[Captions are incomplete: read the description for more information.] So it’s basically illegal to release a seven hour and fifty three minute video on a game, netting hundreds of thousands of views, and not discuss its sequel. The subsection of that law emphasizes this in cases where the original video discussed problems with said sequel.
I mean, I didn’t write the law. Go read the Declaration of Independence if you don’t believe me. So, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The oft maligned sequel to Morrowind and Daggerfall which arguably marked the shift in design philosophy at Bethesda from roleplaying game to action adventure titles.
I guess I should say before we get too deep into this that this isn’t just going to be a bash session of Oblivion. Of course, someone will try and turn that on me the first time I do criticize the game, because they misunderstood the important part of that sentence.
I’m going to acknowledge what Oblivion does better than Morrowind, and am going to try and avoid spending an excessive amount of time on points where Bethesda has improved since Oblivion. There’s no point, for instance, in going on a thirty minute tangent about the failures
Of Facegen when later games implemented better systems for character creation. However, just because a later game did something better doesn’t mean I shouldn’t at least point out its presence in Oblivion. Because even though later games did improve character creation, the decision to implement Facegen still reflects on the development of Oblivion.
Facegen is a middleware program for none-character artists to create faces, and at the time could at most be used for facial generation of characters where they wouldn’t be the primary focus of the camera, example given being Tiger Woods PGA Tour. It certainly wasn’t meant to create thousands of unique, distinguishable
Character faces, or for those character faces to be plastered front and center for every single dialogue in the entire game. What this tells us about the development of Oblivion was that there simply wasn’t time to either implement a better solution or at least try to mitigate the damage the
Potato faced freaks of Cyrodiil have caused the games’ tone. With that in mind, it’s clear the decision to use Facegen was one of time-saving, in order to focus on more important elements. Thus, the goal of this video is simple, to demonstrate the impact the 2006 launch date
And goal of being an early seventh generation console release had on the overall Elder Scrolls formula. Of course, did you really think you were going to get by one of my longer videos without one of my patented ‘introductory argumentation’ segments. On screen is a timestamp.
The timestamp will skip to the part of this introduction that pertains to Oblivion. However, before you click ahead, there are two things I want to mention. One is that if you plan on leaving a comment on the video, don’t skip ahead. You will be laughed at if you do.
The Morrowind introduction did a good job of preventing both a bunch of embarrassing comments about the length as well as keeping the comments fresh by avoiding the common pitfalls of the usual Elder Scrolls discussion. Two is that I never do this timestamp thing again, this is an audio-focused experience
And as such I try not to make any arguments that necessitates tabbing out of a game or unlocking your phone to check the screen. There will be additional visual information or examples you may miss, such as name spellings and character sheets or the odd visual gag, but it is otherwise unnecessary
To keep me on your main screen. Weird thing is, right, despite these sections being easily skippable thanks to the super useful timestamp section feature on YouTube, people still like to complain about the Morrowind introduction, even though it was actually successful at achieving my goal with it’s inclusion.
I guess if I don’t ring an alarm and point it out on screen someone might miss the fact that you could just skip it. Okay, there, go where you will. On my last video a great deal of the discourse in the comments was on my first
Point, where I spent four and a half minutes discussing the length of the video. Despite this section being quite literally less than one percent of the overall runtime. It’s hard to directly criticize someone for making a long video, or for
Watching one, because we are all adults here, I have the data to prove that claim by the way, but it did happen. I did not create this video for the express purpose of watching it one sitting, or even for you to actively watch it.
The focus is, as I said, on an audio-focused experience. You are free to play a game, maybe even an Elder Scrolls game, while listening. Much of the editing effort has gone into balancing the audio so as to avoid having to mess with volume as much as possible.
In addition, a lot of the writing effort went into structuring the script into sections. YouTube currently has a handy feature where the video is divided into timecode sections, if you don’t see that check for timestamps, they’ll lead to the title cards between sections.
Some people like to compare my Morrowind video to various films, which is unfair because in terms of structure it’s closer to a television show. If you can’t spare x hours to watch this entire video, you’ll find this video to be closer to a bunch of episodes rather than a movie.
In addition, the Morrowind video is not mandated watching for this video. I encourage you to watch it at some point if you haven’t already, but you likely came here for Oblivion and Oblivion is what I will be discussing, if it’s not then I will try to provide context.
Something people did with the Morrowind video is leave comments timestamping where they left off in the video. So if you need to keep track of your place, or are switching from mobile to desktop or vice versa, that can help you as it usually shows your comment on top of the comments section.
The only thing I have to add to the length argument that I didn’t say in the Morrowind video is that length is not a factor when I write my scripts. I don’t aim for certain lengths and then stretch out the material, this isn’t a
College essay and my grade isn’t tied to how many words I write. In fact, making these videos is much easier from an editing perspective the shorter they are. I write to the length necessary to cover the material.
As of writing this I have no idea how long this script will be, although when I edit this line I’ll have a better idea. When people ask me who the introduction is for, it’s this guy.
This guy assumes that because a video is long, that implies it has to be watched in a single sitting. Never assume just because you understand something implicitly, that means everyone else does as well. There are plenty of people who don’t understand basic things about longform content.
Finally, in the description you will find a list of all the sources. I started taking sources seriously halfway through the Morrowind project so it wasn’t the best sourced video. This time, however, I’ll be starting from the beginning. Every single interview, article, video, song, or hopefully image will be sourced to
The best of my abilities, and if you are the artist responsible and find I haven’t sourced you, which will happen, feel free to reach out and I will correct that. This is where I have to mention the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, they have
Been essential for my work and I consider them to be the Gold Standard for online wikis. Now, onto Oblivion. [“why do Morrowind fans have to tear down Oblivion so much, it’s just like, Oblivion was better anyways and that’s proven by how successful it wa-”]
It’s amazing how much of a Morrowind Superfan AND Morrowind Superhater I am at the same time. Consider for a moment an alternate reality where you are seeing this video without any possible knowledge of my opinion on Morrowind. If that idea has changed your instinct about what you think I’m going to say in
This video, then you should probably reconsider that comment. My goal is not to prove Oblivion is good or bad. There’s no point to it. I don’t make more money for it. I don’t stake my identity on it. My goal is to analyze the series that I love in the interest that a
Developer, be they at Bethesda or be they at any studio, can take a piece of my passion and make a better game. Morrowind is a broken, dated game, just because I like or praise it doesn’t imply that I think it’s perfection.
In fact, I spent 8 hours talking about it, do you think it was 8 hours of me saying “I Love Morrowind” over and over, like a mantra? Of course not, and I find it extremely annoying when people boil an entire video’s
Worth of arguments down to some kind of misplaced loyalty, because that’s not how normal people work. An immediate comparison that’s going to be made is to WillLovesVideoGames’ own five hour retrospective of Oblivion. I know this because people already make the comparison with the Morrowind Analysis.
I think it’s a good video, I applaud the effort, however you probably can’t find someone I’m going to disagree with more on Oblivion. I watched this video while live-posting on my Discord, because I was only making it a
Couple minutes at a time before I would have to pause due to some of the arguments Will makes, and I disagreed with him so heavily a few people thought I was going to make an entire video breaking down why he’s wrong, which would be both mean-spirited and honestly a waste of time.
If you’re worried that this video is just going to be a repeat of his, I can guarantee it is not just based on our stylistic differences. Instead, I’m going to use his video and others as examples. I don’t mean ill will by this, believe it or not it’s possible to disagree with
Somebody and not hate them. And I fully expect the same to happen to me. This is all overstating the presence of these clips however; we’re giving three paragraphs to something that will be less than 1% of the video because it will be
Very easy for people to get the wrong impression because they decided to space out or skip this section. I mean, if you want proof that it’s not mean-spirited, you should realize that me even including these clips is a sign that at least they tried to say something,
Compared to the myriad of Oblivion videos which say nothing and could have been written off a bingo card of common topics. Be sure to grab your BINGO card before watching my video. Another comparison will be to the more recent Private Sessions’ Oblivion video series.
I was actually worried because I only saw this one after I had finished the script. However upon watching it I was relieved to find that this too won’t be an issue. Each contributor to the Oblivion Longform Video Subgenre has brought a unique perspective to the series.
Another thing, at some point somebody is going to bring up a lore argument which is contingent on information gleaned from Elder Scrolls Online. Firstly, Michael Kirkbride wrote a story called C0DA which says I can pick and choose what games and mods are canon for me, and second, I haven’t played ESO very
Much. But I have played enough to know that it breaks existing canon quite significantly, and it’s fine if you’re into it, but I’m not. So if we start talking about Mannimarco and you bring up that he was the villain of ESO, I can not be compelled to care.
I feel there may be some people whose knowledge of the lore comes exclusively from lore videos. That’s okay, but lore videos make it difficult to distinguish what source a piece of information comes from. Example given, Umbra. Umbra is a sword created by a witch that has the power to steal souls. That’s it.
In Morrowind a guy named himself after his sword Umbra, not because he was bewitched by it but because his name was ultimately irrelevant, you might as well have called him by his sword’s name due to violence being his life’s accomplishment. That’s it.
Oblivion would change this canon to make the sword more… malicious in its powers. And the novel Umbriel would change the canon further to elaborate that Clavicus Vile was involved in the creation of the sword. However, a future novel does not inform the narrative role Umbra plays in Oblivion.
It’s only reasonable to criticize Oblivion by the information that it provides, and it’s prequels had provided. Time effectively stops at the date of release. But what about Skyrim lore? I extend a courtesy to Skyrim lore that I do not to other future lore sources,
Frankly, because I like Skyrim well enough to do so. In addition, Skyrim doesn’t go crazy with the recontextualizations. And when it does, like with the Skeleton Key, I’ll mention it and where the line is. You might say it’s hypocritical to include Skyrim lore but not ESO lore, and the line is this.
First of all, it’s just video games, it’s not that big a deal. Second, ESO likes nostalgia bait and loves recontextualization. Seriously, read a lore page about anything in Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim, and you’ll eventually see something from ESO. The thing is, Skyrim was an independent game.
It loved its predecessors, and it made references to them, but it never really tried to change anything about Morrowind or Oblivion. Like the most egregious thing in Skyrim is that you can wield Keening without Wraithguard and it doesn’t immediately kill you.
The number of people who are massive Morrowind fans that don’t say Skyrim is non-canon says something about the respect that game had for it’s past stories. It’s the same reason why Fallout 3, 4, and 76 wouldn’t come up in a discussion of Fallout 1 and 2, but New Vegas might.
Now, this may sound odd, but there are no fast travel services at Tel Fyr. The character you see on screen does not exist. Despite stating this objective fact, there are people in the comments section of my Morrowind video who have claimed to the contrary.
They are technically correct, in that they do indeed remember there being a boat captain at Tel Fyr. So how can this be? The problem here is the Morrowind Patch Project, which for a spell was the popular option for patching Morrowind of its major bugs.
However, it’s also fairly controversial as the patch attempts to balance aspects of the game and fix things that arguably weren’t broken in the first place. One of those fixes being the re-addition of Cinia Urtius to the game.
The reason I believe she was cut is due to one of the early Telvanni quests where you’re dispatched to deliver a letter to Divayth Fyr, and are given several implements of getting to the island by foot, implying that the writer intended for
The quest to not have a means of easily getting to Tel Fyr. The conflict is easy to see once you realize that Divayth Fyr was a creation of Ken Rolston, and House Telvanni was a creation of Douglas Goodall. Rolston likely added Cinia to the game as the main quest was written first, and
Goodall likely removed her when he later wrote House Telvanni. This is relevant as this video is using several patches. I originally imagined this series would be played unpatched, to review as accurately a version of the game to Bethesda’s intentions as possible, but one look at the
UESP page on fixes by the Unofficial Oblivion Patch swayed that decision, simply from a production standpoint. Plus unlike Morrowind, I’m not going to play an unideal version simply to prove a point. You can not drop Nirnroot in Oblivion. Like Cinia Urtius, people are going to disagree with that statement, as they will
Have clear memories of being able to drop Nirnroot, which is an addition of the Unofficial Oblivion Patch. Nirnroot, in the base game, is a quest item, and thus can not be dropped until the related Nirnroot quest is finished. If I say something that you remember being different, it is possible that is because
We are not technically talking about the same game. Given the immensity of material we have to go over, I can’t account for all of these minor discrepancies, so I simply ask you to consider that fact before calling me out. A few other mods were used as well.
A mod to prevent some crashes, not that it entirely worked, a mod to maintain a higher field of view without having to type the command every five minutes, and a mod that allows me to have a high but capped framerate with borderless fullscreen.
The first and third mods are to help with the recording, while the second mod is both for my benefit as a player and your benefit as a viewer. So now let’s talk about why I don’t use other mods.
Sure, plenty of issues that I’m going to bring up can potentially be fixed with a mod, but I think that modifying mechanics or design effectively invalidates any arguments I can make. Because at what point am I criticizing the designers at Bethesda and at what point am I criticizing the mod authors.
I have to speak to the version of the game that Bethesda created. The Unofficial Patch resolves a lot of issues still in the game, but I think it bears mentioning that I don’t really think it’s alright for that many issues to still be present.
And most of these issues can be sidestepped by playing exact ways around problems. I used it anyways more-so as insurance that I would be able to complete my playthrough with as little console interference as possible, and even that wasn’t a guarantee. My mod setup is akin to playing OpenMW.
I don’t see an issue with reviewers playing source ports of DOOM 2 as long as that source port is faithful to the original vision. Sure, using a mod to fix the leveling system could make my experience better. But this isn’t a let’s play or livestream channel, this is analysis.
If something is so awful that it requires me to go out of my way to track down a modification, install it, and make sure it doesn’t conflict with other modifications, then that’s an issue worth commenting on, isn’t it? More to the point, doing such an analysis would be feeding into the complacency of
Modern Bethesda, who can release broken game after broken game with the expectation that the community will step in, fix the game for them, and then thank them for the opportunity to do so, after having paid full price for the game and whatever DLC is
Attached. I mean, have you tried playing Fallout 3 without fan patches lately? The game doesn’t even start on Windows 10. Before you say that compatibility changes over time, Morrowind and Oblivion still run out of the box on Windows 10.
I do like the modding community, and maybe one day I’ll do a video where I do a super-modded playthrough to showcase some of their work. But that day isn’t today. We’re talking about Oblivion, the game that was created by Bethesda.
Thanks to the UESP, they’ve cataloged many of the issues that can occur if you don’t have the Unofficial Patch installed, which should be handy in discussing problems I didn’t personally experience because of the patch, which are still in the game despite the several official patches that did happen.
This is a continuation of our Morrowind character, specifically our character for the main quest. Unfortunately for the Nerevarine, a mixup at the East Empire Company means all those crimes committed by Umbra got pinned on him instead. That three hundred thousand gold bounty translates roughly to an eight year prison
Sentence in Tamrielic Law, of which he’s currently served six years since the end of Bloodmoon. Six years in the Imperial City Rehabilitation and Corrections Facility. Since each day represents a skill point lost, our skills were reset back to default again The only reason this was allowed was that the Nerevarine’s Lawyer forgot to
Take his ‘Fortify Intelligence’ potion that morning, and did such a horrific job at legal defense he was also thrown in prison in the cell across from his client. Now, while it’s fun to pretend that each Elder Scrolls protagonist is the same character, they can’t and really shouldn’t be.
This is mostly just a way of saying I’m playing the same Breton Battlemage born under the Atronach sign again, with the class currently on screen. Yes that is an abomination and yes I will talk about why it is the way it is.
I’m also not going to be playing multiple characters like I did in my Morrowind video. There are several reasons for this decision, ranging from the fact that you really don’t need to, to the fact that you really shouldn’t. This game is a complicated tapestry and fully appreciating it’s higher levels
Requires a single character. For now, let’s discuss Oblivion’s introduction. It starts with a word from Captain Picard about his imminent death and how that will lead to the destruction of life on Tamriel. This is a tad more active than the prophecy stuff presented in Morrowind, which was
Largely written off by the first character you meet as a dream. Azura in that cutscene mostly just says you’ve been chosen for some unspecifed task and then you wake up. Here Professor Xavier tells us how urgent the situation is and then shows us the consequences for ignoring it.
Write that down it’s important later. After that we create our character, which can range from hilarious Shrekmonster to an approximation of the human form. The faults of Oblivion’s Facegen are fairly self-evident, however it’s important to remember that the goofier faces you encounter are a consequence of them being
Intentionally created that way, and not necessarily just because Facegen itself is faulty. The game basically just packages the same exact tools the designers had for character creation with a fancy UI. Regardless, once you have your creature ready you are deposited into your prison cell.
We’re never given a reason for why we are in prison, how long we’ve been here, or how long our sentence is. That said it’s an open enough prompt to adjust it to whatever character we want. Maybe we’re a petty thief, or a murderer, or it’s just a wrongful imprisonment.
Whatever the case, it doesn’t last, as after a racial lashing from the Dunmer across the hall none other than Emperor Uriel Septim the Seventh himself arrives with an armed escort to escape the city through our prison cell. The Emperor is pretty savvy at recognizing protagonists, so he keeps his guards from
Killing us and we are able to follow him out. Oblivion’s tutorial sequence is markedly different from Morrowind’s, but sets the formula going forward for Elder Scrolls and Elder Scrolls spinoffs like Fallout. You see, Morrowind and Oblivion have speedruns that are fairly similar in length.
However, the difference is that Oblivion’s speedrun is mostly spent in the tutorial, while Morrowind’s blows past it in less than a minute. Morrowind has a short mandatory tutorial, and a longer optional tutorial. This makes it easy for players who want to quickly jump into the game proper to just
Install the game and get going. Oblivion’s tutorial on the other hand is a 30 minute time investment independent of the amount of time spent customizing your characters appearance or crafting a class. Of course Oblivion vets will say to just make a save before exiting the sewers, but
That’s kind of the point isn’t it? Bethesda could have easily built in a prompt after we make our character offering to skip straight to the end so that we can get our character underway. In fact I’ve implemented such a thing already… albeit in Morrowind, but it’s the
Same general design structure in Oblivion, just longer. Even if you wanted the narrative section we actually will see later that the area is only long because it forces the player through a detour. If the player selects our new skip tutorial option, they could just follow the Emperor
Through this door and skip the fifteen minute test to gauge the player’s preferred class. Testing the players preferred class is a decent idea in principle, possibly even something worth improving upon, but boy howdy does this section create problems for the min-maxers.
Since most of our skills are pretty low level, it’s easy to level skills down here, meaning that our stat alignment may potentially be messed up. before we even get a chance to rest. I actually tried getting through the tutorial without leveling anything up, and it basically required cheating.
There is a way, but again, we’ll talk about min-maxing later. This section is also a pretty poor introduction to magic. The game does a decent job of introducing combat and stealth playstyles, yet you’re limited to a minor healing spell and a basic targeted fire spell.
It’s no surprise those two spells are what you see people using. You only get other spells if you select their school as major skills after class creation, meaning that players have to pick the skills on blind faith. Which is how it was in Morrowind, don’t get me wrong, but Morrowind doesn’t start with
A 30 minute forced introductory sequence that was meant to showcase potential playstyles to the player. I’m going to be in the minority of review channels that primarily use magic, and I think that this is part of the problem. Oblivion’s introduction is so long as to discourage repeat playthroughs for casual
Players. Casual players aren’t introduced to magic, so they don’t use it. Or they do use it, but they stick to the basic paradigm of destruction and restoration. Near the end of the sequence is the infamous scene where the player is handed
The Amulet of Kings, gets frozen in place and then forced to watch the Emperor get assassinated as we are powerless to do nothing. There’s a way to accomplish the latter without drawing the ire of the player, which is to have the assassin appear using an invisibility effect before casting Paralyze on the player.
As to the former, well, it would take a complete rewrite of this opening to fix the problem that the tutorial giving us the Amulet of Kings creates. The problem, for those unaware, is that the player is effectively handed a permanent and constant reminder of the main quest.
Theoretically you should be able to leave the tutorial and go off to live whatever life you want, as you could in Morrowind. The orders to go to Caius Cosades can be dropped and ignored at any time, and even
If you do the first quest given to the player, Caius will tell you to go off and get some experience before giving you the next quest anyways. The main quest of Morrowind is voluntary from a roleplaying perspective, making it easy to justify ignoring it to go off exploring.
In Oblivion, however, you are heavily pushed towards pursuing the main quest. Even if you do as the Emperor asks and deliver the Amulet to Jauffre, he’ll immediately push you into the next quest at Kvatch. This is where someone will proudly announce that despite their numerous hours in
Oblivion, they have never done the game’s main quest. I’m not sure why people feel compelled to keep mentioning that they haven’t, I suppose as some kind of praise of how much they enjoy playing the game that they haven’t even done the questline that marks an arbitrary end of the game.
I mean, the main quest is in the middle of this review so you can tell I don’t really consider it the end either. Just because you ignored the urgent crisis of this game doesn’t mean I can justify doing so, although Jake Dekker over at GameSpot had an interesting take on this:
[“You can quite literally take Patrick Stewart’s words of warning as the ramblings of an old man approaching his death and do whatever you want.” GameSpot 6:58] The issue with this, however, is the omniscient pre-rendered cutscene that starts the game with Uriel showing you Oblivion on the march.
Morrowind sidestepped the problem of Azura telling you that you were chosen in the opening cutscene by immediately introducing a character who tells you that you were dreaming. Uriel, inversely, tells you hell is invading, and that today he is destined to die, and then the latter comes true.
The only way a main quest would be the end of an Elder Scrolls game would be if the central conflict of the main quest is present in all the other quest lines as well, example given being Fallout New Vegas or Morrowind.
There’s like one quest that isn’t part of the main questline that involves the Oblivion Crisis, otherwise it might as well not be happening to the perspective of anyone not directly involved in the Main Quest. I look at role-playing games from a, well, role-playing perspective.
And from that perspective, being told that the world is about to end before having an important artifact tied to the fate of the world thrust into my hands is not something I can just ignore, outside of maybe the most irresponsible skooma-addled degenerate
Imaginable. A person with even a smidgen of responsibility would recognize the need to participate, if only to preserve their own life. Baurus, one of the Blades guarding the Emperor, allows us to leave with the Amulet as he believes he needs to protect the Emperor’s body.
This is silly as not only is the Amulet super important, as stated, but I think most people’s first instinct would be to assume the person standing over a corpse is the one responsible for the corpsifying, even if temporarily until Baurus noticed the dead Mythic Dawn agent.
The beautiful thing about a setting with magic is that this can be explained if you try to put the slightest bit of effort into the writing. Just say that the Emperor used a spell to bind the Amulet to us, which can
Only be broken if the player dies or reaches Jauffre, and that Baurus recognizes that the Emperor probably knew something he didn’t to go to that effort to entrust the Amulet with us. The Emperor was a known practitioner of Mysticism magic, after all.
After this is a short sequence in the sewers proper, which I question the need for. There’s no reason this area couldn’t deposit straight into the area right before the surface access tunnel. At this point the tutorial is over and
Not even the most pedantic of nitpickers like myself would have criticized you for killing the Emperor mere feet away from the surface. As it stands it’s just an odd decision to have a couple more enemies before freedom. It could be to test your build, but this only works once.
After this, we’re deposited into Cyrodiil, while you are, as the game says, free to set off in any direction, it also makes a point of telling the player to go to Weynon Priory to deliver the Amulet. And the Amulet will take top billing in
The equipment section of the inventory screen, a constant reminder that we’re going to ignore for a while. The Arena is the first faction of our character, as it takes place almost entirely within the Imperial City Arena. This is, of course, largely referential to the first Elder Scrolls game, Arena,
Which grew past its ambition of simply being an Arena fighting game to having an entire world outside the Arena to explore. A game set entirely inside an Arena would be focused entirely on combat, which arguably isn’t the strength or focus of the series.
We’ll talk about that in the Fighters Guild section, because there’s a bigger, all encompassing problem lying before us, and there’s a reason I’m putting it in this section first. The Arena is a simple faction in that it’s basically a series of fights from beginning to end,
With one whole quest at the end. This is fine, great, even. What’s strange about the faction is that despite its simplicity, it never really bothers explaining the fundamental questions of the faction, like who is the Yellow Team? Where do they come from? They seem to share training space with the Blue Team,
But there’s only one door up from here. And Owen, the Blademaster, seems to act like there is an opposing side to us, but there isn’t. We could say it’s all fake, but that doesn’t excuse how barebones the faction really is. Put the raiment on,
Arrange a fight. Wait for the announcer to finish his bit, fight and then go and get paid. I got the faction done in two days. If you do it at a higher level, and start as soon as the Arena opens, you could feasibly complete it in a single
In-game day. So while we do that, let’s discuss Oblivion’s Leveling Problem. Oblivion’s leveling problem is a central issue tied to almost every aspect of Oblivion. Rather than explaining the problem outright, we’re going to work backwards and start with the three schools of thought that exist to try and solve the problem.
There’s actually quite a bit written on this topic, a sign that there simply is no consensus on which school is the best. The first school of thought is simply to ignore the problem. Just play the game. It sounds like a good platitude. Definitely something a smug person would say.
I bet it looks fantastic on a Twitter post. Indeed, this solution has its benefits. It takes the least thought on the part of the player in terms of their character building. After all, the goal here is to create a system where the player is defined by the
Skills they use in the game. But the problems become apparent pretty quickly. This has to involve scaling, which is not in fact the biggest problem with Oblivion, although its implementation is definitely a major contributing factor to the leveling problem. Enemies on the road of Vvardenfell were scaled, although in Morrowind they were
Called leveled enemies which are displayed by these ninja monkeys in the editor. It’s why at level one, you’ll encounter a Scrib or Kwama Forager, and later you’ll encounter higher level monsters like Alits or Kagouti at the same exact spot.
It’s so subtle that people are prone to making the mistake of claiming that Morrowind has no level scaling at all. This is actually the same scaling system that Oblivion would use. Oblivion just implemented it for everything and in my opinion, the premise is sound.
I don’t really have a problem with escalating the threats of the world relative to the player. In Morrowind, enemies would have set levels. So if a low level player wanders into a high level area, they’ll probably just get killed. And I think that’s great because it makes the world feel more lived in.
If a bunch of powerful mages are living in a ruin, then they should handily stomp some normal low-level guy who wanders into the area. The way you make that work with Scaling has already been done in Skyrim, with the Dragon Priests.
These enemies are relatively tougher than everything else around them, so you get the benefits of having enemies be around the same level as the player while also preserving the fact that some people in the world should stay relatively powerful. The reason scaling largely doesn’t work is due to the bracketing system.
Rather than a smooth transition, enemies are instead staggered every three or four levels. This leads to a flow where you start a bracket weak, and then get decent against a bracket, only to reach the next one and face a new set of enemies that are, relatively, stronger than the previous brackets weak stage.
You’ll spend several levels easily beating on imps before hitting level 8 and running into Trolls, who are both tankier and do more damage. By the time you get decent at fighting Trolls they’ll be replaced with Minotaurs who are, relatively, tankier and do even more damage, who get replaced by Ogres, who
Get replaced by Minotaur Lords. I’ve used the word ‘relative’ several times and I want to be clear on what it means. Trolls do more damage than Imps, that’s a given. But they also do more damage relative to what imps did at their respective point in the bracket.
An Imp probably won’t one shot you when you first encounter them, Ogres and Minotaur Lords can when you first face them. If you just ignore the leveling problem and play how you want to, you’ll quickly be overwhelmed by the scaling difficulty of enemies as their damage and health outpace your health and damage.
You can solve this problem by turning down the difficulty gradually, but that defeats the purpose of ignoring the problem. Remember, we’re not supposed to be thinking about it, we’re just supposed to be playing. Adjusting the difficulty slider on the fly is not a good solution to the problem
Because it means diving into a submenu on the fly to modulate enemy threat levels. I have an audio interface with a volume knob on it that quickly lets me change the volume of the audio on my computer without having to play with settings or the built in software volume mixer.
I kind of wanted one of those but tied to the difficulty in Oblivion. See, the problem can’t be solved by turning the difficulty down to easy and just playing that way. Remember, skills level as you use them.
What you are seeing on screen is the number of times you have to use a skill in order to max out it’s level. Base is the default if the skill is not part of your major skills or specialization. Major skills are the skills that are part of your class, and specialization are the
Skills that fall under which part of the RPG trifecta you chose. So, for example, for me to raise my blade skill which is not in my character’s specialization or his major skills to 100, I would have to land 20,435 blows.
Now, if I lower the difficulty to the bottom, almost every enemy in the game dies in one or two hits, delaying my progression that much more. I spent the first hour of the game running around Lake Rumare picking Nirnroot and punching mudcrabs to train my hand to hand at a high difficulty
Because in order to train effectively I need the crabs to survive several hits. And enemies vary wildly in their health. The difficulty that is ideal for fighting monsters and undead is way different than the difficulty that is ideal for fighting conjurers or necromancers. See how much we are thinking about the problem now?
So the next argument will be to simply ignore the leveling and keep the difficulty down, but that doesn’t work as well because some mechanics are tied behind perks which unlock at higher levels. And ignoring the leveling means we enter another school of thought when approaching Oblivion’s leveling problem:
The only winning move is not to play. See, a solution to this problem of enemy escalation is simple: Don’t level. If you watch a video of someone playing Oblivion and they always have this icon next to their compass, it means they are practicing this school of thought. It has its strengths.
You no longer have to play with the difficulty because encounters will be somewhat consistent. It doesn’t take a lot of thought either. There are a couple quests tied to resting though that you now need to watch out for or tackle early though.
If you do end up leveling, you will level very inefficiently, meaning once you start you have to commit. Every Daedra quest also has a level requirement and sacrifices that may come from enemies that don’t start appearing until higher levels.
Gold drops in dungeons and quest rewards are also scaled, meaning that if you do a quest at a low level you won’t be paid very much and quest rewards won’t be very powerful. Sigil Stones and soul levels will also be restricted here.
The most powerful effects only start appearing at level 17, and access to Grand Souls for custom enchantments will be extremely limited. And, you’ll be fighting the same couple enemies for dozens of hours. There will be enemy types you simply won’t encounter.
I don’t think there’s a way to encounter Land Dreugh or Spider Daedra unless you level up to the point that they start appearing. Training will also be unavailable to the player, as it is now capped at five times
Per level. This means some of the more tedious skills to level will have to either be done by hand, fortified during use, or just flat out ignored. See why the leveling problem is so complicated? Pretty much everything is tied together so intricately that approaching the problem in analysis becomes difficult.
And so, we come to the third and most difficult solution to the Oblivion Leveling Problem, the solution I chose: Min-maxing. Min-maxing Elder Scrolls is nothing new to me, I’ve done it plenty of times in Morrowind. But Oblivion is a whole other beast.
I don’t say this lightly or ironically, I think Oblivion is actually kind of evil. Not a malicious intentional kind of evil, but evil nonetheless. So, min-maxing. It’s where we get back to the build I showed earlier as my character, and explains why it is such an awful build. Magic Specialization, fine.
Endurance and Luck is an interesting choice. But Mysticism, Alteration, Speechcraft, Marksman, Light Armor, Blunt, and Heavy Armor? That’s a pretty terrible class. The first rule of min-maxing in Oblivion is to throw away the notion that the abilities you plan to use are in your class.
For the early game I was intent on using Heavy Armor, Hand-To-Hand, and Conjuration. I find it to be a fun combination, yet only one of those skills is in the major spec category. Heavy Armor is a skill which falls under the Endurance Attribute.
This is important because Heavy Armor is effectively being used to control the rate at which I level. It being the only skill I primarily train means that I can regulate when I level, allowing me to maximize each attribute allocation. When you level, you gain points to invest into your attributes.
In a sense, attributes are like skills in that you raise them by using the skills that belong to them. Endurance is the most important attribute in Oblivion, as it controls the rate at which you gain health. The health you gain per level is your endurance value divided by ten, so if you
Start at an Endurance of 30 you will gain 3 health per level. What this means is that a player who doesn’t raise Endurance because they are magic or stealth focused will not only have less health than a player who does train Endurance, but significantly less health.
The chart I’m showing on screen demonstrates this principle. A Breton starts with 30 Endurance, a Nord starts with 50. If the Breton player ignores endurance until last, he will be at a significant disadvantage in terms of health compared to the Nord player.
Normally this isn’t significant, it’s not a multiplayer game so balance doesn’t matter. In fact, this is exactly how it worked in Morrowind as well, and it’s widely considered not to be a major problem towards that games leveling system. The difference is that because the enemies of Oblivion scale to both the Nord player
And the Breton player at exactly the same rate, and arguably the threat somewhat outpaces characters who don’t level Endurance, that health disadvantage becomes an extremely noticeable problem. The way this problem manifests is that players who don’t minmax their health are going to start noticing enemies that can one shot them.
This chart now reflects the characters if they efficiently level their endurance every level, meaning that every two levels they will increase the health gained per level by 1 point. Yes, dividends are a major factor in my investment decisions and I have made
Spreadsheets to predict the growth of Dividend Reinvestment, how could you tell? Min-maxing in Oblivion will require leveling endurance by 5 points per level until you reach the maximum of 100. In order to gain 5 endurance points, you need to train an Endurance Skill 10 times
Per level. Endurance skills are Heavy Armor, Armorer, and Block. By controlling the rate of levels with Heavy Armor, I’m effectively ensuring that each level will raise my Endurance by 5 points. At this point you may be breathing a sigh of relief that I’ve now explained the
Problem. Well don’t, because simply put there ISN’T a fast way to explain this problem and we aren’t done yet. Endurance is only part of this puzzle; solving in part the amount of damage we can take from monsters. The other half is the damage we do to monsters.
It’s all well and good to be able to take hits, but if we can’t do damage to match then fighting is going to turn into a slog fast. So, you first have to decide what the primary mode of combat you are going to
Engage in is going to be, which is three categories: Magic, Archery, and Melee. I would rather put these in their relevant sections but I have to touch on them here because Oblivion is so interconnected and this problem really does absolutely touch everything in the game. Magic is simplest.
There is no way to increase magic damage via leveling. Yes, really. In Morrowind skills and attributes were irrelevant to the raw damage a spell does. The way you do more damage with magic is to make more powerful spells, the way you
Successfully cast more powerful spells is to be better at the magic skill, attribute, luck, and to have high fatigue. This was changed in Oblivion to address a few things. Spell chance has been removed, there is now a one hundred percent chance of success when casting spells.
That change by itself in Morrowind would mean the limiting factor of magic would then be magicka, so to compensate Oblivion added a tiered system of magic to the game. For instance, if you don’t spec in Destruction magic, then you’ll have a
Novice level in the skill and be unable to cast the apprentice level spell Flame Touch. Having enough magicka is not a factor in being able to cast the spell. It doesn’t matter if you’re the Apprentice, or the Atronach or an Altmer or a Breton
If you don’t have the skill, you can’t cast that spell. So, in summary, if you want to do more damage with destruction magic then you need to level destruction up. Every 25 levels will unlock another tier that does more damage.
Willpower is not a factor and now all it does to influence your damage per second is how fast magicka regenerates, unless you pick the Atronach birthsign in which case Willpower is a dump stat. Intelligence will determine your maximum magicka which can throttle what spells you
Can use but since magicka regenerates now having a large pool isn’t as big a factor as simply having enough. Alright, so, problems. First, the tier system means you’ll be doing the same amount of damage with spells for a long time before seeing a significant change each time you level.
Meaning if you want to be able to really use magic, you’re gonna need to use it constantly to make sure that it’s keeping up with the enemies of the world. Second, Destruction and Restoration, the two skills which can do damage directly,
Are both Willpower skills, meaning that if you want to raise Intelligence efficiently in addition to Endurance, you’re gonna need to use an Intelligence skill a lot as well to raise your magicka enough to use those better spells. Third, spell costs in Oblivion are way higher than they were in Morrowind,
Probably because magicka now regenerates during combat. If you build the exact same character I did between games, in Morrowind you’ll have around 175 magicka while in Oblivion you’ll have around 300. In terms of two spells that do the same amount of damage, however, things wildly
Differ. In Oblivion the Flame Touch spell does 25 points of flame damage on touch, costing 46 magicka at Destruction Level 33. The exact same spell in Morrowind costs 12 magicka, at every Destruction level as magicka cost in Morrowind is determined by the spell effect only and does not factor in skill levels.
You might say that the systems aren’t directly comparable, and that would be correct. However, what we can compare is the number of casts each character would have. The Morrowind character with 175 magicka would be able to cast Flame Touch 14
Times, while the Oblivion character with 300 magicka would only be able to cast Flame Touch 6 times. The difference stems from the fact that as I said previously, Magicka in Oblivion regenerates, unless the player selects the Atronach sign. If our character doesn’t select that sign, then they will only have a paltry 150
Magicka, or three spell casts before they need to regenerate more. Fourth, yes there is a fourth point, remember that skills level based on how often you use them. So the old death spell I used in Morrowind is now a bad idea because to train your
Destruction skill it’s better to cast a 3 point damage effect a hundred times in combat than a 300 point damage effect once. Not that you would be able to cast that spell anyways, and the limitation to training means we can’t boost our magic skills up to that point.
So… it’s just not an option. The main take-away is this: if magic is the way you want to play, you’ll have to use it constantly, at a difficulty level that allows you to cast a lot but not take too much damage. You’ll likely want to efficient level intelligence and willpower
In addition to endurance. Oh we’ll get to that. Next, Archery. Archery damage is mainly determined by the cumulative weapon rating of the bow and arrow, which itself is determined by agility, marksman, and the durability of the bow. You can see it displayed by this formula, you got all that?
It’s not actually that complicated. So, if marksman is the main way you want to do damage, then you can simply focus on using bows which will improve your marksman skill which in turn improves your agility. You’ll want to raise your agility 5 times per level, in addition to endurance, which
Means you will probably need to supplement your agility by using sneak and security. Like destruction magic, hitting more often is more important than hitting hard, so I would avoid the temptation to use poisons or to use sneak attacks, which may seem odd but it’s important to remember that sneak attacks do not in
Fact level up your sneak skill. And you’d be doing more damage, which would mean less hits, which would mean less levels. Finally, melee combat. This includes blades, blunt weapons, and hand to hand. Melee combat is similar to archery in that damage is determined by weapon rating,
Which is determined by strength, blade or blunt, and durability. Hand to hand has a separate formula, but otherwise functions the same aside from durability. So, for melee fighters, leveling strength and their skill of choice as fast as possible is important.
You would focus on using your preferred weapon as purely as possible, as well as trying to land as many hits with it as possible without dying so no stealth or power attacks and no poison. You would also want to use a one handed weapon as they will swing faster and thus level quicker.
Melee weapons take the most amount of uses out of all the offensive skills to level, but are also the easiest to spam to level. You can land 2 or 3 blows in the time it takes to cast a spell, and 4 or 5 in the
Time it takes to fire and hit a target with an arrow. Melee fighters have the added benefit, or potentially detriment due to leveling their preferred armor class when fighting. Oh yes friends, the well goes even deeper. See, it’s possible to level a skill too quickly in Oblivion. Confused?
That’s normal when I tell you that in a game where leveling your skills is the primary focus, that it’s possible to level too quickly. See, Heavy Armor is the main attribute we’re leveling in order to raise endurance to get as much health as possible.
The problem is that once we hit that tenth level, attribute points stop raising. If you realize the implications of this, the migraine will soon set in. This is why I call the system evil. In order to maximize the number of attribute points we get per level, once I
Reach 9 out of 10 skill-ups I have to take off all my heavy armor. If I don’t, then I may potentially have a dirty level where I don’t maximize the attribute points. The only way to know is to level up, so why not just save and do that?
