Dark Nation:

The garden is in the backyard of some building. Look to the compass and local map (F1) and head along to it in the waterfront. Facing away from the entrance, hang a left and hang a left into a passageway opposite the pirate ship docked to your leftish. Then hang a left and walk to one of the backyards. Just head there at midnight. No real deadline/time limit.

Where did you buy a closet or whatnot for storage? Didn't know there was a purchaseable place in the first town =(

>.> they ran out of stock because of all the pre-order >.> now I have to wait one more week >.> oh hell i'll download it >.<

Well, I personally started , but I imagine you could technically start right after you exit the sewers at the very beginning of the game, although you'd probably

Does anyone know if Joining the Thieve's Guild will put you on bad terms with the Blades or other Guilds? Can I join a Fighters Guild AND a Magic Guild?

Oh, and thanks for the tip Gechmir, I'll try it out in a minute, just as soon as someone answers the above first question :)

How do you join the Blades?! =OOO I wanna do it. I'm in the middle of Dark Brotherhood missions. God are there a lot.


Oh. And the thieves guild won't put you at odds with other factions really. Unless you go about it all wrong. I stole everything that wasn't nailed down in the Mage & Fighter's guilds after joining them =p They give you membership keys. Odd thing was, a few in-game days after I stole from the Mage's guild, they kicked me out. Kind of a late response o__O;

Oh. And when you're building up money levels at the thief guild, be sure to sell stolen items. When you loot items in houses, some don't have the red hand symbol. If it's red, you get fence-points/cash for it. I went to an old mission house and sold everything but my fence points didn't go up. Thought it was a glitch but it's because the house's owner was cleared out earlier. Was an easy mark =p Too easy to credit as stealing.

this look so fun ; ; well at least the torrent is running good, I'll probably can play tomorow

Well when I took The only downside to the GREAT equipment that you can recieve from there is that its not sellable, meaning a Gold Value of 0... but those Akivari swords sure do thier job well!

Alright, well now I'll see if I can join the thieve's guild and see what happens.

Ok I have a problem, I asked on other boards, but no one responded. If someone coudl try exactly what I did and see what happens I would appreciate it.

Basically I am in Chorral. I pickpocketed a key from FIRE AND STEEL, her name is rasheda. So I could get into her place at night and steal shit while she is asleep. Also I did the same thing for the locked doors in the Chorral Chapel.

However, the problem is when the door is locked at night at FIRE AND STEEL, it wont open. ANd i have the key on me. It says RASHEDAS key. Also I have the key for locked Chapel Undercroft that I stole of the main church head and those doors dont open. WTF is going on. And what is the point of pickpocketing keys if they dont work.

I have a question as well.

You can't get daedric armor until you are level 20+. Supposedly, when you get higher levels, items in caves, dungeons, etc all get better.

So does that mean if you loot a bunch of caves on level 5 and get iron armor and stuff, that you'll miss out on daedric armor when you turn level 20+?

Does it work that way? Something about that sounds off, so I'm thinking that can't be right, but I'm not sure.

I don't want to loot any caves yet knowing that if I wait until level 20+ I could loot much better items.

This is going to sound really retarded, but how do you just stuff? Like say you accidentally stole from someone, and you want to drop it. Or say you want to put your sword on display or something.

just drop stuff? Don' know what you are playing on, but just press x in the inverntory to drop or hit the left shoulder button to hold it out in front of your face and then you can move it around like that. However, with the physics in this game, I have a hard time standing things up or not knocking other stuff over when moving something.

I'm just speculating here, but since plants grow back their contents in a couple months, my guess is that dungeons get re-inhabited and refitted with loot after some time.

EDIT: Yeah, this is the case. I revisited a camp and found a new, higher level mob and some loot.

Yeah, Bethesda already said all dungeons and bandits and such respawn. Have fun killing pretty much whatever you want, since guards/bandits/etc are infinite and so is loot. :)

I do hope they get a patch out sometime, though... this game dips pretty bad and I have a pretty good idea of why it does it. I imagine in a week or so there will be a patch to fix the issue so FPS might stay a little more consistant. Tired of looking one way and having an NPC walk by and my FPS drop from 60 to 35 or some crap like that. Terribly annoying.

So, what class have you guys been playing with?

Aww c'mon abusing bugs was freaking fun on the last version. And yes I play legitly, but only abuses bugs when I am bored.

Using 'Z'.

I bought this game yesterday and payed an insane amount of money for it(60USD). Now I only hope my Geforce FX 440 can support this game's graphics, and my P4 is 2.53ghz >_>.

I don't know what class I want to be. In morrowind I was a mage, and then I restarted and played thief alittle. I might try making a custom class. It will cool to be face to face with

If you spent time reading the requirements, you would find out the card is supported >.>

Well yea I read that it said FX series but you know my card is old as hell. :P

Longest install ever~

How is that even noticable?

