I got distracted

H'okiday, so I'm seeing all the things going on in the blogs I'm following and I'm once again quite happy I decided to keep my nose more-or-less out of it, all the same.

I don't much care for parties when they're not the sort of thing you get murdered at.

So, what'd I get distracted by, if not all that?

Well, a five-year-old game, of course!

I had a revelation about the entire video game industry yesterday. You can release a buggy game that's sloppy around the edges, and people may buy it. But the way to keep people buying it is to give them the tools to fix what's broken. There is a vertiable army of modders out there, so if the product is good at its core, they will twist and tweak at it to their hearts' content and fix every little thing you never did - provided, of course, you give them the tools to do so. That's how a game that's five years old is still relevant to anything, and how there's still interest in the franchise five years later for the release of the fifth entry in the series.

Apparently Blizzard isn't the only group who firmly believes in the "when it's done" policy of game releases.

Let me explain: the game in question is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Now, there are still people who play The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, though I never took to it myself. I have a copy somewhere, I just never really got into it.

The game is solid at its core, it really is. It's got a standard 'save the world' style plot, but it's got so many sidequests and so much to do that even at basegame, it's a very worthwhile offering. The thing that makes it a gem, though, is the Construction Set. People have built entire games out of the Construction Set for Oblivion. Seriously. I have, myself, downloaded a little over a hundred plugins all told, including the ten official mods.

Let me pick at what's wrong with it, because 'it's a solid game' seems a little bit underwhelming in the face of the fact that I've done so much to my version of it that it hardly resembles the game that came in the box (or the copy I have for XBOX, for that matter).

The leveling system irks me. There are no two ways around it, the leveling system irks me. Until I did away with it entirely - and put something new in its place - I never thought too much about the sheer amount of grinding I did to no purpose in a single player game. The reason? Everything levels with you. While that sounds fine in theory - in theory only, mind - two important problems arise from doing it that way. One: although the enemies do keep up with you, make it a challenge, like, they're also never any stronger than you. There's never really any sense of progress, when everything is on par with you always. Two (and even worse than the first): If you don't fixate on your combat skills, you'll slide behind all the enemies who are keeping up with your stated levels. Even if you do, if you do it wrong, you'll still slide behind, and then all the curbstomp battles are on your skull, and you'll be lucky if they let you run away alive. So, in short, no real progress (unless you plan to lose your soul to, again, the grind in a single player game and become like unto a robot), only regress. Not good.

That's actually just about everyone's major gripe with the game, and it's almost impossible to swing a cat without hitting someone who's got a mod for it, although the biggest mods seem to have gotten it right overall. Check Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul for the biggest enemy deleveler, and I'm currently poking around with Oblivion XP to undermine the stupid grind. I spend enough time on the game, thank you.

So, onto some of the other gripes with the game. Loading screens. It's a very resource intensive game, so sure, I'll accept that on a lot of rigs they're necessary, but on mine they really aren't, not always. (I play League of Legends just fine with Oblivion paused in the background, even with the resource-hogging mods I've plugged in.) Better Cities addresses this one nicely, by making the cities bigger, better, and more open. Actually, just better in general. I'm pretty sure it's added a ton of new places and people, but they blend nicely, so I'm only pretty sure.

What else ... oh, I know. Vampirism. Who ever heard of starving yourself for power? Anorexic models. I don't want to play an anorexic model anymore than I want to sparkle in the sunlight. So there's a mod to flip that about (actually most of the vampire overhaul mods do a whole hell of a lot more than that, but I'm just a simple thing, see), and another to get the disease by sleeping in disreputable places and getting bit, and another to add a major quest of sorts to the game just for the vampires.

Honestly, most of my mods I picked up for realism, not necessity. The only one I pick up for necessity is the alternate leveling system, because otherwise I'll be up to my eyeballs in Daedra too tough to take out (difficulty slider aside, anyway).

Sorry for the ... odd ... slant to my writing, by the by. I sunk my teeth into a lovely book, and the main character talks thusly. I'll be over it in time for Wednesday, probably. I'd like to do a proper review on some of the mods I added.

Over all, though, I have to say, Oblivion is not a bad game, even at base game. It's got an interesting enough plot, and most of the shiny that can still tax a newer system is inherent. The combat system is pretty fun and streamlined, the magic's all right. The main complaint I can think of is the bird-brained level system and the fact that AI is a crapshoot, so the ambient conversations are generally rather inane - which, most conversations among real people tend to be a bit inane. So meh. It's got grand, epic quests if you're into that, and enough other things to do that you'll be quite content if you want no part of those.

If you like RPGs and haven't yet tried it, pick it up. If you don't, well, don't.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to playing. (And I promise, I'm actually working on this here again, too.) They release Skyrim in November.