Because to level you have to rest, and they took away the ability to rest in the wilderness so to level you have to find a bed. This is why in my Morrowind follow-up video there was footage of me, naked, running around Oblivion punching Clannfears.
I have to leave Oblivion to level, and since I can’t risk under-leveling, the armor has to go. Now, does that sound extremely tedious and stupid? That’s because it is extremely tedious and stupid. If you want to absolutely level efficiently, then you need to keep a
Spreadsheet of your levels at the start of each level and track each skill up to keep track of the attributes you are raising. And you can’t use skills that you aren’t currently trying to raise. So if you aren’t raising Intelligence this level, you can’t use alchemy.
If you aren’t raising Agility, you can’t use lockpicks. It’s evil, it’s absolutely evil. You’re choices are to either ignore the broken system and pay the price, starve yourself of content, or torture yourself trying to min-max! “But there is another path.” “Just do it. What’s the worst that can happen.”
The fourth school of thought, the forbidden school. Welcome to Macro Hell. Even this school has its flaws, but it can greatly make up for the weaknesses of the other schools. The downside? IT’S BORING. And, well, there are other problems. Not everything can be macroed.
Believe me, I tried to make a macro to automate selling items to a merchant. It didn’t work. Most of the spells you use to train require spellcrafting to acquire, which itself is now gated either behind paid DLC which cost a couple real bucks and several thousand
Gold, or after going through the lengthy process of getting into the Arcane University. Another problem is that if you skip over too many levels, your gear will get left behind in terms of damage. And you can’t leave the room, at least if you do this while min-maxing.
I mostly just read comments while doing this, but it is something I had to babysit. And, well, it shouldn’t be necessary. This is grinding, I have to mention it because if I don’t people are going to leave comments, hell they’ll probably give up halfway through this section and leave
Comments anyways, complaining that I should just get a rubber band and swim into a corner for a few hours. At this point you start to reach the territory of just using the console to level up and bypass the problem entirely.
This is a game though, I want it to challenge me and I want to overcome that challenge. I’m not leveling for the sake of leveling, I’m leveling because I want to earn a more powerful character with better abilities. Emphasis on “earn” there, there’s no satisfaction in using the console and
There’s equally no satisfaction in using macros, but I used macros anyway, because that’s what the level system encourages. Trying to exert control against the system may leave you feeling hollow spiritually, but that’s better than getting gangbanged by ogres for several days. So, let’s summarize the four schools of thought.
Ignore the leveling and try to have fun, get murdered in a cave of 25 trolls. Pick a level and stay at it, and miss out on a bunch of content. Min-max like crazy and pull all your hair out when athletics increases on an off
Level and you realize you now have to walk everywhere. Cheat or cheese, and begin to question why you’re even bothering to play the game in the first place. So, now that I’ve laid out the problem, how do we go about solving it? First, let’s look at the other Elder Scrolls games.
I don’t remember much about leveling in Fallout 3 but I do remember that New Vegas used a flat experience system which you would earn from killing enemies any way you want and doing quests. When you leveled you could then allocate points into the skill levels.
Every two levels you would get perks which could be invested into attributes, or you could raise attributes at that one doctor. This system takes away the level-as-you use-it aspect of Elder Scrolls, which is part of the Howard Trilogy’s defining style so I certainly wouldn’t advocate removing the core idea.
Skyrim attempted to solve the pitfalls of Oblivion by removing attributes and replacing them with a flat choice between raising Health, Magicka, or Fatigue every level, which is the classic Bethesda strategy of implementing new ideas poorly, and then axing all the old ideas that got messed up as a consequence.
Is your scaling system causing everybody to complain about attributes? Better remove attributes instead of fixing the scaling system, which is funny because Skyrim still made an attempt at fixing the scaling system anyways. I would still rather go back to the handcrafted level design philosophy of
Morrowind, but I will acknowledge that Skyrim was at least an improvement over Oblivion in scaling. Speaking of Morrowind, how did Morrowind solve this leveling problem despite having almost exactly the same core idea? Simple. With trainers. Here’s an instance where the smallest, most minute of changes ended up having a
Drastic impact, and most people don’t even realize that this right here was the biggest failure of Oblivion. You can only use a trainer five times per level. [“That’s nothing compared to Morrowind”] Sounds innocuous, right? In Morrowind there was no cap on the number of times you could use a trainer, meaning
If you had 25 thousand gold you could soar from level 1 to 20 in no time. Of course, the only people pulling that off are gonna be experienced Morrowind vets. The reason this is significant is that Morrowind has the exact same efficient leveling philosophy as Oblivion.
It’s just for min-maxers to make the absolute best characters possible. It is in no way necessary to min-max to complete Morrowind content. In fact, it’s very easy for Morrowind characters to cross the power threshold and become unstoppable beasts even at the maximum difficulty just through playing the game.
In Oblivion, however, the trainers become necessary due to the aggressive scaling, only for whatever reason there is now a limit. If I had to guess, I figure the designers didn’t want players leapfrogging level brackets or they would get left behind in terms of gear.
Which is a funny notion because in addition to restricting the number of times you can use a trainer, trainers are also more expensive per level to use, in a world with even less access to gold than Morrowind.
I mean, yes, the economy of the game breaks around level 12, and you can always use exploits to get easy money, but if you play the game by the game’s rules, it can be difficult to get enough money in the early game to consistently utilize trainers.
Especially if the way you plan on making money is questing. The number of overall trainers has also been reduced. There are almost as many trainers for Long Blade in Morrowind as there are trainers total in Oblivion, and that’s not a joke.
There are 95 Long Blade trainers in Morrowind, just that one skill, and there are 105 trainers total in Oblivion. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages lists every single trainer in Oblivion on a single page, while each skill in Morrowind requires its own page to list all its respective trainers.
Most of them aren’t as long as the Long Blade page, like axe only has 18 trainers, but still. That’s a lot more than the five people in Cyrodiil that train your axe, sorry, blunt skill. So we have less trainers spread out over a larger surface area.
The total number of trainers you’ll have access to is cut down another 21 trainers; in order to get the services of master trainers because you have to have skill level 70. I actually like the master trainer quests.
I think it’s a great idea to make the relationship more personal, but it means you only really have 4 people in Cyrodiil who can train a skill for you. They also cut down on the number of skills individual trainers can train.
So when you meet masters in Morrowind, they tend to be good at other stuff as well. And can offer training in those skills. Then you have to factor in Radiant AI. I have the amazing ability to consistently arrive in a city at night, meaning I have
To wait until whenever the trainer is scheduled to start offering their services to train, and then track them down because if I wait in their house it’ll be considered trespassing. And then there is the cost, which is 10 times the skill level.
And sure, you can use Drain Skill to cheese trainer costs but you also can’t delete spells in Oblivion so I didn’t use that exploit. So, overall, most people probably don’t mention trainers because most people don’t find any use for them in Oblivion. Afterall, their jobs can be outsourced to a macro.
Their best use is training skills that either can’t be macroed or even with a macro level at glacial pace. Prominent examples being Mercantile, Restoration, and Athletics. And, well, there’s a limited number of uses for trainers. I’d guess most players doing a general playthrough get to around level 25 to 30,
Higher if they try to 100 percent. So most players can only get 125 to 150 levels from training, assuming they somehow have the gold to afford it at the low levels. That may sound like a lot of easy skill-ups, but that will probably only end
Up covering half of the grindiest skills in Oblivion. Trainers are an area that got even worse with Skyrim, there are even less of them, not just because of the skill crunch but there are just less per skill in general, and the Skyrim player now lacks control over when they level meaning getting the
Most out of their limited use requires some serious gymnastics. Skill books are another option, in Morrowind you’d mostly use skill books to finish out the final few levels of a skill when it’s most expensive and most difficult to level. Arguably their usefulness in that respect means they are worth saving until much
Later in the game, and I end up forgetting to use them. Saving skill books in Morrowind is easy though, at least on PC, because you can pick them up without reading them. Well you can’t do that in Oblivion, although the ability did return in Skyrim
If you ordered a follower to pick the book up for you. I’m guessing the idea is that Skill Books are meant to be an immediate leveling reward for an area, but that idea doesn’t work. Okay, so, in Oblivion I need 254.9 experience to level Restoration from 99 to 100.
Doesn’t sound bad, until you find out that each restoration spell, regardless of effect, gives you 0.6 experience. That is 425 casts of Restoration spells. Or I can get my hands on a book like “Withershins” or “2920, Rains Hand” and skip that. If I had used that at Restoration level 25, which requires 54
Casts to raise to 26, then that would obviously be wasteful. Morrowind played with the idea of giving skill ups as quest rewards in the Tribunal Temple and House Telvanni questlines in the form of skill books. I think rewarding levels in a faction with a clear skill focus, like magic skills in
The Mages Guild, is a good idea, the only problem then is messing up an efficient level because you got points in at attribute in an offlevel, or accidentally qualifying the player for a level up too early, do you see what I mean when it’s all
Interconnected? I was gonna say the Gray Prince giving you a spell effect to raise your skills instead of training you was an oversight but now I’m not so sure. Speaking of skill books, there are less of them in the world, many are randomized loot, and some are difficult to immediately identify.
This is a problem Skyrim somewhat addressed actually. In Morrowind each skill book would have 3 to 5 fixed locations it could appear in. Sometimes more, sometimes less, only once did a skill book only appear in one location. They were never leveled loot, and they were always more valuable than
Non-skill books, meaning identifying them without using them was easy. Skyrim is pretty similar in this respect. 3 to 5 versions of each book with fixed locations and clear values. Oblivion messed this up in several ways: there are usually only 1 or 2 versions of each skill book.
Many books are available through randomized loot, meaning a stealth player might find a combat book. Some books, like a Dance in Fire volume 7 are only available in randomized loot. Book values are also not consistent, most of the time they are valuable but sometimes
You get a book like The Firsthold Revolt, which will blend in with other books at it’s low price point For the coup de grace on leveling, you have to consider all of this information, all of it. All the formulas and xp values and charts and trainer locations and different
Philosophies and essays, you take all of that, and you try to cram it into an Oblivion playthrough. You’ll forget to use a trainer here, or accept a dirty level there, at some point you’ll probably break down and macro a couple levels or just turn
The difficulty slider down just to try and experience the world that we haven’t even really gotten to yet and you’ll realize that you did all of this just to get a character that can kinda handle enemies at the medium difficulty without making you
Want to gouge your eyes out and check yourself in at a mental hospital. You’ll look to the sky and wonder how a benevolent being could permit such an atrocity to pass QA. I know it’s a meme to say Bethesda doesn’t playtest but I seriously can’t imagine how Bethesda let this system slide.
Did nobody there play the game for more than a couple hours? I love the Making of Oblivion documentary because it shows level and world designers but you know who it doesn’t show? The guy responsible for this. Wait, yeah it does, he’s right there, hugging Terrance Stamp and showing off how
Big his [____] is for getting 3 celebrities in the game and then calling it a star studded cast. And the E3 demo, we’ll get to that later, what did you think I wasn’t gonna mention it? So we’re wrapping up the Arena now and we get to
It’s one and only real quests, which is optional. The Gray Prince requests. We go and investigate his lineage. He’s far too busy standing in place and cutting up this target dummy to do it himself. Now, one would think
That given this is literally the only quest to go outside of the Arena, that it would be in any way complicated. Nope. Go to Crow Haven, get a journal. Come back. I had to kill a vampire to get that journal, of course, But
It’s actually optional as the quest doesn’t require his death to advance. That’s fine. But then Adirondack won’t say anything either way. If his father’s left alive or slain. Oh, yeah, Lord of Leviticus. Here is his father, which to me explains the great Prince’s pale complexion, because by implication, he’s half vampire.
All right, so the book Notes on Racial Phylogeny seems to indicate that orcs, for whatever reason, can’t bear children with the other races of MYR or men, even though works are supposedly awesome, but also Goblin Kin and apparently Beast Folk, although that last part two years older and thereby not canon, it’s also
Left ambiguous and open with the idea that most people would try keep their half work children a secret. So we’ve got Angry Neck who appears to be pale skinned more than likely because he’s half imperial, half work, but also apparently has enhanced abilities compared to other orcs, even though
That could boil down to either conjecture, a misinterpretation of his skills as natural born talent or some byproduct of being part of two generally pretty martial races. Or it’s half vampirism. Who can really say, Well, I can? He’s distressed at the news of being descended of a
Vampire, so that probably indicates that he hasn’t been feeding on people this entire time, even though he is an Arena fighter and lives in a place called the Blood Works. He has no weakness to the sun, although I guess photosensitivity could be in play.
But then again, that’s a pretty bad condition to have if you’re an Arena fighter. And he doesn’t turn to vampire dust when he dies. But maybe half vampires don’t. The real point of the story is simple The Great Prince staked his entire identity as a fighter
On having some mysterious legacy behind him. It’s a pretty big part of his branding. I have never made it a secret that I am actually only half or. I am a lord son. Yet I’ve been denied the noble privilege to which I’m entitled. So I have become the gray
Prince Noble in my own right. Still, if I can prove who I really am and show the world that an author can be noble in blood as well as deed, maybe yes, you could help me.
The news of his vampirism doesn’t just distress him. When it comes time for our match up, he gives up on the will to live and just lets you kill him. It’s weird that they account for this by lowering his health 100
Points when they should just lower it to one point. That would make him go down in a single strike and would avoid the hilarious instance of it taking dozens of swings to down an opponent who isn’t fighting back.
And if you think it isn’t difficult, it’s literally just the command set, a space health space, one again and poof, good, good. People will just witness the impossible action that bromadiolone has been defeated. All right, See, again, the great print has been
Defeated. The whole the new hero of the people of Syria to be your Arena grand champion. Good deed by now. That germ in the unpatched version of the game. If you kill again after revealing
The truth, it’s counted as murder by the game. Before we take the title, we get our own custom title. We get to pick from. I chose the Divine Avenger for various reasons. It’s not a big deal because after
You defeat the Great Prince, all you fight are leveled monsters with the same one line every time. So being the Divine Avenger is really nothing special. Afterwards, we get an upgrade into the raiment of valor. The raymonds are sort of a twist on the uniform idea from
Morrowind, where you’re required to wear a uniform to do the Imperial Legion content. You can actually get expelled from the Arena if you remove your raiment in battle twice. The first time effectively functions as a free battleship, but you won’t really need it. There’s a pretty
Big problem with the Rayman of Valor, which has to do with how armor works in Oblivion. Oblivion cut down the number of armor slots from Morrowind. Morrowind had two shoulders, two gloves, a chest, a shirt,
Greaves pants, a skirt, slot boots, a helmet, a belt, an amulet to ring slots and a shield Oblivion. Cut this down to chest legs, boots, gloves, helmet, amulet, two rings and a shield. The Rayman takes this
Further by filling the chest, legs, boots and glove slots. In order for it to be good, it has to make up for being armor in all of these slots. The heavy Rayman has an armor value of 20. If we use the worst heavy armor
In the game, the rusty iron set, the chest greaves and gloves, add up to a cumulative armor rating of 18. There are no rusty iron boots, so we move up to regular iron boots and then the cumulative
Rating of the worst heavy armor in the game is at 22. Compared to the heavy raiment of Vela’s value of 20. It gets better if we compare the weights of these pieces. The Raymond has a
Weight of 72, while the combined weight of the rusty iron armor set and the iron boots is 63. The enchantments are similarly dubious. Fortify personality is without any question, worthless in Oblivion. It seems
Like a reward idea held over for more wins. Like the armor is fortifying your personality because you’re a celebrity kind of meme or vice versa. But the Arena awards a point of fame for each combatant you beat and you get three points of
Disposition for every ten points of fame, whereas you get one point of disposition for every four points of personality. So if you do the math, the actual fame rewards of the Arena results in a higher disposition boost than the armor
Fortify athletics doesn’t make up for the increase in weights and fortify health and fatigue. Don’t make up for the penalty to armor rating. Remember that we’re talking about how the raiment compares to rusty iron gear
Here. A steel set has a cumulative armor rating of 27 and Blackwood Gear goes up to a cumulative rating of 32. Those are both easy sets to get your hands on early. And the only downside is they’re heavier
At 73.5 and £94. Yes, pounds respectively. Now, that’s the heavy armor set. The lighter armor set fares better with an armor rating of 15 versus the light armor at 14.25. You have to get past fur and leather to chainmail armor to get better gear so it can last a while longer.
But Chainmail still shows up pretty early in the game. However, it bears mentioning that without the unofficial patch, the light raiment has a health value of 100, meaning that it will break within a couple of swings. After you get the raiment, you find out what the endgame of the faction
Is. This is actually a faction where you aren’t technically the leader who exactly that is. We never find out, but we are the grand champion, which in the game files is the highest rank, a rank we
Share with own the battle master, but not Jezebel, the battle matron and our new manager We have a manager. But don’t worry, she isn’t going to send letters asking why we haven’t been showing up for the weekly exhibition matches because there’s nobody to fight us because we apparently killed all the voluntary fighters.
Which is kind of weird. But sure, I guess nobody knew was signing up to the Arena after seeing a guy go 27 or no in two days. So instead the Arena is paying guys to wrangle us some monsters and we get paid depending on the
Number of critters we fight at once. Don’t get excited. It maxes out at three. The monsters are leveled and so is the gold reward. We get paid. So you’ll go from fighting wolves to miniatures and wonder how the hell they captured a miniature. It’s also
Weekly, so you have to remember to go do the fights as well. There’s something important we’re supposed to be doing. Our final reward is just outside. However, the adoring fan. Wow. You’re the grand champion. I saw your fight against the great prince.
You’re the best. Can I. Can I follow you around? I won’t get in the way. Golly. 11 best. I’m going to follow you and watch you and worship ground you walk on. Let’s go to the perks of a guy like me. And I won’t. Me. I don’t see.
I wish you could be mine for a treat to eat. Please pick mine. Hey, There were. Only a couple of escort missions in Morrowind where you could get a companion. Oblivion would greatly add to this number, although most of these quests will remove your companion afterwards. Still,
There’s a few antiques which exist for the express purpose of serving as full time companions. The mechanic is. It’s not quite there yet. Fallout three would overhaul followers, which translated to Skyrim. Followers don’t attempt to maintain their gear and getting them better equipment is a
Hassle with various restrictions because you can’t just trade gear with them. They also can’t. The utility purpose of carrying loot contrary to what the adoring fans says. Can I carry your weapon? Still, his uselessness as a follower, combined with his voice and goofy appearance,
Tends to lead people recording videos of themselves, knocking him off of dive rock. He responds, though a specter of the man you killed with all the same functions. Yes. Oh, great. And mighty grand champion. Is there something you need? All right, then.
You’re the grand champion. Whatever you say. You dare attack me. Hey, I’m just warming up, you pathetic. You. Hey. Back off. I am. Hey. What did you do that for? You some kind of woman? Hey. Hey. Look, most NPCs in Oblivion are essential, but not followers.
If you bring one with you, you now have to worry about them getting one shot by ogres as well. And I’d rather not hang it. I suppose I’m somewhat expected to propose fixes for the Arena instead of just leaving it broken by the side of the road. The problem is that my
Fixes would mean a fundamental change to the Arena, which I’m usually not comfortable doing. I like to fix quests by preserving the writing changes that would still tell the same general story other than a fundamental
Rewrite. I could propose something that keeps the same general structure, but with a lot more features to make the faction interesting. Before we start, we have to talk about the original Arena faction. Given there was an entire game
About this premise, it was only logical that Bethesda wanted to celebrate the legacy of Elder Scrolls with the Arena. However, according to the cutting room floor, a bulk of the Arena content was cut in favor of saving file space. So what we got was a neutered
Version where the quarrel Arena was transplanted to the Imperial City. Look, there’s an Arena you can see in Bruma in the trailer there’s a destroyed Arena and covered much. However, the cutting room floor then spins it into this ironic twist of fate where unnecessary foul space was wasted on
The former male Breton voice actors lines, which was originally West Johnson and later Ralph Kazam, resulting in thousands of wasted voice lines. No sources for any of this. So now I have to look for myself. First of all, I find it
An extremely dubious claim that all of several cities had unique Arena areas that were covered by only 800 voice lines. I unpacked the BSA files which contain the voice lines in Oblivion and deleted all the lip files which just tell the NPCs how to move their mouths.
And that totaled the voice line count in the base game at 39,000, which was as they had to cut down from 70,000 in order to cram it all into a single DVD for the Xbox 3/62. Let’s just assume that there’s an entire faction that was cut for the
Benefit of fitting on the Xbox 360. Sounds like a good narrative to run, right? About the staple PC role playing game, compromising to work on the inferior console because voice lines in the final structure start with a prefix designating what content they
Correspond to. It’s easy to total up the voice lines for each faction. The Thieves and Fighters Guild Both have 1757 lines. Yeah Both of them apparently have the exact same number. Explain that, atheists, because I can’t. The Majors Guild has 2745 lines. The Dark Brotherhood has
2526 lines, and the main quest has 3061 lines. The Arena has only hundred and 41 lines. Oh, but I’ve deceived you because in the Majors guild count, I’ve included the super essential narrative voice lines of the lectures given at the University that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single reviewer mention.
That’s 383 voice lines right there. Nearly half of this apparently complete and fleshed out faction. Third, and finally, I can’t find any trace of these West Johnson Britten lines just sitting in the files, taking up space. It’s probable he did voice some Breton lines at some
Point he was the moral and voice actor for the Bretons. But this idea that there are just thousands of unused voices just sitting around when we know that Bethesda, when a terror purging unnecessary lines to shed a Bolivians water weight is simply improbable and needs to be proven.
If you’re going to claim it, I mean, there are unused lines in the game like these holiday lines. But according to Pete Hines, some were taking dagger Paul this holiday to different towns in the game have different holidays at
Different times a year and more summer so you can own horses in the game. And one of our downloadable things you can buy different kinds of armor to put on your you know you’re riding around, you got all this cool Daisuke armor on.
You might have something for free horse so you can buy you can buy this downloadable stuff that will let you go to different places in my arm horse. And that brings us to our final point. If there really was a complete faction that Emil Pagliarulo offered up as sacrifice, why
Wasn’t it DLC? If spell tones in the Ori could make it, why couldn’t the full Arena faction? Sure, there was probably a concern that adding this content could threaten some people saves. Hence why most Elder Scrolls DLC takes place on the edges of maps or new areas. But let’s not kid ourselves
Here there was no full Arena faction. The gang saw that the voice lines were getting numerous and a meal offered up the lesser of his two quests lines so that he could focus on the dark Brotherhood. That’s the story. On to my redraft. Firstly, I would put a limit on the number
Of fights that happen per day. While plenty of people will tell us that they saw our fight with the Great Prince, I’m sure many of the Arena regulars were mad when they found out we killed all the fighters the day they decided not to go.
And now it’s about fighting monsters. Second, I would place more ceremony on the fights themselves. I think that was the intention, given that Owen gives you a pretty basic rundown of the fighters. The problem here is the fundamental
Question of whether or not a Bolivian has enough combat mechanics created dozen or so unique gimmick fights. I think the only way my proposal works is in conjunction with a later proposal I’m going to make for improving the combat.
Still, I have to stick around to fix this with the mechanics we have. Let’s start with creating three distinct types of Arena fight generic promotion and exhibition. Generic fights would work off a level list. They’d be repeatable but not contribute to the
Overall plot of the Arena. Promotion fights would be the big deals, the tough enemies that determine if we get to move up the totem pole And exhibition matches would be similar but focused on crazy event style match ups like The Oregonian Prisoner match.
One or two fights could work with some kind of allergy. Maybe one fight involves an offer for us to throw the match with threats of retaliation outside the Arena if we refuse. Maybe a fighter uses a special helm that makes him super powerful
At the cost of weakness to paralysis or something like that. At some work as a fight promoter at the low ranks, we could apprentice under the Great Prince and at the higher ranks we could get our own protegé to train and help climb the ranks.
Would also rework the grand champion fight. I don’t know if I would keep the Great Prince suicide plot point. Maybe instead is fighting style just becomes crueler and vicious if you tell them the truth. Among other
Choices. I would also try to make it a more fitting endgame challenge. Like the expectation is that you have to be genuinely high level to beat him unless you figure out his critical weakness or something like that.
There isn’t really a lot you can do with a story that’s trapped inside one location. That’s why the part of the Questline people usually talk about is the part that takes place outside of the Arena. So we
Head out looking for new work. But before we go and do the Fighters Guild, we’ll need to get a horse. As for some reason they don’t have a guild hall in the Imperial City like they do in every other city.
Even then, only three halls will let you enlist in the Guild and only two of them have meaningful work. Horses are expensive, however, and we bored horses and, well, we don’t actually sell horses anymore. That is now despite this being an end snack or a bura here sentence and no informing
Us that we can receive a free set of her new horse armor as some harebrained promotional scheme. Yes, we’re talking about horse armor scratched off the bingo card. Now everyone knows horse armor’s lazy and overpriced. But I don’t think you understand. Just lazy and overpriced. Horse armor
Was. For starters, I’m fairly confident there weren’t any actual new lines of dialog. Snack reviewers responses seem to be patched together from. Other voice lines. What can I interest you in? You’ve got to be kidding. Let’s see what we’ve got here.
I mean, come on. Lynda Carter is the wife of the guy who runs the company. Surely you could have. The only new asset that’s added are these steel and elven armor sets. Even then, the difference is purely cosmetic. All the armor does is give your horse a
Bit more health. Which [____]. Fair enough, I guess. However, if you don’t own a horse, which is fair at low levels as they’re pretty expensive starting at 500 gold, then snake will throw in a free horse with the same stance as the worst horse in the game.
Starting the theme with the DLC, however, is that they introduce that messes with a base concept. Horses are a simple idea. You spend a few levels running everywhere on foot until you have some money and end up purchasing a steed to get around quicker. Makes sense, right? So throwing
In a free horse minutes from the end of the cereal is kind of a punch in the nose to that idea. Although there’s another free horse you can get in the main quest. Like the first main quest. I don’t think Bethesda really knew
What they wanted from horses. And as a result, they come off as an undercooked mechanic. Are they to help the player get around quicker? Because this is a game with fast travel, Running is pretty much better because you can level athletics and if you stop
To fight something, there’s a long animation as you dismount and you’ll be starving because the roads are packed with critters. Despite the frequent legion patrols, you run into. And if you don’t stop, you’ll have to contend with all the critters you aggro along the way all at once. Let’s just
Say it wasn’t long until the old nag died. Even with the armor. But as the charge $2.50 for this DLC, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but the gaming world of 26 hated it.
If they released it two days earlier, they could have written the whole thing off as an April joke. One thing that always bothered me was the people arguing that it wasn’t all right because it was a cosmetic difference that other players
Couldn’t see, which is technically not true. There’s a negligible gameplay difference, and if other players could see you, you’d be embarrassed for wasting both real and in-game gold on horse armor actually has trees and like garden poles.
That was a clip from the Making of Oblivion documentary from E3 25. You can forgive the guy. There’s a lot of wasteland Morrowind. It’s not like the first area you start in is a swamp or anything. Playing them because. Oh yeah. E3 2005. We’ll get to that. The Fighters
Guild, they’re an imperial organization dedicated to organizing the mercenaries of Tamriel. There’s nothing to stop nine fighters from joining the Guild like mages or assassins. The only requirement is being able to kill stuff. New faction requirements have been removed
From Oblivion in Morrowind. They were a way of getting progress so that characters had to have skills related to their faction, which isn’t as restrictive as some make it out to be. If you weren’t of a fighting persuasion in Morrowind, then you could only do roughly half
Of the Fighters Guild quests before running into the quests with rank requirements and more would be unlocked at the impossible requirement of reaching skill level 30 in one of the Fighters Guild skills you’ll need to maintain a high level and a faction skill.
If you were intent on completing the endgame quests for that faction. The bit of it was in order to do a quests like, say, finding the staff of Magnus, you had to have a magical skill at 60, so the staff of Magnus probably wasn’t going to end
Up in the hands of some barbarian and capable casting magic. Experience problems. I don’t. I don’t know how to do whispers. No, no. I’m aware the Fighters Guild isn’t where this rears its ugly head. The worst. I mean, I didn’t mention how a freshly escaped
Prisoner managed to be an ex blade in one on one combat in the Arena, and it will get worse. Just bear in mind that as of now, the rules made up in the ranks don’t matter. The number of cities with quest givers has been reduced to two. This is unlike
Morrowind, where each major city had a guild hall with a quest giver. The free form questing of factions for Morrowind has also been traded in for a more linear narrative. Like, say, there are two players. One starts in shading hall, one starts an anvil.
Both players are going to do the same three quests Supergrass because they are literally the only quests the player is allowed to do in the Fighters Guild until those three are completed. Now, ideally, Oblivion should still have the advantage as it seems like the goal was to blow Morrowind quests out of
The park in terms of direct one on one comparison, less quests and more structure, but better quests. It’s the example everyone loves is a rat problem versus exterminator creating one of the most subversive and creative quests I’ve ever seen in an RPG. Of course, Oblivion Rat
Quest is designed to be subversive. Like the first question you ever do in the Anvil Fighters Guild is a parody of the first quest year overdue for the Fighters Guild in Morrowind. It’s only redeeming quality during these beginning quests is the somewhat humorous scenarios that
Come up every here and there, like helping a woman protect your pet rats, even though it sounded like the rats were the problem. The first Fighters Guild quest most players will do in Morrowind is at the Bellmore Guild Hall, where the player is contracted to take care of a rat problem.
This involves killing three in Oblivion. A rat problem entails going to a woman’s house of a similar name to the woman in Morrowind, where it will be revealed that she has been keeping the rats as pets and she would like us to take care of whatever is
Killing them. That’s right. Rats in my basement and something has been killing them. It’s how by rabies you must do something. We kill a mountain lion and are sent with a local hunter to take out a pack of lions before killing another lion in the
Basement after our return. Our client then thinks that her neighbor is responsible, and we tell her to find out that she’s been leaving bait near the client’s basement. The goal was to draw the rats out. And coincidentally, these lions were somehow getting into
This free walled city. Sure, if we tell the truth, we get a free level in speech craft. If we lie to cover her neighbor who didn’t want anybody to get hurt, we get a free level in acrobatics.
Now, in terms of a comparison, I think most people would agree which Quest is more interesting. However, I think the comparison is unfair. Morrowind wanted to give a quests that new players could feasibly complete, while Oblivion was more certain that players could handle the challenge because
There isn’t any more version of this quest more adequately primed players for the faction. Oblivion poisoned the well by setting the expectation for quests to be this nuanced when they generally aren’t. The next quests the unfortunate shopkeeper involves just sitting in a shop and waiting for
Some thieves to break in while more wins. Next Quest involves leaving town to take care of some poachers holed up in the back of a mine. Morrowind sets the expectation for what it accomplishes with quests to reasonable a simple objective where the storytelling is emergent.
Go read some forum posts about how much difficulty people have with this quest and the various ways people figured out how to handle it. Oblivion sets the expectation that its quests are going to be a step up
When often they aren’t. The player is told at each step how to handle the problem. So you don’t get that moment where the player realizes they can chug alcohol to improve their stats in order to fight the rats.
Well, we’ve also won’t place the meat to beat rats until after the player goes with pinterest’s on the hunt. And the choice is somewhat bizarre as speech craft and acrobatics are not the hallmarks of a fighter. It’s the illusion of a quest with depth and it works
Because people like to talk about how much of a wonderful subversion this quest is. In order to go further, we have to talk about the writers. Oblivion did us the great favor of crediting every
Single writer as quest designer without a clue as to who is responsible for what quests. So unless the writers have since taking credit for their work, it’s become nebulous. Who to attribute what work? This was true of
Morrowind as well, although with a smaller writing team, the writers themselves giving credit was far easier. An example than the creators of various doom and thief levels are very well known. When you discuss those levels, a part of the analysis is understanding the people behind their creation. Yet people are
Willing to spend hours discussing Elder Scrolls quests without acknowledging the people responsible. To the point that Wikipedia credits Ted Petersen and Michael Kirkbride as the writers of Oblivion. Now, that’s an easy mistake to make, and I believe there are two at fault here. Bethesda for not crediting
Developers properly and the Elder Scrolls community for not better documenting sources. The writers shouldn’t have to be like a mule. Pagliarulo shouting the rooftops that he created the dark brotherhood Questline. But in the same vein, he often doesn’t bring up that he’s also responsible for the Arena.
Questline a fact that almost fell into obscurity. If for the fallout Wiki Zone archive linking to a Gamasutra article. Yes, the Fallout wiki did more to document an Elder Scrolls Quest designer than the Elder Scrolls wikis did. Bruce Nesmith’s work on the Thieves Guild
Would have been missed if not for a Ken Ralston interview mentioning the fact offhandedly, Brian Chapman worked on the IMages Guild and Kurt Coleman worked on the main quest and Mark Nelson worked on the Fighters Guild, although I can only say that one with 80% certainty.
In fact, I can’t really say with any certainty that I won’t be proven wrong in at least one of these accounts. I mean, I only figured out that Nelson worked on the Fighters Guild from the credits section of a mod on the Nexus. The nature of development at
Bethesda as well makes it difficult to say just one person worked on each questline. It’s more than likely multiple team members contributed to each questline, with one designer acting as the lead for that questline rather than its
Sole developer. But it’s the best we have. Unless some of these developers pull a Douglas Goodall and break down who was responsible for what quests. Speaking of Morrowind had ten factions you could join in the conventional sense of starting at Rank one and progressing to rank nine, The Fighters,
Mages and Thieves Guilds, the Imperial Legion and Colt, Great Horses, Halilu Rudoren and Giovanni, as well as the Tribunal Temple and more like Tong. And eight of those factions had the same writer. Now we have half as many factions, most of which
Have exclusive writers. So the transition from quantity of Morrowind to quality of Oblivion should be apparent by default. And yet it isn’t, as you’ll see before you get ahead of yourself and leave comments about fast travel. I implore you to actually listen and not just assume my argument for my position.
Once you complete the two question the anvil, you now have to go to Shane Hall or vice versa. If you started in Shane Hall. This is a fantastic opportunity to discuss fast travel and the world of Oblivion. If we look at
The map, we can see that we start the game here near the Imperial City. We then went to Anvil is here in the southwest corner of the playable area, and now we have to go here to Shade Knoll in the Northeast to progress.
A common defense of fast travel goes something like this. If you don’t like it, just don’t use it. Ralston and Nelson, who were anti fast travel during the Bolivians development, lost the fight with Todd Howard. Under similar logic. Sure, if you don’t use fast travel
In Oblivion, then it’s just like Morrowind. Except it isn’t for one. Mark and recall have been removed, likely because there are more than a couple of quests which would break in terms of sequence and scripting if the player could simply teleport out of a trap.
There was, however, already a built in way to stop players from teleporting out of certain areas in Morrowind, such as the final boss area of the Main Quest, The Clockwork City of Tribunal and the maze of the blood moon expansion. Now you could say it would
Break immersion to prevent the player from teleporting out of certain traps in Oblivion. After all, the examples I gave tended to involve some powerful magic to stop the player. And that’s fair. Maybe could introduce some kind of sigil suppressant crystals that explain why you can’t teleport in some
Areas. The downside is instead the immersion shattering realization that the Wizards and Mages of Tamriel willingly gave up the ability to teleport. And nobody, especially not any evil mage, is present in this game.
We’re willing to break the law for the useful power of actual teleportation, let alone in emergencies. I bet having a mark set at Cloud Rule or temple would have been really useful to the. The other reason Mark can recall, as well as the intervention spells
Were likely removed, was that the developers thought they were unnecessary because they’re fast travel now, so they added a system that they intended to be optional for more hardcore fans and then removed a solution that those same hardcore fans used.
Fine, we’ll just hire a Salt Strider or a carriage or a boat to transport us. Well, there aren’t any because there’s fast travel, so it would be unnecessary. See the problem here? I honestly believe most of the proponents of the just don’t use it argument are people who haven’t
Played Morrowind and so are blissfully unaware of the diegetic travel options of that game. They just hear that it didn’t have fast travel and assume that everyone must have just walked everywhere. Something people seem
To get caught on during my Morrowind discussion of this topic is time management. If people are busy in their lives, then they don’t have. The time to spend on hours of travel and navigation. I think people are missing something important, however, which
Is that time itself equivalent to hours of playtime, is still 2 hours of playtime, whether you spend that time traveling or not. Is it really more satisfying to get ten generic quests done with fast travel in the same time you could have spent adventuring the countryside? That will come down to people’s
Subjective preference and taste. But the point of my Morrowind video is that there are people who have a taste for Morrowind who aren’t being catered to, and it’s not even impossible. Elder Scrolls could cater to both signs, literally one checkbox in the menu. Any design philosophy
That doesn’t rely on fast travel is all it takes to make Elder Scrolls more inclusive for everyone. Instead, and we’re quoting Gavin Carter, adding in a fast travel system to eliminate the tedium of long trips. These things are features the fan community has requested again and again.
Rather than everyone getting what they wanted, features were slashed in favor of appealing to a vocal minority. Well, if you disagree and don’t like micro-transactions in your fallout games, you can no longer complain because these are things the fan community has requested again and again to eliminate the tedium of scavenging
Environments. Tamriel isn’t a big place post Morrowind in the individual provinces or especially small. The decision was made to keep the mainline games to the scale of hard info, which is honestly just weird to me. Like,
Would anyone have complained of zero at all? Was twice the scale of art and fell besides the world designers, which is why it only takes 3 hours to fast travel from Anvil to the Imperial City. It’s not even that big a deal to really
Make the world that much bigger because most of it was just procedurally generated and then decorated with speed. Three. Hell, there’s a quest where you track down a merchant who does a round of Breville skinned grad, Bruma and Leeuwin each week, and when a guard from outside the Imperial City comments that he
Attended our supposedly legendary fight with the great Prince. Yeah, I can believe that. But I shouldn’t. See, the trick you’re supposed to pull is to make the world feel bigger than it actually is. Morrowind may only have a population of around 2600, and you might not see merchants traveling
The world or people sleeping or even adequate housing for every single person. But it achieves the feeling of being even bigger than it really is by showing the player how it is the people get around and by never breaking the illusion of art and Phil’s actual size.
These provinces are supposed to be the size of real life countries, but in reality they’re smaller than real life cities. That’s a limitation of handcrafting the world. And the key to making it work is not breaking the scale. People in Bruma shouldn’t be wearing the
Same clothes as people in Leeuwin. Not only for cultural but climatic. More wind gave people in different regions, different styles of clothing in conversation and were able to do that because of more weapons, more advanced gear system, as well as text based dialog.
There are, however, non immersion reasons I support a lack of fast travel. The first is that it’s a system the player now has to master. If you’re able to select a point in the map and click Accept, you’ve
Mastered travel in Oblivion, navigation in map knowledge or the difference between a player who knows where they’re going. Any lost player in Morrowind, you’ll never wonder if you’re on the right road. The skinned grad, if you always just fast travel to the city, you’ll never be tempted
To explore the dungeon on the side of the Orange Road you pass every time you travel from coral to Bruma and the consequences for not properly planning out your quest will never be felt. If you can always just teleport back to your base of operations.