Try being on my system, where it drops from 22 fps to 6 fps if there's a few goblins and warriors onscreen.

Ever install WoW? THAT's the longest install ever.

Installed everything, updated my drivers for my card, and you know what? "Oblivion has encountered an error and needs to be closed".

Time to go poke around and see what's wrong.

Well here's my problem. I can't read XD. My card is Geforce4 MX 440 with AGP8X - 64MB. Aka unsupported whee time to buy new one monday.

Where can you buy lockpicks? Only a few NPCs held them that I recall (merchant for Dark Brotherhood). Any others? I really need some >_>;

So no one can help me huh? Yah right -_-

Just a guess BZ, but what actually makes the doors unlockable might be an event you unlock which opens the door.

Like them giving you their key or allowing you access to their house.

I'm not sure though.

You need Expert, not Journeyman.

When your frame rate drops by half you feel a stutter. I know 35 isn't a bad FPS when it's consistant but dropping from 60 to 30~35 over and over is.

I'm finally playing the game and I'm at the point where I get to choose my class. I chose my birthsign as the Thief. In hindsight I'm thinking that might not have been such a great idea . . . I'm a dark elf and plan to go your a sword fighter that backs up his martial prowess with magic. So far I was thinking of making the following skills major:

Alchemy
Alteration
Blade
Destruction
Illusion
Marksman
Restoration

Also. why do I have five kajillion FFDshow audio decoders open in my system tray while Oblivion is running?

Is their a command to display FPS?

Is there a way to change your appearance after starting the game? I just downloaded some new eye mods and I really want to change my Dark Elf's eyes.

Wow this game is so amazing! and I thought that I couldn't really enjoy the graphic, but i'm happy that I can run it with evrything at max with 2xAA (except HDR which my video card don't support)

now I just finish the crypt(sp?) just after the sewer, my frame rate is good well for me it's good ^^ there some time that there a little freeze here and there but nothing really to bother... even in outdoor it still ok. I'll just wait till i'm in a city to see how it goes and i'll ajust the setting with that ^^

but wow very fun game (but the character are really ugly >.>)

This game is so freaking amazing, it has more than exceeded my expectations already. After playing about 17 hours in the last three days it has really grown on me. I really like how Bethesda has enhanced the character growth system and added benefits for having your various skills at a certain level as it adds so much more depth to training your character. I also really like the ability to add poison to your weapons. Granted it is only good for one strike, but if used strategically (like apply a paralysis potion to your sword) it will give you a major advantage over foes stronger than you, especially when you combine it with the 2x or 4x sneak bonus.

There is only one thing that annoys me however, the fact that invisible NPCs/enemies and certain types of magic animation (Alteration I think) will bring my FPS to 0. I don't know if its just a memory leak or if they use some really GPU intensive method to do both of that, but it has prevented me from attempting one quest so far (Allswell). Everything else though runs at a very smooth 30-40 fps, even when I’m in a bit town or fighting multiple people (like a necromancer and his undead minions.)

Is it true the enemies level up with you as you level? Because I've noticed no matter what level I am against enemies they're just as strong.

Which has me worried because that would mean I should get the game over with before I'm too high. Otherwise I'll get my ass handed to me.

Well, I believe there's a combat difficultly slider in the options in case you get stuck on a particular encounter.

Does anybody know how to haggle well? The merchants are ripping me off. I really need to increase my mercantile skill - can you only do that by buying and selling stuff?

Persuade, get them higher up. Then increase haggle slider and that, in turn, increases mercantile skill.

Or Find a trainer.

GGE(Greatest Game Ever)

The more I play the more fun this game is. Right now I'm just going about aimlessly doing whatever mission comes by and getting up the ranks in the mages guild. The hours are counting and I haven't even touched the main quest yet. Need to join the thieve's guild soon though with all the loot I'm amassing :p

im in chorrol and there is this inn that is run by this tiger looking thing

Yeah I think I heard that too. Didn't find anything either. Maybe something later in the game happens. Also in Chorral

Oh and it's a Khajit, RACIST!

So my girlfriend says to me she says, "It's impossible to make an attractive looking female character in this game."

I was inclined to agree, until I finally sat down and took the creation system seriously.

http://www.gigapress.com/1up/oblivion_janissary.jpg

Mission accomplished? :X The shot is from the 360 version and my camera.

I started over for my third (!) time with this character too. I finally know how I want to play this game and in only a few hours, I've completely caught up with myself. Yay!

Yeah, it's not impossible. I made a pretty good looking imperial guy, too, for my main. It just takes a lot of manipulation to get the damn thing to give good results. Personally, everyone else in the game can look as hideous they want but my main character has to look acceptable or I find it difficult to enjoy the game.

yeah there is a rumor



Im thinking of continuing the main quest now lol been playing detective long enough. For some reason i hate the oblivion part. it's just so boring and not that cool, they were so hush-hush about it and when i finnally saw it was like.. standard hell...
Anyone know if the Gates are random or if their places are set?

Install FRAPS, it'll display your FPS.

Yup, it's true. You can, however, put the difficulty lower.

I love...

Ok... I gained like 2 levels in an hour. That seems a little fast. Time to start using my minor skills - heavy armor, marksman and blunt. Is anybody finding that they are levelling too fast?

Where do you go to join the guilds? I asked one of the Imperial City guards and he told me that there were no guilds in the city. I haven't come across any yet.

Fighters Guild can be joined in three places, but I don't remember where. Thieves Guild can be joined by...



No idea about the others.

I found some neato stuff:

To enable FPS display: ~ to open the console, then type "TDT"

To improve performance outside: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=283055

Basically:

Go to your Oblivion game folder,

"OBlivion_default"

Search for [Grass]

[Grass]
iMinGrassSize=80
fGrassEndDistance=3000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=2000.0000
bGrassPointLighting=0
bDrawShaderGrass=1
iGrassDensityEvalSize=2
iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=2
fWaveOffsetRange=1.7500

Change the iMinGrassSize=80 to something like =140, or 160 (I'm using 160). Then you can increase the EndDistance to 10000.0000 and the FadeDistance to 5000.0000. You must make the file READ-ONLY to prevent Oblivion from resetting these to default.

Any word on a patch yet?

Holy crap. Why did this suddenly get so hard?

it works, better than i thought it would.. and i only have 768megs of ram.

so far its great.. wish it supported gamepads tho, looks better on my tv than monitor

So how much does the FPS improve with this?

Got the same problem too. I changed the difficulty to something lower.

Eheh. It gets harder as you continue into the city ;( There are fire elemental thingies. You fight a few and they are TOUGH sonsabitches.

I didn't check my FPS before - but other people that have done it have reported increasing their FPS as much as 10 when outside.

well, I don't think all lagging comes thanks to grass. Some points, everything is as smooth as butter in the thickest of forests, fighting conjurers and crap. But other times I'll be walking out in a town at midnight with almost no one outside and it'll get choppy ;_;

For PC screenshots:

In Oblivion_Default, change

bAllowScreenShot=0 to bAllowScreenShot=1

Print Screen. It'll save the BMP for ya.

anyone else having a problem loading save games? sometimes, not always, it freeze my computer and i have to cold boot. Ive read on the offical forums.. some having this problem.

I encountered a weird bug. I was stealing in a house, and some woman came downstairs. She didn't catch me stealing, but said "get out of my house!". I left, and since that moment she follows me everywhere I go. Even when I fasttravel, she's there.

Lol. Kill her, maybe she'll haunt you as a ghost!

I really like the game, first I was worried that it wouldn't run good. But Thank god it does. It don't have very high FPS, but with this game it's not that important. I played Daggerfall and Morrowind, and I'm glad it still feels the same when I played the other games.
I'm now Grand Champion by fighting in the Arena. You can make some nice money there.

i did that grass thing and i got MASSIVE performance boost. Funny thing is that it works much better even indoors where there arent any grass...

Is there an ending to this game?

Do you guys have any mods installed? I've currently got some eye mods installed (they add extra sets of eyes) - having only one set of eyes for Dark Elves at character creation was lame. Now my elf has Lilac coloured eyes. I also plan on installing a mod that slows down skill progression because I hate levelling from casting a create light spell like 4 times and from constantly using my restoration spells. I also found a mod that puts a free house somewhere in the world - I'm definitely going to use that because I'm way too poor to be able to buy one at the moment. I can't even afford to buy new spells.

Changing the line "bEnableBoundingVolumeOcclusion=0" to have a one instead of a zero bolstered my FPS in city areas by 15 steady FPS. Just figured I'd mention that for anyone who still might need some ini settings for better performance. If it helps anyone go ahead and post about it so I know it isn't just a trick of the mind. Heh.

Edit: Also, I have no clue what it does but it didn't seem to effect the graphical quality of the game in any way. (have mostly everything at max and nothing seems disabled or garbled in any way)

It sounds like it has something to do with your footstep volume . . .

One odd thing - when I run Oblivion I get a kajillion FFDshow audio decoders opening up in my system tray. W-T-F?

Grawl - how is that guide coming along?

We are working on it with a team of five or so. I'm only responsible for the Thieves Guild and Fighters Guild, and I'm currently doing the last quest for the Thieves Guild.

Five people. Wow. Who are you working with to write it?

Tweaked both of those ini thingies. Looks and runs dandy ;D Thanks!