In the Morrowind video, I told the story of an adventure. I went on where I had to end up fighting a dangerous vampire that I could barely defeat. On the flip side is the Oblivion version of that story where I ran out of health potions. So I just left the cave teleported
Home, crafted, and then teleported back and continued the fight like nothing had happened. If the goal of the gameplay formula is to incentivize exploration to allow each player to tell a unique story by the simple means of which path they choose to navigate the world, then you have failed from the start by
Unlocking every city by default. That mistake has since been corrected, but that does not alleviate the fact that once you unlock a point in the middle of nowhere, that point can now serve as a nexus of fast travel. If you travel to desolate mine on foot, you better remember that journey, because every
Time you fast travel to desolate mine to get to other places near it, you miss out. This is Kuma, my friend’s character from our play time in Test three MP. It’s there, but those on. Oh, Jesus Christ. See, I can explain all the efficient ways to navigate the world.
But my friend, who’s never played Morrowind before, doesn’t know that the Major Guild will take you from Caldera to all drone. So we walked and we got lost a little, but we found our way. It was a proper adventure. Well, if you were to
Somehow play moral together, all Coomer has to do is click on a drone and hit accept. See, part of what makes Morrowind work is that the map tells you almost nothing beyond the basic geography of fell. It’s actually pretty cool, gradually filling in the map because you’ll see exactly
Where you’ve been. A Bolivians map on the flip side shows you the cities and roads by default. A Bolivians map is also tied to the Oblivion UI, which is a tangent I’ll have to set aside for now.
But since a Bolivians UI can’t be scaled or zoomed out, you can’t actually see the entire map of sphere at all. Like you can vardenafil. Because if you could, you would notice how every faction is extremely
Reliant on fast travel in Oblivion rather than having holes in each city that give contracts local to area. Guilt holes in Oblivion represent all of spirit, all which becomes apparent at the fourth quest. The third question shading all has this passing out gear to some fighters, guild members,
And then trying to keep them alive. Pro-tip turn down the difficulty every time someone gives you someone to protect, unless you really like loading screens. But well after Shade and Hall were directed to speak to the Guild master who already you’re needed in coral.
Report to Villa Danton. She has got some duties for you to take care of. So we journey from Shade and Hall across here at all to coral to be told to speak with Mandarin Oriental. I would like you
To speak with modern Orian. He will assign you any duties that are currently pending duty to be told again, to cross it all down to Skin Grant to deal with a guild member’s delinquent contract. Once that’s taken care of, it’s up to Coral to then be sent down to Leeuwin in the
Opposite corner of the map. Then back up to Coral, only to be told to get another job from either anvil or Shading Hall. This is part of the reason it feels like zero to LAX and a distinct culture, no matter what part of the world you’re in.
Now, I want to be clear here. Yes, there are reasons that the Fighters Guild master sends you around the map to take care of Guild business. That isn’t unreasonable. And there were more when Quest had you crossing the map? Frequently. The difference
Is that if you play with our fast travel, you can still get around fast in Morrowind. Whereas if you play without fast travel in Oblivion, you rush to get shadow mere or use fortify speed and run. If we’re going to be centralizing our guild operations, could we at least start hiring
Couriers to send orders instead of getting all of our instructions in person? Let’s face the facts here. Most of the question Oblivion are just Morrowind quests with better scripting and voice acting. Talk to a lady and get her five portions of ectoplasm so that she signs and exclusivity deal with the
Fighters Guild. The difference is that Oblivion doesn’t have the mechanical intrigue of Morrowind, so getting ectoplasm isn’t a big deal because once I have it, I can just teleport home. So why include fast travel? Well, Todd knew best the 26 release date and the audience that Todd Howard was going for needed travel.
PC was his core market and he knew they would buy the game no matter what. It was selling the idea of a role playing game to the console, plebeians that mattered. Hey man, just got back from Coral after a long mission near Leo, and I heard you
Got a contract for me. I’ve got another contract for you, mate. I assume you won’t embarrass yourself. It’s from Vienna. A million at the water’s edge settlement. She needs something retrieved from her ancestral tomb. Try not to muck it up. Oh, sure.
Let me just consult the map of where that is. Oh, you’ve got to be [____]ed. So, yeah, we’re back on the road again. I guess I should mention. That I’m not following any kind of self-imposed travel rule for Oblivion. I tried to go down
Every road at least once, but most of the game I just fast traveled to and fro. We a lady with her debt, which we can pay out of pocket if we want to keep her dad’s unique, like chest, piece and sword. Then we travel back up to
Sheridan Hall to then be directed to cross zero to Anvil, our next quest to take out a gang of thieves. You’ll note that these quests aren’t very complex. It’s literally just go to caves, kill targets, get things return. The only thing that’s notable about the
Bond’s is that Magnolia, the guy who defaulted on his contract back in Skin grad, is joining us for this mission. You have the choice to either rat him out or keep his secret. And it apparently doesn’t come up
During this outing, which is strange because you have to complete the skin graft job to get this quest. After this, we go back up to Coral for another mission from Orian. Orian, if you aren’t aware, is a reference to a Malekith quest in Morrowind, where you kill a man with a similar name
Who is supposedly the last of his line. But in classic Malekith fashion, this the case and apparently the super powerful helm of Orion Bear Claw was returned to Mondrian out of goodwill. And I guess that makes umbers death in the Morrowind video canon. Wait, if Orian
Has the super powerful helm, why doesn’t he wear it later when he joins us for some field work? We’re taking the son of the Guild master out in a contract as a morale. And don’t worry, he’s essential. He has to survive this quest to that.
Later, he can die and we can suffer a meaningless demotion. See, they couldn’t have risked him dying here because he would absolutely get annihilated if he wasn’t flagged. Essential. This is the start of. Oh, there he is. There’s that savage troll. He’s the real antagonist of the Fighters
Guild alongside his brothers, Savage Ogre and Savage Minotaur. You’ll see why soon enough. This game is weird in that the Savage moniker is actually supposed to indicate that they are leveled enemies rather than stronger variations on normal trolls. Anyways, we find
The body of the guy we’re looking for alongside a broken shield. Orian is very interested in the shield, and our reward is one of the most convoluted loot tables in Oblivion. Our next job from Orian is to go to Brazil and investigate why McAleer has defaulted on
Another contract. Sure enough, it’s revealed that McAleer has left the Fighters Guild to join a new mercenary organization. The Blackwood Company defaulted. That all you talk? I’m Blackwood Company now. This is where that choice from earlier matters in a really stupid way.
If you covered for McAleer, he’ll tell you what his original contract was, and you’ll have to complete it for him. If you told Orian the truth about McGwire, he won’t. So you have to go all the way back up to Coral to then be told what his
Contract was. So you can go back down to the Breville Mages Guild to complete it. What’s wrong with this? Is that our last job with Magnolia during Den of Thieves? Nothing changes mechanically about the quest, despite being closer to our choice of regarding McGwire. So him
Being upset now is just kind of weird, as is Orian not giving you the details of McCullers contract ahead of time, just in case you’ll find you have to get ten samples of gall for the contract.
At least with this quest, you’re told the location to get the stuff out and not just supposed to wander around or look up where to find ectoplasm at a low level. Our next contractor, Marion, is an off the books investigation.
Several different quests have now pointed us at the Blackwood Vitello’s. Dawn time was another sign of the Guild master who died alongside 14 others in an attempt to retrieve the sword Sin Weaver from his only black heart for.
The Wizard. Forgot. I. I mean, are. I just love that detail that’s thrown in. We threw 15 bodies at a single contract and failed. Where Orian and ourselves are going to succeed. And we have the gall to be upset when the Blackwood Company started to look like a viable alternative to the Fighters
Guild. I mean, sure, they did pull some underhanded trickery with Blackheart lying about killing him and then paying him some of the contract money to give the sword to our gods and then giving Blackheart our Goths details so that he could mysteriously murdered and the sword taken back.
But even with that information, the Blackwood Company still looks better by comparison for not losing 15 people in one raid. At least until later. If you look at the USP page, you’ll note that this quest has some serious issues with bugs. The highly
Scripted nature of this quest means that it’s prone to breaking in a few spots. Anyways, we fight through the generic bandits until we get to Blackheart, who is pretty strong because, surprise surprise, his gear isn’t scaled to the players level.
Is it any surprise that the guy who worked on The Danger Quest and Morrowind understood that fact? I wish he’d use it more often. Orian takes my cards ring to prove that they were the ones to complete the contract and that the Blackwood lied. But who did he
Take the ring to? The Blackhorse Courier. The Arcane University High Chancellor Ocado. Well, the courier doesn’t publish. The new information. The university doesn’t serve that function in civil society. And Ocado is probably preoccupied with the Oblivion crisis. Nothing comes of this quest
Except establishing that the Blackwood Company lied about completing a contract and screwing over one of their clients, which is for the dramatic benefit of the player, even if it doesn’t make sense. The Blackwood Company doesn’t have to be evil for the player to be justified in supporting the Fighters
Guild. How Morrowind was the game where you could join the Fighters Guild in their war with the Thieves Guild or vice versa, but you’ll notice a trend with Oblivion quest lines of there being opposing enjoyable factions with childish characterizations. So the Finder’s Guild got a zany black heart.
Blackwood Company said they did him, but apparently they were mistaken. Or stretching the truth. Maybe after the Blackheart job, which started in Coral and ended near Leo. And by the way, we had to shading hall in order to get our next contract to take
Care of some fugitives by Breville. Oh, go to a cave, kill two fugitives, come back. Does anybody work at the Revil Fighters Guild Hall? There’s only four people here. One of them’s a generic
NPC that exists at every guild hall. No quest ever takes you here. And the one thing of note is the northern right plant. Hell, Leon has a guild hall which exposes a problem they really shouldn’t just say
The Leo in Guild Hall was doing so poorly they got evicted and the Blackwood Company took over the building. Maybe a few quests near the start of the faction take place in Leo in, you know, to make the take over personal. Or maybe the Fighters Guild wasn’t allowed in Leo in
Until the recent Imperial takeover. It would match the themes of the nobility in Leo in being racist towards beast Folk, which the owners of the Blackwood Company are. So after we finish and prevail, we then have to go from Shane Hall to Anvil to take an ultimate scholar named Talent
Of Eleanor to a cave full. Deidre. She can die, but it’s also easy to clear the area ahead of her and then go back to grab her. If that description sounds familiar, it’s basically a copy of the quest to sign Dale for Morrowind, where we
Rescue an ALMER scholar named sign Dale of Shimmering from a sixth house base We were supposed to escort her through. There’s a key difference, though. If sign Dale died, the quests give her her under. You would refuse to give you his two remaining contracts, including the lucrative PW day Egg Mine quest.
If L.A. dies, you lose out on a fame point and a little bit of gold because Oblivion can’t afford to actually punish the player for failing a contract that it didn’t plan for you to fail.
Mind you, if you failed in Morrowind, you could still generally make it to the end of a faction as long as you didn’t fail any other quests but Oblivion. Linear and rigid structure has no tolerance for failure,
So the player can’t fail even if the client themselves dies because you didn’t do what they hired you to do. Now, theoretically, what you could do with the rigid quest structure is be punitive of with rings.
Players still get access to all the content, but they might not achieve as high a rank at the end of the questline to unlock the quests. The grants leadership. You might have to complete a couple of radiant quests to return
Those rings. It’s not as ideal as the freeform quest structures of guilds and Morrowind, but I could see why they wouldn’t want that, given there are twice as many cities, so theoretically twice as many guild halls in Oblivion.
But there doesn’t need to be guild halls for every faction in every city. In fact, there are only halls in all of the cities for the Mages and Fighters Guilds. It’s weird how Oblivion is trying to improve the individual
Quests experienced by prioritizing quality over quantity, but then strives out to show how much more content there is because cereal is bigger while lacking in faction quality because of how stretched out it’s become. We go back to and will then be told to go up to Coral to get our next
Job. The Guild Master’s son and a few other fighters went to a mine south of Leo in Yes, really? To clear out a bunch of savage trolls. Only problem is that it was a few days ago and they haven’t been heard from since.
I mean, you did send them on a mission halfway across Tamriel. So you can’t expect immediate answers. That’s not hyperbole. As a joke, I put a circle on the map with coral at the center and
The forsaken mine at the edge. And as you can see, the same distance goes from coral to EB and heart. Vivek and more and hold as well as solitude and wind helm nearly even gets to self-same. That is how far away land wind is from coral trolls though the forsaken mine has as
Fighting nine trolls to clear out a cave which is on the edge of too many by itself. But this isn’t the first quest to clear out a cave full of trolls in the Fighters Guild. In fact, no animal Cavern also had nine trolls in addition to three and a minute art.
Most of the Fighters Guild is either set in a cave or, if it’s feeling frisky, an alien ruin. Of course the obvious has occurred and the master son Veronese has fallen at the hands of the Blackwood Company.
We find his journal and his body next to his comrade, Edward, whom we can speculate Berenice was super gay with because that is the only possible logical conclusion of two men sharing an emotional connection. Thank the gods for Edward. I fear without him I would go mad. This constant companionship
Keeps hopeful that I will one day be returned to active duty. Until then, we have each other. He has willingly foregone lucrative contracts in order to help me pass the days. A true companion. I could not imagine. Tomorrow I will ask if he wants to go to fanboy Hooters with me.
This area is where the player can acquire Blackwood armor, which is better than steel and even dwarven armor and Modern doesn’t even comment When we come back. Adorned in the enemy’s equipment, Orient indicates we need to lay
Low while he breaks the news to the guild master, which means another trek across cereal to anvil or shading hall, only to be told we’ve been demoted because everyone in the Fighters Guild has access to couriers except us.
The one guy who’s actually doing and Shane Hall was asked to rescue a noble’s daughter, which is one of the better quests of the faction purely for this character. Lord Rugg, dumped grocer Jack, are you from the Fighters Guild? I resume. Good show. I am Lord Rock, Dump, grow sugar. Let us converse.
Sit on the lady, Rog. But I fear that while stout rock picking, she was apprehensive, stolen away. My suspension is that ogres have objected her. Please search to the east of my sprawling abode. They have been known to vacate these premises. I am most gracious and truly woeful.
We have to save his daughter, who’s hanging out with a trio of ogres, which, given the relationship between orcs and ogres and the later Malekith Quest has implicated Asians. We have to take down the ogres, which of course is great because ogres are damage sponges
That are annoying to fight because it’s like punching pinkies to death and doom just dodge their attacks. Swing, dodge, swing, dodge, swing endlessly. Oblivion has a whole roster of enemies and locations to use, and it always seems to be the same enemies in the same areas.
The next, once we get in shade Hall almost disproves that previous statement in that locals at Harlan’s watch have been seeing strange lights down the hill and some people went missing after investigating. Turns out a couple of willow
The wisps are down there, which are energy creatures that can vanish and absorb health. At first I thought they were annoying, but I realized it was because their design actually makes you wake from the stupor of punch and dodge.
These guys will be important when we talk about zero later, but don’t worry, because as this quest becomes interesting, there’s actually a bunch of swamp trolls in that cave. We need to clear out. This is the only time swamp trolls show up in a cave near Sheridan Hall and not
In a giant, swampy marsh. They’re marked specifically as Fighters Guild trolls in the sea. Yes, rather than the generic level savage trolls or static level normal trolls. And they’re great because their level stats are actually even worse than savage trolls.
Even better, in order to clear the cave out, we have to kill all 15. Yes, 15 trolls. This is the last Fighters Guild quest where trolls show up. So let’s do a tally. Nine three ogres and a miniature normal cavern movie Escort of the Master Son. One monster potentially at
Robert Glenn when we were gathering all nine trolls in forsaken mine. Three ogres when saving the ORC lady. 15 Swamp trolls at Harlan’s Watch and seven Ogres. When his aunt sends us on our next quest to recover the
Stone of St Alicia that is 33 trolls 13 ogres, a miniature and a wild card monster depending on your level. Skyrim tried to amend the troll problem by cutting down on the number of individual trolls that would show up at any given cave
And making the trolls tougher enemies to compensate. But simultaneously, Skyrim would make the same troll mistake with dragger, so really no progress was made. Trolls aren’t ever really character ized as being social creatures that like to hang out in
Clusters, and I certainly can’t understand how they’re getting the food necessary to support their populations in zero at all. I do want to be clear the Fighters Guild does have more than monster caves to deal with. There was
A cave full of Dadra which had their own problems better suited to discussion during the main quest, and there were a couple of undead caves which have their own problems better suited to discussion during the Mages Guild. The real question is how does this stack up to the more Open Fighters Guild?
Most of the Morrowind quests tended to revolve around fighting other humans, but this made sense somewhat as the broader faction conflict to the Fighters Guild in Morrowind was the human conflict between the Thieves and Fighters Guild. So fighting humans makes sense given the endgame
Quest killing the leaders of one of those sanctions. Oblivion has a similar human conflict. This time it’s the Fighters Guild versus the Blackwood Company. And not to spoil things, but it will end in a similar manner of fighting humans. Yet human enemies make up the minority of general enemies for fighters
Guild quests. Unlike Morrowind, the two Fighters Guild doesn’t ever seem to be contracted to take care of bounties. Hell, none of the factions are actively taking steps to deal with the Sierra Bandit crisis. Speaking of bandits, our next quest is to recover an artifact from the Bruma
Chapel from a gang of bandits. How bandits acquired the stone isn’t elaborated on. Almost like they aren’t going to be the main enemies of the quest. And sure enough, we use the power of the map marker to find one of the guys who stole the stone.
But he is the only survivor of an ogre ambush. Recover the stone and our lost ranks are restored. Almost losing their ranks was pointless because they don’t perform the functions they did in Morrowind. Let’s talk about Oblivion. Combat Oblivion. Combat is a total overhaul of Morrison’s combat system. Almost every element
Has been changed in some way, and it can be stated without question to have been an improvement or can. The problem with gamers is that they hear my discussion of more weapons combat and assumed that I was saying it
Was a perfect combat system and that every game should take cues from Morrowind, including the absurd example that Dark Souls combat would be improved with hit chance. This is not a position I ever took, and I could spend hours
Clarifying myself to no avail, because some people have impressive willpower when it comes to missing the point. The problem, I think, is that a lot of people in discussion of video games as an art form believe in the universal design philosophy that there is exactly one way
To make video games that all roads are leading to. Imagine saying there’s only one way to write books, only one way to write songs. Only one way to paint a canvas. Only one way to direct movies. That would be absurd. And I think the same is true of game design.
When people describe the difference between the two systems, you often hear something like dice roll combat versus action combat, which I think is also inaccurate. Morrowind is not entirely dice roll combat. It’s still reliant on the player’s ability to control their weapons.
You still have to aim and you still have to lead targets. A true dice roll combat system would have completely removed the factor of mechanical skill from the game. More Wins. Combat is in fact an action system with a dice roll system layered on top. This stems from its
Origin as a tabletop simulation, and there are several reasons why this worked for Morrowind. Once you adequately understand them, Morrowind is attempting to simulate the character, skill and attribute levels to adequately portray elements of the fight that it can’t with its graphics. Morrowind biggest problem isn’t chance,
It’s feedback. Feedback is an interesting thing because you can give the same player the same shotgun, but change the feedback and their perception of that shotgun will change entirely in order to demonstrate more ones Combat system.
I’m going to add an element taken from other games to explain what’s going on. A combat log. This will now communicate what is happening on screen when we fight. See, the thing is, more wins, not the first game. To have a system where the player’s weapon model will collide with the enemy model
Only to do nothing. But when you have a combat log and more information about what is happening. People seem less likely to complain. Suddenly those misses aren’t misses, but glancing blows or parries or dodges or just plain luck. Morrowind is communicating with its combat system that this is
The battle of your offensive and defensive skills against someone else’s offensive and defensive. If you fight a master of a defensive skill, you’re going to need a high offensive skill to land hits. Now, when I say that most people will go, Well, why aren’t there animations for that?
And I just say, Look, do you know how on the wire more wins development was? The system we got from Morrowind wasn’t perfect, and I don’t recall ever saying it was. What I do recall seeing was my wish to see that system iterated upon rather than replaced.
Oblivion removed. Hit Chance. This simple change necessitated a cascade of reworks due to how hit Chance was a variable in most combat equations. The goal was clear. People complained about not being able to hit stuff in Morrowind with only a limited time to fix the system and with a desire to increase
The appeal of Elder Scrolls. The easiest way to fix that problem is to remove the mechanic entirely. If you play Morrowind with a 100% hit chance mod, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice because Morrowind by itself isn’t designed to progress you through a world where everything always
Hits. Oblivion had to hastily design a system where the players progression improve their ability to fight, and this inevitably just meant that higher skill levels meant bigger numbers. Higher weapon skills translate to getting bigger numbers out of weapons and higher armor skills translate to
Getting a bigger number out of armor. However, Hit Chance is just a piece of the puzzle. Strap in, We’re going deeper. Fatigue was king in Morrowind. A lot of things were king, actually. That’s what made it interesting.
But your fatigue and more importantly, how much you’ve used was a factor in a lot of equations in Morrowind. Not just combat, because it makes sense if you’re out of breath, it’s hard to do anything. Fatigue in Oblivion is
Just a damage modifier. Having low fatigue means you do less damage. You lose fatigue from swinging and a lot of fatigue from power attacks. Fatigue. Regeneration has also been simplified for no reason. Fatigue now recovers ten points per second throughout the entire game, whereas in Morrowind fatigue, regeneration was derived from this formula.
It wasn’t very robust and needed a finer tuning, but it was something that could inform your build. Blocking. Blocking has been made of manual action and this doesn’t bother me. Walking in Morrowind was derived from your skills, including the chance your character would use their shield.
Now the player and I can control when they block and can block more more than their shields. Weapon directions have also been removed. This will be relevant later. But Morrowind had directional weapon attacks. Todd was Very proud of the system. The only downside was that because each weapon dominated specific categories. Having an
Option to just toggle the best weapon attacks was inevitable. Rather than fixing this, it was removed. Dodge rules have been added. This is tied to your acrobatics and I rarely see people use it for combat due to how unwieldy it is to use.
But it’s worth mentioning that they took a stab at it. If only to see how many people didn’t realize there was a Dodge mechanic in Oblivion. The end result of all of these changes is a combat system I would describe as spongy. I demonstrated the difference in
The two systems in my Morrowind video, and I’m going to try and improve that comparison. Okay, so I’m rewriting the section because my quote, improved unquote comparison was very confusing and difficult to follow. The problem stems from the fact that the comparison doesn’t work for people
Watching compared to people playing the games. So let’s talk about that instead. Imore Windows. I’ve been playing this character lately. He’s a red guard, proficient in long blade and time duration. He doesn’t carry a weapon. Instead he summons his sword and before every fight
It’s pretty fun. But at level one, he only seems to hit about 75% of his swings and has an 80% chance of casting the summon spell. Those are actually pretty good chances for a level one character, but most people who play this game seem to fail.
The basic expectation of picking combat skills tied to your playstyle. And maybe that makes sense. Actually, considering the number of Morrowind YouTube videos telling people to not put their preferred skills in their class, which is advice
For Min MAXINE, but first time players are probably taking it anyways. It all comes back to that mud crab on the peninsula and say the nine over by the lighthouse involving a character who isn’t good at short blades swinging that iron dagger.
Whether you’re that guy or you are my current character. Both characters have the problem of not hitting all of their swings. If only Morrowind had a built in way of solving this problem leveling you solve the problem by leveling. There’s a reason complaining about Morrowind
Combat always takes place in the early game. By level four, it won’t be a problem for my character and by level seven hit chance usually isn’t a problem for most characters because it turns out skill levels are an abstraction for, you know, the skill level of the character.
All right. So shifting forward to Oblivion, like Morrowind, it has a contingent of people who complain that its combat is also not satisfying. But we’ve removed, cast and hit chance. I thought that was all it took to make the combat feel good. I mean, the thing is that game
Feel or whatever we’re calling it this year is not just subjective, but super subjective. I think more wins combat is good. That’s a subjective phrase. Of course, I explained why I thought so and provided objective examples for my argument. That’s not as subjective. The first issue
Oblivion has is that there aren’t really any problems the player needs to solve. That’s because of scaling. The only thing you need a level for is increased damage numbers and increased health numbers. But since the enemy isn’t static, there’s no point to leveling to increase those numbers.
A day trick sword and Morrowind works because enemies are static. A Diedrich sword in Oblivion doesn’t work because a Diedrich Sword two is is the same as an iron sword to a stunted scamp. That is why a refusal to level is a serious playstyle in Oblivion.
The second problem is that combat at level one is the same as combat at level 20. This is not the case in Morrowind because, you know, hit chance and that was the point of my combat comparison. You can’t really tell what level my character is just by watching the
Footage on screen like you could in Morrowind, because it all looks and feels the same. This is a modern problem with roleplaying games. Developers are terrified of players finding a mechanic annoying or frustrating,
So they would rather make safe, stagnant and boring games than have early game be frustrating in order to make the player progression feel earned. That’s why people now conflate roleplaying games with dialog simulators, effectively upscaled visual
Novels. Ironically, it’s survival games that picked up the abandoned mechanical elements that roleplaying games often left behind. Seven Days to Die feels more like a sequel to Fallen in Vegas than Fallout four. Even if there isn’t any dialog. Anyways, the next few lines might be confusing because
They cut out the comparison. But I’m past the point of carrying on this project because it’s August and I shouldn’t still be writing stuff for this video. Okay, fine. If you decide to watch the unedited version, you’ll notice that in Morrowind or character, regardless of
Skill level, did the same amount of damage. And that makes sense. Our weapon damage is scaled off of strength, not our skill level. So it stays the same because being more proficient with a weapon doesn’t make you do
More damage. Your body does your training with your weapon instead determines your ability to land those hits. You can be the strongest man in the world, but if you keep missing the high, it’s pointless in a sense. Then your damage per second is derived from both the physical
Damage you can do and how often you can do it. This creates a large amount of nuance building your character, having to balance a multitude of factors in your playstyle. Strength for raw damage, skills and agility for landing blows and dodging attacks. Endurance for the rate of fatigue.
Recovery. Speed for dodging attacks by taking a hit chance out of the equation. You’ve crippled the system. To compensate, the fundamental dynamic has to be changed in Oblivion. Weapon skills now determine damage as well as strength. So does
Fatigue. Surprisingly, however, Oblivion does maintain a complicated, nuanced web because this is where scaling comes back. I told you it affects everything. This is why I couldn’t really go into detail about this topic in my Morrowind video. All right. So in the Morrowind case, you have this
Option when creating NPCs to auto calculate stats. This takes all the basic information you give their class level, race, etc. and auto calculates what their skills should be. Oblivion inherited this, but it also added level offsetting. The example we use this Captain Hieronymus
Lex. Captain Lex is always 15 levels above the player and every time we level he levels and his stats increase. So if you aren’t level one, you can go to Captain Lex right now and use the command.
Get a space blade on him and find that the value is much higher than its construction set value of 58. See a lot of people when discussing Oblivion scaling just leave it at health because that’s what’s
Noticeable at a cursory glance. Even with research on the USB, they may not be realizing that the horror doesn’t stop there. I’m actually writing this section very late in production and I’ve probably looked at over 100 different NPC pages and almost all of them use level offsets rather than fixed levels.
In the same vein, it’s probable that most of these species are also using auto calculated levels, meaning that it isn’t just the gear of bandits or health values that’s increasing the people of serial are actively getting better at skills as well. More wins, combat better conveys the feeling
Of becoming a master with a weapon than Oblivion, because it has that relative skill difference. Even then, Oblivion is surprisingly of displaying the difference in skill levels with this damage system, and you’ll only see that difference
If you don’t level because NPCs aren’t improving. When you don’t levels, you’ll gradually grow in skill level compared to other NPCs. It’s only one way, however, so it’s not a perfect fix. It’s funny to me that they actually made the combat system work for the purpose of
Displaying skill difference in Oblivion without hit chance and then completely invalidated that advancement in formula with level scaling. Now I’m adding this section after having recorded and edited the combat demonstration in order clear something up. I didn’t really know what my second attempted this would demonstrate until I
Did it the first time. It was to show that Morrowind combat, regardless of skill level, always results in the same paddle spamming combat, whereas Morrowind combat is faster and more dynamic. In doing this test, I realized that a Bolivians combat system actually has the potential do a
Fine job of displaying skill levels, but you won’t ever notice due to the aforementioned scaling. I still think the clip demonstrates my objective of showing how I Bolivians combat feels more spongy than more wind with the player not really feeling all that more powerful as they level up.
However, one thing I’ve noticed in discussions of Elder Scrolls is that people really don’t get Morrowind combat. Now, if you want to make the criticism that Morrowind doesn’t do a good enough job explaining itself, that’s one thing. But I think if you have analysis or retrospective in the title of your video
And you have a surface level or even atmospheric level understanding of the system, then that’s a problem. I’m bringing this up earlier than. I wanted to because I think it helps demonstrate my point. Let’s say I’m analyzing Dark Souls and I say something like this Dark Souls Combat is frustrating because
There’s simply too much unavoidable damage. Look at this gargoyle fight. I’m unable to run fast enough to avoid these attacks. If you heard me say that and have played Dark Souls before, that’s a red flag. It shows that I don’t understand how the game’s defensive systems work with dodges and blocks.
I would be rightfully criticized for analyzing the game. I didn’t understand. Most analysts I’ve seen discuss moral wins. Combat fundamentally don’t understand it. And that’s a red flag. By the way, if every other Oblivion video can have tangents about Morrowind combat, then so can mine.
I’ve come up with a handy three strikes system to expose these reviewers, and you can take it for a spin on any discussion of more wins combat you want. Let’s see how people stack up. First strike
Spamming the attack button. See, in Morrowind you do more damage if you hold the attack button for a second before releasing. This is akin to a power attack, but is actually efficient with your fatigue.
I think people are drawn to spamming the left mouse button in order to do more swings, thinking it will improve their chance to hit and thus damage per second when actually it’s the opposite. A few short considerate swings will easily out damage fast strikes because you’ll use less fatigue.
And that brings us to the second strike. Bad fatigue management running out of fatigue due to fighting a tough enemy is one thing, but consistently demonstrating yourself, fighting at low fatigue and then complaining that you’re misaligned is akin to showing the world you didn’t know.
Dodge rules were in Dark Souls. You hit 25% more often at full fatigue and miss 25% more often at low fatigue. The third strike to knock you out is this using weapons, not part of your class? It’s one thing if you train a weapon skill up to a usable level, but I’ve
Noticed a trend of people not picking the short blade skill but using short blades anyways. Specifically The Iron Dagger. The iron dagger itself is a red flag because it’s the free weapon at the Census Office. If someone is genuinely playing a short blade class, they would
Probably upgrade pretty from the low damage Iron Dagger. I simply don’t believe in a long sword dominated world that there are this many people dedicated to using short blades. It’s far more likely they hit record started. Morrowind made a character, rushed to fight the first
Enemy. They could put the starter weapon. And that’s the clip we’re seeing. Bonus points of the combat clip examples they use take place in the Bitter Coast or Skating Isles. And with three strikes, you’re out. Hell, it’s entirely possible the same thing is happening with Oblivion combat.
It’s just harder to tell who is bad at Oblivion and who isn’t because of how much more homogenous the footage will look like due to the removal of hit chance. So with that out of the way, let’s make
Our first proposal to fixing the system. Now, I should be clear here, When proposing fixes to things, I tend to work in the framework of trying to maintain the stylistic vision of the parent game. When I propose a fix to a questline, it’s in the interest of still telling the same
Story. With that in mind, let’s talk about Dark Souls. This game should not be like Dark Souls, but it’s always the go to when trying to propose ways to improve a Bolivians combat. Because I think people are stuck in the mindset that hit chance is off limits.
Dark Souls Combat works for the vision it’s trying to achieve, which is a third person action adventure game with a variety of enemies and weapon types. Oblivion doesn’t even have the basic variety of a charging enemy that you have to stroll away from.
And people think Dark Souls is the place to start. Now the aspect that the Elder Scrolls should try to learn from the game is enemy variety, and when fighting humans weapon variety, once it has those things, then we can talk about parries and weapon arcs.
Ironically, Fallout four seemed like a step in this direction with multiple monster types like creatures that burrow in. Okay, maybe that’s all I remember off the top of my head, but it shows a bit of innovation. So spitballing some ideas. We got the minotaur
Who could do a big wind up charging attack that makes him a threat in tight hallways. Maybe instead of the miniatures using war hammers, we give those to the ogres who do giant sweeping attacks. We’ll still from Skyrim and say the trolls have a really powerful health regeneration
That you need to use fire to stop and maybe fly up away from the enemy to keep using magic. But this caused them fatigue and they eventually float back down, back into melee range when they run out.
I would also make sure that Amazon trolls don’t stop showing up. So instead of fighting caves full of miniatures and ogres at higher levels, you always have that variety in enemy types. We’ve taken the basic monster
Category and given them all really simple overhauls. That brings them variety. Now let’s make the bandits marauders more interesting. First, we’re going to bring back the three different attack types chop, slash and thrust. Each weapon has different strengths in different categories, so some swords are better at slashing than they
Are thrusting, and some swords are better at thrusting than they are at slashing. But you say, won’t this just inherent the best attack from from Morrowind Meat Mortal has directional attacks as well as upward and downward swings and thrusting attacks. Mountain Blade would also later use the model of directional attacks as well.
No, really Elder Scrolls was actually early to the first person Melee Brawler Party. So why don’t people just stick to using one attack type in Mortal? Well, while people do tend to use the same attack over and over, thrusting with pointed weapons and slashing with the others, they still have
That option of switching in order to shake things up, not for themselves, but for their enemies. Maul users will often poke with their blunt weapon because it’s faster than winding up a massive swing, even if it does less damage because it knocks people out of
Their rhythm. Swinging with a spear rather than stabbing may seem silly, but the goal is to have as big an arc as possible to improve your chances of landing a hit. While each weapon may have an ideal mode that is strong in the other, options could have
Strengths as well, like making the attacks faster. Another common occurrence in mortal coil is people not being able to swing their massive claymore is in tight spaces. Long sword is a bad option in close quarters. The thing though, is that mortal is an imperfect example.
It’s a skill based, competitive multiplayer game. Never roleplaying someone bad at fighting, although I do sometimes use that excuse. Elder Scrolls can learn from Lord Howe, at least in terms of how it handles its weapon systems. But the focus still has
To be on the roleplaying aspect of the franchise. If my guy is in character not good at using swords, I shouldn’t be able to just pick up a great sword and fight like a master because I, the player, am good at fighting with a great sword in the system.
Our next edition is changing how armor types affect combat. It’s pretty easy to identify when someone is wearing light medium, heavy armor or no armor at all. So different weapons, having different strengths seems like it would work well now. Armor effectiveness being realistically portrayed is a rabbit hole
Of extremely niche knowledge and bickering. I’m not interested in exposing myself to bladed weapons. Could be great for fighting people in little or light armor. This would gradually fall off as you got into medium and finally, heavy armor, blunt
Weapons generally do less damage than bladed weapons overall, but wouldn’t fall off with the heavier armors presenting themselves as better all rounders. Materials should also be a factor. Maybe a Diedrich sword cuts through iron and steel armor, but a steel sword does nothing against a plate that would
Make Diedrich Blunt weapons like the massive Moloch ball or fallen drunk more desirable since they would be the ultimate melee tools against heavy armor. Assassins, meanwhile, would stick with blades thanks to their strength against an armored foes. Another thing
Would be to add bleed effects and broken bones. But maybe borders on feature creep right now. However, adding weapon variety is important in easing the current effect of weapons being flavored paddles. One possibility is incorporating enchantments into attacks. For instance, perhaps some enchanted daggers could double as magic wands.
Staffs could double as pull arms in a pinch. And maybe some weapons have weapon arts where they deal more damage at the cost of enchantment charge. So now that we have that down, how do we work? Hitchens
Back into this equation? Simple. We improve the feedback. When an attack is made, the game, the odds of it landing it then knows where the end of the attack animation needs to be and where it’s starting from. This is where forward in inverse kinematics come into play. If the attack misses, maybe it
Goes wild or falls short. If it’s a glancing blow, then it connects with flies off the armor. And if it’s a dodge, we might see the enemy suddenly increase the distance just enough for it to miss. I would weigh the formula to work something like this for two average fighters.
15% of swing should miss, 20% of swings should Glantz And 25% of swings should be dodged. If someone rates high for agility, dodge more often. If someone rates high for armor, there are more glancing blows due to their instincts. If someone rates high for luck, attackers miss
Them more often. It’s then the job of the designer to communicate these ideas to the player. If someone’s known for wearing light armor, they should consistently dodge more often. If someone’s known for being
Lucky, they should have a high luck rating and so on. After this, it’s simply a matter of communicate to the player that their choice in weapon skill is important to their ability to fight. I think there would be a lot less complaining
If the Census Office generated a weapon off the player’s highest rated skill rather than always placing a dagger. Because any time you see people complaining about the combat, it’s always that [____]ing iron dagger. Finally, let’s rework health and fatigue. Health can be brought down or damage brought. Currently,
Large health pools are the order of the day because without them, 100% chance would just tear through people. By bringing nuance to the system, we can bring the glass cannon approach back to combat. Surviving more than a couple of blows should be territory reserved for tanky playstyles. Supporting this
Would be a fatigue rework. Fatigue now regenerates much faster with player progression, bringing that time up drastically as well. Oblivion changed the system by making attacks take far more fatigue than before, meaning the fights will slow down as they progress and fighters run out of energy to do as much damage.
Fatigue has returned to now affecting your ability to land hits. Now the game is trying to beat your opponents before you run out of fatigue. Dodging or blocking a lot would affect this. But what about power attacks? Oh, yeah. Let me put power attacks in the grave real quick. Power attacks in
Oblivion just aren’t good. Someone’s already left a comment saying, Did the combat tests wrong? Because I didn’t use power attacks. That’s intentional. Fatigue is damage and you trade a lot of it to do power attacks. However, because power attacks either lock you in place
Or lock your trajectory, they actually often miss quite a bit to try and get use out of my expert perk for hand-to-hand, which has a 5% chance of knocking someone to the ground. I have to do a backwards power attack. The consistent way I found to do this is
To turn 180 degrees away from the enemy, run backwards towards them, and then initiate the power attack before quickly jerking the camera back around to try and land the hit power. Attack levels are tied to perks which are tied to skill level.
At 25, we master the standing power attack, which does three times the normal damage. Note that all power attacks normally do 2.5 times damage for five times the fatigue. Take that in F power attack fatigue. Penalty is a variable that is multiplied against the normal fatigue cost formula. When you power
Attack, it will always cost five times the fatigue to do a power attack that does 2.5 times the damage. Now let’s think here. Instead of power attacking, we could do five attacks, which would be five times the damage or twice the damage or the power attack at the same
Cost. Power attacks then fill the niche of being finishing moves. Or as you level up special moves, a level 50, you gain a 5% chance to disarm from left or right attacks. At level 75, you gain a 5% chance to knock enemies back from backwards power attacks. At level 100, you
Gain a 5% chance to paralyze. That works around paralysis resistance. The perk system is an Oblivion edition with varying results, mostly positive. Skyrim would inevitably go on to improve this general idea. It’s not worth going to go by skill to explain all the perks, so we’ll discuss them if they come up.
I think power attacks are fine if you’re trying to get a 5% outcome or trying to quickly finish the fight. But saying that they should be the bulk of combat is, in my opinion, really bad advice.
With that, I think we’ve finished up on Oblivion combat. I don’t know if my proposed system is superior because it’s pretty easy to let the ideas guy in me get ahead of myself with proposals. However I do think that Elder Scrolls would do nothing but benefit from having a system with more
Depth. You can make it accessible and easy for people to play with, but playing on the higher difficulty should necessitate a level of mechanical skill with the system. Right now, that mechanical skill is bobbing in and out of fights or running around opponents hiding in their blindspot.
From here until the end is a linear chain of events, so we’ll treat it as one long finale instead of three individual quests. Orian asks that we meet him in his shack in Coral. This man was a high ranking Fighters Guild member and lives in a hovel. Orian believes the Blackwood
Company must be stopped and where the only one capable of doing anything useful for the guild. His anonymous source, a.k.a. Mark Nelson, told him A high ranking Blackwood member is in Glade Mist Cave between Coral and Burma. To acquire him alive, we have to tear through
A company of Blackwood fighters. He’s intimidated. They’ll be killed all his guards and his willing to follow us back to Oregon’s hovel. We have to pass through the gate, man. Not even going to call for guards to arrest us. Nobody ever thinks to just lie and say the player
Struck first help. Even if Blackwood members did attack us, that doesn’t mean we can just kidnap their boss. I’m pretty sure slavery is still illegal in the Empire. It’s weak writing, and I’m not sure why. Subsequent interrogation scene couldn’t have just happened at Glade Mist Cave to avoid it.
The interrogation itself is clever and fun using the persuasion mechanics or a good old beating to get answers out of Jim Cajun. It ends with a suicide though, which is weird because there’s nothing that should inspire such loyalty in that faction. It’s a mercenary group,
Not a cult. Either way, figures. The next step is to infiltrate the Blackwood Company. Yeah. Send us the guy who runs around naked box controls on an infiltration job. Jim Z is skeptical. We lie our
Way through because player choice is an illusion. We follow him to the training area where we receive our first mission, but we need to take some hissed sap before we head out. And this is where the game completely, utterly broke,
Even with the unofficial patch as Jim Z walks out, locking the door behind him but forgetting to give me the sap. The scripting is actually broken, so the game is completely and utterly soft locked even with access to the console, which is
Only the second time we’ve had a game break at such a fundamental level. The first time being after I shot a settler in the Minutemen path of Fallout four. There’s a few problems here. This is one of those moments where the designers can’t let the
Players have teleportation magic because it would break the sequence to have the player discover the secret be able to escape. The player is being strong armed into taking his sap. You can’t avoid it and you can’t escape it. Killing the other
Trainees won’t work and you won’t ever be able to escape. The Blackwood Company is content with locking you in their basement for the rest of time and waiting until you take that sap. They do the same thing with the hazing scene in
Skyrim’s Companions faction, where the game isn’t prepared for the player to say no beyond simply locking off the contents. Which is fine if the faction in question is in the primary combat faction of the game. Morrowind, for example, could theoretically get away with doing something like this because the player still has
Other options for factions to go do. What’s funny is Morrowind generally avoided putting the player in situations where the rules for the character of their playing would come in conflict with factions. I would point to craziest curio, but hell, sexual favors are perfectly in line with a hollow character. The Fighters
Guild is by design. What are the morally good factions in Oblivion? Still, presenting no path for the player beyond this trap is just bizarre. So we reload the save and try again. This time the scripting doesn’t break and we
Head out, arrive at water’s edge, and take out our target’s goblins who have taken over the village once it’s done. Or if we leave the area like a punk, we wake up at Orient House, which is impressive given
Water’s edge is near Leeuwin in murder and lives in coral. He then sends us back down to Warner’s edge to find out what really happened, which, as it turns out, the village has been slaughtered. We can find the father of the woman whose debt we helped with mourning the loss of his daughter.
This is an improvement over Morrowind, at least in terms of emotional storytelling. But boy, is it stupid. For the aforementioned reasons, the player is ramrod it into this trap because it’s the lynchpin of the Blackwood Company that the player
Needs to participate in this event. Sure, it’s interesting to force a good player into doing something morally dubious. The Premise is fine, but the methods and more importantly, the goal of the scene overrode any desire for good storytelling.
The Blackwood Company is using bad. His stamp from a tree located in Leeuwin as a performance enhancing substance. But in turn, it apparently makes you do evil things, no matter how complicated that may be. Let’s break this down, then. All of the Blackwood Company
Quests belong her reign, so only his quest and the den of Thieves Quest is worth discussing. We start with Magnier defaulting on a contract because the guild isn’t paying well enough. This is where I have to criticize the USP, because at present they state that Magnier
Isn’t Fighters Guild material. Call him a coward and say that he rambles about his family and paycheck. That’s that’s one interpretation. But it’s that Magnier is a capable fighter. And he’s completely right. The Fighters Guild doesn’t pay well because the rewards are
Leveled at levels one through four. They only pay you 100 gold per contract, which is an alliance bordering how dangerous the contracts can be. 500 gold at level 20 may seem like a lot, but the cost of equipment go up more than the payouts at level brackets.
So in reality, you’re being paid relatively than at lower levels. If you’re a normal person trying to ply your trade as a mercenary, these wages will barely cover the cost of life saving equipment, let alone other expenses, especially If you have a family like Mangala
Does. It’s little wonder that only psychopaths like us are able to survive contracts at all. Considering how many Fighters Guild members likely die due to chronically being underpaid. Drunk and disorderly is another quest with delinquent Fighters Guild members, which they attribute to the Blackwood Company, stealing all
Of their contracts. This is where the player will probably first hear of the if they aren’t reading the Blackhorse Courier. We then take the master son to find a missing farmer and find a Blackwood Company shield by his corpse.
How and why did the Blackwood Company kill Galt as provIa? How? Because the cave is still full of monsters. And why? Because the cave is full of monsters. So they clearly didn’t have a contract to be there
And privy as a farmer. So there’s no point in killing him. The only explanation is maybe Gault is was a Blackwood recruit, but that wouldn’t explain why he was looking for gems in a cave so far from Leo.
And after this is Den of Thieves, The Quest Where We Go with Magnolia to take care of some Basma. This quest is weird because, as I’ve stated, Mackler won’t bring up if you write them out in the first quest. And here he is being at
Least content with participating in a contract. He’ll complain about the lack of direction, but that’s a valid criticism of the Guild not doing the investigation for us and simply sending us out to do the fighting part of the contract.
After this is more business where Magnolia leaves the Guild to join the Blackwood Company. This isn’t unreasonable. They are getting better contracts and they’re even equipping him with Blackwood armor and improvement over his former Iron Gear. The only thing that’s wrong here is that Magloire didn’t finish his contract, and
Really, the only thing that’s wrong is that Magnolia didn’t tell anyone he wasn’t going to finish his contract. He’s not obligated to do so given that he left the Fighters Guild. So at worst, Magner was unprofessional in airing what were otherwise valid grievances with the Guild and joined another organization,
Paid better and provided equipment as Ani Blackheart is where the faction takes a turn. Tell us Don’t on the Guild Master’s other son died alongside 14 others trying to retrieve a sword for Blackheart. His death is the reason various staff are being sent out on jobs and is slated to be the
Reason for Leena dying town has been running the guild into the ground. The Blackwood Company claimed they did the contract before Argus mysteriously died, and it’s revealed that Blackheart is still alive. However, and this is important. Nothing here points at the sap.
In fact, nothing to this point has ever pointed to the sap. It’s simply shady dealings. And it’s shady dealings we have to take. Modern origins word on. I draw aurion into question because there’s a great deal of information that he has access to that the player doesn’t. Another thing is the question of
How Blackwood Company got their hands on so many contracts that the Fighters Guild already received. Did they just show up at Argyle’s house out of the Blue Sword in hand and turn in the job? Or were they hired by Disney to do so? Because there is an important distinction there. If Argus
Can hire the Fighters Guild to retrieve a weapon from Blackheart, why shouldn’t Blackheart hire the Blackwood Company to take care of someone who basically contracted Hitman against him? Argus doesn’t speak for the Imperial, so can anyone just put in a contract to kill people with
Bounties? Sure. It seems underhanded because the Blackwood Company played a client for financial gain. But all we have to go on is assumptions by Aurion that Argus hired the Blackwood Company. We’re shown multiple times clients of Magical disposition, stating that they prefer to hire the Fighters Guild.
Simply put, there’s no clear answer here beyond the fact that his sap isn’t a sufficient excuse to explain the Blackwood Company in this situation. Then villainous Staunton dies of the forsaken mine. They took a contract to take care of some trolls. However, it becomes apparent they were
Attacked by Blackwood Company, who killed Troll and fighters, guild warriors alike, and then left. The clear implication is that they were affected by the his sap, likely seeing the Fighters Guild members as trolls. However, question Who made this contract and why did they hire both the Fighters Guild and the Blackwood
Company to it? That’s like hiring two different electricians to wire the same outlet. Surely the Fighters Guild would have some kind of exclusivity clause in their contract prior to Dunton running the Guild into the ground.
And here’s the thing. If you hire a contractor to do a job and then some random guy shows up, says he found the mangled corpse of the original contractor, so he completed the job instead. You aren’t obligated to pay that random person because they weren’t who you contracted to
Do the job. Rather, you’re obligated to call the police because they’re likely a murderer. So we’re assuming National Guards under the effect of the his. We didn’t find any bottles except empty or filled. Are the Blackwood Company members even aware that they’ve been hallucinating enemies and
Doing immoral things under the influence of the SAP? Or is that just their initiation process? And that guise brings us back to where we were. Simply put, this revelation only be described as really stupid. It recontextualized as exactly one quest and said quests didn’t need contextualization. If trolls of
The Forsaken mine was a more open question would have gone like this. The Fighters Guild was wiped out of the mine and there are several leading theories. It’s possible Vernon started a fight with the Blackwood Company when they showed up. It’s possible the Blackwood companies struck because.
They recognized that he was the son of the Fighters Guild leader. Maybe they showed up explicitly because they knew he would be there. Or maybe they were under the influence of his sap. There were several conflicting journals that could be found site with each faction
Speculating about the motives of the other. Oh, and Blackwood Company would be a general faction. Instead, they’re a vaguely evil faction under the influence of drugs. This is grounds for us to go to their headquarters and wipe them out to a man murdering
Every single person involved. Where’s the law on this matter? You are no longer one of us, like a skilled spy. Traitor. Your life is far underground. Orian isn’t even a member of the Writers Guild anymore. He got expelled after died. We’re doing
This under the table. And I’m pretty sure Officer Wes Johnson isn’t going to be impressed with the excuse that it was for the good of the Fighters Guild. The canonical new leader of the Writers Guild should be serving time pending execution for the murder of all of these people, including McGwire.
Yes, McGwire shows up to fight, which is just the cherry on top. Regardless of whether you kept a secret or not, you can’t avoid fighting him, which kind of runs contrary to the power theory, although, again, it runs contrary to
His family excuse as well. And don’t say it’s history. Considering he recognizes who we are, Selena is outraged at our actions but decides that we’re worthy of leading the Fighters Guild and we appoint Orian are second in command.
The boy. What a disaster. Assuming Mark Nelson really was the writer, it’s easy to see that his primary focus was the danger quests because they are way better than what we got with the fighters. At best, the Writers Guild got to lose outlines of ideas that really needed a second draft. That didn’t
Come because Mark and Ken were busy trying to fix a problem with the ABCs of the date or shrines. Not to hate on Nelson. He wrote the danger quests of Morrowind as well. It’s funny that Ralston claimed that Nelson hated fast travel because, well, let’s think about that claim for
A second. If Nelson believed that, then surely would have pushed his quest to not rely on fast travel. Right. So what does a fighter’s go play through without fast travel look like? I’ve been hinting at this, so let’s fully map out what this questline looks like. Why? Well, I’ll tell
You when I’m done. Assuming we saw an angel, then the first two quests start in and around Anvil. So no travel necessary. But now to progress, we have to go get a quest from the Shane Hall. Hall. We go to the
Desolate mine, which is near Shane Hall, then back to town before being directed to our next quest in Coral. Our first question Coral then sends us down to skin graft and in turn to fallen rock cave near skinned grad. Then we have to go back up to Coral in order to
Be told to travel down the lay away from here. We have to source ectoplasm, so I’ll call it a freebie and just say everyone hit up the local chapel Undercroft. We then have to go back up to Coral before having to journey back to Shane
Hall to then be told to go to the water’s edge. A small town north of Lay and take care of the debt. And we back up to Shane Hall to then be sent across the world to Anvil to take care of thieves at Hirota Cave near Anvil.
We didn’t have to travel up to Coral to escort the master’s son to no animal cavern near coral before returning to Orient and be directed to meet him at his house and then meet him in Leon. We walk up to the ruins of our Pioneer,
Which is a fair distance from Leeuwin, and then we move on to Ed nearby. Then we go to Shane Hall to get a contract to deal with fugitives hiding in blood man cave a stone’s throw away from Brazil. We then go back to Shane Hall before being directed to Anvil for an
Escort quest to British Rock cave near coverage and then go back to Anvil. Then were sent up to Coral for rain to give us a mission to go to the forsaken mine, which is southeast of Leeuwin.
And then we go back up to Coral. Then we travel to Shane Hall to be sent to save a noble daughter at law Grog Dumps estate, which is some distance north of Shane Hall. Before returning to Shane Hall to be sent to
Anvil, where we get our next job to recover Stone of St Alicia. So we go all the way up to Burma in the innocent East to find out the stone is at the ruin of say, door, which is halfway between Shane Hall and Burma.
Then we go back to Burma and then back to Anvil before being sent to Coral to kidnap a guy from Glade Cave, which is halfway between coral and Burma. We take the guy back to Coral and are sent down
To Leeuwin to infiltrate the Blackwood Company. This quest teleports us up to water’s edge before teleporting us back to arranged House, who will then send us down to water’s edge near Leeuwin. And then we return to arrange house in Coral who orders us to wipe out the Blackwood Company
Headquarters in Leeuwin, and we finally return to Coral to finish the Questline. I want to put a nail in the coffin for people who make the just don’t use it argument anytime fast travel comes up. The problem isn’t the traveling. The problem is being asked to travel to and fro a dozen times.
I had no problem. Each time I stepped out into the wilderness to go to a troll cave. But the caves were always Stone’s throw away from the cities. The Book of Travel Time Your Clock in
Oblivion is going to be going down the same roads over and over. And the reason is that the designers knew you would have access to fast travel, which is why the argument doesn’t work.
It would be one thing if the quest line was designed around a non fast travel playthrough, but there are a few steps you can take in that front. For instance, having Aurion relocate to the Guild Hall for each quest, using a courier to deliver messages and make it
Possible to turn in contracts at any Guild hall. But because the designers knew the player would have access to fast travel, they have to worry or probably didn’t realize just how much of a mess the last line is for the person who decides to disable fast travel.
Finally, we have battle Horncastle. This was a piece of DLC that added a themed home for Warriors, a large castle complete with a retinue of fighters and servants, and even the ability to collect and build trophies from the enemies you defeat. There’s even a cool sword
You can find. It’s kind of busted because the castle is just handed over to the player. If they stop the marauders currently besieging the castle, all four of them will battle. Horton Castle does break his armor or. We’ll go into more detail later, but here the player can
Purchase a dormer forge fortifying armor 15 points, using an ability which grants this future perks. This is important for getting the skill up to 50 quickly in order to repair magic equipment. As otherwise, this is one routine expenditure the player can expect until they get to skill level 50. It’s
Probably the most innocuous the mechanics broken by the game’s DLC and otherwise I rate the castle pretty highly and are the major skilled. I’m not even sure how to approach this faction. So let’s start with some
History. This faction is the work of Brian Sharp, an Elder Scrolls form admin turned Morrowind World designer. He’s alleged to be responsible for the Cliff Racer population. He got switch into Quest Design in riding position with tribunal. As with all things Bethesda, it’s difficult to specifically credit
Which quests he’s responsible for. Although there is more certainty he’s responsible for the Oblivion Mages Guild Questline and Mothership Zeta DLC from Fallout three. So how did he do you here?
Well, I’m generally against saying that are outright bad to start. I think the angle we need to take is this is the Majors Guild, a good magical faction? And the answer is not really. Mostly because the faction is basically Harry Potter. Got to get back to
The focus. I don’t know if you know this, but the Prisoner of Azkaban movie came out in 2004, and this was basically beginning of the fantasy obsession with magical high school, which is not and never has been the purpose of the Majors Guild and Elder Scrolls.
Now, sure, you have places like the arcane University and the College of Winter hold, but I think it’s important to remember the historical purposes of universities and colleges, which wasn’t primarily education, but rather the aggregation of knowledge primary research. Rather, the older school setting is typically
Characterized as having magical education fall into two camps self experimentation or direct apprenticeship. I don’t think there’s ever been a good magical faction in Elder Scrolls. The closest we ever got was how still. This
Is half a mechanic’s problem and half a passion problem. Simply put, there’s a Mages Guild in Oblivion because it’s expected of the series for there to be a magical faction. And because the faction is being made without passion, it
Can’t genuinely get content behind the expectation that the player knows or even has access to any kind of complex magic. Stealth and combat get two factions each, while magic has a single faction to be defined by. Now, the
Mages has to be accessible to Todd, and Todd is rather famously a barbarian player. The major skill never requires you to actually cast a magic reliant on your character’s skill level. In other words, the game will always provide the necessary scrolls on the rare occasion that a quest requires a spell effect.
Now, this is a problem I noted as well in the Morrowind video. However, Morrowind offset this problem in a key way. Faction requirements. Even if the Morrowind quests themselves never required the player to personally cast the Magic
House to avoid any of the major skills, Both require a magical to be raised to 70 and 80 respectively. Oblivion Inversely has a few quests which encourage spell usage and one quest that outright requires it, but it has no means of that.
The player is actually a spell caster. Outside of the most pedantic and technical sense of being a person who casts spells, albeit with scrolls. Scrolls have always been in an awkward position given they’re in the name of the game. They provide
An opportunity for non magical characters to try out and utilize magic. In Morrowind, for instance, players without the mysticism skill could still purchase arms of the intervention scrolls, allowing them to teleport back to tribunal temples.
Emphasis is on purchase. Players who lack the skill have to spend money to supplement that lack of skill. If a player is skilled in mysticism and can cast the spell, that means they may have a new weakness they need to supplement instead. Oblivion. Cut this down.
The utility function of scrolls is lessened because there are less utility spells overall when used for scrolls and Morrowind was for warriors who didn’t have security or alteration and couldn’t unlock chests, so they could purchase undersized scrolls instead. Oblivion equivalent Open scrolls, however, are now randomized to loot. So instead of having
A reliable alternative, it’s more of a coupon in the player can use to avoid playing the lock picking mini game. Charm is another good use of scrolls, but only for the first couple of levels in Oblivion. Even then, there are far fewer instances high disposition matters at all.
Once the player starts raking in those fame points and faction disposition bonuses, charm schools are worthless. Someone scrolls are another good supplement for players want to summon, but don’t use conjugation yet where it really
Getting into niche markets now. But they can’t rely on scrolls as part of their playstyle because almost all scrolls are again randomized loot. The problem, or perhaps intention behind the system, is that players can’t create scrolls. I mean, technically, yes, but it’s extremely cost prohibitive. Morrowind. So they’re just relegated to
Bonuses and demonstrations of magic, which meant sometimes I forgot about scrolls even being in my arsenal because of the UI. No, please, not yet. Spell crafting in Oblivion was a misstep, in my opinion. The player
Can only create new spells after gaining admittance into the arcane university, or for the low price of 189. And once spells are created, they can’t be deleted. So creating spells for a specific purpose and then later losing that purpose means you’re stuck with a worthless spell. It seems like being able
To craft scrolls as one offs to test spell ideas or for specific use cases would work really well instead of going the opposite direction of making spell creation increasingly difficult to in Skyrim. Well, let’s walk this back to the Guild. You can join it in a guild hall which provides
Access and ownership to many of the objects in the guild halls with no responsibilities. It’s a miracle more people don’t become associates anyways to join the university. We’re going to need a recommendation from every guild hall, meaning every city except the Imperial City.
And given such and such. So let’s go on tour of Syria, those cities. Bruma. I started by joining the Guild in Bruma. Hello there. Are you here to join the Majors Guild? The Bruma recommendation entails finding a missing mage who isn’t missing but has in fact turned invisible to prank his
Boss. You can investigate by asking around or you can use a detect spell to find your scar. You’ll eventually be allowed to all narrow who will dispel the scars of invisibility If we steal a book from Jean and he teaches us an open spell to unlock her desk. Or you can
Dispel it yourself. If you’re a nutjob who actually owns a spell on touch your target effect. I appreciate the magical path to this Quest, but here’s how I would have done it. Gene suspects that just scars invisibly hiding. But as others will point out, Jean isn’t very
Good at magic. She has her position due to nepotism, but she will point out the vulnerable happens to know, detect life and dispel and that we should ask him for training under the guise of our new membership. The quest has the same dichotomy as vallenato and just versus Jean.
We can use dialog to solve the problem or we can use magic. I would go so far as to say the desk is magically locked and can’t be physically unlocked. So both paths require some magic to be used. As
It stands, the player can bypass the magic of this quest with the security skill and a disposition check. No magic required, which in a microcosm fine, but with the rest of the guild is disappointing. Speaking of disappointing, Bruma, Bruma is the northernmost city of Sierra, all sitting at the
Base of the Jerel Mountains, which serves as a natural border to Skyrim. However, due to Oblivion maintaining the scale of Morrowind, it actually feels more appropriate to say that the Red Ring road near Lake Mary is the base of the mountains and Bruma sits just above the snow line.
In any case, Bruma shares a cultural overlap with Skyrim, at least on paper. In reality, the people do not dress for the climate and spend their days loitering. The cold and the Nordic culture is superficial at best. This is in all
Likelihood because what the nord’s actually were supposed to be hadn’t been worked out yet. The Chapel of TALOS, the City, with a nearby section of wooden shacks copied from other cities that look out of place in the northern climate.
The town also lacks a cohesive plan. You have a row of higher end housing, but at the end of the row, far from the gate is the Smith. You then have a ridge with the guild halls, but someone’s house is also up there. Just switch the house
And Smith around. Then there’s another ridge which has most of the businesses. I think the Ridge premise is fine, but it needs to shift some stuff around to better centralize the commercial area. And you would think the broom of Fighters Guild would have been mentioned at least
Once, considering it’s located near Skyrim, a land defined by fighters. Look at the muscles on you. Shading hall. Shane Hall sits below the valley’s mountains, which border straddle and Morrowind. Although this time below the snow line. Our recommendation here comes from Felker,
Who seems less than pleased that we want a recommendation and sends us off to do grunt work. Retrieving a ring he believes was tossed the well. We have to get a key from Dede soon, but she insists that we speak when fourth car is in present.
Yeah. Can we hurry this up? You aren’t even trying to get away from him. Well, met guild mate, a developer. I hear she is journeying Jason Hall inside out, looking for her husband. Right. I hope nothing bad has happened to him by deed and informs us that we aren’t the
First associate to go after the ring. Which is alarming given how simple the task is. She gives us the key and teaches us a weak feather and water breathing spell. In the well we find the ring which
Weighs £150 and the corpse of the last associate to attempt this task. Imagine drowning because you refused to drop the ring. Anyways, we return to find Falkor has left after an argument with Dietz in. He got mad that she had
Helped us and then she threatened to report him to the council, even though from her perspective, he had done wrong. This ends getting ahead of the script. She only has grounds to report falkor after the revelation of Bitcoin’s death comes up to light. What if Bitcoin had taken the ring and skipped
Town or just left the guild in general? The only hint of foul play is that Dietzen was aware of the rings abnormal heaviness, which she herself doesn’t directly indicate to the player. Despite having the opportunity. Meaning if we had died as well, she would now be culpable.
We go downstairs to search his room for the recommendation. Yeah, sure. And instead find his dildo. I mean, two black sole gems, the significance of which is intentionally lost on the player as this is their first appearance in the setting in a quest like this.
Black soldiers are used capture sapient souls, i.e., the souls of elves, humans and beast folk. Black soldiers are an interesting topic we’ll get into later. Their presence here allegedly means that Falkor is a necromancer, which is not true, given the player can possess black soldier arms but can’t
Learn necromancy. Here are the problems. Falkor was apparently aiming to kill Mages Guild Associates. His idea is clever enough for exactly one murder. His fatal flaw sending the associates to deep down to get the key. If our car was a
Necromancer, wouldn’t he have removed the body for, well, neck romantic purposes? And why would he possess the black soldier arms if he wasn’t trying to get the associates souls? I’m surprised he doesn’t have a man of Marko poster in his room for how immature as his efforts at
Sabotage are did send in, accuses Falkor without evidence, and rather than discrediting her or killing her, he just storms off in a hut. Killing her would have been on the table too, considering Falkor just goes off to live in an alien ruin after this.
And sure, the game offers a magical solution to the ring problem. Except the player doesn’t actually need to bring the ring to deetz than the world is so small and the player doesn’t need the water breathing effect and five points
Of feathers not going to help much with the weight, deets and offers to write the recommendation in place of falkor. So a theme of the majors Guilt Quest Questline is this dichotomy between talented magicians versus
The more bureaucratic members of the guild. In a sense, the guild has lost its way as a magical institution and is now purely focused on magical regulation. This mostly took the form of gradual bans on magic, like teleportation and levitation has recently extended to necromancy as well.
The Questline, though, doesn’t actually acknowledge the latter restrictions, but is primarily about the schism created by the ban of necromancy. We’ll have to discuss that later. Did you know that Sheldon Hall has a statue of Galarian? I’m not quite certain
What his connection with Shane Hall is supposed to be. Just worth noting, given that he was the guy who founded the major Skilled, The city is supposed to be inspired by Dunmore architecture, yet looks nothing like any of the Dunmore buildings seen in Morrowind.
The Adobe material would likely be rarer, sure, but it isn’t visually similar to more Anholt. In fact, design wise it’s the antithesis. Maun Vault had angled roofs, but they are almost flat while Shane Hall’s rooves are almost vertical. The doors and windows of more and hold are defined by sharp angles,
While the doors and windows of Shane Hall are rounded and more, An holds main theme is a seafoam green. While Sheldon Hall has uniformity their purple color scheme. In fact, Shane Hall appears closer to the imperial architecture of Pele’s yard and Caldera rather than any Dunmore style, and that reflects
On its people as well. There are almost as many orcs living in shade in Hall as there are Dunmurry, and what Dunmore do reside here are far more Imperials than even the worst of household blue. It’s bizarre that given massive religious schism that is currently embroiling Morrowind during this
Time period, that there aren’t apparently any new or old tribunal worshipers and Shady Hall. There’s one NPC who a mark on this Jarvis attest. But someone decided to put this character in the layout in
Chapel instead of Shane Hall’s chapel. I used to be a priest of the tribunal Temple in Craig and more. After the collapse, I drifted for a while until I joined the chapel. The beggars and the Wicked Thieves Guild still troubled. I wish the Nine Divines offered charity and comfort to
The poor like the Temple did. Here you have your chapel going Imperials and your chapel Dark elves. And never the twain shall meet. The Imperials have the gold houses and top spots. Dark elves like me left Morrowind in the hole. Priest ridden tribunal nightmare. And we take the whole
Patriotic imperial mission attitude with a dose of soft shade shading. Hall at least has a more design with a clear divide between its commercial and residential areas. And the city is quite beautiful with the contrast between the buildings and the plants and the river that flows through the middle of it.
But to say that it has heavy dunmurry influences is little more than flavor text. Like the quest lines, the cities had individual designers, and we know that Shane Hall was the work of Megan Sawyer, who started at Bethesda
With Oblivion. You can even see her working on the city in the Making of Oblivion documentary that layered in Diggle, is the head of the Guild Hall and asks us to recover her personal amulet, pointing us to a garden.
Most of the guild halls dissatisfied with Degale as without her amulet, she simply isn’t fit to lead. Calthorpe is the most vocal about this, which isn’t surprising given his tragic facial status. A guy who asks us to pray in Calthorpe reveals the Gail’s father.
For some reason, Degale in turn, points us to the fort her father was stationed at. I know where you must go. Blood bran blue and dragons flew high under broken towers and broken bodies. It now lies waiting to be found. That may sound like a
Riddle of some sort, but it’s only solvable if you happen to know the names of all the local forts. Which is why a quest marker pops up pointing us exactly to it. Unfortunately, Cathar also got a quest marker and turns up as soon as we get her father’s amulet.
Why are you trying to ruin everything? I’m just now learning this According to the wiki, can reveal that he was a necromancer, but ended his practice when the Guild banned it. This is a revelation to me. And this is not the first time, even in the last two years that I’ve played Questline.
Yet in all my playthroughs, I’ve never learned this basic fact because I’ve never thought to ask health or about the Majors Guild. That’s a pretty important piece of information about his character to not include in any of the main dialog. I thought he was just some [_______] with
A half misguided, half legitimate grievance against the guild who took it out the wrong way. This quest is so much worse with this information in mind for reasons that bear mentioning when we talk about the necromancers. So we give Dugdale the amulet and she sends off the recommendation.
I think the weirdest part of the quest is that the antagonist is the one that proposes the solution, which is weird because Cathars never given a legitimate reason to care about the girl’s father. Hell, given that she and her father are Basma, she’s on the older side, it doesn’t
Seem like something Cathar would know about. Why so, Leo, When I put some feelers out there and layer when seems to rank in the lower end of imperial cities, at least in a lot of people’s opinions. Lay win isn’t the ugliest city. We’ll get to that.
It’s colorful and has a unique esthetic without making it seem like the local homeowners association commissions the dark brotherhood to enforce the roof color. If I had to guess, there are two problems with win. The first is the aforementioned aspect. I discussed in the
Fighters Guild section about how the player is expected to make so many trips down here. Even with fast travel, it can be annoying having to scroll the map down to Leo when that’s for the benefit of doing Quest. Lay a win and there are more bad quests than good here. And that’s
Grading on the curve. That is the standard of Oblivion quests. In addition, Leo, it isn’t laid out that well. It does decent job of not mixing its commercial and residential areas together. But then there’s this guild area. The way you fix this is to switch the guild area and the
Chapel around and then swamp the fighters and Mages Guilds that the Mages Guild is closest to the gate because the Fighters Guild serves no purpose here. The Blackwood Company has a Quest finale and the Bookstore’s a bookstore and a post Morrowind Elder Scrolls game.
Also, the horse Heraldry is just weird considering the city is in a swamp. Horses and swamps just don’t go together. You guys should know better. Lilwin sits at the apex of Serial elsewhere and black. Despite its advantageous
Naval position, it doesn’t actually have a port, which is just bizarre, given wars have been fought over cities that sit on naval choke points for gameplay reasons, River isn’t even deep enough for ships to actually pass. It’s a shame. Oblivion was also the game to portray the lowest amount of racial tension.
Considering how interesting the conflict between cagey natives, outgoing immigrants and imperial nobles is in the city, there’s nothing to hint at the fact that the conceit went against the empire in the war that occurred between Oblivion and Skyrim just based on this population.
Brazil? No. No. Not Brazil. No. No place. Anything like that. Oh, Canonically. It’s the worst town in at all. That doesn’t stop the designers from trying, at least. It’s a fun city to just run around because of all the exterior staircases you can use to jump around on the buildings.
And it’s laid out well with an upfront commercial area and two separate residential areas. It’s hard to get lost in Brazil, despite all the buildings being brown and decrepit. I would say the town’s lack of economic prosperity could be due to it being a coastal city with no port but so’s Leone.
There’s not really any good reason Brazil fails. Leone succeeds. Sure, the count of Brazil is a prick, but that doesn’t cause all the buildings to turn brown and everybody to start taking up sukuma.
I’m getting the town aspect of the section out of the way because I, like a lot of people, don’t like Brazil. A local Dunmore Bard has been harassing one of the majors guild members and were tasked with
Retrieving her staff from him. Kudzai I will even give a scroll to help persuade him. We confront him and he tells us he did take the staff, but he ended up selling it to someone else in the Imperial City.
Quite a ways to go because you felt embarrassed about stealing stuff. Anyways, could I gives us three more scrolls and dispatches us to go get the staff back. We can persuade the guy who bought the staff and he’ll sell it to us for 200 gold. Or we can persuade wife and she’ll tell
Us where the staff is. We return, give the staff back, and Kudzai teaches us a charm spell. All right, let me be honest. This quest doesn’t even feel like it’s part of the same Questline. And in fact, it could. I has a second quest through a Nightmare Darkly, which
Feels more appropriate to me as the recommendation quest Oblivion regulars will recognize it as the quest where you enter guys dream world and pass for tests to escape. In either case, neither Quest really has any significance to the broader necromancer story.
And, you know, I appreciate that. Instead, it’s just a simple little quest to introduce players to charm spells in the game where charm spells aren’t as useful. I’m not sure why the player couldn’t have been taught the spell first and expected to use it. That’s rhetorical.
I know. Why. It’s because players with an illusion level of five need to be able to complete this quest. Right. Skin grabbed. Our next task is simple. Adrian wants us to retrieve some notes she went
To Earth for, but she doesn’t know where he is. Adrian Adriana’s bruja. Yet another are going in the recommendation series. Points out that Earther was sent out of the hall to better practices Magic. Adrian then sends us to check up on Earth or who we find trapped in a cave full
Of zombies. And he’ll refuse. Talk to us until every single one is dead. And he telepathically knows if this is true or not. Now, why he’s in a cave with seven zombies is never actually stated. Seven’s a bit much to accidently set loose upon yourself.
So the implication, I guess, is that the necromancer sent the zombies to kill Earth, or because he’s a guild member, even though they could just try recruiting him. He doesn’t mention ever speaking with any necromancers,
And he’s a bit hasty to move past the why question If the goal was simply to rescue a forgotten earth or and not involve the necromancers at all, then surely it would be better to use a different enemy type, right?
Is the idea that Earther is secretly a necromancer? Because that doesn’t come up. Adriana will teach the player a weak fireball spell to help deal with the zombies. So that’s nice. But given this is the simple task of killing X
And retrieving why any player is again capable of completing this quest. Skin grad sits atop the road in the sense that the player has to enter and exit the city If they follow the road from the Imperial City to Anvil and City.
Despite this being in the gated area, bridges over this road rather than connecting to it, I almost never use the proper gate into skin grid. The town forms a loop with a section for merchants and to
Residential areas. Despite skin grid being close to the vallon would border it. It appears to be an example of a truce. Your idyllic city and it’s well known for its wine, of which two separate vineyards.
This is drawn sundari on a famous alchemist to the city, as well as a whole host of interesting individuals. Simply put, this feels like the first city we’ve covered to have any kind of unique identity to it, and it’s little surprise. Skin graft is a common favorite among Oblivion
Fans and more than Oblivion fans. Skin Grand is popular as an example of a fantasy city design. Its castle sits alone, perched over the city, and the main road design becomes apparent when you read the story of Rublev The Righteous, The King of Skin Grand who trapped in Alesia, an army
In a valley and pelted them with arrows. Excellent city. Shame about the recommendation Quest Kovac. A quick note about Kovac. We’ll discuss it in more detail when we cover the main quest. But this an area where the lack of interconnectivity between the quest lines really hurt the game. In
All honesty, it isn’t necromancy that should have been legalized in Serra. Do but conjugation as a whole, considering the planet currently undergoing the Oblivion crisis. Instead, the major skill will be characterized as using nature more a messenger. In a situation where De Mora are invading and pillaging the country.
Perhaps Conjugation has been proposed to be next, and this has forced the division in the Guild. Either way, nobody ever mentions that the Guild Hall and Karachi gets destroyed. Anvil The recommendation quest is interesting in that it shows the Majors Guild actually performing their function
As magical regulators. Someone has been ambushing travelers along the Gold Road, utilizing magic. This is a bit much for a recommendation, and if you’re like me, this may have been your first exposure to the Oblivion Majors Guild. In any case, were more so acting as bait than
Actually taking out The Highwayman. We meet with one of the battle majors sent to assist us at the end, and she directs us to rent a room and use the cover identity as a merchant. Sure enough, one of the other patrons asks our identity expresses concern given recent events.
We sleep. This is one of those quests players trying to avoid leveling have to watch out for. And the battle mage meets us in secret, laying out a plan. The next morning or whenever really we set out down the road. Sure enough the high of who asked our identity earlier ambushes us.
And you may not know this but she’s a necromancer. The is really obvious. Don’t you see it? It’s right before your eyes. Okay, so the trick is to close Oblivion and open the construction set. And then look at the quest scripting. See that she’s added to the Necromancer faction when she
Ambushes us. Oh, Were you expecting the clue to be in the game and not just some hidden variable? What’s funny is we get frame point for this quest. You know what else gave us one fame point? Finding the scar. Anyways, that’s the whole quest. Magic in this quest is
Completely optional, which might be fine. There was a narrative relevance to this quest, which there isn’t, because at no point does it ever come up that she’s a necromancer. So the point of the quest is that the Majors Guild is a competent organization that is doing its which is contrary
To what all the other recommendation quests are trying to imply. A few more things. The Anvil Guild Hall is run by Cara Hill, whose name comes up in an optional side quest, a Lich Hannibal Traven, the current arch mage and
Opponent of necromancy, also used to run the Anvil Guild Hall prior to becoming the leader of the Majors Guild. So perhaps the implication is that is the only good Guild hall. All of that information doesn’t come up in the
Story. However, just like how our roadside bandit being a necromancer doesn’t come up either. At least anvils are quality town. Anvil is a port city sitting on the coast between Allenwood and Hammer Fell and Somerset
Beyond that. I think part of the reason people like Anvils esthetic is that it’s a proven, real world esthetic. The city is also clearly influenced by Red Guard culture. You have pirates and crime on the waterfront,
And then you have the more imperialist red Guards inside the wall. Just need a few Alec here to tie things up. It does suffer somewhat the same problem the other cities have by not making their neighbor races more
Representative of what their culture is, which is the problem endemic to every race, even, and Oblivion. I don’t envy the challenge of trying to capture the unique esthetics of each race, and it’s one of the reasons Cyril was always going to be a bad setting for an Elder Scrolls game, especially
During a critical time period as when Oblivion was being developed. Things might have been better if the Order of Oblivion in Skyrim had been reversed in terms of the layout of Anvil. The city’s design is simple, but its layout of services buildings are not, with merchant homes sitting amongst
Each other. That in its distant location makes Anvil not very suitable to using its services as such. Coral Our final recommendation Completing the outer circle of several cities is coral. Coral is another one of those purely imperial cities lacking the hammer fell or high rock influence as you would expect from its location.
People like Coral likely for its simplicity. Services by the main gate, a centralized guild ring and a separate residential area. As the city, it’s mechanically refined, which is important given there are twice as many quests here as, say, Brazil. I guess people also like
The really Big tree. Tiki US wants us to find out what Ariana wants, so she’ll leave town. She’s looking for a book, Fingers at the Mountain and even gives us the location. So why doesn’t she go get it? She is at least as capable as any Associate of
The Mages Guild. Anyways, Tiki senses we retrieve the book and bring it to him, and we find the book on a charred corpse to really sell how dangerous it is. This is where the quest branches, which is a rarity for Oblivion. You can give the book to
Tiki or you can give it to Arianna. If we give it to Tiki and then tell Arianna, she insists we steal it back. If we say no, that’s the end. And we get two fame points. If we say yes and do
So, or if we give the book to her in the first place, she will spend a day studying the book. We can then take the book back Tiki, who will overlook whatever path we took and send in our recommendation. If you’re like me, you might try to get the book after Arianna
Tells you. But before consulting with Tiki s, in which case it just doesn’t appear. You have to tell Daddy about the book before you’re allowed to go get it from here on. The second part of the quest is optional. If we cast Shark Spell at the pillar we were
At with a working stone in our inventory and managed to survive a counter spell. We get the fingers of the mountain spell, which is not only an underwhelming spell, but its cost is more expensive than equivalent custom spells, making the whole venture pointless.