Pretty much all of them are people of www.planetelderscrolls.com.

I don't have a "bEnableBoundingVolumeOcclusion" in my Oblivion_default. Odd. . .

Check the one in your "My Documents\My Games\Oblivion" folder... that's the ini the game actually uses.

Are all of you in the process of playing this game? It seems fairly nice, I haven't been able to play it on my own machine yet unfortunately because I'm not quite sure. It loves to just go, "Shit sux fag" and not even go into the game. "Play Oblivion" .. "Oblivion Encountered an Error and had to close." Hmmm.

Though, I have a fairly good idea what's keeping it from going. It's probably my 1.2 ghz Processor. Can anyone confirm or deny this? I know it's minimum requirements are atleast a 2 ghz processor. Though, Quake 3 is said to require 1.5 Ghz atleast.

why ask a question that you know the answer >.> you don't even meet the minimum so yeah that's probably the problem >.>

Even under the minimum you'd probably be able to start the game. Still, I don't think it would be worth trying to play the game with such a poor processor. Even if you had the most powerful video card on the market that proc would bottleneck it so bad it would be like playing on a midrange card, tops.

Hahaha, Never had any problem with other games. Plus, there are tweaks that you can do to limit the amount of abuse your processor endures. Some even mentioned in this thread.

You'd probably be surprized at how much you can do with such a bad processor.

EDIT: Also, I did abit of posting on the actual forums. I forgot about the little thing called SSE instructions that game developers are notorious for just going, "Oh, everyone's processor has it. We don't need to bother with those that don't.(I know they more then likely don't say that.)" until it comes out and they're slammed with people having a problem with it.

Either way, this problem is actually plaguing those who have Well and Over the actual minimum requirements.

well, i only can get 20fps outdoors.. and i have an ok system i guess

p4 3.0
768m
Geforce 6800 PCI-E 256m

PROTIP: Never allow yourself to be turned into a Vampire.

You will hate yourself and this game when you attempt to cure it.

AUGH.

Hmm, I became a vampire just because I thought it would be cool. I've yet to find reason to cure it, short of there being few places where people ACTUALLY sleep.

That's my only issue. Although, I like how your complexion changes as you starve. :D

I found another performance tweak while browsing the GameFAQs forums. Again, people report 8-10 FPS increase on average.

Change

iPreloadSizeLimit=26214400

[OPENMP]
iThreads=3
iOpenMPLevel=10


To

iPreloadSizeLimit=1000000000

[OPENMP]
iThreads=20
iOpenMPLevel=20

I have yet to test it myself. Also, nobody appears to know what this does - it just works.

Oh. In case anyone was wondering-

Before Vampirism

http://www.gigapress.com/1up/oblivion_janissary.jpg

AFTER OH GOD!!

http://www.gigapress.com/1up/oblivion_janissary2.jpg

She has become. . a man ;______; Or an old, Italian aunt.

Yeah, can't wait for a usermod to change that... maybe just do something to the eyes to signify you are a vampire because the way Bethesda does it is very irritating.

Well I don't know about the 360 Version, but on the PC your eyes turn a light red hue, along with the obvious skin changes. I'll post a screencap once I can make sure its screencaping correctly.

*spoilerz*
Also on the Cure Vampire Quest, I found all the ingrediants, but the lady seems to think I don't have Garlic and Nightshade, which I have at least one of both. Do I need multiple garlics and nightshades, or is it some sort of bug?

What an original and unique usertitle you have there >.>

I'm having a problem. I'm in Chorrol and doing a quest about inspecting a missing painting.



Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? ._.

Aha... ha. Thank you. <.<

I know that. I just mean, maybe a usermod can change it so your face doesn't completely change. JUST have your eyes change and maybe complexion change. I'm not one to complain about vampires looking creepy; but the way it happens in this game it basically says "fuck all the time you spent in the character creator... use the default, ugly face, to make you wish you never became a vampire". Eheh.

Screenies from Dark Brotherhood stuff tonight:

What's the literature like?

Are there as many nooks and crannies about Cyrodiil as in Vvard (hideouts, mini colonies, secret dungeons, lairs)? I get the impression from the screens I've seen that most of the content's located in the cities and immediate vicinities.

Could I run it smoothly at least on a 2Ghz P4/6600GT/2GB RAM? Any point installing even more RAM? Zero-lag is far more of an issue for me than prettiness. Oblivion could look like Morrowind and I wouldn't care.

More ini tweaks that may or may not help.

dont use the iFPSClamp!!!! sure it will stick your fps to 80 but all the agme will be like playing in slow-motion... the 2 others seem to work though

It's so weird. Nobody had to do all this .ini editing(atleast I didn't) for Morrowind just to get it to play at a desirable framerate. LOL Oblivion is so technologically badass that you need a super computer from the future.