And it’s leveled. So at higher levels you get a higher version of the spell. So Let’s evaluate this for a second. This quest requires no magic to progress. It only requires magic if you want the worthless fingers of the mountain spell. There are no consequences for disobeying tickets and
He’s willing to give us a second chance, even though we clearly acted in our own self-interest. And his entire motivation is putting down selfish mages like Arianna. Arianna is thankfully not a secret necromancer, hence why we can cooperate with her. This quest has probably the most player choice of any of the quests
In the Oblivion Mages Guild. I’d like to posit a theory about this. During the Arena section, I stated that the Majors Guild had 2362 lines, making it the third largest questline in terms of file space, at least for content.
Each branch in dialog means more voice lines, which is why most of the majors go to so linear in terms of player choice. I have to wonder then, if perhaps there were more choices in the original version, but when it came time to crunch things down, the Majors
Guild had to shut things down into a single path. I mean, look at the dark brotherhood. Each choice potentially results in a unique response. You could probably cut that quest line down from 2500 to 1500 vines if you just focused it on a single dialog option for each prompt. Now, I’m not suggesting
Bethesda took a chainsaw to the Questline. It seems to have very little cut content hinted at in the final version, but if every branch offered a second choice, just how much would that be in the file space?
Fallout three had to work under the same exact constraints, ending with a similar count of 40,000 voice lines, and the way it incorporated dialog choice into quest lines was to just have less overall. It wouldn’t be until the primary way we delivered content turned digital that developers could break the
Shackles of the disc and actually provide choice in a dialog heavy game without constraint or limitation. So how come Bethesda hasn’t realized it’s the current decade and actually embraced player choice? And now I’ll say what I’ve wanted to say after each recommendation. Quest. Here
We have the beginnings of what could have been an interesting quest. I can propose fixes and patches and better ideas all day, but what does Questline needed was a second pass.
It feels like a lot of improve. This later posted notes that never got taken off the whiteboard until after the game finished. I think Shane Hall is probably best quest narratively, while Coral is the best quest from a choice perspective. I think tidying up
All the details like giving Calthorpe necromancer rope when he attacks us, giving Cameron all the line about being a necromancer when she attacks us and indicating that there was an embedded necromancer somewhere in skin grab the trapped earth or in that mine.
Those are all things that would have improved the quest, but I think it just needs a foundational rework. The Imperial City, with all our recommendations done. It’s finally time to go to the arcane University. Welcome. Another magical year at Hoguarts reminisced Polish
Acceptance into the Guild and is willing to immediately send us out to go build our staff. But first the services. At this juncture, we gain access to spell crafting and enchanting tables. Assuming you don’t have access to or aren’t using for us. Correct. Spire now available for
189. There’s also a lush garden to harvest and a couple of trainers we unlock. The Imperial City is underwhelming. It’s only impressive when you put it in context of other Sierra Deluxe cities. When it was decided that Morrowind would be hand-crafted rather than a hybrid of procedural generation
And handcrafting, the scale of garden fell had to be reduced to make such a game possible. Despite The success of Morrowind and increase in staff, the scale has never been increased. Part of the reason the Imperial City feels small is that it’s entirely contained within the walls of the city.
Even though canonically the entire archipelago, not just one island is packed full of people. We’re talking about the central capital of an empire that spans an entire continent. Now we go back and forth all day about how Bethesda didn’t have the time, resources or engine to fully realize the scale of the
Imperial city. But I want to take this time to compare some cities between the Howard Elder Scrolls games. This is Balmoral, typically the first Denmark city the player will visit and the local seat of house below. Here’s Belmore compared to a single district of the Imperial City. Sorry, that’s
Actually just labor town, a district of Balmoral. Here’s Balmoral compared to the Imperial City. Now important to mention here because some dip[____] pictures somewhat related will get confused here. We’re comparing two cities. One is a frontier settlement on a recently colonized island.
The other is the capital city of an empire and Bal mura is just the second largest city, and Vardon fell with the largest being the vast city. Now, I discussed the problems with Vivek, and I’m prepared to die on the hill that it’s mechanically not a good city.
In all reality, I consider the Imperial City a better regional capital than Vivek and definitely better than the historically rural solitude. That’s because it has a clear and simple market district that’s easy to learn. I feel a lot of people may have missed the point with my
Vivek section. Vivek is esthetically a better city. While the Imperial is mechanically better. Where’s the alchemist? In the Imperial City? The market district. Where is the Alchemist in Vivek? In addition, however, the market district also boasts most of the best merchants
In the game, which Vivek does not. So the player is actually encouraged to utilize this area. People have Vivek or Bonura from Morrowind. Well, Big are going to be in for a shock. The city is divided into ten districts. The Central Palace District, which sits at the root of White
Gold Tower. You would think more than four quests take place here given the significance. But no. The Palace District is surrounded by six evenly divided districts, and there are three more satellite districts. There’s the arcane university, essentially the headquarters of the entire Mages Guild.
There’s the Imperial Prison former home of both the new Riverine and the champion of it all, whoever that is. And there’s the waterfront, a port that also contains the residences of pretty much the entire city supply of poor people onto the six main districts. The Arena district is the home
Of the titular faction. Not much else to speak of beyond the statues of Morehouse and St Alisha. Although powerful white streaks absent the arboretum houses statues to the nine divines with TALOS at the center. The temple district houses the temple, the one, although at least this one actually houses people. The Towers Plaza
District is the wealthiest part of town with large manors. After that is the Alvin Gardens named so for the Elven gardens in the alleyways, whose decision wasn’t to line an alleyway with tons of shrubs and the market district.
The only place considered you’ll easily be able to find a merchant for everything. Let’s take a step back and look at it another way. Is the Imperial City impressive for an Oblivion city? The answer
Is yes. The city is home to roughly one fifth of the named in season cereal. And unlike before, the vast majority of these NPCs live daily lives involving routine, eating, sleeping and recreation. So while the city is actually smaller than Vivek, both in physical size and population, it
Feels more lively seeing so many people walking around at different times of day. My only complaint about the city would be island, not filling the entire island with the city. Fine, I’ll accept that. But not even for disparate farms or Imperial Legion camps or anything.
I would kill to own a farm walking distance of a major metropolitan area. There’s simply no way. It’s not possible. This island has to be full of people. The major skill questline from here on is linear
Questline. We get four quests from Romanus and after that we have seven quests from the Arch Mage, Hannibal Traven himself. We’re going to dive deep into the morality of playing with other people’s dead relatives. But first we have to get our major staff. Don’t worry. As the Necromancers have decided to wipe
Out Wellspring Grove where the staves are made. What have we here? Another plaything. You transfer me, little one. Yes, you will. I will make your stance and then tear itself apart. Most of the quest lines in Oblivion revolve around the factions being at odds with some other unavoidable faction.
I mentioned this in the Fighters Guild with the Blackwood Company and the Arena with the yellow team. Here it’s the Necromancers. The only problem is that this faction conflict is an ideological divide, unlike the previous two, which had monetary motivations. The thing is, ideological faction divisions tend to be
More interesting settings for stories provided. The story in question explores the antagonistic faction. Morrowind Would do this by having the faction. Conflicts include factions that the player could choose between the majors Guild versus house tile Varney. The Majors Guild is a top down bureaucratic establishment which utilizes
Imperial lore to expand their sphere of influence. They believe in controlling the magical population for the benefit of the magical and non magical house. To Varney as a libertarian society with little need or desire for regulation.
The core of their ideological beliefs are that might makes right, and that magic is the path to becoming powerful. And we see both factions modus operandi. The Majors Guild has quests that involves dues collection, recruiting freelance wizards and performing primary research. How still Varney has quests that involve finding artifacts,
Performing menial errands and defending the house. We also see both sides stoop to match the other house, too. Varney makes appeals to fairness to prevent majors Guild from monopolizing the door and territory, and the Majors Guild can potentially resolve the conflict by sending the player to assassinate to tell Varney
Leadership. Now let’s compare the majors Guild of Oblivion, the Order of the Black Worm. The Majors Guild is characterized as being a busybody organization that rarely performs meaningful functions for society. They’re saving grace. Is that they are morally better than a literal death cult that is actively murdering people,
Stealing their souls and enslaving their corpses to further torment their victims. They have only one stated objective the complete destruction of the Mages Guild, and it can be assumed they will not stop once they’ve done
That. Dangerous death cults can be interesting, but I think a good rule of thumb is to only have one per game. Someone should have realized that the mythic dawn is already filling that near and far more interesting in
Developed ways, and that having the necromancer attempt to share space with them in that front was a bad idea. I think it’s more appropriate to just have the order of the Black Worm operating as a more generalized cult. The of
The Necromancer conflict and broader Elder Scrolls is really about the bounds of reasonable magical regulation. The story started in Dagger Fall with a faction called the Necromancers, led by Man of Marko, the King of Worms, and former owner of the Necromancers amulet. He was one of the leaders who the player
Could give the totem of Tiber septum. And as the book, Where were you when the dragon broke details? Mana Marco, like all the others, somehow canonically received the totem and achieved his ending.
It’s actually funny that this book isn’t in Oblivion, considering its relevance. Oblivion did come with the book Man of Marco King of Worms. It details the history between Man of Marco and Venice Glory and the founder of the Majors Guild, and it’s an alchemy
Skill book. For some reason. Anyways, Mana Marco using the totem, the Tiber septum, he underwent apotheosis and gained divinity, which is emblem ized by the Necromancers moon, which will occasionally block the body of R.K., one of the Divines who represents death.
The Necromancer conflict would be on pause during Morrowind, although interesting to note, Morrowind was apparently one of the few provinces in Tamriel to outright ban the practice of necromancy, although it bears mentioning that the Dunmore practiced ancestral worship in various neck romantic rituals and the lore pertained to
Performing necromancy on Dunmore corpses. Morrowind was also the game that introduced conjugation to the series. Conjugation is the art of so many daydream. However, in Morrowind and Oblivion, this included the undead. This can be confusing. So let’s elaborate on why this is. Conjuring the undead was meant as a
Stand in for actual necromancy. When a necromancer is exposed to the Belmore Mages Guild, she offers to teach the player a necromancy spell to keep them quiet, which is a choice between two summon spells.
This is because reanimate, as an effect, wouldn’t exist until Oblivion. And even in Oblivion it was only available through a single staffer. A power in the Shivering Isles expansion. Full blown necromancy wouldn’t become available to the player
Until Skyrim, one of its few genuine contributions to magic in the series. But once reanimation was available to the player while conjuring the undead was taken away, at least until the creation club came along and Bethesda reanimated a dead Skyrim.
Now, what’s broken about this explanation is that the way you acquire spells to conjure the dead is from major skilled members, including members who get killed by necromancers. It’s just sloppy that the mechanics surrounding necromancy stayed
Vague when Bethesda was intent on telling a story about necromancy. In a theoretical second past, the conflict could be explored better. Maybe the player can acquire real necromancy spells, but only if they join the order of the Black worm.
You lose access to support for most schools of magic to practice purely one. I understand the desire to tell this necromancy story. The game is set in the home of the Major’s guild and Manu Marco is at odds with them. But it’s like the designer forgot the whole reason. Man of Marco’s
Here in the first place is because the player could support the necromancers and dagger fall. Anyways, we got the material and we went and got our staff enchanted. We get a choice in a few effects. Fire,
Frost shock, charm, paralysis, silence, dispel soul trap and telekinesis. Fire is a valid choice for the Questline considering we’re about to fight a lot of undead. Frost is, for that reason, a bad choice. Shank does not yet
Have the property of sapping Magica, so it doesn’t really have special use as an anti spell caster weapon. Charm isn’t very useful and it would definitely be wasteful considering paralysis is an option. Paralysis Is difficult to cast and difficult to find on weapons. For this reason, it’s one of the few I went
With. There’s also silence, which is a valid choice considering there’s quite a few spell casters. The game. Soul trap is, in my opinion, simply a waste because the effect runs far too long to be efficient. Telekinesis isn’t a good option for my intranet character to quirks or bad design with the effect,
But it is definitely a great choice for thieves. A problem with the quest, however, is that staves are leveled. This means the optimal level to complete this quest is 15 as the staves will be at their most powerful. If you get a staff early, then level up, the staff will become less useful.
Essentially, this means that for pure mage characters who want to start with their faction but want to get the most use out of their staff of choice, they’re going to need to grind some levels. This also means if you start as a warrior or a thief and
Do the Mages Guild last, you’re a better reward than mages who started with it first. After we get our staff reminisce, sends us to skin grad to retrieve a book from the count. The count a screen grab doesn’t hold court, so to meet him. We need to
Arrange an appointment. However, we’re told that the count doesn’t want to meet with us. And his secretary suggests trying to morrow. No, really. 24 hours have to pass. Mercator tells us that the count will meet us outside town at two in the morning. It’s 11 now, so that’s another
15 hours that have to pass. Only it turns out that Mercator is necromancer and has ambushed us with his two buddies. Then the count comes in and helps me beat them to death with our fists. He calls us a fool for believing
The Count would want to meet us out here, which just Do you not recognize a necromancer when you see one? Yeah, man. If they’re wearing the black robes, but not if they’re dressed like a noble working in a castle.
And I’m directed to speak with them to arrange an appointment. If you’re going to call the player an idiot for falling into a trap, you should endeavor to not have that be literally the only path forward. A quest. The count
Was either tailing Mercator constantly or was aware that we were here and let us walk into the trap anyways. Now that might make sense and even be a good plot point if was using us to beat out the other necromancers.
But he wasn’t. He shows up to the meeting because narratively he needed to show up to establish his character for later. But if he was really aware of what was going on, then surely in the 39 hours I had
To wait and skin grabbed before this meeting, he would have approached us directly or sent us a message. The meeting isn’t the only thing he knows that he shouldn’t. He also knows the real purpose of our mission was to determine if Count house door had picked a side in the conflict.
Effectively, the guilt has just sent the player to die because if the count was on the side of the necromancers, he would have killed us. But what was supposed to happen if he wasn’t? We ask him for the book and he asks us what we’re talking about. Or what about
If he was on the side of the necromancers but decided that this wasn’t the moment to expose his allegiance? I guess the guild figures the player just has a punchable enough face that makes every necromancer who sees it want to kill us.
Which welfare? Enough. That’s how it’s gone every other time so far. Now, obviously I didn’t point out how silly it was to send the player as a courier when the Majors Guild can summon Shimura for that work as this was more than a fetch
Quest or send a note to the skinned grad majors guild and dispatch them to do it. We returned to reminisce. Who apologizes? Saved you, Did a well. That’s a good sign. I must apologize. It was never the Council’s intention to put you in harm’s way.
Really? Then how was I? Is he lying to me? Is every party secretly master manipulators putting on the guise of being morons like? Yeah. You didn’t warn us he was a vampire. That’s not the problem. That’s a red herring to the real issue of what you just
Asked us to do. But it turns out all right, as we receive the spell drinker amulet, which provides spell absorption and a level value, this paired with our 50% spell absorption as part of the agent X sign, puts us at almost 70% spell absorption.
We’re going to go higher. But even this value alone basically invalidates most of the necromancers threats. Our next task from Romanus sends us to one of the council members who says that the Necromancers have taken over one of the major skilled dig sites and
Where to rescue them? Does that sound like a good quest? Because it’s not actually yet. We’re just being sent to help clear out a blocked passage and at no point do the necromancers comes up. This seems to be a point of contention critics. Story wise, every faction in Oblivion
Usually begins with the player receiving odd jobs before some primary conflict is introduced between another faction group. And from that point, the quests all focus on that conflict. That’s just not true. Not just for the Majors Guild, but any of the factions in Oblivion. Nor do I think it should
Be the case. The Fighters Guild in Morrowind starts its overarching story from the third quest to get in Belmore, yet has plenty of quests that are the Fighters Guild being the Fighters Guild. If the entire questline was focused
On that story, then I firmly believe the more Win Fighters Guild would have been much, much worse off as a faction. The player needs to see the factions operating at normal capacity in order to appreciate just what it is they’re even
Fighting for. And just because you’re undergoing a crisis doesn’t mean you can shirk your responsibilities. The necromancers are a threat, but they aren’t one that can be immediately extinguished, just like the Blackwood Company. We don’t
Know the location or even identities of its members or the full extent of their infiltration into the Rangers Guild. It’s not like we can pull these archeology states off their project to help deal with the problem, because at this stage we wouldn’t have a use for them. So they continue
Their expedition of this alien ruin business as usual. The problem the researchers have run into is not a caved in hallway, but a chamber with a pillar that responds to magic. The puzzle is rather simple. You give a translation book to one of the researchers and
Then read off the inscriptions on the wall. Each inscription refers to a magical effect, which, when cast in clockwise order, opens the way. The big issue with this puzzle is the lack of clues that suggest you follow a clockwise order that may make sense to us.
People who have grown up with analog clocks and are used to clockwise being a standard method of following in a circular pattern. But does it make sense in a setting where the clock hasn’t been invented? It’s not actually a problem for me that the mages here
Haven’t solved this basic puzzle yet. Sometimes gamers forget that normal people die. Best to play it safe. No complex magic. Stick to basic spells with single effects. How have you figured this out yet? All I can say for sure is that it
Reacts to magic badly most of the time. Several mages were heard attempting to cast spells at it. It’s at the bottom, the runes. If you wish to try your luck. Be careful though. It could be quite hazardous to your health. Best to play it safe. No complex magic. In fact, it’s fairly understandable.
There’s nothing to actually indicate that anything worthwhile is inside the pillar. These are alien researchers who would know that aliens intentionally use a lot of traps in their cities to kill outsiders. From their perspective, this could be just a giant magical dildo
That spits lightning at interlopers with a pedestal inside that has a tablet carved with the likeness a butt on it solely to waste time. Or maybe the pillar requires the castle to be alien. This is a setting with racial magic,
After all. In addition, if it’s the narrative that the Majors Guild is full of and ambitious bureaucrats quite well that this character gave up at the first obstacle to progress. Salt’s criticism that the researchers have all the scrolls on site to complete the puzzle is valid.
Just for the wrong reason. Imagine that instead of these randos, we’re greeted by members of the same hall. Major skill. The characterizations are the same. The plot is the same. The characters are just different and of having a chest for scrolls. One of them is a spell teacher.
They have a lot of red herring spells, but they happen to have all the spells you need on hand. Now, instead of using disposable scrolls that any character can, you have to actually cast magic to solve the puzzle. I would also add two additional voice lines because that’s all you need.
One would be that Scarlet, who is now dyed sand from the recommendation quest, decided for safety reasons to disallow any further testing of magic on the pillar as a guild member was killed. The other line would be for Danielle, the translator, who would suggest from his study of the
Aliens, We may know the effects, but the pattern could be random and offers to teach us a spell absorption spell to help protect us from the pillar while we experiment. The quest now requires that we go behind the back deed, send someone who has helped us before and after we succeed.
She may even threaten to report us for not following her instructions to the letter, because remember, we’re telling a story about a major skill that has lost focus on the point of research and has become embroiled in petty politics and egoism. The other half
Of the time spent on this quest is a standard alien ruin subsection undead variety. Particularly eight of these wraiths. Fighting them is more tedious than difficult due to the fact that they can absorb their magic and easily dodge their merely attacks.
But they are built like tanks. I love it. I try to use them as much as possible. Just bringing all of these guys pop them down. We get our hands on an ancient elven helmet. They could have specified alien but whatever, and return to Earth after all, to finish the quest.
Our reward is the robe of the conjurer. Now it’s somewhat worthless to discuss clothing as most of its. Unlike Morrowind, you can’t wear clothes under your armor and there’s no unarmored skill. The only gameplay advantage is spell effectiveness, which can only reach 100% of the players on armored.
The changes to the armor system have had an impact on the number of articles of clothing the player can wear. You don’t have as many options to combo or layer clothing, which is more than cosmetic considering enchantments. Robes are actually inferior to a shirt and pants combination because the latter provides more
Slots for enchantment. Males can no longer wear skirts, so the Imperial Purple skirts of Morrowind are gone. The mythic dawn robes that I want to wear go further by taking up the gloves and shoes slots as well. The best combination I found was the dark shirt, the black wide pants,
Black hood and a generic pair of shoes and the wrist irons you start the game with. This combination works because it will only weigh £1. The downside is that it looks awful.
Spell as a multiplier to the power of the spell effects. So 90% on a 100 point fire spell would do 90 damage instead of 100. However, it’s not really the biggest deal in terms of spell casting unless you are a high level illusion. Mage
Illusions magic magnitude is tied directly to NPC levels which scale past level 25. You need 100% spell effectiveness to be able to use illusion magic, which is only possible if unarmored, but the unarmored skill was removed after Morrowind.
An armored is a contentious skill among Morrowind mini Maxis, largely because you miss out on a bunch of potential enchanting slots. But it was important that unarmored characters in patched versions of the game anyways could have armor ratings specifically for non magical unarmored classes like PUGILISTS. I believe the expectation is
That the Unarmored Oblivion player would use alteration, magic and enchantments to supplement their armor ratings. Shield effects do provide a noticeable increase in defensive stats, but they have the downside of further limiting the number of enchantment slots the player has. I prioritized using fortify magical
Effects to help deal with how few times the player can cast spells before running out of magic and Oblivion. This opens the enchanting can of worms. There are three ways the player can enchant. First is to bust out the wallets to purchase the indoor install frost cracked spire. You go to the
Mystic Emporium in the Imperial City Market District and purchase the necessary materials to build an Enchanter. Then you acquire a soul. The more powerful the donor, the more powerful the effect. Finally, you pay a sizable sum of money at the enchanting station, and you now have an enchanted item.
The second way is to gain access to the same enchanting station. After you do your seven recommendation quests and join the university, or you use a sigil. Stone Sigil stones are earned at the end of Oblivion, which start opening
Around zero after you visit, covered in the main quest. The central stones effect is randomly determined when you close the gate at the end so you can endlessly save scum to repeat the final sequence until you get the desired stone.
The stones are, however, leveled with the most powerful of them appearing at end after Level 17. You simply use the stones. Select your item, get either the offensive effect on weapons or the defensive effect on armor. The Citadel stones are a limited supply. There
Are only 60 Oblivion gates, meaning 60 chances. And once you use the stone disappears. So if you refuse the safe scum, you’re going to have to do a lot of Oblivion. Gates to get the desired effect
And Oblivion. Well, we’ll detail the problems with Oblivion during the main quest. The end of the main quest also means prematurely ending access to Oblivion as well. Even if you do get the desired sigil stone in our
Case, fortify magic, you have to get it multiple times to fill all the slots, which means more Oblivion runs or. Or. All right. So there was a point where I broke down and started using macros to level. There
Was a similar point where I decided to use a certain glitch as well. The scroll duplication glitch is a fairly bizarre glitch where if the player selects a scroll they have multiples of and then drops a different item will duplicate those items to the number of scrolls the player has.
So if I select a 100 stack of scrolls and drop ten potions, I will get ten stacks of ten potions totaling 100. I don’t really understand the technical haul of this glitch. I’m sure someone will explain it and then post a link to an explanation I could have spent
Several hours looking for. Obviously this falls the bounds of an immersive playthrough. The difference between this and using the console is just time saving. Finding the reference ID. Look, I tried to play the game without cheating for integrity and all that and it lasted about
15 hours. If the player decides against several stones for any valid reason, they still have the option of standard enchanting. Although even grand souls will result in a weaker effect value. Now, you might think that grand souls would be the most difficult to come by, but the most difficult
Soul to get is the relatively weaker, greater soul. C Oblivion added, Black soul gems, the creation of which will get access to you in this Questline which enables us to capture the souls of people. This always results in a grand level soul, even if the soul in question to a starving homeless beggar.
And since the generic bandit population outnumbers the normal civilians, it’s not like you have to murder an actual character to get them. And no one. The major guild will even bust you for turning people into weapons. Personally, I think that
Nameless NPCs, if you have to have them, should result in only a greater level black soldier. Black soldiers are a shortcut to creating powerful items because they allow you to get around the need to soul trap powerful, white, sobering creatures.
So it should come with the cost of sacrificing named pieces for this cause. Sure, meta gamers would just rush to soul trap all the names and pieces that die in the quest, but at least it would make Black Soul gems require some actual evil on the part of
The player. Also, because soul gems are now buried in the UI, it’s hard to keep track of what gems you have and need to fill, so you might end up feeling a valuable grand gem with a petty soul because you didn’t realize you were out of the petty gems.
As stated, however, grand level enchantments are generally weaker than their sigil stone counterparts, although custom enchantments do allow you to have multiple effects. So the comparison looks like this sigil stones are tedious to acquire. There’s a limited supply. They have level values in the randomized grand
Souls are easier to acquire, but cost gold to use have a weaker effect, but a custom effect at the same time. The upsides of enchanted equipment is too great even for the most die hard of orc barbarians to pass up.
And I think several stones were meant as a means for non magic characters to access the benefits. So let’s go over the spell effects that a player can enchant armor to possess. And since spell crafting is in the
Name of the section as well, alteration Burton and Feather are both effects which impact encumbrance. It’s strange to hear people complaining encumbrance when feather and fortify strength are both effects that exist in the game. Then
Again, feather and strength in general were cut from Skyrim Burden, which has a similar effect to drain or damage strength allows you to offensively encumber somebody. Although most people don’t carry enough equipment to be noticeably affected. Still, it’s a good tool to have
In the arsenal as NPCs can use it to suddenly throw an unexpected wrench in the player’s plans if they’re redlining their own inventory. Shield, as previously stated, is used to increase the target’s armor rating. Armor works a bit differently in Oblivion Morrowind. However, it’s now effectively a percentage that
Determines the physical damage absorbed in caps. It 85%. So there’s no point in going over 85 points of shield and. You can get away with less the more or better armor you wear.
Fire, Frost and Lightning Shield all operate the same way. It’s basically a shield and a resistance effect rolled into one spell with, a slightly higher base cost. Water, breathing and water walking provide fairly obvious effects, although it’s worth noting one thing the ability to enchant items to cast spells has
Been removed from Oblivion. So instead of enchanting turning to cast water, walking for 45 seconds, a water walking enchantment is now just a constant effect in Morrowind a certain playstyle possible where you could get items like the Ring of Toxic Cloud, which would cast arranged poison spell that exploded on impact.
It’s a ring, so it weighs almost nothing and has the benefit of being reusable, unlike a scroll. Players could collect these items and create a very powerful character with a very low encumbrance. There are no downsides to this playstyle, as
Enchanted items would passively regenerate their charge in Morrowind. I feel the designers really wanted to nerf this playstyle, but they used a bunch of different solutions that had a way bigger impact than nerf in the jewelry collectors.
The first was to remove passive enchantment charge. Regeneration meaning items have to be recharged with solid gems or add an enchanting services provider. Given the cost of enchanting using solid gems to recharge items was
Their primary use in Morrowind, and it served as a fast way to keep your items going in a fight. Removing passive recharge means the player now has to sort trap or spend money to keep getting use out of their enchanted items.
That’s fine for a custom enchantment job because that likely means the player is already magically inclined, but not for something like the web Jack. If players aren’t going to soul, then they have to spend one
Gold per point of charge to keep using their toys, which is extremely expensive. Or or they have to use far less stones which are extremely valuable and, difficult to acquire and require running alien dungeons. However, another nerf was dished out. Enchanted items can no longer cast spells, so a ring of
Water walking doesn’t cast water walking for 30 seconds, but now provides the effect as long as the player wears it. Constant effect items existed in Morrowind and creating custom constant effects was the end goal of every player using enchanting system something you had to work hard towards.
Now it’s the only option and a lot of the fun has been removed. Granted, they did fix the infinitesimally small chance of hand enchanting by cutting it from the game, and they fixed the superbly high cost of enchanting out of service
Provider by turning them into lecterns and hiding them behind a paywall in a locked gate. Anyways, open is the magical player’s alternative to lock picking and is tiered into very easy, easy, average, hard and very hard lock effects.
Oblivion made a change to the lock system, which was to have lock level 100 correspond to requiring the key in Morrowind. If you had the skills and or tools, you could open any lock and it wasn’t hard to have a high enough security or alteration
Skill to do so. Oblivion would introduce the trend of creating locks the player was incapable of opening without any mention of a key because there is a possibility that the player might find a chest or door ahead of time and break a quest sequence.
And rather than accounting for that, it’s way easier to just slap a requires key sticker on it and move on. The lock spell was also cut from the game, although it does exist the construction set. This was probably because the spell would break radiant air. And rather than simply
Having the AA call for help at a nearby guard unlocking the door that just got the spell. Lock a neat spell. Its main use was usually security training, although the lock spell you buy is also useful for macro alteration training. No. Yeah. And since the air couldn’t
Open locked doors, you could trap them in rooms and hit them with explosions you shot at the door. I can see them wanting to fix that is sure. It’s just a shame the fix was a cut.
And speaking of cuts, jump, fall, swift swim and of course, levitate. Jump was probably cut because it was superfluous with fortify acrobatics, even though it wasn’t and worked in the separate way. And even then, the game damn sure to
Limit how hard you can fortify acrobatics. Funny how we went from finding a scroll to jump across the map to nervous that high level acrobatics players might realize you can jump up to the end of and at this ledge near the beginning.
Swift swim. It didn’t have a lot of things going for it in Morrowind, but that was bad balancing because it was better to use fortified speed than Swift Swim. Just make Swift swim cheap to use, but obviously
Ineffective on land. And it’s balanced. But no, just got it. Slow fall was an easy way for mages to mitigate full damage isn’t a problem in Oblivion, as dungeons and even open areas are very rarely designed vertically.
And they were probably worried someone would slow fall off castle screen out into the wild part of the city and break the illusion, which is definitely why levitate was cut from the game, even though areas were levitation effects are magically negated, do exist in the setting and
Were used in more hold for the express purpose of preventing players from flying out of the city. But again, areas in Oblivion are very rarely designed vertically. So even if you did have the effect,
It’s not like you would ever actually get to use it. Still, it would be fun to be able to levitate up mountains or across rivers. Just say that cities and Dungeons and Oblivion gates use suppressants to inhibit magic or or make it so that responsible people witnessing you levitate gives you a bounty.
It’s illegal. So maybe we have to track down Delvin or Rain, A former levitation trainer who lost his passion after the spell was banned from the Empire Men. I can’t help but imagine how Levitate might have helped the emperor here. Conjugation, Conjugation has
One enchant effect, which is turn on dead. It makes undead lower than the spell level. Run away from the player. I continue to be amazed that among all the cuts that happen to the magic of Elder scrolls, Turn
Undead has managed to survive at all. Conjugations remaining effects are to bind equipment and summon creatures. Binding weapons in Oblivion has always seemed like a meme to me. Like Morrowind, you can make a red guard specked in Long Blade in
Conjugation and get him a bound long sword spell that he has a 93% chance of successfully casting in less than 15 minutes. But in Oblivion, weapons are level tier conjugations, so a novice is stuck with a dagger. Then
It conjugation level 25. They can get an ax, then a conjugation 50. They can get a mace and a bow, and at 75 they can get a claymore. It’s the same thing with the armor. You get the boots
Gantlets and helmet end of is the greaves at 25, the 50 and the shield of all things at 75. Bear in mind your other reward for getting to expert was a two handed sword. So no sword and board for
Conjugation players. I think the concept of 17 year equipment’s pretty cool, so I’m glad it exists, even if it’s a mangled victim. The Oblivion Balancing Act. What’s even weirder is that someone at Bethesda clearly likes binding equipment, as evidenced by the mythic gun entering combat by binding their armor and its terrible Oblivion.
Implementation didn’t see it getting cut from Skyrim, so I don’t understand why players are expected to switch from Blade to Blunt and back to Blade again in order to use the bound weapons. Creature 17 is actually mostly the same as it was in Morrowind. There’s a couple new creatures like the Lich
And the Spider Deidra, but also a few that got taken away, like the old Grimms and Wingard Twilights. You can also only start summoning creatures of conjugation 20 meaning that turn undead and bound dagger have to do if you don’t make it a major skill. I like creature summoning
Since it means you can outsource some of the Oblivion combat to a minion. But it comes with quirks using the default spells a summons scamp costs 60 magica for 20 seconds. A summoned flame archer neck costs 135 magica for 30 seconds. A summoned frost at your neck cost 360 magica for 35
Seconds. This spell costs are pretty insane, especially if you have the neck birth and don’t naturally regenerate Magica. Morrowind summons were expensive as well, but that was because all the default spells lasted a four minute. I
Don’t know why we’re making the more powerful summons last longer since that’s just going to balloon the spell cost. And the first thing any smart player would do is create custom versions of their desired. Summon that only last 20 seconds. Destruction. Destruction has a lot of effects. So I’ll try to be brief
Here. Damage effects last until a restore effect is used. Drain effects last until the effect expires. Disintegrate does damage to the health of items and weakness lowers the resistance values. Fire, frost and shock are basically interchangeable in terms of effect and cost. Both the
Differences depending on the target’s resistances. All of these are used for weapons, which means they are all cast on strike. Enchanted weapons are necessary for min max and the amount of damage you can do. But don’t work as well for general use because they have to be recharged by hand.
Now, there isn’t anything actually stopping the player from putting in weakness the magic and drain fatigue on an item and permanently trapping them in place. So that’s how I kept the servant at battle horncastle out of my
Bedroom. Destruction is the same as it was in Morrowind minus poison damage, which now belongs to Alchemy. Oblivion also broke ability to combine a weakness spell and a damage spell into one and have it take full effect.
Example Given weakness, the magic of 100 points drain health 100 points in Morrowind. This were typically 200 points of temporary health damage to amputees with no magic resistance usually killing them. This same spell
In Oblivion will only do 100 points. I believe it has to do with the order. The game internally applies, the effects being backwards in Oblivion, where it applies, the damage effect first and the weakness effect seconds.
So to get for you said a weakness spells you have to cast them first and then switch your damage spell. Skyrim would completely revamp the destruction school to such a degree that even brushing on the subject would make what is already going to be
The longest section of this video even longer. So I’ll leave it at that. Illusion. Illusion has four enchanting effects, as most of its effects are spell oriented. Light creates what else? A magical light source. It’s actually better than its Morrowind counterpart, given the light more prominently
Affects the player’s ability to sneak. However, it’s somewhat unnecessary as Oblivion isn’t really a dark enough game to need the light effect. Skyrim would improve the light effect by allowing players to cast it. Targets Night. I in turn allows the player to see in the dark without casting light for stealth
Purposes. Everything turns this color. Then there’s invisibility in Chameleon. You can’t enchant items with invisibility as the effect would expire as soon as you interact with something and you would have to constantly reequip the item. You can, however, enchant items with Chameleon.
The difference is largely the same as in Morrowind. Invisibility makes you undetectable until you with something chameleon allows you to interact but is more expensive in Morrowind. If you were under the chameleon effect and attempted to speak to an embassy, you could potentially fail and suffer a disposition lost. I
Assume to simulate the NPCs, not recognizing who the player is or maybe getting spooked, this was removed. The player can freely chat with anyone. A chameleon level 100. In fact. Chameleon level 100 is. We’ll talk about it later. Silence is in effect to prevent spell casting. However, an improvement
From Morrowind was made to the cost. Also, why is it called silence? If spell is non-verbal in Elder Scrolls, Paralyze was equally effective to silence at the same cost and more universally useful. Now Paralyze is much more expensive, with a lower duration, so silence can actually fill
Its niche as an Andy Spell caster tool. The problem with silence is, and will continue to be the spell caster as they simply never make effective use of magic. So going out of your way to equip and cast a silent spell will never be preferable to just doing damage.
Which is why Silence was removed from Skyrim. Why fix when you could just cut it instead? Calm charm, demoralize, frenzy and rally are all spells which affect various values that belong to NPCs with pretty obvious effects. The problem that was inherited into Skyrim is that because the effect has a level variable which
Caps and levels can raise beyond that cap, illusion spells can drop off in viability after a certain point. If the player stops using illusion spells and passes into a new level bracket, they may find their old spells no longer work, or they may not be skilled enough to cast
The new spells and have to grind some to catch back up. Calm can be useful for ending fights, but unlike Morrowind, there are no hostiles that are worth calming down. Example given would be Corrin. A hostel armor mage was also master enchanting trainer in
Morrowind. You could also call him any normal bandit and then use persuasion to intimidate them into no longer being hostile. Generic Oblivion bandits, even when calm talk to you and using the spell to end fights with town in pieces you don’t want to kill is unnecessary.
As Oblivion added, the ability to yield seen as calm is now just a combat spell for a slightly higher base cost. You can instead of use demoralize, which causes NPCs to run away in fear. The only time this would be a disadvantage is if the
NPC runs further into the dungeon and draws the attention of all its friends. These spells seem to fit the niche of the stealth player who wants to continue using stealth after being caught, or a normal person who doesn’t want to fight other woodland creatures. Then there’s frenzy.
Frenzy exists to start fights. I believe the idea was that you could use frenzy and a group of enemies to cause infighting, but in reality friends it gets used as a free murder pass in Morrowind and Oblivion.
I don’t actually mind at all. That frenzy is considered assault in Skyrim as frenzy has zero downsides as is. And I never got a frenzied to actually become an ally. They usually just end up targeting me anyways. Rally’s a spell. I’ve never understood the usage of enemies
And Morrowind generally didn’t run away unless you got somewhere. Couldn’t Pathfinder too. And I’ve only noticed enemies in Oblivion fleeing because they were trying to utilize ranged magic. Skyrim was really the first game to implement wide spread enemies running away
Dynamic. So. So I guess Illusion was the baby of the designer command. It was the spell that was taken from conjugation and placed into illusion magic, which is honestly fair enough. In Morrowind it could be utilized moving pieces around, moving immersion into the player’s home. The more
Complex scripting means that even if you try to relocate an NPC, they’ll just go home when the effect ends appropriately Angry at your magical manipulation. You can also use command magic to force enemies to fight for you. Sadly, command was another spell that got cut come Skyrim for no apparent reason.
Overall illusion. Magic is fairly versatile, but it does a bad job of selling itself because most of the lower level effects are pretty weak and it can be pretty easy to out level the skill. Mysticism rest in peace. Mysticism has a short list of effects. Detect life has had a genuine improvement over
Its Morrowind counterpart, showing an on screen effect of indicating the detections on the minimap. Telekinesis has also improved. It allows the player to manipulate objects remotely but is more dynamic and allows the player to move objects around the environment. Still, trap applies an effect that when the target
Dies, captures their soul and the gem reflect, spell, reflect, damage and spell absorption are a little more complicated. Spell absorption a chance that converts points of magic damage into magic of the nature and trades. Passive magic regeneration for 50% spell absorption meaning a 50% chance spells effect is absorbed
Into magic to reflect spell is another chance which reflects the spell effect back onto the castor reflect damage is a new effect which reflects a percentage physical damage taken back onto the castor. Unlike the latter two effects, this is guaranteed to occur for each melee strike.
It would be neat if the A.I. recognized that it was damaging and switched to a bow to compensate how well the designers seemed cognizant that these effects were unusually powerful enchantments. Given that Martin will comment, if you give him spell breaker, which has a 30% reflect spell,
Not many people would give up spell breaker for destruction. My friend, your sacrifice honors me. We’ll have more to say on these later as our characters develops. The final mysticism effect is to spell, which removes active magical effects. This is only effects from spells, but can be
Positive or negative. You can use the spell to dismiss enemy summons, for example, or to remove an absorb effect from yourself. It’s a good idea. The only problem are the enemies spell casters. A spell effect usually isn’t going to be on you long enough for you to stop and to spell
It, because most enemies will use magic, inefficient, quick burning that will be over before you can dispel them. End Well, there’s the ever present issue. If I’m going to be casting magic at an enemy, why not just cast a spell that does damage to them instead?
Magic users generally aren’t durable enough to actually require thinking about disabling their magic. Now it’s time for the cuts. Absorb effects have been moved to making its long list of effects even longer. Arms of even divine intervention have been cut. Detect enchantment and
Detect key have been cut. Mark and recall have been cut with only seven spells to its name. By the time Skyrim came around, mysticism had been cut. Restoration Restoration has the most obvious effects in the restore heals. Resist, resists, fortify. Fortify as cure cures and absorb
Absorbs. If fire damage is the bread of destruction, restore health is the butter of restoration. That’s why they are the two default spells every Oblivion and Skyrim character ever has had. There’s also the less popular restore fatigue. However, since power attacks are useless for the
Aforementioned reasons, the only thing drawing fatigue would be jumping around. So as long as the player stops doing that, the player will always be a decent fatigue level, meaning they will always do mostly ideal damage. Resistances have been cut as spells except for resist magic of all things.
It’s a shame too, as resistant spells could provide spontaneous defensive measures like using resist fire in Oblivion gates resist frost against necromancers or resist poison against Garbo’s. I think the idea was to encourage utilizing the elemental shields from alteration, even though restoration is the most universal skill. Fortifications are another interesting tool that
Has fallen by the wayside. I was always careful to use Fortify Health and Morrowind is taking too much health damage and losing The effect was a death sentence, although apparently in Oblivion
That isn’t the case, as it will leave you with just one health fortify skill attributes are always means like using fortified speed to speed up escorts or using fortified mercantile to max out your mercantile for 3 seconds and then initiating a conversation. However, Bethesda did go out of their way to put some
Caps on their formulas, so getting to 10,000 intelligence and making potions worth thousands of gold is no longer possible. Cure spells continue work as usual, although cure paralyzes as a spell continues to boggle the mind. The problem with cure
Poison is that unlike the player created poisons, the poisons NPCs will use are almost always instant, finally absorbs spells. They’ve been stolen from mysticism, as mentioned, and Bethesda never seem to get absorb health in a good spot. So
They removed it as a spell. Skyrim unless you’re a vampire. The problem with absorb health isn’t that it’s bad. It’s actually really good. So much so that it can overshadow the other offensive spell options. Sure, the spells base courses
Than damage health or fire damage, but it’s not greater than those two spell effects combined with a healing spell. Absorb health is very powerful and its only weakness is being tied to restoration. The slowest skill level spell crafting. Okay, so I’ve basically giving you a rundown of all of the magic
In Oblivion. You can thank me later because now we’re going to talk about spell ality things that could exist in the Wild West of 26 game design, but never in today’s triple-A games. Yeah, but why, though? In reality, most magic in Oblivion boils down to increase number,
Decrease number spawn thing or freeze body if you’re feeling advanced. Hell, the crazy part of Oblivion spell crafting are mostly just interactions with the new physics systems. A lot of what was hereditary for Morrowind was actually stifled in an attempt to balance the system out.
For example, what’s stopping me from creating a spell that uses all of my magic but completely and utterly erases the enemy skill? The restrictions based on magic are caused because spell chances are in the game any more. Magic costs have to be the balancing
Factor between spells. But rather than having that be decided by the player in their pool of available magica, it’s instead tiered into the system and all roads lead to sitting in place casting one magic is supposed to increase your to unlock better magic.
In order to make a custom spell, you need to gain access to the spell crafting table. Join the arcane university or pay a thousand gold to get one next to the Enchanter add for Oskar expire. Morrowind was much more open to spell crafting, allowing anyone to
Do so at the Majors Guild To acquire effects, you need to learn a spell from a trainer. This is where I mentioned that you can’t delete spell effects in Oblivion. Meaning, if you want to make a custom spell, you will have to first acquire a spell. You will almost certainly
Never use again and will thereafter have to scroll over it for the rest of game. Spells fall into three categories Self touch and target target multiply spell cast by 1.5 times. So I usually stick to touch spells for offense and self spells for defense and it also costs less
Of the duration is higher. And we’re working on a magic economy here. I should mention spell tomes. This is an one. Back in the day for $1, you could get this plug in that adds a bunch of books to the
Game that will teach the player spells that ended up being the primary way spells or Titans Skyrim. It’s kind of weird that this is how the idea got its start. Of course, now it’s packaged with the base game
And it’s inserted in such a way that many people might not even realize that it was downloadable content. Spell tomes just have a chance of replacing scrolls. There is a conjurer that will try and kill you
Carrying one, but that isn’t even really necessary for you to start encountering them when you use the tome. It will offer to teach you the spell in question. This is in varying shades of usefulness. Ironically, it’s more
Useful my super dungeon mind as a way of getting magic than it is in the actual game. Because well, spell crafting. There are a few effects you can only get through spell tomes, including fortify skill, resist disease, resist paralysis,
Resist poison, resist frost, summon bear and stunted magica which the effect that prevents magical regeneration. And that’s kind of weird, right? Morrowind too, had a problem with Fortify Skill breaking a bunch of stuff,
So one of the base patches removed. The only way you could get that effect from the base game. And then the first person you meet in the tribunal DLC will teach you fortify skill spells. Then Oblivion comes around.
It also doesn’t give you the effect in the base game, but again, it will bundle the effect in with DLC. This reinforces my suspicion that there isn’t any one person at Bethesda focused on magical mechanics. The thing is right. What sticks out is the ways the effect can break the game.
But you could also just use it to minorly augment your abilities. For instance, enchanting gear to fortify your blade so you increase your damage. A grand soul will buff your skill. Ten points, which increased my damage with saved children, ruined from 16 to 18. The problem
With spell tomes is that it’s more spells that may potentially clutter the spell screen. Maybe if the spells were more magic, efficient, a couple are, but most of them are identical to what a custom spell would give you. There are also a bunch you can potentially find for preexisting spells.
It’s a small that I guess is kind of useful to magical playstyles. Maybe I created a basic one two punch. We start with weakness to fire 100% spell for a couple of seconds. That’s quite cheap. And follow it up with a fire damage spell that does low damage a long period
Of time. Even though the weakness to fire spell expires before the fire spell finishes. It will continue to do damage as though it is their higher key to weakness. One and the fire spell the two one cast to cast and then I don’t know, just beat them to death with your fists
Or something. Did you know that a 93% chameleon for 3 seconds is an apprentice level illusion spell? You can get up to 96 points of fortified Mercantile for 3 seconds at Apprentice as well. How a novice can cast a 100 point charm effect for 3 seconds and impress every single NPC
In the game. Honestly, even with its limited spell for custom spells in Skyrim had a lot of potential due to all the new additions. Magic like the flamethrower effect, dual hand charging, cloak spells and runes. And we lost all that because we decided to cut this entire system.
When last we left off, we had gotten the robe of the conjurer. Reminisce, pull us now, asks us to try and get some information on the creation of Black Soul Gems. We’re sent over to the archives to meet with
Tahmina who was angry at first but is more cooperative when we state our objective. It’s good that not every character in the Majors Guild is characterized as being self-destructive, fully up their own ass.
We have to find the book. But don’t worry, because there’s a quest marker to help us. This is something I don’t get about the Quest marker supporters. Right. Okay. So they’re supposed help prevent bad directions. Yeah, let’s pretend that’s true.
But what about this quest? You can’t just let the player look through the library for the book is Bethesda worried that players will get bored or worried that some players will complain when they miss the grayish brown book on the brown table.
I mean, they could have used a different, more obvious colored model for it. The book Necromancers Moon details a celestial phenomenon called The Revenant and states the purpose of black soul gems in the trapping of humanoid. I am unfamiliar with The Shade of The Revenant described
Within the book, but I was never one to dabble in the more, shall we say, amoral arts. I wasn’t aware astronomy was an amoral art. Actually, I’m curious how Termina even knows that’s what it’s called, considering it’s to as The Revenant and the Necromancers moon
In the book. Anyways, Romanus has no clue, so he sends us to the university astronomers to both heal. She doesn’t know what it is either. Which that’s something in the heavens. That’s literally your job. The necromancers moon has been a thing since the end of Dagger
Falls 16 years ago. She does at least remember that Falkor, the necromancer who had infiltrated the shade near Guild Hall, had asked about the same thing, and he had left behind a note in a hurry. The note states four locations, one of which is literally called the dark Fissure.
And in states, altars have been raised, anchor rights have been called. Watch the skies. Once a week, his grace shines down on us. Okay. Am I being pranked? When did Falkor research this information? We know it wasn’t after we met him because he’s a murder suspect. Unless Romanus
Didn’t think to say something when a known necromancer came into the university to do some research. Why did Falconer write this note That would obviously implicate him and expose several important sites to his order? Why did both of you think it prudent to save this note but not
Report this information to Romanus? Does save all the paper scraps people leave behind. Does she not read them out of principle? How would she know which paper scrapped belong to whom? And once Felker, again a known murderer and Necromancer, was found out. Why did both your not
See it prudent to further investigate The Revenant? Is both the online necromancer and why when we bring this information to Romanus, does he know where the dark figure is located? Is he a necromancer? The answer is no. Both the old Taormina and Romanus are not necromancers.
They’re just incompetent. Which might be interesting. It might give the player some pause for consideration during a future quest if they were approached with an offer to join necromancers. Reminisce wants us to investigate further the dark fissure, although you can technically
Go to any of the sites. The dark fissure is the only one which has a performing the ritual. Is that true? We can wait for the ritual to occur. Or we can go into the cave and kill the Anchorite and take a note detailing the ritual. Or we can intuit the
Ritual ourselves. When The Revenant shines, a grand soldier is placed in the altar and then Soul Trap is used on the altar. And that converts the gems over. We go back to romanus get an optional promotion to magician and are told that the
Arch Mage is going to be giving us orders from now on. Before that, let’s talk about the Ori. This room is actually in the game. Even if you don’t load the DLC and it looks like this. No, I don’t know why the scale of the room is so large.
Of all the DLC, the Ori feels like cut content from Oblivion. They got a second chance at life. Without it, you can’t reach this empty room with it. The door goes to a room, which leads to another door
That into the Ori proper. But it’s nonfunctional right now. So both of your decides to write a letter to a freshly escaped prisoner asking that they go out and retrieve the parts needed to it go again.
It would take until Skyrim for us to learn to level gate the DLC so the player isn’t ambushed by ten prompts as soon as they step out into the world. And then the Creation Club messed that up. The quest is pretty simple. We go out and collect Ford Wimmer parts out
In Colombia. The mod is kind of barebones in that the pieces don’t even have unique icons. A patch. When the Ori operates, it offers us different powers based on the phases of the moons. Each
Power will boost one attribute by 20, but drain another by 20 as well. 60 seconds. Neat, but not really worth two bucks. Our first task from Trayvon is to intercept a group of battle mages en route to union.
Well, and to ensure the protection of an undercover mole inside the ranks of the Necromancer cult. And there’s no time to waste. Follow me. Funny scene. I suspect you countered the later scene where we find out the mole was turned into a zombie.
He’s a worm for all now and she’ll be quite content here. A grim fate indeed. But one does not cross the order of the black worm without suffering greatly for it. That’s the quest. Go into ruin and kill necromancers
Before Traven will give us our next task, he insists we head downstairs and get a promotion from Romanus. So I have all of the achievements on the Xbox copy of Oblivion because I didn’t have a functional
PC for a couple of years. Except I have one achievement and that is the magician rank of the Majors Guild, which is a completely optional promotion that you can miss. The only real purpose of faction ranks in Oblivion achievements, something that would be easy to miss on PC where there aren’t any.
Now, faction ranks did have a purpose in Morrowind and it was more than immersion. They helped to control the free form quests structures of factions and came with disposition bonuses as well as detriments when dealing with opposing factions. Some employees would also restrict their services
To only ranking members of their factions. Now, however, most of that’s gone. And so come Skyrim. The faction ranks were gone as well. Travis next tells us that count hassle has requested we visit him to receive information on the necromancers. His new assistant has this wait while she gets him. Honestly,
Why don’t we just declare our arrival and meet with him in his awesome and unused throne room area? County council door does have information for us, and in all honesty, likely had it the last time we met him.
But now he has a task that needs doing. Council door is a vampire. For those listening and unfamiliar with him, a pack of unrelated vampires recently moved into a nearby cave. He speculates, attracted his county by his success as a vampire. These vampires, however, have
Drawn the ire of the dawn of the order of the virtuous blood. No, no, not Even those guys. Just a generic vampire hunter group. Anyways, has a door, wants both groups gone and you’re presented with a few options. Surprisingly, the vampires have to die. But you can kill, use or dismiss the vampire
Hunters depending on how you approach the situation. Sure, it may just be three possibilities, but given everything so far, having options is, well, refreshing after a lot of foot tapping waiting for the count. He comes and shares the information he has. Manna Marco has returned. I might have spoiled that already, but. Oh,
Well. Is this supposed to be a dramatic reveal? What? For all the people who played Dagger Fall read, Where were you in the Dragon. Broke in Morrowind and remembered Man of Marco’s name and significance. It’s a minor thing,
But I just love that half of the footage of me talking to the Arch Mage starts with him waking up in his bedroom. No wonder he’s full of bad ideas. He keeps having to make quick decisions immediately after waking up. This news
Shakes him and he says the council needs a few days to come up with a course of action and of course to move a couple of NPCs around for future quests. So after an Arena fight, two different Oblivion gates and an update
To my gear Trayvon still hasn’t come to a decision, but he does need us to check up on the Broom of Guild Hall. It’s been wiped out. Their bodies everywhere, the undead and a necromancer. That’s pretty bold and pretty stupid. People emotionally resonate with this quest because this was the Guild Hall
With the guys who like to play pranks and they’ve just been killed. And while I agree that the faction quest of Oblivion should have featured more moments like this, this is also superbly silly. Arch mage Traven suspects something is wrong because Gene Frederick, woman who recommended us,
Stopped sending him correspondences for several days. Nobody knew anything was wrong at the Bruma Guild Hall until that point. For several days, the the smell of dead bodies, the sounds of combat and screaming and the parade of necromancers as they entered the city. All of that was ignored.
And for several days, nobody attempted enter the Guild Hall because it’s not like the Majors Guild provides services to the public. All right, All right. Let’s doctor this quest. Warlock, I’m glad you are back. Minutes ago, a courier arrived. I was expecting my daily
Correspondence with Jean, but instead I received a worrying report from the captain of the broom. My God, that our Guild hall was attacked. We are stretched. And so I need you to broman and find out what’s
Going on. Are you from the Major’s guild? Good. Your guild hall was attacked. They snuck into the city, claiming to be a theater troupe and attempted to escape using magic. One of the guards heard commotion
And we mobilized as quickly as we could, but only managed to trap a couple of them inside the Guild Hall. I’m not risking my men if I do not have to or get in there. Bam! It’s that easy. Now we’ve
Made the Bruma Major’s guild an actual part of the broader city of Bruma instead of a microcosm where a bunch of people can get murdered by unambiguously evil necromancers and their neighbors just shrug it off as Mundus just scar the invisible Kaji from before.
Managed to survive due to being invisible. The time of the slaughter. Although, he remarks, the man of Marko seems to have seen through the invisibility, which is not an unreasonable feat considering the spell detect life exists that makes him remarking on Echo Cave and
Claiming he’ll destroy the Mages Guild will stealing all of the major souls a pretty alpha move. He killed them one by one villain Arrow was last. I think he was trying to run away. But he
Didn’t make it, did he? Damn He’s the only guy that teaches some indoor more a lord to Travon shocked and says he’ll need two days to come to a decision. All right. One Iliad ruins some macro training in a couple of hours of using the weight function later in the council has collapsed.
Trayvon words it a bit strangely he uses plurals to describe singular people. Maybe the idea was that there were going to be more members of the Council of Mages, but it was never finished. The council thus far is Arch Mage Trayvon Earl after all. Karanja chancellor Ocado and
Reminisce. Paula’s Yeah, he’s in the council. But you wouldn’t be able to tell at a glance now. Sure, The council is supposedly already split when a bunch of guild members left after the necromancy. I think the real
Problem, though, is that the arcane university simply isn’t big enough. The council chamber is tiny and most of the grounds of the university is just wasted space. The bulk of the space is taken up by the Orrery, which isn’t even used in the
Questline, and they don’t even mention who the former council members were, or even if they actually joined the necromancers. We’re given a choice of tracking down the two council members who absconded with artifacts the Guild was holding IRL, after all, with the Blood Worm Helm and Karana with the Necromancers
Amulet. We’re going after the amulet first because it’s shown up in every Elder Scrolls game. You would think that would be of great interest to Mana Marco, considering it’s his artifact. So we head over to the abandoned Imperial Fort, number 56, and there are a bunch of unnamed mages
There who direct us to speak with Corona and are doing creepy smiles and are nervously sweating knowing they have to speed change into their necromancer robes. Once Karana reveals that she is going to give the amulet to Mana. Marco Okay, we reported the Echo Cave thing to Trayvon, right?
He probably brought it up. So why didn’t you go to Mana? Marco Why are we here? South-West of Coral. Well, well this is quite a surprise. I thought you were Trayvon’s lapdog, doing whatever he said. And yet here you are. Is this commentary on the Questline is Brian Chapman begging for somebody to
Let him make an actual interactive story and not just the Hoguarts themed 18 part instruction list. So we kill Corona and fight our way out, turn over the Necromancers amulet. Curiously, this is permanent. Before you say anything, being able to get the amulet from the Arch Mages nightstand
After completing the Questline is an addition of the unofficial Oblivion patch and is not in the base game, although there is a glitch. But why do people want this necklace anyways? Well, it’s leveled. But to Karanja, who is surprisingly not leveled but fixed at level 30, so
The necklace is always in its best condition, which is fortify willpower and intelligence. 14 points, fortify conjugation 12 points, fortify magic 130 points, which, with the intelligence boost, is one and 58 extra magic. But at the cost of drains, strength and endurance 25 points.
It’s weaker than its more one counterpart, but obviously desirable enough that even the lore patches added a way to get it back, at least without a glitch. After this, we’re off to abandon Imperial Fort number 57, which is full of necromancers, who you’ll find are battling it out with a
Bunch of Deidra. And at the back of the cave is Earl overalls corpse wearing the blood worm helm. It’s a light armor helm with a leveled fortify conjugation effect and apparently this is news to me. It gives you the spell essence drain while you wear it, which is an absurdly cheap absorb
Spell that does fatigue, health and magica. But I wouldn’t be able to cast it because even though I meet the magical requirements, my restoration skill would need to be 75 to use it anyways. Actually, only the blood worm helm you acquire between levels one in gives you the essence
Drain spell as the other homes are bugged in the base game. So if you didn’t notice the spell because it didn’t give you one, that’s why. Just be sure level up to 15 to get the best staff and then I’m level back to four to get a useful blood worm Helm.
I shall return the helm to a secure place in the tower. It’s the least can do for love. Thank you. Have you recovered the necromancers amulet? I owe you before we continue, you should speak to reminisce police about your advancement within the guild. I’m sorry. Did I walk in on you jerking
Off? Maybe get a secretary So I don’t have to report on your dead colleagues in your masturbatory? I’m. We’re master wizard now, but don’t think for a second that actually means anything. Trayvon has apparently learned
Of a colossal black sorghum that has been created in the Iliad ruin of Cylon. How everyone in the Majors guild is incompetent and we are shown spies failing directly. I’m really curious how exactly this information is being gleaned. We
Get sent down to Cylon to check on some battle mages who are sitting outside of the room and not accomplishing much as. The door is magically locked. I wouldn’t be surprised if the magical lock was actually just a stick propped up against the door. Anyways, they’re planning an ambush and
Leave it up to us. Decide where the individual members go at our disposal. We have ax woman, spell woman and healing man. I wonder what the right place for each person is. The happens when three men necromancers and Felker leave the ruin Our flees with the
Soul Jim, As soon as the fighting starts and it’s up to us to clear out this ruin full of necromancers and undead montage. I know that death will never start by looking for Cliff. I split into space to bring you back. I thought, What if I tried inside?
Prepare to pay the price for failure or I’ll have a real fight for that here in this part of Tamriel you’ll stay with. With the colossal black soldier in hand, Trayvon reveals his master plan. We are to go to Echo Cave, wipe out the final cave
Full necromancers for this questline and confront Mano Marco, the King of worms. Many will try to enthrall us, but thanks to the colossal black soul, Jim, it’ll fail and we’ll be able to kill him. Trayvon then commit suicide. Soul trapping himself
In the soul. Jim and condemning his soul to the soul kin Farewell, my friend John. You would dare to approach the King of worms if seek an audience with his grace. You must open this door. I hold the key and I will die defending. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
Oh, oh, oh. I see Bullard was unsuccessful in delaying you. Oh, very well. I shall reanimate him once we are done here. All right Let’s talk about man a marco. Manny boy is a cartoon villain. Dude, I get you’re into the whole necromancy dark arts Blackwood’s inner monologue thing.
But what happened? Did the reasonable political savvy side of you split off to become the divine being and you’re stuck on Norn with all the angst and hormones never mind his goofy appearance? Why not draw from his dagger fall uniform with a hood, his face concealed in shadows, and his eyes
Glowing in unnerving blue? We’re not even going to get into the Elder Scrolls online version of Marco. But let’s set visuals aside and how he presents himself. Is he a good boss? Fight? It is universally
Agreed, even among fans of Oblivion, that men are Marco is not a satisfying boss fight for the major skilled. But let’s actually analyze him. Mano Marco, when put under scrutiny, actually highlights a fundamental lack of understanding in game design. Men in Marco stats skill based on the players so.
In theory, he’s supposed to be somewhat challenging regardless of when you face him. However, his magica actually caps at 350. He knows four spells. One is the scripted he uses to start to paralyze this for the monologue. The remaining three spells are a paralyzed spell for 7
Seconds, which will take 332 magica. He can cast spell exactly once before being out of Magica. His second spell is a shark damage spell that does 20 points of damage for 2 seconds in an area of 15. This costs 243 magica so he can cast this one once and then need
To regenerate for a short time to cast it again. His third spell summons a glitch but costs 700 magica. It is mathematically impossible for Manu Marco to cast this spell. His remaining spells are determined by a level less, which itself contains five level lists to fill out the remainder
Of his spell roster with five random spells. However, because he only has 350 magica, he consistently runs out and then decides to fall back on his backup weapon. A dagger Many. Marco is a necromancer. The Necromancer class
Often falls back on summoning daggers as backup weapons, but confusingly they do not have blade in their skill lineup. They do, however, have Athletic’s sneak and blunt two skills the player won’t see NPCs using and one skill the
Necromancer can’t utilize because they can’t conjure maces. A marco, however, doesn’t conjure his weapon. He instead carries a generic silver dagger. That’s right. His weapon choice is not leveled. Whether you come here at level
One or level 50 mana, Marco will always fall back on his silver dagger that he doesn’t have the blade skill to. Effectively. The player would have to reach level 190 just for Mana Marco to reach skill level 25 with his
Backup weapon. Note at this level the player would have somewhere between 602,000 health. So even if the player fought naked, Mano Marco’s dagger would likely break before managing to kill the player. He only has two other items to his person, his uninhabited robes and the staff of worms which reanimate Bonnie’s.
Except there’s no in the boss Arena for him to reanimate. He does, however, have a unique birth sign fortifying his health 100 points is intelligence, 20 points, and giving him a 50 resistance to magic, normal weapons and paralysis. So at least he’s got that going for him. Mana Marco is
An amazingly bad boss fight in a game where the concept of boss encounters is dubious as is. Let’s fix this up first. We’ll give Mando Marco a whole 1000 magic plus additional spell points from scaling and 25% spell absorption. The boot will also up his resist normal weapon stat
To 75% from 50% at half health. We can script him to initiate a second conversation. Something like Nice try mortal, but that wasn’t even 1% of my power or some filler bull[____] like that.
And then we’ll spawn in a bunch of skeletons into the fight. As it stands, Men of Marco. This ancient threat to the Majors Guild that dates back to Galarian is indistinguishable from any of the other ultima necromancers
We fought so far off his corpse. We receive the staff of worms, A primitive version of the reanimation spells that would appear in Skyrim Reminisce tells us that the Arch Mage left a note appointing us Arch Mage.
I don’t know if that included a qualifier like on the condition they beat me a marco because it’s basically up to us if you want to undo the legacy of arch Mage Hannibal Trayvon in permit necromancy again because remember that’s what this whole Questline boils down to two years prior
To Oblivion Traven became Arch Mage and made the decision to ban necromancy from the Majors Guild. Not from at all, just the major skill. However, I feel some people have made a mistake in their understand of
This story. Craving didn’t ban necromancy because of the return of mana marco rather Mana Marco returned after Craven banned necromancy meant Marco have inevitably returned to serial to destroy the major skilled given his beef with Galarian. But that doesn’t change the fact that the ban on necromancy was proactive, not reactive.
There’s a book on necromancy titled The Black Arts on Trial, penned by Who else? Animal Draven. The book details the debate between two Mages Guild, Magister one from elsewhere, one from or Citium. Discussing the issue of banning necromancy, Master Kong argues that the Guild should form an objective understanding
Of necromancy, while Master Karlis argues necromancy is the work of Satan and should be banned. The book tries to justify Carlos’s position by later stating that Korg was a necromancer and that Treyvon attempted to have her arrested despite necromancy only being a provincial crime
In Morrowind. Craven even calls her a slave to the black arts, and that her only possible motivation for endorsing this study of necromancy was to the benefit of evil. Like, Hold on. If this was a discussion on banning destruction, magic and the person making the defense for
Destruction was a master of destruction, Magic, they be called a slave. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that the person you got to mount the defense of the art was in fact a practitioner. Throughout the section, I have pointed out time, time again the incompetence of Mages Guild members.
It is my belief that some early draft of the story was about how the Mages Guild had lost its way as an organization and that the ban on necromancy would inevitably be the downfall of the major skilled. Indeed, that is what ends up happening between Oblivion and Skyrim. However, when it came
Time to translate the idea into a questline, it seems the purpose of the story was lost or changed. Instead of being a questline pitting two Mages Guild factions, the Necromancers versus the rest of the Guild where the player may choose between an amoral but objective art versus the morally good but ideologically
Corrupted. Mages Guild. Oh my dear, I didn’t mean to imply that you have a choice. It became the story of a renegade faction of outwardly evil mages out to destroy everything that is good and holy, justifying satanic panic.
And only we can stop this threat. The more I analyze the story, the more I realize that it has the potential to be one of the greatest quest lines in a Bethesda game. I’m not even kidding. The pieces are all the setup
Is here. An ideological conflict about the role and purpose of the Mages Guild. Is it a faction dedicated to the study of magic, or is it a magical regulator that cowers before the whims of the non magical population?
Trayvon’s position as a hardline anti necromancer could embody everything that has gone wrong with the Guild, someone who opposed to the Guild’s understanding of an entire school of magic was allowed to dictate to the Mages Guild from Black Moorish
To high rank that necromancy was not to be studied. If the player was a necromancer, they might arrive at the university to suddenly find themselves saddled with the same choice that other guild necromancers like Cathar, Karana and Fulker had to make.
Do we continue membership depriving ourselves of a school of magic? Or do we join the Necromancer faction, depriving ourselves of all of their magical services? Instead, look at what we got. It’s to sit around and speculate about what could have been the Mages Guild
Questline could have been a quest about building an airship fleet to go conquer Olivia. But when all the pieces are here, and when all these elements are half formed, it makes you question why. If the necromancers aren’t going to be join evil, then why right than Mages Guild members like
This. In Morrowind, there was a spectrum between politics and academics focused mages. Edwina Elbert represented the academic aspect of the Guild and most her quests focused on the acquisition of knowledge. Has Sartorius represented the political aspect of the Guild? Every quest involving him focused on the
Political relationship. The Guild had with Morrowind. Rene’s athis was Politics Focus, while his era in the same Guild hall was more academic with minor politics, skink and trees. Shade was a mix of politics and
Academics, and you have to do all of his quest to get the option to peacefully replace your Bonia Sartorius. However, in Oblivion all the mages are just incompetent academics. It’s hard to see how there were two separate magical factions in a post Oblivion sphere. It’ll give him. Pretty much everyone
We meet in the Guild is on team [____] necromancy. Most of these people would absolutely join the Synod and go on to ban conjugation if it means they can continue to get paid to do nothing.
I just love the line the necromancers drew in the sand in the year for 21, the Empire passed the Levitation Act, which banned the use of levitation magic across the Empire. Morrowind was exempt due to the armistice, but Cyril obviously for 21, was only 12 years prior to Oblivion. And this
Wasn’t a guild only ban like necromancy. This was the outright criminalization of levitation magic. If only I could think of examples where you break the law in an Elder Scrolls game, maybe even two whole factions dedicated to that concept. Alas, I cannot. Apparently the Necromancer is in the majors. Guild
Were fine with the ban on levitation. The power of flight, the ability to ascend vertically into the atmosphere, The necromancers, they’re just a little sleepy, and there’s nothing that could stir them awake. But The practice of reanimating the dead, where its practitioners often target bodies without
Consent and raise abominations to the point of soul trapping humanoid souls. We banned the practice of necromancy just in the guild halls and all of the sudden they are wide awake. Rebelling. Half of the Major’s Guild council resigns in disgust at this gross violation of magical study.
And this is why I think the Majors Guild fails as a magical faction. It doesn’t require magic. It barely encourages magic. And it fundamentally does not understand magic. Speaking of not understanding magic, let’s finally discuss Frost Crag Spire, the DLC option for the Magical Player. It’s a Wizards tower atop a peak
Overlooking Seattle. That’s pretty cool and it looks great with a distinct style over substance design. The deed appears in your as the tower’s master was apparently our dead relative terrorist. Rendell Arch. Mage. What? I guess he was the arch mage before Trayvon. Although he sounds notably dumber, given that
He’s supposed to be the player’s relative, it might not be a good idea to actually name him. Anyways, he built the tower but failed to put the finishing flourishes on it, so bequeath that responsibility upon us. The first thing are the enchanting and spell crafting station, which apparently require special permission from
The arcane university. We need to buy candles for them to work. Working with the Master Alchemist and Darian, he created the apparatus table, which fortifies our alchemy 15 points. He also built an annex table, which
Will those permanent summons of your next you may have spotted me using in exchange for three of their salts. Kind of smart since you can’t really summon storm at your next without reaching the level 19
Spike. There are no void salts in the world to actually do it at level one. But still this is cool. He also made portals to the Mages Guild halls. Seriously? What? He needed permission, custom spell and enchantment stations, but could casually create teleport doors that span half the continent.
The garden here also provides access to plants that are limited in the base game during. The main quest for all those reasons for us. Correct. Spire was my base for this playthrough. Even though you now have the ability to buy houses in every city, I usually only bother with the house and
The waterfront until I’ve made enough money to purchase the upgrades for frost cracked spire. People like to brag and say they’d never done a Bolivians main quest. I find this strange as people put an unusual emphasis on the main quests of these games in terms of how they end the game. However,
Neither Morrowind nor Oblivion, nor Skyrim’s Main quest actually marks the end of their respective Elder Scrolls game. The end of the game is really just the last time you hit exact game on a character. However, what people can’t say is that they haven’t started Oblivion as Quest. Unless you’re somehow in the
Minority of individuals whose first playthrough involved an alternative start mod. So we have to go back to the beginning. The Introduction. We are a prisoner sitting in a cell inside the Imperial City prison. Emperor
Uriel stepped in the seventh with a group of blade bodyguards, uses a secret exit inside our cell to escape. We follow as the Emperor has had visions of us before and trusts us. He gives us the amulet of
Kings. And we witness his assassination. We’re instructed to go to Wayne in Priory, and we leave. As we exit the sewers, we’re told to either fast travel to coral or to follow the quest marker to get there. Now, before we set off, there’s something that I feel merits discussion at this juncture.
Why was the emperor skipping town? The obvious answer is to escape the mythic dawn assassins. But Why secret passages out of cities typically exist in the event a city is besieged and the defenders aren’t confident they can keep the attackers
Out. It’s a way to get your leadership out of the inevitable torture and execution. This is not what you do in the event of an assassination attempt, because now, instead of being surrounded by guards, you’re surrounded by ambush positions.
But fine, I guess we’ll assume that the blades have decided that there may be infiltrators in the Imperial Palace and they can’t defend them there anymore. What are their options? Firstly, teleportation magic. For 65 years, I’ve ruled as tamriel as emperor. But did you install a teleporter in the
Imperial Palace that apparently doesn’t merit special permission? And besides, you’re the Emperor. Even if there is no teleporter out of the palace, the Emperor is a master of the mystic arts. So you’ll definitely knows how to cast, recall or Divine Intervention. But that
Be illegal. We may be fleeing for our lives here, but we aren’t criminals. God damn it. Okay, so you’re in the Imperial Palace and you want to not be go through the sewers. Except the only palace entrance Connecting to the palace proper is lost knowledge that is
Only later recovered during the Thieves Guild. So I guess they went across the surface through the market district. Cross the bridge to the prison district in to the Bastion, and then came down to our cellblock. So they were going to leave through the same sewer exit we use.
Right. Which is not far from a shallow point in the lake. There are four ways to get off this island swimming the Imperial Dragon Bridge, the Woodbridge in the northwestern corner, a shallow part of the lake in the northeast, and a shallow part
In the south. What’s their plan after that? Maybe we take the Emperor to a fort. Except there aren’t any Imperial Legion forts inside at all. The closest for is for your escort, which is full of goblins. The second closest work is Shaman, which is full of undead.
Fine. We’re going up to Cloud Ruler Temple. Except one little thing. I was born 87 years ago. So you’re telling me you’re going to march in 87 year old up this mountain to Cloud Ruler? Temple? Are we confident that he’s even going to be able to breathe up there? And the
Answer is yeah, because have you seen the Imperial Palace? Cardio day is every day when you live in a with no elevator. I mean, we see the guy on the roof in the trailer. Urinals probably ripped under that rope. But we don’t even have to get up that far.
The road is Ambush Alley again, trying To get your people out of the city is probably not that great a plan cuz Cassady is in. Morrowind was talking about a secession crisis six years ago, so surely you guys have prepared something in the
Interim. Take him to the Fort High in the mountains. Okay. So what are our options? You could have just stayed in the Bastion. The prison district is like a fortress. And the only downside of the prisoners of which there are only four. But if you don’t
Want to go that route, you could instead go to the arcane university. Sure, there might be hidden necromancers and it would suck to flee from one death cult to another. But it’s highly defensible. There are battle mages there and a bunch of powerful wizards.
You could also go to the waterfront and commandeer a ship and then sail away from the city. Oh, wait, there’s a shallow section there, so you’d have to get out and push the boat. The only problem with the main is that there aren’t any horses at the stable.
Also, here’s a question. We know the Emperor walked by here, right? So why didn’t they march around the prison? You’d get to the sewer exit faster and could even commission some legionaries to escort you. Or if we’re really dedicated to wading through
Feces because you think it’ll get the dawn to stop following you, you could enter the market sewers at a couple of different shops in their basement and then connect to the North Tunnel, which exits equal distance from two different land bridges.
It’s not implausible, as Boris seems to know the sewers pretty well. Or take the south east tunnel, which you enter in the arboretum. It’s the farthest from a land bridge, but the simplest and shortest of the sewers. But fine. The invisible hand of fate pushes them
To go through the prison district sewers because they felt they had to start in prison. And they showed the scene in the E3 demo on our arrival at Wayne and Priory were directed to speak with Joffrey, a priest who is secretly the
Grandmaster of the Blades. Emperor Uriel. Do you know something about his death? Yeah, I that instead of bringing the amulet to you directly, I instead entered into a gladiatorial Arena, started from nothing, and became its grand champion, and then left that Arena to sign up with a mercenary
Company, discovered a conspiracy by a rival company, and subsequently wiped them all out, became the leader of the fighter’s guild in the process. And now I’m currently in the 15 hour section between the into the Fighters Guild and beginning of the Majors Guild, and I need to access some Oblivion games for several
Stone. So I may have finally decided to bring you the Amulet of Kings. I know it might be a bit late, but here you go. As unlikely as your story sounds, I believe you. Now, it’s impossible to not make a comparison to Morrowind, given the extreme and obvious that exists between
Joffrey and the character Chaos Societies. Both Morrowind and Oblivion start with the player character being released from prison by the Imperial Authority with the instructions to deliver something to the regional leader of the Blades. Both characters are old, balding Imperials who have taken cover identities as unlikely suspects of espionage.
Cassidy’s was a scum addict and Joffrey was a monk. Both characters fill the role of giving the player directions that constitute the main quest. Now, for the differences, the player has little inkling of what their true use to the blades is in Morrowind. Your
Only clues will be to read the documents that you’re assigned to collect for Cassidy’s. And if you don’t, Caius will explain your role in the new riverine prophecy. Whereas from the outset of Oblivion, the character is intimately aware of what their role
In this story is. You hold in darkness. A doom sweeps the land. You, I. I’ve seen you. You are the one from my dreams. Then the stars were right. This is the day. What path can be avoided? Whose end is fixed by the Almighty God? These are the closing days
Of the third era and the final hours of my life. If the story was realistic and bear with me on that sentiment, then Joffrey would thank us for the amulet and send us on our way. I appreciate that Sometimes unrealistic things have to happen in stories for the sake of storytelling.
Joffrey, however, begins divulging information to the player that he really shouldn’t. At least not yet. What if, for instance, the player was actually the mythic dawn member who killed the emperor after hearing his instructions, then managed to the player and Boris and
Taken the Amulet of Kings. And this was a ploy to try and uncover any illegitimate errors. Is Joffrey so confident in his cover identity that he’s willing to divulge information to a complete stranger, simply off the idea that Uriel Septum was a quirky guy who knows a
Protagonist when he sees one? No. Trust the player because he has verifiable proof that he’s been sent by the Empire. Even if he didn’t. Morrowind has another trick up his sleeve. After introducing ourselves to Cassidy’s dismisses us with only one order to get a job. In that interim, it’s not
Unreasonable that he reached out to sell us gravitas. The man who gave us our orders has seen a need to verify this information. Joffrey has no equivalent moment because he really can’t. Fixing this inherent problem of
Trapping the player in the main quest would take one big change to the game, delaying the destruction of coverage. Bad idea. Suddenly destroying an entire city housing quest content and maybe the player’s house would probably foster more resentment towards the game than the Deidre in that situation. I’d
Imagine that most players would reload a save if they found out the city was destroyed and then proceed to complete everything they could in coverage until they were okay with it being leveled. Which sort of defeats the purpose of destroying the city in the first place. How true is the
Sentiment, however? Breville, for instance, is a city that doesn’t get destroyed, which only has eight quests. 12 if you count the Thieves Guild quests that start in Brazil. But don’t actually take place here. Imagine for a moment that it’s possible during quest for Brazil to get destroyed.