You dont need a super computer. You just need a mid range system or high end system built recently. Not from 2-3 years ago. :P

Edit: I also dont understand the part about that ram thing. Do I just put the amount of ram I have in each field? Or is it how much Oblivion uses out of my ram at a time?

My game ran fine before any tweaking. The tweaking is just to get a little boost here and there.

BTW - the slow levelling mod rules. I can actually hit people with my sword without gaining levels every two seconds.

Levelling tips (I haven't read them yet, but it's long and looks interesting) - http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=300984

Quick question - How is your total magicka calculated? Does it go up each level based on your intelligence like your HP/endurance? The manual just says that you start with magicka = 2xInt

Eeh... Morrowind was a state-of-the-art game, and a high-end system was needed to play this at the time.

Besides that, Morrowind had a whole slew of issues all on it's own. Oblivion, thus far, doesn't seem to have any game destroying bugs. Morrowind on the other hand was a glitch-fest when it was first released. Lot of people don't realize that, though, 'cause they didn't get into the game until the GOTY edition came out.

I found another ini tweaking thread. This one provides ini's to download. I'm currently using the other tweaks that I posted in the thread (except for the FPSClamp), but I might switch to one of these if they work better.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=299166

Regarding the Gray Fox:

So I'm using a mod that makes you level skills slower and I "borrowed" a fine steel longsword from one of the fighters guilds - the game is suddenly much more manageable. I can actually do damage in melee now!

I don't understand why everyone want to lv slower >.> if your lv is lower you do less dmg no?

and for the tweaks: I have a

AMD64 3200+
1g ram (HyperX dual channel or something like that)
Radeon X800 pro

and i'm on high setting, but I can put almost everything to max and have a good fps

but to have the best performance, I tried those tweaks (use the gloom one because my card dont suport hdr) and yes the fps is now great but the gloom is too much! like in imperial everything is so bright, it's like even the stone wall are reflecting light! XD

Yeah, I know. You are not looking hard enough. Take your time.

I want to level slower because when I level at the default pace I get pwned by the enemies in the ugly ass city after the first Oblivion gate. Yes, I am stubborn, I don't want to lower the difficulty slider.

I'm also probably going to use a mod that gives x5 multiplier for gaining one level of a skill of the appropriate type - cuz you know, wasting time levelling 30 levels of skills each level to ensure that I get those modifiers is a huge pain in the ass and makes me enjoy the game less. I play this to feel emersed and to do what I want, not to feel like I'm grinding in a MMORPG except by myself.

oh I see >.> but I finished the first gate and yes me too I get owned one shot by the monster in the city... and i'm still lv 1 >.<

well I might try that mod too than, but i'm still in the testing phase XD (to see which type of character I like the most)

oh and nvm about what I said about the tweaks >.> (those I made that when you start the game you don't have to change anything in the option XD)

I dont get it why it's so hard for everyone... What skills do you have? I have Blade, sneak, speech and heavy armor and im breezing through the battles >.>

My major skills are: Alteration, Blade, Destruction, Illusion, Light Armor, Mysticism and Restoration

I think the problem had more to do with the fact that I wasn't getting x5 stat multipliers when I was levelling up. I usually had 2-3 - basically, I wasn't doing a lot of damage and the enemies were doing stupid amounts of damage to me. The fact that I couldn't afford new weapons, armor or spells at level 4 also certainly didn't help.

woah you can get x5?! I only got 3 and 2 :/. Is it decided on how much you use the skills?

Yes. Each skill upgrade gives you a .5 addition to the modifier for the stat that governs that trait. e.g. increase Heavy Armor skill by one level = x.5 modifier to endurance - so you need to raise 10 skill levels per stat to get the maximum modifier. You can raise any combination of skills with the same governing trait - their .5 addition is cumulative.

Yeah really, I can't figure it out either.

Besides, the enemies level when you level... it's not much use.

Yes it is. Levelling slower gives you more time to explore, earn money and upgrade your equipment so that it is at an appropriate level to give you a fighting chance against the enemies.

Does anybody know where I can find a mercantile trainer?

In the Fighter's Guild quest "Mystery at Harlun's Watch," I'm stuck. When I go into Swampy Cave and defeat the trolls inside, the strategy guide says that I need to look for Eduard Denile in the farthest south room. Problem is, the room doesn't have that person's body. The only things left are two skeletons, a troll, and two zombies. All other animals in the cave are killed. Is there something that I'm doing wrong, or is it a quest-stopping bug that I've encountered?

THANK YOU. People wrote long and confusing paragraphs about how the stat upgrade works and all they needed to say was that. Thanks for finally getting me to understand how that works!! You're the best!