What exactly Changes in Oblivion? IMages Guild Quest Two dark Brotherhood quests, three side quests, a main quest and a quest to buy the house. Maybe it’s frustrating if your Belleville hovel gets blown out, but one short quest to rebuild it in the ruins
And bam, all your stuff’s back. Just avoid the Mages Guild. Quest. The Dark brotherhood seems like they would hang out in the ruins and losing three side quests sucks, but it helps create the illusion that the cities are in danger if one gets destroyed.
You could sidestep the issue entirely by making it so Kovacic just doesn’t have a home for sale. That might be a death flag, but the benefits of having the city outweigh the alternative reality criticisms that would endure being designed for destruction. Obviously there are time concerns for
Bethesda, but don’t discount the idea entirely because it might be an inconvenience for the player. Nobody in the Fighters Guild their friends that perished in the city. Arch Mage. Trayvon will conveniently decide to not assign a school of magic to the Guild Hall prior to its
Destruction. Well, sad to say, but such wasn’t the only forgotten city of at all. Given the only thing people outside of the village have to say is praise for the player when they save it. Patrick We save the city. If coverage actually exists prior to the main quest, it
Could be a simple city, a few quests, most of them simple, and might only pay out gold, curvature. Lack of quests could even be attributed to it being a quiet, peaceful area. It would have a simple recommendation quest for the Mages Guild, which would get waved at.
The player joins after the Guild Hall is destroyed and like most Fighters Guild halls, it would serve no purpose. It’s not like there isn’t a precedent in Oblivion for areas and characters get destroyed and killed. Look at the Bruma Mages Guild Hall. The minority of people who care about
Getting 100% just grab the door. More Lords summon, spell and invest in the Alchemist ahead of time. Everyone else gets caught by surprise and generally praises that quest. The only time the Majors guild reaches out of storytelling mediocrity is the quest where the Necromancer king attacks the broom, a major guild,
Destroying it and killing many of its residents. Had the characters in Bruma been more fleshed out then? This could have worked as a gut punch, which would have given the player a reason to hate the necromancers. As it stands, we get none of the benefits of having coverage exist prior to its destruction.
In fact, the one tidbit most Elder Scrolls fans know about Kovach is that it was destroyed because the city was created for the express purpose of being destroyed. It’s trying to receive benefits of denying the player content without doing any of the work.
So for most people, instead of Kovac being the city where they were mildly inconvenienced for a dramatic story, it’s instead the place where the Oblivion gate starts spawning and has this weirdly unfinished quest to reclaim the castle. I believe Coventry is relying on the player being familiar
With the other cities to function, which doesn’t work for the players who just follow the compass. If the player goes straight from the Imperial City sewers to wine and priory to the village, they never actually encounter of the normal cities this year at all. Simply put, there’s no angle where the
Destruction of coverage really works because either Bethesda was concerned players might be mildly annoyed at its destruction, or more likely they just didn’t have the time to fully realize the city. Todd Howard himself stated there was a questline to become the Duke of Columbia that would
Start here at coverage which was cut because, quote, it really refocused the main quest from dealing with the danger that and getting the game out in 2006 to the console market. If Bethesda couldn’t finish the city of such, then yeah, of course coverage was just left to smolder.
It’s a city that was doomed from the start. Something is immediately wrong if you attempt to fast travel to cover, much as it’s the only city to not allow you to go straight to its gate. Deidre overran coverage last night. It’s a kind of quantum last
Night. No matter how long you delay arriving at the city, you’ll always be too late. And inversely, no matter how quickly arrive at the city, hope is gone. The imperial line is dead. The covenant is broken. The enemy has won. This guy will always know about the Emperor’s death. Good day. I guess
The danger didn’t target the cell towers coverage and the related quests to close the Oblivion gate that sits in front of its door is always available to the player, even if they haven’t visited Joffrey yet. So like me, you can actually do these quests out of order and get special dialog when
You deliver the amulet. After closing the gate coverage. Yes. I think it’s a neat touch, if only because Bethesda could not engineer a situation where the player absolutely could not get to a watch without speaking to Joffrey first, without making the city itself.
Our goal in the main quest is to rescue the illegitimate son of the emperor, Sean from the city of Kovach. If you do the quest early, the goal is to rescue the civilians from the Chapel of Akita. And if you do so, Sean will go down to the
Refugee camp with the others. But First, we have to take care of the Oblivion gate. So. Question Why did the danger attack coverage? Because it’s an emotionally resonant moment, man. And There’s the fulcrum of Oblivion. The amount of information and capabilities of the mythic
Dawn in Marin’s Dagon is near omniscient when convenient in order to drive the plot. The mythic Dawn assassins pursuing the Emperor into the sewers in such numbers is a stretch, but it makes sense. They could at least find the Emperor in the Imperial city. The danger tracking down the
Illegitimate heir to the Septem dynasty and then deciding that a full scale invasion of the city was preferable to an infiltration and assassination is dissonant. He’s a priest. Guys, he wouldn’t see it coming or be able to stop you. They used a cruise missile to kill a rodent and failed.
And then the bulk of the major forces left closed the great gate and two of its supporting gates and left a single Oblivion gate open. But not to actually accomplish the danger, just sort of stand around and look menacing for the benefit
Of the player. But come back to this point later. Now, spoilers for later. But in the interim, when the player leaves the Amulet of Kings that went in Priory to fetch Martin, the mythic dawn will attack the Priory and steal the amulet.
Before I ask how they knew, we can figure out the mythic dawn may have been tailing the player. It’s only an unreasonable assumption if the player doesn’t immediately deliver the amulet. It might have been neat if there were sporadic mythic dawn attacks until the player
Finishes the quest. So if Dawn is tailing the player, then a possible direction to take. The story is that the player is by proxy responsible for the destruction of coverage. Or you could be lazy and say a mythic dawn agent had infiltrated the Priory. It just seems like your
Priorities are backwards when you send the assassins to kill an emperor and an army to kill a priest. I mean, sure, they couldn’t open an Oblivion gate when the Emperor was still alive.
Amulet of Kings and all that. But why not plop down a gate? And when in Priory is it because we’re not opening gates on such petty targets. Is waning Priory in the Amulet of Kings less important than the middle
Of the woods? Moving on now we have to take care of the Oblivion gate itself. Cave Arch has a unique Oblivion gate, which is an odd statement by itself because Morrowind had moved away from procedural generation. So everything was unique. While the gates you encounter in the world are not procedurally generated,
They are randomized to be one of seven presets. There are four more handcrafted worlds, all of which are to the main quest. Everything else in Oblivion is handcrafted. The minimum you have to do in Oblivion to complete the main quest is three out of the 60 that can in 90 potential locations.
Most of the time the forces of Oblivion will Parker Gate down in the middle of the wilderness and hop out doing not much of anything. The player can ignore these gates and come back to them later to see that the data are still doing nothing. There are also
Places where the player will see multiple gates within spitting distance of each other. The prime example usually being your skin grabbed. Given how many times the player will travel near that city. These are issues that every single Oblivion critic brings up because it’s very obviously a problem. One
Solution that was proposed in a live streamed chat was that the Major Gates could focus on attacking generic and non-Western related forts and ruins, replacing their occupants for the duration of the main quest. Or there could be less wilderness gates and more village and city gates with consequences
For not doing those when you see them. Of course, the next problem is Oblivion itself. Oblivion as a dungeon area is universally hated. You might get the odd contrarian who defends the premise of Oblivion, but very few people will go up to bat for its execution.
The only time I enjoyed doing in Oblivion Gate was when I popped a new Doom song in the background and pretended I was a modern pelon or white strake. Oh, what you don’t seem to understand is nerd, isn’t your world to conquer with 50 random gates in the world sharing
Seven preset designs? If you decide to take down all gates by hand, you’ll likely encounter each design around seven times the variation. These designs is sparse, with the towers all being copy paste of each other. The recent towers are where
Underground ruins aren’t is that the towers supposedly have to conform to realistic dimensions since they’re above ground. Now, given this is Oblivion, and especially given this is the data points of changes point of Oblivion, this isn’t actually true. And there were a lot of opportunities to make Oblivion more unique than
The overworld dungeons. I mean, it’s in the name of the game and several of the danger quests involve going to Oblivion. Yet every variation of Oblivion ends up being the same hellish dead lands area. First, the overworld. This is the best part of Oblivion being the only dungeons to generally involve
Exterior skybox cells. You’ll encounter towers that spit fireballs at you. Magic land mines, even plants that try to poison or slash you. It’s awesome. And that isn’t counting the day occupants. They suffer in some regards. Daydream Morrowind were always higher tier threats, even scamps merited until around level seven.
However, the expectation is that the player may be completing the gate coverage at level one so the enemies have to be leveled to be beatable. This starts with stunted scamps and clan fury runs, which for most players were simply so threatening that they
Overwhelmed the cave arch guard. They stand side by side with generic dreamer enemies who have traded in their impressive and powerful Dedrick armor for weaker and level draw more armor that can’t be taken off their bodies at some point in Oblivion gates.
You’ll encounter the Oblivion caves, arguably the most miserable variety of cave you can find in the entire game. And then there are the towers, which have the same beginning, middle and end for every single Oblivion gate in the entire game. I’m sure the original design document. There was
Something about a joint invasion that might have the player visiting various realms of Oblivion. Hence the name of the game is Oblivion in not Dead Lands. Maybe a four Horsemen motif with May ruins, Dagon, Moloch Ball, Parasite. And I guess Nomura would be the closest thing to famine.
Instead, we got a game focusing on the intricacies of the Dedra, where most people just ride off Maroons Dagon has Satan and Oblivion Gates as hell you get to go through in the Eye of Sauron. This is Minion Gold. This character shows up once in Oblivion and then disappears forever. He
Exists to tell us how to close the gate. He cannot be rescued as he will insist on closing the gate first resigning himself to whatever fate that will bring him. You can’t even tell him that
The city needs as many guards as they can get and that he should endeavor to return home alive. No, just a pointless sacrifice that is supposed to come off as heroic. We go up to the central key. I detailed the several stones already. They apparently serve as anchors for the gate. And
Conveniently, instead of just being trapped inside Oblivion after closing the gate, we get deposited outside. That’s pretty much the only heroic aspect of what we or Minion were trying to accomplish. And once we know taking the sigil stone allows you to escape it, then what we’re doing is really no
Different than any normal Marauder or necromancer cave because, well, there’s no way to get stuck inside Oblivion with the way into the city. Clear. We asked the acting guard captain to accompany us into the city.
After one fight, we group up with the survivors in the chapel of Akita, and they are allowed to escape. Now there is more to this quest, but our part relating to the main quest is done for now. We
Meet Brother Martin, and I looked into it. Martin Jafari are the only people in Oblivion referred to with the brother honorific, something that rarely shows up in Elder Scrolls and hasn’t since Red Guard. Except with Joffrey, it makes sense, given he’s living in a monastic order.
Martin is the only member of the actual Church of the Nine Divines to hold such a title and given the rather easy connections between Maroons and Satan, it’s not hard to see why. Never mind him, being a priest
Of archetype would surely be enough to convey that Martin is a good guy or that Martin aligns with us against the forces of hell, or that Martin suggests we our attention to the idea of quiet instead of him.
None of that really conveys Martin is a good guy until we slap that little brother down there. We explain the situation to Martin, his bummed about the Divines and their plan to destroy the city, even though that is how God is typically characterized. And the Nine Divines aren’t
Generally characterized as having any kind of omniscient plan laid out for their subjects. Still, our honesty and having closed the door in hell gate means that Martin is willing to trust us and meet with Joffrey. Not that there’s any other approach like lying to him or telling him to get over himself.
Nope. We just tell him that determinism is silly and not a valid excuse for being evil. And he comes along with us to win in primary, which, as I said, is currently under attack by the forces of the mythic nine.
Why not plop down one of those gates you were going to use to molest a local wildlife to instead wipe out this monastery of undercover Blade’s agents? Out of my way. I once found a deer, and I’ll do it again. I suppose I haven’t really focused on the
Mythic dawn. Truth is, the Legion doesn’t know who is behind the Emperor’s murder. We’ve already ruled out the dark brotherhood. How so? Is this something worse? Come on. Mythic Dawn is printed on the robe. Surely it can’t be that hard to figure out. Their beliefs will come under
Scrutiny later. Right now, we’re just looking at their basic exterior. Their movements and numbers are mysterious, but they all seem to be wearing these red robes and using magic to bind four sets of armor. It’s a cool trick, likely inspired by custom enchanted items, People made more when they did that
Effect. It’s a shame that they’re wasted on these satanic hydra cultists. Help! You must help. They’re killing everyone waiting on Priory. I don’t know. I think they’re right behind me. Prior material is dead. We go and bail out Jeffrey at the chapel and then go and recover the Amulet of Kings.
Because the plot would be over if people kept taking their brain medicine. But it’s missing. Oh, no. We gained Ariel’s heir and lost the amulet of kings. We set out on horseback to Cloud Ruler Temple. There’s something cosmically hilarious about passing an Imperial Legionary who’s already gotten word
Of a heroic sack of watch whilst being tailed by the heir to the throne and grandmaster of the blade. It’s a Jew, but only an Elder Scrolls game can engineer such a beautiful moment. Of course you
Could just fast travel to clobber Ruler Temple as the game not only unlocks a point on the map, but discovers it for as well. The Hidden Fortress of the Blades. Yeah, sure. It’s a shame too, as getting there from Wayne and Priory involves one of the more interesting roads in the game.
We arrive, makes an awkward speech to the blades, and Joffrey offers to induct us into his order. I declined. Go off to do the major skilled and return in full ebony armor with the ebony blade in hand. I don’t think I need
The katana, but thanks. A lot of people claim the blades are inspired by Japanese historical armors, but no, that’s quite literally Roman centurions armed with containers or cash armor from Morrowind on the other hand. Anyways, being a part of the Blades is optional in Oblivion and only comes with the benefit of
Being allowed to take their stuff and sleep in their beds. But It’s not actually a faction. Granted, it was only technically a faction in Morrowind as well. Use what you. Once we continue on the main quest, Joffre dispatches us to meet Boris, who had been doing field work in the Imperial City.
Given the blades prominence as a Spire organization, you would think there would be a dozen agents filling this role and hundreds in the Canonically Imperial City. Funny thing is, the Mythic Dawn does actually have sleeper agents, many more than the Blades do. So we meet with Boris,
And he gives us some simple instructions. I’m going to get up in a minute and walk out of here. That guy in the corner behind me will follow me. You follow him? I will follow you. Remember, I’ve trained for
This kind of follow thing my whole life, too. Don’t give up. Listen, I’m going to get up in a minute and walk out of here. That guy in the corner behind me will follow me. You follow him? Our staff, Wyrick, whose one
Package is to sit and read his book until this very moment, stands up and follows Boris into the basement to him. Boris, I hope you aren’t wondering how your cover keeps getting blown, considering you walk around proudly displaying your katana. We kill Wyrick, grab his book and chat with Boris.
What? They took it from Jeffrey. Things are worse than I thought. You didn’t know Joffrey had it? Unless you and him have been communicating using illegal teleportation and magic anyways. The book is The Mythic Dawn Commentaries, Volume one. Boris suggests we head over to the Arcane University and
Speak with Terminus, and she is apparently supposed to be an expert on Diedrich cults. Yeah. No, I’ve worked with her before. She’s barely suited to being a librarian, let alone an actual specialist. You may be wondering
How the player who hasn’t joined the arcane university is supposed to meet her at the mystic archives. And the answer is you don’t, because Bethesda couldn’t come up with a way to give the player a guest power. She’ll sit in the arch majors lobby instead, having received another one of
Those illegal teleporting messages notifying her of our arrival. She, of course, doesn’t know much as they are a secretive cult. Other than that their leader is Menkaure Cameron the mystic. The mythic Dawn isn’t secretive at all, or really any more secretive than any other danger
Cult. Maybe the implication is that they’re secret because shrine is in a cave, whereas most dangerous shrines are in the open. Really? I suspect she’s seen as much because that’s the extent of her knowledge and where her boss and she doesn’t want to look unprepared for something.
She is supposed to know. You have a scholarly interest in Diedrich cults then. Are you serious? The Order of the Black Worm, The Necromancers Moon, The Raven and Black James Bennett. Marco. Any of this ringing a bell? Tahmina I might be interested because it’s my job as the continent’s magical regulator. Supreme,
To know this kind of stuff. She gives us the book’s alternative name commentaries on the Mysterium Xerxes. At the very least, she actually gives us the second volume instead of making us search the library. From there, she refers us over to the first edition. A bookshop in the market
District to try and find volumes three and four as they’re exceedingly difficult to find. You must be referring to man called Cameron’s commentaries on the Mysterium Xerxes. A common mistake. No, Boris is on own our mind. Oh, we haven’t that one yet. Phineas
Mentions that the third and fourth volumes are rare, but that he does happen to have a copy of the third volume on hand awaiting someone to pick up their online order so he can’t give
It to us. He even goes so far as naming the person who’s coming up to pick up the book. Like what? I don’t know him personally. Well, you have awfully loose lips. All things. We’re not even given a chance to
Read the book before Gwyneth arrives or try to copy some notes down or to offer a higher price as there’s an intended sequence we have to follow. Because of that, Phineas is not only as knowledgeable about the series as Termina arcane
University data cult expert, but willing to taunt us with the fact that we have to politely witness for the book. I’ll point out here the missed opportunity to have time pass as you read books and means. All the
Coffee table books are basically worthless given the possibility of using them to pass time waiting NPC patterns. Now we do actually have the option of stealing the book from fantasy. However, to progress the
Quests, we still have to talk to Guinness because he has a note we need in order to get fourth volume. In addition, this option isn’t really apparent as Guinness is scripted to arrive shortly after our conversation
With Venti. So it seems like fantasy would obviously suspect us of stealing the book when it grabs the book and we follow him outside. We can actually do a disposition checked by the book off him for 100 gold. However,
Two things. Guinness is actually from Brownwood traveled across the continent to come pick this book up. So the idea of someone cracking a couple jokes and convincing him to part with the book, especially for so little
Money, is silly. However We also have to still get the note from him, which we can technically steal or loot off his corpse, but so could the book. Ultimately, the path of last Resort is to simply talk to, which always
Ends in us getting our hands on the book and note without any other requirement, making it the only real choice. He isn’t willing to part with the book or note until we accused the dawn of being the assassins behind the Emperor’s death. From the way he talks, the hero of caveat strikes
Me as kind of a moron. He actually thinks making an accusation of criminal behavior would affect a cult initiate. And don’t say something like, Well, it works because. Yeah, it does. That doesn’t make it all right. The note details Guinness was to meet someone named the sponsor in
Order to receive the fourth volume. Now, we could go do this without Boris, but one. Absolutely not. And two, Boris will eventually track us down anyways. He can help us as we fight our way through the sewers. The Imperial City does
Have a full sewer system, but thankfully, Bethesda learned from tribunal to not set all of its quests inside it. I happen to know that if you go up the stairs there, you can get a vantage point on the meeting
Room. Boris How much of your brain is occupied? My knowledge of the Imperial City sewer system. We’re given two options at this juncture, which is important as Boris has been flagged as non-essential. Oh, yeah. Essential flags. Up to this point, I’ve mentioned them, but I haven’t really explained them.
When an epic is flagged as essential, they cannot be killed. While is common in a lot of games, arguably most games Morrowind allowed the player to kill every NPC they wanted and one informed the player of the NPC they killed was considered essential. The main quest. Now the next argument goes something like
This. In pre-season, Oblivion are more dynamic than Morrowind in pics, so they need to be essential. It’s possible they may get killed while doing their routine and that would be sad face crying emoji. This ignores the fact that the essential could just mean that NPCs can’t be killed by other
NPCs or falling damage or drowning, but only the player dealing a lethal amount of damage. The other big argument is that being able to kill any NPC in the game would break quest sequences. Oh my dear, I didn’t mean to imply that you had a choice. Really, the only decent
Argument I’ve heard against my proposal is that the player might accidently land a fatal blow on NPC have to reload their save. However, this potential stroke of bad luck is a small price to pay in order to preserve the freedom of killing any NPC in the game.
In fact, the Thieves Guild already has consequences for killing certain NPCs. A feature we’ll talk about when we get there. Ultimately, it’s a design philosophy that made the quest lines of Oblivion so rigid murdering a single NPC could ruin the entire questline. In Morrowind, if you botch
The quest by killing the wrong person, you still had other potential paths through the faction. Even then you had quests like Muro Llano Slanders, which accounted for the possibility of the player killing someone despite being directed to do otherwise, which was a disposition penalty
And a lack of reward and ultimately more wins. Quests were flexible enough as to usually only break if the person murdered. Was the quest giver themselves a benefit of their simplicity. But New Vegas proved that you could do a rigidly structured quest without taking away the
Player’s ability to kill all but one NPC in the game. It’s not fair to compare Oblivion to how a game did an idea, sure, but it is fair to say that the possibility does exist and that the lack of exploration into player choice in regards to murder reflects on the 26 launch date.
I will say, however, that Oblivion is actually better than Skyrim in this front. In Skyrim is common to kill random NPC only for them to be knocked down because you haven’t completed their side quest in Oblivion. Many side quest NPCs can actually be killed
Beforehand, and this simply fails that side quest. What’s funny is that Skyrim was the game. Add the protected flag, which operates pretty much exactly how I proposed. Don’t bother deleting your comment.
I can still read them and 10% max health. These NPC isn’t or a bleed out state like essential NPCs and will be ignored by AI in combat but can still be killed by the player. There are two problems. One is that there are still
So many essential pieces in Skyrim that you run into that you may not even realize that there’s a distinction. I think it was on my third playthrough Skyrim when I actually shot a fireball at Some Down Companion
And killed them by accident. And even then I shrugged the incident mod I was using. The other problem is that there are still essential NPCs in Skyrim. Most of the time protective flags are used to simply prevent certain NPCs who are targets of assassination from dying early or keeping your companions alive.
So I thought I would bring it up because yes, I am aware Boris is no longer essential. So if the meeting goes south, he may die in. The process that will prevent him from appearing in later quests. And there
Is some free training tied to his survival. I wish that in Bethesda’s limited capacity to allow the player to kill NPCs that they are included more opportunities like this to focus on saving lives better. Boris tells us that he should meet with the sponsor, having been trained for this. He can, however,
Be convinced to allow us to meet with the sponsor instead. Let’s change this a little bit. Add this Beechcraft 335 thing here at a fame 20 there. Maybe if you’re feeling sexy, we could put it in a thing where if Boris disposition is low, he’ll actually recommend the player handle the meeting themselves.
What are those skill checks? Morrowind had a moment like this in its main quest, and that should have been a prelude to Oblivion being full of them. So you want to become one of the chosen of May Ruins on the path of dawn is difficult,
But the rewards are great. I have the book you seek with it and the Master’s. Three other books. You will possess the key to enlightenment. But I told you to come along. Brothers killed them. Whatever happens at the meeting, a pair of mythic Dawn members will head out on a vantage point and
Either support the player or recognize Boris as a Blades member, and a fight will break out. There’s technically a peaceful resolution if you immediately steal the book and leave, although I think that’s an exploit. If he survives, Boris leaves for Cloud Ruler Temple, leaving the player to figure out
The rest of the questline. There’s a puzzle in the four volumes that the player has to figure out, which is a fairly easy cryptography challenge, but is a surprising amount of trust Bethesda has in the player’s ability to figure out a just go ask Termina.
A day later she’ll tell you to go look at the first word of each paragraph. Before that, let’s talk about the commentaries in the base game of Oblivion. They are some of the few contributions of Michael Kirkbride, concept artist, starting with Dagger Fall
In Law Book writer. Starting with Red Guard. Unlike the other writers, Kirkbride has a fairly detailed list of all of the materials he wrote for the series, likely due to his current status as having been the guy solely responsible for Elder Scrolls writing.
In any respect, after having written the 36 of effect for Morrowind, the commentary seemed to be the Oblivion version, so it’s only fitting they are only an eighth of the size as the 36 lessons and less interesting to boot. Honestly, the only comprehensible part of the
Series is the puzzle. The 36 lessons actually read like lessons, while the commentaries read like an Imperial Library Dictionary of Lore terms and ideas being dumped out onto the pages as Kirkbride hurries to complete the book before security removed him from the building.
The books are written by men Kirk Cameron, of fact, so transparently obvious it really doesn’t even bear mentioning. Yet both Taormina infants do so as it can really be assumed that most players aren’t going to read the books. Cameron gives clues that his story and ideology,
But it’s caked in so much symbolism as to be meaningless. Probably intentionally so. For example, every quarter has known and none bore our passing except with trembling. Perhaps you came to us through war or study or shadow, or the alignment of certain snakes.
Though each path matters in its kind, the price is always thus welcome. No vitiate that you are here at all means that you have the worthiness of kings. Seek thy pocket now.
And look. There is the first key glinting with the light of a new dawn. You can probably easily some meaning from that. Every quarter would refer to the four corners of Tamriel, but also to the next line, which refers to the four playstyles of Oblivion, which
Would also exist in the ranks. The mythic Dawn. What it almost feels like, and this isn’t actually that unreasonable given what happens in the main quest, is that when the player pretends to join the Mythic Dawn, the player could potentially decide to stick around.
This was something that was alluded to in Morrowind with the sixth house, but not fully realized in the final product. Perhaps Kirkbride hoped that the mythic Dawn would remedy that, but was again not fully realized. Something to be noted is the extreme similarities between the main quests of Morrowind and Oblivion, something
I’ll go into more detail later. The puzzle is the first letter of each word highlighted for an easy solution. Green Emperor away where Tower touches midday sun, you may need to carmena to know that Green Emperor
Or away refers to the Palace District, since the map itself refers to the area as the Palace district. Anyways, at noon you walk around looking for clues and find a map glowing on the tomb of Prince Camarillo. As Tahmina says, the commentaries are contemporary with Tiber Septum over 400 years ago.
This means that this tomb has been glowing red and pointing at a spot in Sierra Tile every day at Prime Garden, walking time for 433 years. And no one ever thought to go check that out. People see the wrong symbol on a building and assume child
Predators are involved. I don’t need to tell you that they would be all over this. The only explanation I can come up with is that the tomb is enchanted to only glow when the fourth commentary volume is near it and know the tomb glows every day at noon for like,
40 minutes every single year in Tamriel. It’s 365 days. No leap day. That’s 158,045 times the symbol has glowed red. And not one curious guard ever reported this strange phenomenon. It’s on the main path of the graveyard. It faces outwards towards the path. Hell, the map and mythic
Dawn symbol are literally carved into the tomb. There’s the main point. Sure, but what are the other points? They seem to point directly at Bruma, Coral, skin grid and coverage. Three of those cities are tied to the main quest, but skin grad and coral only superficially via Wayne and Priory.
The best explanation I can come up with and this is not an often discussed topic, is the symbol only glows if a person who is written in the mysterium Xerxes even retroactively approaches it and a person is written in the Xerxes. If they read the first of the commentaries. But even that
Falls apart because that’s the volume the Mythic Don publishes to try and recruit new members. So it would be the most read. That rule would only be viable if it applied to the fourth volume, which it
Doesn’t. Maybe then the explanation is that Cameron or Dagon decides who sees the map. However, Cameron would absolutely not give that power to the player. Dagon might if you stay up all night thinking about how Dagon
Would be seeking to usurp Cameron now that he’s the status quo and stop got ahead of that metaphysics. Yet it’s very easy to fall into the wormhole of filling in the blanks for Bethesda. Who is Prince Cameron? Other than his elven name? We know nothing about him or
His significance to the map. The only reason might be because the garden was full of alien tombs. And that’s what Cameron had to tag. But then why is it still around? The map points to a cave at Lake Aria’s. Now, the obvious thing to do would be
To report to Joffrey and gather forces to lead an assault on the cave in order to reclaim the amulet of kings. Good work locating the shrine of Dagon. If you can retrieve the amulet of kings, we may yet prevail. I had to go back to record that.
See? Oblivion hurts to play with your brain on. So some of these hypotheticals I propose after the fact. I didn’t actually go back to the temple because I didn’t play Oblivion with my brain fully switched on. That said, Really, Joffrey? Here’s the thing.
Recording a single line to acknowledge a player choice isn’t really embracing player choice. Boris who will insist on doing infiltration part when you acquire the volumes, won’t volunteer to assist you with this quest and you obviously can’t get the help you need.
Granted, the player is expendable. They aren’t actually the chosen one in this story, even though they are still valuable. I just feel like Joffrey should have a bit more to say than to generic sentences like, I know we’ve asked a lot of you, but just a little farther
And we’ll have gotten the Amulet of Kings. You’ve proven yourself an apt agent thus far. I trust you can do this. Something that acknowledges the necessity of the player doing it by themselves. So we head to the cavern and are greeted by a hero. Or rather,
A generic doorkeeper. The only exists because someone couldn’t figure out how to spawn a rock in front of the door to keep players from getting in the cave early. So cut the doorkeeper and have us just get greeted by a hero. Hero is a dumb
Name. I’m going to decide that They use that as a placeholder and it’s stuck. And not that they decided to actually use a synonym for distress as character name. Yeah, it fits the motif. Just some small mercy, please. Hero takes all our stuff.
It’s surprising how derivative each game story was given how the more embassy infiltration is a better version of this quest premise. Granted, we get all of that stuff back minutes later, defeating the benefits of a
Quest that separates a player from equipment. We can, of course, say no, and doing so twice will blow our cover. Nice touch. In my opinion, at least the player has the option of being belligerent or attempting to fit in. We journey to the shrine proper where main car Cameron is given a
Pep talk to his middle management team and I walk the earth again. The faithful among you shall receive your reward to be set above all other mortals forever. Neil taught me how to put that in. Smile. I it.
You tell me if I’m overdoing it when we see our target. The amulet of kings dangling around Cameron’s neck. He leaves, which I’m not going to go on a rant about player choices. There’s plenty of magical explanations
For this scene. And now we’re stuck. Having joined the Marines Day gone cold. Our player decides the only thing to do then would be to steal the only thing of value in the shrine, which is the Mysterium Xerxes.
Yeah, it’s just sitting there at the altar, we’re told. Take up the sacrificial dagger and offer some red drink to the statue and the dagger sitting right next to the Xerxes. Apparently the lesson the game’s trying to teach us is that stealing a
Copy of Oblivion will people very angry. The sheer amount of material written on the ensuing fights says a lot about how most people build their characters and play Oblivion, which is heavily dependent on gear rather than skill or attribute levels.
Granted, I have a home field advantage having been trained in both conjugation and hand-to-hand, and the next sign helps with all the incoming magic. Once we take down Hero, the guy holding on to our gear, we’re golden. Now before we leave. There is a topic of Julius,
The guy we’re supposed to sacrifice. I usually save him, although this time he perished. He offers some free skill boost to alchemy, restoration, and mysticism should he survive, although that itself is its own challenge. When we grabbed the Xerxes, Dagon statue collapses on top of
Julius, usually killing him. We can preemptively free him, but that in itself starts the fight. I enjoy that playing the hero and absolutely saving everyone is an added challenge with its own rewards. It really helps with making the player feel like an actual hero for going above and beyond instead
Of most other times where we’re just the hero because ticked off some boxes. The mythic Don has even joined evil as a faction. Granted, it’s a bit weird if you talk to the doorkeeper and trigger the part of the quest where you’re in the faction and immediately leave before speaking to a hero.
You’re effectively a member of the Mythic Dawn. Your relationship with the Blades will take a disposicion hit and you’ll gain a disposition bonus with all the mythic don members out in the world, as well
As a couple unique lines of dialog. The player will also scream a voice line along the lines of for Lord Dagon, but only certain races and genders that have recorded lines and only when you power attack.
This is likely an oversight as to how those lines were scripted rather than an intentional feature of the faction. The whole faction oversight as you can’t actually leave the cave if you go through the initiation ritual. It’s curious.
People like to discuss theories about joining the 6000 Morrowind, but researching this video was first time I had even heard about actually joining the Mythic Dawn, which is more feature complete than the six as of action ever was.
And really that draws on to an interesting of how derivative this questline is, the more one’s main questline. That might seem like a good thing, but in all honesty, a lot of the pieces that made more one’s main quest work as well as it did, are missing in
Oblivion. Morrowind main quests can be divided into three sections. The first six quests relate to intelligence gathering, meeting various contacts and performing favors, exchange for information on the near severing prophecy and cults, as well as the sixth House.
This entails meeting with six different informants, as well as later meeting the leadership of an Ashland or tribe. Oblivion starts somewhat similarly, despite its bombastic introduction, its first act can be described as the same intelligence
Gathering format, this time with the mythic Dawn. However, Oblivion deviates by establishing the Mythic Dawn as an existential threat from the very first moment, and by the second quest, they have destroyed a city and killed the set them lineage.
In addition, the Mythic Dawn are not as complex an enemy as the sixth house, and much of the necessary prophecy Information is already known to the blades and explicitly told to the player without even earned the trust of Joffrey yet. And so this information gets published in the
Blackhorse Courier. Morrowind Second Act begins with a mission to eliminate a sixth house base. This begins the player down the path of directly interacting with the Six Towers and fulfilling the seven trials that mark the player is in there ever seen in turn. Oblivion
Second Act begins with a mission to eliminate a mythic dawn base in order to track down an item necessary for fulfilling a ritual that will close shut the jaws of Oblivion. When the player returns the mysterium Xerxes to cloud Ruler Temple. They will eventually be dispatched
To collect a series of items in order to use the Xerxes to open a portal to make our Cameron’s personal realm of Oblivion. Morrowind third Act begins after the player meets Vivek is short detailed its problems in the relevant video. Oblivion attempts to correct the shortcomings of the third act.
We’ll get to it. The problem is that because of the conflict between the blades in Mythic Dawn is so much more simple than the conflict between the Ash Islanders and Tribunal Temple. It lacks any of the intrigue necessary to make the plot interesting. Oblivion instead has to
Rely on emotionally resonant moments to keep the player entertained. And before we can get to doing important stuff, Martin sends us to Joffrey as the game can’t justify Martin knowing what the first piece of the ritual would be within seconds of getting his hand on the Xerxes.
Strangers have been spotted on the road leading to Club Ruler Temple, and Joffrey needs someone to flush them out. This quest is actually somewhat important and interesting in establishing the Stakes for Oblivion Second act and a lot of people miss that. The blades can’t and won’t extend themselves from the temple to
Hunt down the mythic Dawn Scouts. And the mythic dawn can’t just materialize portal wherever they want. This quest also establishes the Bruma City Guard, who play a big part in the upcoming quests. Captains Too Fond of the Blades will tell us that the spies have been spotted by the
Runestone at dusk. We head over to Bruma, as Joffrey suggested, and go ahead. I’m Captain Bird, commander of the Bruma Guard. Except for Jethro coming back from a trip down south. Things are pretty quiet. Not much travel right now with the Oblivion crisis. Never was. Bird won’t be much help
Unless you take the only he offers offhandedly that Euro has returned from down south recently. So we break into their house and their general sleeping during the day so I can easily break into her basement without drawing attention.
A Dunmore woman is sleeping down there next to her copy of the first edition of the commentaries of the Mythic Dawn. Not exactly interesting reading material, and I guess it’s for recruiting new members anyways, from Freaks Out. And we put her down.
It is neat that the spies who operate at night were given packages to sleep during the day. It would have been very easy to forget about that detail. Okay, so problem An actual sleeper agent probably would have tried to implicate us as a trespasser rather than
Blowing their cover, although there’s enough damning evidence here to expose them as Mythic Dawn, the law isn’t exactly on our side. Even if we do find a note, both implicitly naming the homeowner and detailing the mythic Dawn’s plan to destroy Bruma in order to assault cloud rule or temple and kill Martin.
So we find a cavern which leads out of the city towards the runestone murder girl in her sleep and report back to Joffrey. It’s a shame the player can’t steal the orders. Report back to Joffrey, and then attempt to arrest the two for interrogation. We shouldn’t have
To rely on a clandestine organization like the Mythic Dawn, making a mistake in leaving their evil plans just lying around for us to find. Unless the plan is a misdirection. But it’s not. Joffrey tells us that he’ll warn the Countess of the danger and sends us back to Martin Xerxes.
Four items needed for the ritual. But so far I have only deciphered one of them. The blood of a daydream. Lord. Come on, man. It’s just a simple alphabet. Martin wants us to get our hands on any
Dangerous artifacts. This is one of the more interesting quests due to how freeform it is and obviously requires some sacrifice on the part of the player terms of their access to a Dietrich item. If the player doesn’t have one or know how to get one, Martin will point them at
A book and tell them to read it to find out more. Said book points at the Shrine of Azura, which results in as are a star, a bad choice and absolutely hilarious that is there a star as the artifact recommended for sacrifice to the player?
Should the player somehow lose every day? Trek Artifact starting this quest is a prerequisite for her Mace Morris Quest. That’s a pretty serious artifact to have to lose, but you would have to make some serious mistakes along the way to reach point where the player can actually soft lock this
Quest. There are 15 potential items which can be used, and Martin has a unique line for each artifact. Martin has a revealing line. If you give the Sanguine rose, for example, I never thought to see this
Again. I once possessed it briefly. A lifetime ago, it seems now to obtain it and then give it up. I honor your dedication to our cause. Most of the lines, however, are fairly generic. Usually, Martin,
That he or someone else will be thankful when the artifact is gone from the world except spell breaker. Although spell breaker isn’t really a daydream artifact as the book Tamriel look, lore by the last living dwarf Yaga Mugen details. It was created by the Godless Timur for the purposes of defending
Against shallow doors. Powerful magic. We’ll be discussing the data in more detail later, but for purposes of video making, I use the console command to progress the quest with an artifact in hand. We’re sent to Jeffrey, who informs us that an Oblivion gate has opened at Bruma. What beat two
Gates about a horncastle with a small regimental retainer? Surely the city guard can handle this? No. Instead, we have to go to Bruma and meet with Captain Bird. Thanks for coming. Since we had the hero of Carthage available, I didn’t think it made sense to try this on our own the first time.
We’re ready when you are. Just say the word and we’ll follow you into that hell spawn gate. Why are we presenting it? Like an office worker passing a print job after the guy who always handles the printer and not an invasion from hell? That the
Fate of the world is staked on. Captain Bird and his two men join us in the fray. And the gate is one of the four unique gates the player can do. Birds a bit spooked, and the two
Men only have names in dialog not endgame. Once you get the serial stone, you show Bird what to do. Save some a thousand times to get the stone you want and return to Burma. If you manage to
Exit the gate after 2 a.m., bird comes out of the gate in his evening attire, returning to Joffrey. He commends our job in instructing the Burma guard, but suggests we go out and try to raise a larger garrison for the city. The allies Burma quest is actually
Optional and the consequences for not doing it are rather minor. Still, I went along with the spirit of the game and did it anyways, but more on that in a bit. MARTIN Simultaneously give us a quest to retrieve the blood of a divine. The second item is the counterpart to the first,
The blood of a divine. This was a terrible puzzle to. Me. Unlike the danger lords, the gods have no artifacts. Last. This is a major point of contention for the story. And it’s amazing how much of the conversation comes down to people just making stuff up. We Are directed to Joffrey,
Who gives us the location of the armor of Tiber Septum. Martin says you can reassure Joffrey that I will not destroy the armor. All I need is a scraping of Talisa blood. A lot of people have taken the statement to mean that Martin will use actual dried blood
That’s caked onto the armor. However, this strikes me as off. Sure, you could come to the conclusion that the old blades wanted to preserve the armor as is, but you could also come to the conclusion that the armor would have been preserved in a pristine, clean state.