:biggrin:

I dunno, I got a elven weapon set (long sword and shield) at level 5 or so. It's not a terribly difficult game by any stretch unless you have a bunch of stuff like mercantile, speechcraft, unarmed, block, and security as all your major skills. =\

So far I've found that leveling relatively fast (I'm level 15 right now) hasn't really given me any problems. *shrug*

Geez?! 15!

I'm level 5 and I've "beat" the Dark Brotherhood Guild. How are you doing on gear and quests?

Theives guild done, Arena done, lots of misc. quests done (A few more than 55 total quests done, according to stat sheet.)

Full Mithril armour set, some pretty spiffy rings and enchanted boots and a few magical chest pieces. Lots and lots of elven weapons. Bow, shortsword, etc. Lots of dwarven and deadric stuff, tonnes of enchanted weapons, a few glass weapons, one particularily huge enchanted glass war hammer worth like 6 grand, ummm....I dunno what else. 15000 septims, plus whatever I spent on my two houses, so...25k total I've accumulated? I dunno. Something like that.

Wow I feel like a retard. I found what I was missing and all I had to do was look down.

Man how could I miss that. I guess I really was rushing through. ._.

I didn't mention that the game only counts skills upgrades before you get the level up sign. If you raise 10 major skills, get the level up sign, and then level up 10 minor skills, those minor skills will be counted towards your NEXT level, and not the level that you will gain when you sleep.

I don't see why you'd want to level slower... some quests don't activate until higher levels and equipment is also level based. I kept the slider at default and am not having too much trouble against most enemies thanks to the great items I keep finding from all the dungeons and bodies I keep looting. :)

How is everyone doing?

Exploring the world of Oblivion with my Redguard thief/assassin has been nothing but a joy. As an acrobat I'm leveling pretty quickly, considering all I do is jump from rooftop to rooftop picking the town clean. I just hit level 20 last night and I have done zero quests along the main storyline.

I was wondering what you all felt about vampirism in the game. I just recently accepted the Dark Gift and I'm enjoying the bonuses thus far. For now I'm keeping myself well-fed, so I can still explore during the day and do various quests. However, eventually I plan on starving myself for blood to increase my vampiric abilities and slowly succumb to the monster within. At that point I'll go about the world leaving havoc and terror in my wake! :D

Have any of you thought about taking this route?

I myself have been playing the role of the "white knight", in the sense that I've been doing everyone's dirty work and have been getting scratch for it. But this path you speak intrigues me, and if you were to give me further details I'd be quite interested in laying waste to thoes petty imployers who do not appreciate the work I've done for them. Mwahahahahahaha... uh hum... sorry bout that ^^;

Where the hell do you buy ectoplasm potion or something?

I'm stuck at the same quest.

I got another small problem:


Currently I'm at Level 9, The Champion of the Arena, Envoker in the Mages Guild, and a beginner in the Fighter's Guild, despite my player not being much of a magic user, haha. The reason for the low level? I've been Opting to do missions more then exploration, although I should probably tackle a few more Oblivion Gates, and get the Thieve's Guild started.

--Edit--
For Ectoplasm, .

And A word of warning: Use Magic (Lighting seemed to work) or Silver Weapons on them.

Just came across a Daedra Lord quest that requires you to be at least level 17. Pretty glad I didn't wind up using the slow leveling mod now, especially if there are quests which require your level to be past 20. <.<

I've got a Breton custom class myself. Let's see... my skills are Blade, Light Armor, Sneak, Destruction, Acrobatics, and Security. I've done the Dark Brotherhood and am a vampire. It's... a mixed bag. On the one hand, I love the bonuses I get from it, but on the other, now that I've finished the DB, it's hard for me to keep up with my feeding. I also caved and bought the official guide for the game. It's already paid for itself, though: it taught me how to pick a lock EFFECTIVELY. I've gone for about a good 50 locks with ONE pick and a skill ranging from 35-42. <3

Geez, what's your game time like? I've done about 10 hours gameplay and am level 5.

Wish I had time to play more of this game, but a full time job and now further study ontop of that doesn't do me much good :(

Picking locks isn't that difficult. You just need to know what to look for or even what to listen to. Once you know the different ways the tumblers go up (and the distinct sound each one makes), you'll rarely break a lockpick. =P

Anyway, how's the rest of the guide?

What ;_; HOW do you pick locks?! Computer has you use a mouse. And moving over a tumbler takes a large swipe of it. Is there some way to stick the tumblers up as you pick it or something? Enlighten me please? ;( I always do auto-pick...

Move the mouse left and right to select a tumber, move it upward to push the tumbler into the slot. Push your attack/activation/whatever click to lock it into place. The tumblers make a small double click sound when they are going to fall slow so that's the best time to do it. Basically, you could do it with your eyes closed listening for the click-click when you push them up.

I found some pretty slick mods that you level scale haters might like:

Monster Random Level Mod

Level Scaling Cap


The second mod purportedly stops monsters from scaling as fast as you do levelwise. Also, it's supposed to cap NPCs' and weaker monsters' levels at a certain point.

The first mod, as the name implies, generates a random level for all monsters in the game. So basically it makes it more like a traditional RPG in the sense that the higher level you have, the more monsters you can strike down. I'm a little weary to use that one though since it might make some quests too difficult.

I love how brutal the fighting is. It's just so satisfying. I love hitting random noob bandits with my mighty daedric 2 handed sword. There's nothing like smashing through shields and do massive damage.

Easily the best part of the game.

hahaha yeah i love that. when i first saw it i thought i read it wrong and it was necromancy but noooo the bitch is a dirty elf XD

I've had 31 hours of playtime so far. I have a full time job as well, not to mention school after work everyday. I pretty much just spend as much (or as little) of my freetime playing Oblivion which usually means I play long into the nights.

And like I said before, I have barely even touched the main storyline. I spend probably 90% of my time just exploring, dungeon-crawling, or robbing cities! Between all of these activities my level has been steadily increasing with little signs of slowing down.

I'm not sure if I should get Oblivion or not for my PC. I'm certain that the game could run graphics wise on my system, but there always seems to be something that screws up on a lot of my PC games. Anyone else have the same problem?

Ahh, thanks... I'll give that a tryout in a minute :)

Yeah, the game IS quite buggy on PC. ffdshow HATES Oblivion, for one thing. I've also had numerous random crashes, and Oblivion REALLY doesn't like it when it gets alt-tabbed out of (be it by a pop-up window from Gaim's away message interface, or by the screen saver). I also remember one time where I was riding on a horse, and two bandits started chasing me. I got off, and the second I got off, I was kicked out of both the Mage's Guild and the Dark Brotherhood (the two factions I were in at the time).

So yeah, if you have the 360, then go ahead and get it for that. It'll be more stable, and if you can withstand the stuttering from loading times, the game will be much more enjoyable.

But is it really necrophilia if they're the LIVING dead?

Oh thank God I'm not alone. It opens a million of the icons, right?

My shell always crashes when I exit Oblivion so I never notice if there's icons down there.. But I do have ffdshow installed. I wonder if that has a performance hit on the game?

Ya I get a million of those icons. If I put my mouse over them, it disappears though. Odd thing is, every time I exit the game, my game crashes. Odd.

Damn Grawl are you playing Morrowind. The screen looks like it. Just kidding.

Well it does kinda look crappy, but you are making do with it seems.

Terra: You got it in slightly the wrong order, but I figured it out and got in. Now I gotta mess with some dammed ghosts >_>

on with the mission!

Yup. :(

I'm pretty curious what Bethesda did to their screenshots on the site, since they claimed they weren't doctored or artwork yet look nothing like my game at *max* settings.

Can see a SS below of everything jacked up. The only thing you can't see in the shot is AA for some reason. No shots I ever take seem to include it despite it being on.

I found a FFDshow audio decoder fix! Here's what you do - go to the settings and disable mp3 decoding. Problem solved.

Don't overreact, it's not that bad.

WoW I really want to get this game now... maybe It will get me out of Warcraft for a couple days.

If anything does, it'll be Oblivion. ^^

By the way have I mentioned that I love this game? Because I love this game. KingdomHearts 2 you say. Who needs that? I've got Oblivion, Mwahahaha...

*Yes, I know that I'm mentally unstable thank you very much.*

Version 0.1 of our guide - http://www.grawl.nl/modules/download...ion%200.1.html

Well, I decided I should try sneaking and stealing items, so I went into a house in Cherydil (or whatever it's name is), stole some items, then left.

I'm also a vampire, and found out how to feed on people, so I fed on a beggar in the same town, and to my disappointment, he's not a vampire, he's just wandering around as normal. Is there a way I can remove the vampire effect and become normal again, as i'm currently running around loosing health rappidly because of the sunlight. Also, will I be able to become a vampire again in the future?

I woke up from sleeping and got a note from the Grey Fox, which I suppose I should check out, and I also got a note from someone wanting some items I found.

Great game so far.

Awesome. Thanks Grawl. Will it be an IGN Insiders only thing once it's complete?

Nope.

First off, the sun damage only starts if you don't feed for a day. In other words, keep up the feeding and you won't take damage, although you'll be a weak little pussy compared to your blood-starved self. You can also get a quest for a vampirism cure, but it's rather long-ish. Start it by talking to Vicente in the Dark Brotherhood or one of the priests in the chapels. And yes, you should be able to become a vampire again when you're cured. Personally, I would've preferred if the cure had just been like the corprus cure in Morrowind, where you got all the benefits and none of the weaknesses.

Funny how he totally ignores the guide I just posted, which covers it.

I don't know any sane person could look at a guide for this game. You want to have the most complete unpredictable experience and solve things on your own.

Maybe when you think you have practically did everything in the game and want to check. Then maybe.

Or maybe you want to check when you get stuck, or just because you are curious and feel like reading about some of the more interesting quests. Or maybe you want to read it to find out about new quests that you weren't able to find on your own, or . . .

For the first or, yeah if you want to ruin the experience. For the second or, I said that in my earlier statement that you yourself quoted. 0_o

I bought the guide because I thought it would tell me where some item locations are just in case I got bored of searching the entire world on my own.

It doesn't tell you squat.

By any chance does anyone have a screenshot of the imperial dragon armor? I heard it looks so badass, but I have yet to see it.

I bought it because I wanted to be able to witness time-specific events for quests. For example, for one quest, I had to wait for this chick to show up and do something. Before, I would've been like "wait one hour... damn. Wait one hour... damn. Wait one hour... damn," over and over again. With the guide, I just looked it up, did some math, and got it over with quickly and easily. =\

Actually, I wanted to buy it to ensure 100% in quests. But the use I mentioned before is actually what I use it for most often. *shrug*

You'll find that some people have different definitions of fun. Apparently, for some, fun is just going from point A to point B without having to make any decisions along the way that might deter from getting the optimal outcome. These are the same people who immediately look up the solution to puzzles so that they can watch a few lights turn on and then get back to killing monsters.

Hi, I haven't played any of the Elder Scrolls games before. When you branch off from the main storyline does this game still act like you're in control or are sub-quests obviously set apart from the "main objectives?" I'd really like to demo Oblivion, but if it's as addictive as I've heard I'm afraid I might not be able to graduate from College.

You won't graduate from college. Although I have the ability to put Oblivion on hold even though its all I think about doing. I really don't know how.

And good explanation Magic. I just find that retarded.

And when you are in the world of Elder Scrolls, you can do whatever you want at any time. There is never any limitations and you are always in control. Just be aware that there are many noobs who cannot handle such a game because there is too much freedom for them and they can't comprehend this. This happened with Morrowind, but is less likely to occur in Oblivion considering it's the best game of all time and they give you somewhat of a training in the beginning of the game. However, after that it is up to you to decide what to do. I think you played old Bioware games and the like so you should be be fine. Just either have the best PC out there now, or get the 360 version.

So, Oblivion is obviously the best game.

But it could be better: click here for speed and graphics optimisations, and some awesome mods. I really recommend the slow level one if you want to get more out of your game. Also the "remove annoying text" one is a must.

EDIT: Personally, I find the quality-speed tradeoff for the "soup" one to be not worth it. The loading times almost double, and one of the things I love about this game is the fact that loading times are so minimal. Besides, on long distance the "detailed" textures make this grid pattern that I personally find more annoying than soup.

I'll take a little longer loading times and increased performance over quick loading times any day.

The main quest was a little shorter than I expected. It's a good thing the only factions I bothered with before beating it was the Arena so at least I know I still have a lot to do.

Doing quests with NPCs is fun:

1 - I went down a slope, and didn't see the rope that triggered a trap. I walked through it, and a big spiky ball came down and hit the NPC from behind. He flew over me.
2 - I walked over some planks, but gravity caused them to fall down. I made the other end, but the NPC fell down.

Which is why being Champion of the Arena rocks. Getting Adoring Fan into all sorts of situations is bloody funny.

Anyways, I have a question. I know it would be better if I found out myself, but I can't figure it out... And I'm lazy.
Okay, I've not done so much of the main quest. I've collected the four volumes of the Mythic Dawn Commentaries, and I've uncovered the 'hidden' message. I got:

So, I figured I had to walk around on the Green road. Here I found something called something like "Feathors Tower". (Note: It's not called that, but I can't remember what it's called...) I hung around that place till midday, but nothing happened. Could someone please point me in the right direction?

While I haven't played the main quest that much, all the other things in the game rocks my socks. It's like an earthquake. The guilds, the random quests, exploring. God, I think I could play this game for weeks and still find new things...

Well, the soup fix is only a slight performance hit (and is easily counteracted by the precache fix below it), so I definitely recommend it for those who were annoyed with it. It's just that to me it actually doesn't really look much better since you get that ugly gridding instead (plus longer load times makes it really not worth it to me).

But I'm kind of hoping they'll come out with a mod that randomises the textures over distance to fix this! I think that might work really well.

Best game ever??? I don't know about that. I am fully enjoying Oblivion but there are plenty of things that could be improved.

One thing that bugs me is the time scale of the game. If you go off of the main quest and start doing other stuff, and only do other stuff then there should be consequences, but instead it doesn't really matter as you can always go back to it months (possibly years) down the track and all will be the same as you left it.