After all, kept him for unstated reasons, decided to seal the armor inside of sink or tour in the 36th year of his reign, despite ruling for 81 years. Or maybe they’re referring to his 38 year long reign as Emperor of Tamriel. I guess it would
Be after since the tomb was haunted by the Under King, which is why it’s sealed. If it was at the end his career, then surely he wouldn’t have fought in it in a while and it would have been cleaned
Off at some point. Now, Sink or Tour was an ancient Roman city. However, time was up and saw it as unimportant and left it to rot to significant events occurred here. Tiber septum at the armies of Skyrim in hi rockets think or tour
And use the doom to defeat them and then recover the amulet of kings from the corpse of Emperor in the third look. I have 20 tabs open trying to answer the question of why Tiber Septum would bury his armor at sink or tour,
Or if Martin means the scraping is a sliver of the armor or actual dried blood. If the latter, wouldn’t a more prudent artifact to find be the dagger that was used to slit Tiber symptoms throat which prevented
His use of the tomb, considering the blood could instead belong to someone Tiber bested in battle. More to the point The aged do have artifacts, the armor, the divine crusader are all age artifacts, or
At the very least are as close to age of artifacts as spell breaker and villain drunkard a Diedrich. Same thing with the brush of true paint, which is in the base game or Orioles bow. Ultimately, this quest
Signifies a larger problem, which is the complete and utter cluster[____] is lore pertaining to Tiber septum. Now, the thing is, Bethesda had pinned down that the Elder Scrolls four would be set in Serial during the production of Morrowind. Maybe they weren’t sure they
Would to make the game, but if they did, that’s where it was going to be. So more than likely, the idea was that Oblivion was going to settle once and for all. All that matter of Tiber Septum in the Empire at least in a matter similar to how Morrowind
Settled characters like the VAC in Navarre. And you would have stuff like the Romans with seen Alicia and Moorhouse and the Arc of Erie and even further back to the ancient aliens. Michael Kirkbride That name is a flashbang thrown into the room of an Elder Scrolls lore discussion.
Here’s the thing Kirk Wright contributed a bit to Elder Scrolls Lore but he isn’t its sole writer. Morrison’s main quest was instead written by Ken Rolston, who took a more hands off approach when it came to Oblivion, passing
The job to Kurt Coleman, a designer. Again, it’s hard to point at which writers are responsible for exactly what material, like, for instance, which particular designer was responsible for the quest to infiltrate Mythic Dawn. However, it is fair to say that when it came to Oblivion, there was far less interest in putting
Tiber Septum in a similar role to Navarre. Oh, we learned all about near Avar, all the different theories about his origin, his life, his death, his history, and his reincarnation. In comparison, we get table scraps for Oblivion. It might seem minor, but an easily miserable piece of flavor.
Text about when a door was sealed shut can cause a lot of anguish if you don’t have someone filling a lower master position. Elder Scrolls didn’t have any kind of official lore master until ESL because it was the philosophy
Of the writing team behind these games that contradictions are not only natural but even encouraged. Stylistically, the problem is that this is a story about the heroic end of the Septem dynasty, the Empire and its home.
Steroidal are the protagonists of the meta text, and while we do get a lot of new information with Oblivion in terms of quests, we get next to nothing. The problem is that the writers believe that establishing any kind of objective
Information about Tiber septum would ultimately undermine the intrigue of the character. People will spend hours discussing New York Turin heresy, something that wouldn’t happen if it turned out there was an official to the story. However, the key difference is that Morrowind never answered the question of what really
Happened near Avar. While Oblivion never even tried to answer any of its questions, while the affairs of the empires of men are a big symptom of this, an even bigger symptom are the aliens. Their ruins dot the land of steroidal to how the dweller ruins existed across vardenafil.
The difference is that the dormer played an integral part to Morrison’s main quest. While the aliens exist in about nine more books a DLC. The heart of the conflict of Morrowind is the sorry for the pun, the heart of Lacan, and what the dimmer did to it. The player
Can actually piece together what not in the game’s main quest, but in the major skilled. There’s even more context to this event in the main quest about the artifacts involved, the major players who supported it even the opposition to character
Tax proposal. The player even meets the last living dwarf during the course of the main quest. However, the aliens have absolutely zero presence in the base game of Oblivion. Outside of their ruins, the dimmer a race of people who all collectively disappeared from existence millennia prior to the
Series have more of a presence than the aliens who got massacred during the rise of the Roman Empire, but still existed in small numbers until recently. Mind you, our next quest to visit an alien ruin. This is their shot. And this is the UPS page
On a detailed breakdown of this quest. A fairly standard alien ruined dungeon crawl. That’s what the aliens are to people. They don’t have cities. They have standardized dungeons. The extent of the aliens presence in Main Quest is that we need a really big glowing rock made by them.
There’s not even a metaphor that Martin has to decipher. He just asks for a great welcome. STONE The same way one would ask for chicken nuggets. Years ago, I mentally inserted that man car. Cameron is an alien king trying to restore his former empire because at least that would make
Them relevant. But it’s not that main car Cameron is hanging out in a pristine alien structure. I guess because he’s an enthusiast of their architecture, the man is actually the descendant of a ruler, a villain would who rebelled against a random Septem emporer. Granted, the dimmer
Were a multi game spanning mystery and the aliens were a piece of flavor text. So it’s easy to understand why the legacy of the aliens wasn’t a priority when it came to the writing. If the Romans weren’t going to be part of the main quest, you can bet the aliens definitely
Weren’t. It all comes down to the fact that Bethesda had March of 26 to finish the game. Now, one might say the Bethesda had four whole years to make Oblivion, which just isn’t how game development works. The team was expanded from about 40 developers to 70.
The engine required various updates, such as support for full voice acting and an implementation of Havoc physics. And then there’s the matter that. Work on Oblivion did not start on May 2nd, 2002, and it did not end on March
1926. Games of the era had to go gold, meaning that the game had to be actually complete, playable and bug free months before release so that the game could be physically printed, packaged and shipped out for release day.
Oblivion was writing on the cusp of online patch distribution, so unlike the modern Bethesda Standard, Oblivion had to not have any game breaking problems that would cripple the game’s success. Simply put, think a lot of people are very
Charitable with the timetable that Bethesda was operating under. Curt Coleman, for instance, details the moment where his initial E3 25 demo at Fort Such was thrown out in favor of the sequence we ended up receiving at the last moment.
And that’s not the only cut content. The plans may have been to go harder with the plot elements to explore all those aspects of the lore I talked about, but one fact ruled above all others. Is it time?
I think it is. It’s November of 2005 and the Xbox 360 has just released its only problem. Microsoft had only started production of the console a couple months prior and the shelves were already empty.
By the end of the year, 900,000 units had shipped just in North America. Here’s a list of all the Xbox 360 launch titles. There’s some pretty good games on this list, but do you know what isn’t here? The real thing
That was selling three sixes was the promise of Halo three. Here’s Bill Gates signing the first copy of Halo three ever sold because he knew full well in 20 hours a million people would be playing it on Xbox Live.
Halo two was already a juggernaut in its day. It was the record holder for the highest grossing video game. People were prepared to spend three, even $400 on the promise that Halo three would be good. The only problem was that it was exactly that a promise Halo three would release
In September of 27, almost 22 months after the Xbox 364 launched that 22 month gap between. The launch of the console and the launch of the game is interesting. Chances are, if you were born around the new millennium, one of your favorite games came out in this
22 month time period and are you know about it because of its success? Because over a million people bought a console for a game that would come out almost two years later. How is this significant? Simple. Bethesda released Oblivion in March of 2006, only four months into that 22 month time period.
Here’s Peter Moore, vice president of Worldwide Marketing and Publishing for Xbox. There’s an unconfirmed report that this guy got a permanent tattoo to market the release date of Halo two. He’s standing on the stage of E3 25 less than a year after Halo two set its
Record for making it $125 million in one day, IGN would go on to claim that 6 million people followed just their coverage of this event. Here’s what he has to say about Oblivion. It promises to feature one of the largest open
Ended worlds ever created for a video game. It also includes thousands of characters that are given by groundbreaking A.I.. These characters eat, sleep and complete tasks all around the clock, and they make their own choices based upon what’s going on in the world around them.
Welcome to the world of Oblivion. What would follow would be Oblivion trailer showing little but hyping the game up. Todd Howard would follow that ax during the conference with his presentation of the game. Kirk Coleman
May have been annoyed that his E3 demo got the ax, but Todd Howard could see the bigger picture. Morrowind may have saved the company, but Oblivion was what made Bethesda worth seven and a half billion dollars to Microsoft.
Okay, that part’s hyperbolic. Each step was important, but arguably there was no greater turning point in the story of Bethesda than these words. I’m Todd Howard of Bethesda, Softworks and welcome to our demo of The Elder Scrolls four Oblivion. Now, I want to finish my point before we get into the specifics
Of this gameplay demo. Bethesda didn’t have their modern reputation to the broader gaming audience. They weren’t the studio known for action adventure games with light RPG elements that are full of bugs and use an outdated engine. Most of the people who knew Bethesda had a history with bugs at
The time were hardcore RPG fans, and most people ignored that crowd. To the layperson. Bethesda was an up coming studio with a unique idea that was pushing the boundaries of what was possible. Millions of people saw this demo, and with 18 months to Halo three, millions of people,
Their hands on the game. This was impossible without two things the Xbox copy of Morrowind and Ease of which traditional PC developers could port games onto the hardware. But Morrowind, even the Prolog just the forward on the inner sleeve. To most Elder Scrolls fans.
The story of Bethesda started with Oblivion on the Xbox 360. So let’s watch that demo. It last about 20 minutes and can be divided into the following sections. A Prolog where Bethesda sells the company to the public. Then we get a prison sequence to show off Patrick Stewart. Then
Howard us to a forest, then into an alien ruins, then into a mine to show off the aero physics. Then to Coral, where the Morrowind voice actor for the Dumber and Imperials, Jeff Baker has a conversation between his two different characters. Rumor has it there has been an attack
On Korvac. They say the Deidra attack in great numbers. Ray using Deed raps, My ax can be yours. Then we get to dog torture scene before ending the demo at the Battle of Coverage.
So how much did Howard lie? Well, we start with such, which is honestly not that big a lie. As Howard states, there would be nine cities. And yeah, there are nine cities in the game. Howard’s caught in a massive lie. However, when he states this is where the game starts.
Like our others in prison. Gosh. Dagger fall. An immediate and apparent difference between the demo and the launch release would have to be the brightness that’s not the brightness or gamma simply drop to zero as high parts of the scene are much brighter than the low parts.
It looks as though areas which aren’t being directly illuminated are just straight up dark. In reality, this isn’t what the demo looked like as outsourcing My research. Another copy of this demo footage with more even lighting that is fairly
Close to the game. So the version currently on YouTube makes things darker than it needs to be. Also, look at the shadows cast by light as it swings, or the differences in the color of light based on the angle and location of the surface.
As the emperor comes down, you can hear that Boris, his voice actor, is actually Jeff Baker’s old Imperial voice, and West Johnson’s entire character isn’t in the scene yet. Usual mix up with the watch I. Mind stand back prisoner. We won’t hesitate to
Kill you if you get in our way. Prisoner Stand away from the door over by the window. Now there’s also an extra line from the Emperor that was cut. But it’s just establishing for the demo that
Would have been out of place in the game. I know this place. The prison. Yes, Your Majesty. Beneath the Legion compound, we’re headed for a secret passage known only to the blades. No one can follow us through
Here. We go to the next part of the trailer where Todd shows off the forest, which wowed a lot of people. This game was unbelievable. He actually has trees and, like, garden falls. Our staff spent some time at the University
Of Maryland geology lab studying how soil erodes, how rocks form and how trees grow. We have the game. Create that for us. A Usually when building a scene like this, I start out by placing the rocks. I sort of look at the lay of the
Land, which is generated first and then I, you know, try pick out spots where, you know, a rock might naturally occur. I got this big one here. So, you know, just take a big rock like this and pop it down and get to
An appropriate height. And then I’ll go in and like a little satellite rocks around it to try and create a feel that there’s some natural erosion going on. Oblivion, rather infamous as an early adopter of Speed Tree, a middleware program which could be used to easily generate foliage for forests.
Here are some stats from the unofficial Oblivion patches. Sell audit for various mistakes they fixed related to trees. The number of trees partially or completely embedded in rocks, walls, trees, logs or fences. 4101. The number of trees partially or completely embedded underground. 1055. Shrubs embedded in rocks, Walls,
Trees, logs or fences. 13,277 shrubs embedded underground. 244. See through the underside of trees or shrubs. 3883 See through the underside of rocks, 3002 rocks, partially or completely embedded in walls, trees, logs, fences or stairs, or completely embedded in other rocks. 11,252 Rocks completely embedded underground. 4533 103. Flying trees, 698 Flying
Shrubs, 549 Flying rocks, including six at the canopy level of the forest. There’s no point in the screenshot in pictures of see through or floating objects in Oblivion because there are many dutifully patched by the unofficial Oblivion Patch team.
This is half a problem with the early implementation of Speed Tree. It wouldn’t be used by so many game and movie studios if it had this higher failure rate today. The other half is Bethesda, assuming that procedural generation would be adequate for their world. One of the people in My
Discord reached out to Noah Berry, one of the world artists in the Making of Oblivion documentary. He was kind enough to explain exactly how speech was implemented into Oblivion. Explaining that speech re randomize is elements of the shape of foliage and its placement, but that these elements are saved
And imported into the construction, said speech tree was used to quickly populate the world with objects before world artists would go in and perform cleanup areas like the shrines or dungeon entrances. Another tool was created to generate the initial height map, which the world artists
Would again modify to suit their needs. And he suggests that the bulk of the height map was hand adjusted and the height map editor would indeed erode the terrain. This is all Oblivion specific as they would change the workflow and tools used by Fallout three.
Maestri made a joke about how this guy was just justifying his job, but honestly, if he spent any time trying to fix all the broken trees, his job itself. However, it’s the next line that perks my ear and it all animates. What’s the weather in the demo? You see
Trees swaying in the wind in the game. You see the rotate slightly during a rainstorm. Only some of the trees in game are affected by heavy rainstorms, let alone soft breezes. This is one of those areas where Howard made a promise he technically keeps. We know it’s an
Exaggeration. His next line is that cereal is 16 square miles, but half of that is procedurally generated forest. I can’t verify the latter part, but apparently zero is bigger than he promises. So good on him. He mentions the compass. And here we have Todd engaging in a prototypical Oblivion
Fight, missing several swings and blocking it Wrong times and generally appearing engaging while in reality it’s just two dudes clicking on each other. We’ve created an all new combat engine that combines melee defense and magic into one system. Then You combat engine was actually just removed.
Directional swings removed, hit chance, remove spell chance and reworked a couple formulas. We spend a couple of minutes killing things in the ruin. I’d say making the demo dungeon and alien ruin full of undead is surprisingly honest on the part of Todd Howard.
He does overstate the relevance of the Vala Stones, and we move on to the stealth demo. Most of what he says here fairly accurate, although he does say there are no experience points. He does three shot in Ogre, which is outright deception. Next, Todd states there are
Quote there are nine main cities in the game and dozens of smaller settlements. Let’s count. Using a spreadsheet and a map and later, a page listing all of these areas to double check. I listed out everything that could be considered a settlement. Let’s start with the first
Category. This is every multi building area in cereal that isn’t a stone’s throw away from a larger city. There are 14 of them. Nine of them are considered villages, four of them buildings with an outhouse and one temple area. Most of these areas only have two structures.
Bleecker Way is an outlier with eight different buildings. Now we have two areas which have multiple buildings but are close enough to a city to be considered a satellite settlement. These areas are Harlan’s watch and
Wind and primary. If we say that every multi building settlement outside of a city walls are considered to be settlements, that brings the total up to 16, which is eight short of the technical definition of dozens.
Now we’re going to stretch the definition of a settlement. It’s generally agreed upon by pedants everywhere that the term settlement refers to a plurality of buildings. However, the endgame cereal is not a 1 to 1 representation of the actual memetic citadel. In a sense, each person represents
10,000 and each building theoretically represents its own village. This loophole gets stretched something like Miller’s Vitellius house, which is just some guy living in the middle of the woods alone and likely doesn’t represent a village, but for the sake of argument will count it.
Here’s all the single areas that are not adjacent to a city. There are 20 of them. So Todd is hitting 36 settlements, even though over half of that count are single building farm areas for a couple of chapels and all of the
Ends located outside of the cities. And that would make three dozen settlements, although I’m not sure that argument would hold much weight in an actual legal settlement if Bethesda were to be called out for false advertising.
Remember, two of these 36 areas could be considered an extension of the city near them. Let’s out the remaining areas which are single building areas adjacent to cities. There are 12 single building structures located next to
Cities. Most of them are stables with a couple farms, a house and a chapel. That brings the total count up to 48 areas outside of the nine major cities, which could be considered with the scaling argument to be settlements.
But 32 of those 48 settlements are actually building structures. Now, it may be possible to say that it was Bethesda’s intention to deliver upon the promise of dozens of settlements, but Leighton Development suffered a cut. But if you actually look at the map, there’s
Not really a whole lot more areas that settlements could fit into, at least at the current world scale, unless they’re all like hack dirt in the middle of the woods as the tides next line, over a thousand NPCs live in Oblivion, all with their own schedules and jobs.
Yeah, they fell a bit short. VSP says there are 855 NPCs and base Oblivion. I’m sure their methodology, other than they don’t count the generic NPCs like guards and bandits who themselves don’t really exist as characters other than the roles they perform. So they don’t meet the mark of Howard’s promise.
Mind you that Peter Moore promised thousands, which was accurate for Morrowind at over 2600 NPCs. We’ll have more to say on this topic later. We move on to the conversation between Geoff Baker’s two characters. The only deceptive thing about this conversation would be two
Random NPCs referring to each other by name. Given that most NPC conversations to avoid using names to refer to each other to make the dialog more general and thus more usable. Let’s head into this bookstore. This is the rather infamous part of this demo where we went from
Stretching the truth and numbers to outright lies. In this section, Todd details a conversation with this woman that is completely disingenuous. You simply do not have interactions like. The NPC then leads you upstairs and performs a set of actions that the player would be hard pressed to find.
Here’s the thing. If Radia actually refers to an A.I. packaging system, however, it’s an accurate to say that the packages aren’t scripted. These packages act similarly to functions being called at various times with a set list of conditions and variables can be tweaked by the designer. An example would be
Generic A.I., which often uses a sleep package to direct the A.I. to locate a bed near them and sleep in it. This is essentially function being called that searches for a bed, and once it finds it directs the A.I. to sleep in
It. Now, in fairness, most quote, dynamic unquote systems are actually scripted if you do enough productive boiling down. It’s fair to say that a Bolivian system of having NPCs do this semi dynamically is still leaps and bounds ahead
Of actually scripting an NPC to, say, leave their desk and walk downstairs for a minute in an actual scripting language. In a sense, Bethesda effectively showed off all of their A.I. packages in this demo and NPC
Finding their dog and talking to it might be a stretch in terms of the A.I. packages. NPCs can be given packages to find a bow and arrow as well as practice with these items saying the NPC will dynamically drink a fortified marksman potion because they missed their shots on the other hand.
Well, there’s a reason the designer showing this to title had nervous expressions on their faces, but the AI can be given a package to consume a potion, which is how they handled it here. So the air using an appropriate potion is in sense a scripted event. The air can have a package
To locate meat and place it, but choosing to do that would be scripted based on this sequence. I mean, you could technically set this up in packages, but it would be fairly complex. I do have a package
For eating, although that directly translating into giving the dog a high energy level and running around is suspect. I can have packages to read books in their environment. The air casting Paralyzing Our dog is
Technically a package, although in this case Todd is more so making the case that the air I can cast spells. Not that the air gets annoyed with the dog and dynamically decides to paralyze it. Todd is on the
Money with how the package works for NPCs, except I believe in regards to the that NPCs will grow food. I will decide to sleep and infamously I can be given packages to cast spells on other targets. Overall, I’d say about 90% of the demonstration is reasonably possible with the packages system.
However, rather blatantly what is being advertised isn’t the possibilities of radiant AI but radiant air itself being applied to thousands of NPCs, which means when players play the game and realize that most species are nowhere near as complex in their behaviors, let alone possessing multiple behaviors of this complexity as this demonstration
Implies, but does not outright state. This results in a lot of people looking at this demonstration as a why. Again, we’ll go into more detail with rating air later. For now, we’re simply assessing the E3 demo. Next, we see the map powered shows off fast travel and fast travels of an interior
Cell. Less likely an advertisement as a feature and more so a structural convenience since you can’t fast travel out of buildings. In the game’s main quest, the emperor has been killed. The gates to Oblivion have opened. You alone must find his lost son or the whole world will fall.
Spoilers, dude. There’s not much to say about the coverage segment other than the actual Battle for survival. Quest plays out in a completely different manner. A few lines, but mostly just disingenuous statements, which can be technically classified as correct, with some stretching and free legal work.
If you compare it to the later promises, Howard would gradually get better at making less objective promises or saying things that could easily be disproven. He might be known as the king of liars, but you can’t say he hasn’t leveled up at never being abjectly wrong. Whatever
The case, Bethesda march forward to its November 25 release day only to inevitably delay. They want it to be a genuine launch title for the 360, but ended up needing six more months in the oven.
It’s hard to concretely say these things, but by the point Bethesda shows us what they’re selling us, it’s usually too late for them to go back and make any drastic improvements to the system, meaning it’s fair to
Say that at best, average Questline Oblivion had a two and a half year time period of possible development. Oh yeah. I remember when this point was speculation about how much time the writers slash designers had.
Mean, I was going to talk about the E3 demo regardless to catch you back up. A lot of people see aliens as sort of generic fantasy elves and not the slave master. J.J. worshiping jungle living wild elves they
Were meant to be because of how little character really come across in both their dungeons and quests. The best we get is that they use a lot of traps. So that must mean they’re fairly cruel nature. But that could also just mean they don’t like trespassers. Regardless, we’ve acquired
Our great welcome Stone Martens adorned in full armor and is talking to Joffrey about how this is the only way. He’s thrilled We’ve managed to return to him with the welcome stone. Genuinely impressed at our tenacity and abilities. Martin is a selling for a lot of people,
And it’s little moments like this where the game tries and arguably succeeds at making you feel like a friend to Martin That seals the deal. It’s the counterpart to the great work in stone, just as the first two with the opposed powers of the Dedra and the Divines.
Well, can stones contain the concentrated power of Mundus, their counterparts, a city of stones, which he used to hold open Oblivion Gates. This is going to come back later when. Main card. Cameron shares some of his ideas. So Martin needs a great sigil. Stone Which we can only
Get from a great Oblivion gate. the same kind of gate that ended in curvatures destruction. Mind you, we only have confirmation of normal sigil stones existing. And it’s possible the great Gates are a special mechanism tied directly to Dagon. But Martin’s confident, and I just can’t
Say no to that face or. Well, really, it’s the voice. And with Sean being, it was actually over the phone. So it was me and Kurt Kuhlman and I believe Todd Howard around the speakerphone. But you recognize the voice when you hear him? You know what? Let’s try a small exercise.
You suppose you were sent to kill me? We’re in this meeting together. You’re sitting there in the chair waiting for your moment. How would you kill me? What’s the plan? Fast acting, poison. Mimetic. About 5 seconds ingestion to reaction. Terrible accident. Gruesome.
But I survived worse than that. He’s willing to open a great gate at Bruma in order to recover the amulet of kings and asks us to go down to the Countess and ask that she meet him at the Chapel of
TALOS. We kind of miss a memo by explaining the plan to her. Instead, we should have just explained that the heir to the throne wishes to meet her at the chapel and let Martin do all the talking.
This quest exposes several moments where the character is forced certain dialog lines, which usually isn’t a problem because Elder Scrolls tends to avoid assigning emotion or personality to the player’s lines whenever they don’t have a choice.
The hero of curvature is a specific character. Whatever character you forged up to this point is effectively molded into the heroic archetype, which I think is missing the opportunities of the main quest to test the player’s heroic attributes.
It’s fair to say, and none of the other quests as the play are really allowed to shine as a hero. So this could been the crucible of that mentality. If the player had been shirking their responsibilities, ignoring Oblivion, gates and using dirty tactics in the
Prior quests, then maybe the player would be offered dialog lines to compensate for that. This obviously fits into a larger problem of Elder Scrolls generally lacking dialog options, which will come up later when we discuss the dark Brotherhood. The Countess is amiable to the idea of fighting
A giant battle outside her city, which honestly makes the decision to do this in the Nordic city make sense. This is one of the few times the stoicism of the Norse reflects in its cultural embassy. That said, she does refer to this as a war, which is about as accurate as calling the
Morrowind video. This is also the moment where Martin will share the most information about his past as a young man. I grew impatient with Mages Guild restrictions, as did many of my fellow apprentices. We threw ourselves into the riddles of Diedrich Magic.
We hungered for forbidden secrets, knowledge and power were our gods. You can guess the rest. We got in over our heads. People died. My friends died. I’ve put those days behind me. But the bitter wisdom that one has been a fool is not without
Value. Before we start the battle. We have to discuss the allies for Bruma quest. This large chunk of the timeline you see is the allies for Burma Quest. Not only is it long, it’s actually
Longer than several other quests combined. We are tasked with going to the regional leaders of Sierra all to ask for aid in the defense of Burma. However, this doesn’t in the defense of Burma up to this point, but rather
Just stockpile soldiers for the coming great battle, as though we’ve been aware all along that this was coming. The difference is that the soldiers of this battle will have slightly better equipment and represent the various counties of Sierra at all, turning it from a broom battle to a Sierra Doe
Battle. The difference between doing and avoiding this quest is generic in pieces. Granted, it’s a cool idea to try and raise an army and seen all the different guys there for putting in. The work is neat, but it’s deflated by the fact that I had not spent so much time doing a bunch
Of Oblivion. Gates. Those guys would be there wearing yellow instead of a rainbow assortment. Each allies for Burma leg begins with the count of a city for aid with Burma. You can ask Ocado, but
He’ll turn you down and you can ask any of the guilds for help, even the ones you’re the leader of. There’s no using my connections as the leader of both the Arena Fighters and Mages Guild in this
Situation. Each count, once we use the adequate console commands to summon them to us because I don’t care to wait. Will tell us that they can’t spare any guards for Burma until a gate outside their city is closed. Each of these gates bearing one notable exception is the same randomized gate.
The player will have, should they have been closing generic gates up to this point. After a tedious Oblivion gate, we return to the count. Use console commands to teleport them to us again. Because I got in the last time I snuck into their quarters to ask them this very important question,
And then they offered to send troops to Burma coverage in shaded hall or different coverages. Captain of, the guard will actually spare a soldier should you help him reclaim the castle. You know, I saw your fight against the great prince.
Okay, let’s talk about how busted this quest is from a logic perspective. The tension of this quest relies on the player closing the gate, saving the chapel, and then going and clearing out the castle. However, if the player gets here from the main quest, which
They were shoved into via the urgent introduction, then they will be here to get Martin. A pragmatic player wouldn’t stop to help the guards with the situation, given that Martin needs to get to safety immediately. Assassins could come in the time we take helping to
Clear out coverage after all. Yet if the player decides to put off doing this quest, then the tension of trying to clear out the castle and save the count of coverage is lost. It can be a week even longer. And the guards will not have advanced their campaign to secure the city
An inch without the player. And we’ll try to pretend that saving the count is even the table when at this point the danger will most likely have gotten to him. The only way to approach this question
And make it make sense is how I did it, which was to ignore the urgency of delivering the amulet. Go to coverage, take down the gates, clear out the castle, and then later come back to get Martin when we know he’s important.
That has its own problems, but helps make the honestly decent battle for Castle Quest better by preserving its tension without the player having Martin in the back of their mind. And sure, we can just conclude Martin is essential and that
The game not only won’t kill him on this quest, but that we can actually bring Martin to help us clear out the castle. But I try to role play these things. And from that perspective, there’s no way to approach
This quest that doesn’t have issues. The other quest of note is the shade in Hall Quest. Not only does it have a unique Oblivion gate, it has an entire quest tied to its Oblivion gate. The Count son Farwell and Doris took his band of knights into the Oblivion gate.
This is another example of why seeing coverage prior to its destruction would be a good thing. Prior to the Oblivion crisis, the Knights of the Thorn, if the player pays attention to local law, are basically just a local fraternity where they spend more time bragging about their exploits than
Actually anything. However, when a gate pops up next to their headquarters, the Knights went in. This was disastrous for them and where to try and save the county sun. Not only is it not essential, but there are consequences. Should he die, you die.
Oh, and these consequences extend to him having died prior to this quest. Even If it was out of the player’s hands. And Farwell is appropriately foolhardy, easily getting himself killed, chasing glory. This is honest, diegetic
Storytelling about character who exists prior to this moment. Who can survive after this moment if the player can protect them and who is being characterized correctly in this situation and, the reward is pretty spiffy to boot.
Simply put, the Wayward Knight is one of my favorite quests in Oblivion, despite being an escort quest set in an Oblivion gate because it shows the potential for what could have been. Even though its Oblivion game visually glitched out, I couldn’t help but feel impressed with its design. Unlike every other leg of
The alleged for Bruma Quest, this is so unique I have to wonder why the others were so bland and generic. I can’t help but compare this to the Georgia tour in the inquest series, where the player of Morrowind
Would go around acquiring titles with the great houses in Ashland or Tribes. Each quest there, however, was unique and appropriately reflected on the culture of its faction, meaning that if the player hadn’t interacted with those factions before, would still have an understanding of who it was they were saving.
Oblivion fails in that respect, but succeeds in actually making these quests meaningful. Kind of being the horde tour in a Riverine was meaningless given how the Battle of Red Mountain series played out, and having those factions support is only necessary to fulfill the prophecy. And even
Then, you can bypass all the quests by having enough reputation, which was a hefty requirement. That said, giving the player a contingent of slightly stronger guards is not really a good reward for the sheer time and energy investment that is the allies for Bruma
QUEST And it’s often described as a weak point of the main quest. Having our allies recruited, they gradually roll up to bruma and form into a camp, even If it’s goofy. Hearing Wes Johnson talk to himself a dozen times. Seeing all these guards does elicit
A feeling that what we’re about to do is significant as we march out of the city for battle, the citizens even cheer us on, which is a great detail. Martin even gives a speech we must hold fast until the hero of Kovach can destroy that great gate.
We must kill whatever comes out of that gate. Whoa. Hey, Martin. Big [____]. Captain Bird came to battle in his nightwear. I’m sure he can handle that great gate. No problem. Given he’s been closing gates just like us for some time off screen. When people complain about
The battle of Bruma doesn’t feel epic because there’s not hundreds of people on screen. Sure, I get that guy Tough the by Oblivion standards. I’m sorry. I’m the anti Oblivion guy and I’m [____]ing hyped for this battle. And yeah, sure, I played with difficulty turned
Down because the game’s busted. Scaling meant I would have been slashing opponents dozens of time in the middle of the chaos. I didn’t want this section to be challenging. I wanted it to be epic and. To me it is. It has all the prototypical elements of a Law of the Rings
Movie speech, followed by the great animation of the Gates opening that the player won’t have seen yet. And finally, that great gate opening the great gate itself is a timed dungeon, Giving the player 15 minutes to complete the gate or Bruma falls when the district siege engine makes it through the portal.
Another failure state is Martin’s death, though the battle outside the portal is effectively paused once we enter. Yes, Martin’s not essential for this battle, and should he die, the game ends. I’m not sure how I feel about the game having a hard ending, but it’s nice to see all the major players lose
Their essential flags. It takes the wind out of the sails of those who argue for essential flags. Since Bethesda trusted the player enough to try and keep Martin alive during this battle. Granted, it would be neat if Martin dies in the game, continues like the main quest instantly fails and
Suddenly gates start popping up absolutely everywhere in a full invasion. It might be a lot to ask for a post-apocalyptic serial as an alternative ending in a game with such a tight development. But you must admit it would be neato to actually see a fully realized consequence like that. It must
Have been anticlimactic at coverage to see the great gate open only for nothing that big to come out of it for 15 minutes. So how is Oblivion Final Gate? We step in and immediately see the vision Big you
Showed us at the start of the game a great siege, engines marching toward us and spraying fireballs to. The thing is, it only took me 6 minutes to get to the sigil stone. There are random Oblivion gates more dangerous than the Great gate, probably because Bethesda needed the
Average player be able to complete the great gate if they somehow got their character stuck at this quest and couldn’t reload to a previous save for whatever reason. I don’t know. Just make a save for the player at some point with the great sigil stone in hand,
We’ve won the battle. And even though there are several other gates as well, I’ll assume those were handled by the guys outside and not tied to the great gate. Martin tells us he’s going to prepare ritual and we set off to prepare for the .
I have everything in place for the ritual. I’ll open the portal whenever you’re ready. Martin explains, The portal will be one way and speculates that Man Corps Cameron is an anchor for the realm and will need
To be killed for us to return. The rituals performed we had in and are greeted by paradise. Paradise represents the possibilities of Oblivion, and its visual design is unlike anything else seen in Oblivion. Purple vegetation, a perpetual state of sunset, intact alien structures, deer roaming around alongside the deidra and constant torture of
Man Carr subjects. Menkaure also does some narration becoming aware of us the moment we arrived. We’re going to break down Cameron’s lines all at once later. Just bear in mind we’re being narrated to as we progress. Eventually, we come across many bloom plants, which are the
Only respawning source of ambrosia and like or in the game which are both single effect plants that restore health and magic respectively. The path eventually leads to the deer more a catheter. But he greets peacefully, remarking that we destroyed the central tower cannon or the gate that opened the kibosh. He’s got some
Interesting lines. Your swift retribution. Are you respect among my people. We had not expected that a mortal would act with such resolution and honor. It Is no dishonor for us to speak. You speak directly like one of my people. Almost. I’m glad I did not kill you immediately. The catheter
Offers us a choice to regress into the Forbidden Grotto. We need the bands of the chosen. We can fight him for them or earn them through service, as both are honorable. I choose service and we get sent on a
Short quest to free a trapped Zavala and axes from some ascended immortals who tracked him in the cave. Three and axes return. And then I reject taking the from him. You are unlike any other mortal I haven’t killed yet. You serve me and then you part. No reward for your service comes
As an equal. I shall grace your name and corpse with honor. Also, you can play persuasion pi with catheters. Since Gomorrah more are actually NPCs and not creatures like in Morrowind. And they forgot to give him the flag to prevent persuasion. This also means he has a
Black soul despite being a daydream. We head into the grotto, the shackles now stuck on preventing our escape. After some daydream killing, we meet Elder Mill, a delusion man Kah worshiper who will help us with our situation by getting this parish to draw more overseer.
He removes our shackles and comes with us to fight with man car. Finally, we’ve reached the moment. The moment we reveal what this game is truly about. Obviously we can’t talk about man car Cameron without mentioning the fact that he’s the last member of a Bolivians
Star studded cast blowing a giant stack of cash so you can wrangle up Stewart, who is in the prime of his fame from Star Trek The Next Generation, and the TNG movies, I guess so that he can be a voice in the trailer and have 10 minutes of screen time is one thing.
Hiring Sean Bean, who had a prominent role in The Lord of the Rings, a movie so significant to fantasy, and then having Sean Bean voice, the protagonist of your main quest for the entire game is another hell. That makes
Terence Stamps cameo his main car camera and almost insignificant. Still, it’s the voice recording session that the Making of Oblivion documentary showed off with Todd Howard flying to London personally to get the lines. Neo cord yet to put that smile. Oh yeah, that’s a Newman 87 microphone. One of the best and most
Expensive microphones money can buy. Granted they would have been renting time in a recording studio. Just thought I would point it out as someone who spent a lot of money on a microphone. Thanks patrons. Given that Cameron is the game’s principal antagonist, one would hope Bethesda would have learned from more.
Owen’s antagonist. Dig Author. Dig. I thought we had a compelling conversation, but most of the time his presence in the main quest proper came in the form of his servants and a few text based dreams, and they got there proper lacked any
Substantial screentime until the conclusion of Morgan’s quest. Cameron corrects this, using that celebrity voice talent to appear a single time in the main quest before our arrival in paradise, where he doesn’t acknowledge the player.
The difference, though, is that we get a generally good idea of who Doug Arthur is before we ever meet him. Until the time came that I generally had to write about Man Carr, Cameron I couldn’t have really
Told you much about him. For instance, we know that the big Arthur was the one who reported the swimmers plans to create new medium, effectively starting the series of events that led to disappearance. Dig Arthur was entrusted with the heart of Lorcan and the various claims of what happened after that
Are a big part of Morrison’s story. Menkaure, on the other hand. Well, for a long time I just assumed that man Car Cameron was a former alien king who, after the rise of men, spent a couple thousand years
Coming up with a plot to eventually the Septem empire and bring Tamriel under Elvish domination again. All of that is information I assumed based on the alien architecture of paradise, and because the question involves sink or tore, which was a significant place in Cyrillic lore. As we complete
Martin’s tasks, he’ll gradually accumulate literature on his desk that is relevant to the plot. One of these books is titled The Refugees, which is a light armor skill book that can only be found here. And at the first Edition bookstore from earlier in the main quest when we were getting the commentaries. The
Book details Birth of Man Car Cameron and constitutes the bulk of his lore page. Man Carr was born to a boys Mary refugee, whom, as the story progresses, is revealed to have been the mistress to him and Cameron who had
Been a primary instigator in a massive civil war that embroiled Val and would Clovis a hammer fell in high rock. So remember when Tahmina said the commentaries of the Mysterium Xerxes contemporary with Tiber Septum, not the Xerxes itself.
She specifies the commentaries. The commentaries are contemporary with Tiber Septum. Over 400 years ago. So he is unlikely to still be alive, although you never know. Okay, well, the Pocket Guide to the Empire. Third, which physically came with the
Bolivians Collector’s Edition, has a section on Valens, which dates the war with the Cameron U surfer to the third era year to 49. That that not only was man car born far after the establishment of the Septem dynasty, but that his birth is
Closer to the current year than it is to the death of Tiber septum. You can almost say is intentional seeing as the arcane universities expert, which in turn likely means tamriel is expert in de jure. Cortes didn’t make
The connection that the man car Cameron, who wrote these commentaries the same man car Cameron of this book. But we can forgive that again, a Bolivians world isn’t to scale and doesn’t have the Internet math priests. So Such a connection could easily go unnoticed. However, it’s important to mention
That in Elder Scrolls races passed down via the mother, which is detailed in Notes on Racial Phylogeny, and given the man car’s mother was a visor and man car clearly isn’t, something’s wrong.
If anything, given that main card doesn’t mention his legacy and that the story doesn’t draw attention to this book despite its placement in Main Quest areas, I believe the refugees to be a possible red herring. Although again, there are several similarities between man car and the Heart King
Stories that make that difficult to believe. This is where I start to see words like Portal Anemic and neo nemec and a bunch of high war concepts to
Dance around the fact that someone made a [____]ing walkie and said the commentaries are older than they should be and that man car’s the wrong race. Why does man car live in an alien building? Because he used Nipmuc surgery to change
Himself into an alien and make himself Dragonborn. So he could Will The Amulet of Kings. How did he do this? Because Maroons. Dagon taught him how to use Maroons Razor to open the construction set and do a race at it. All of this is in the lore.
You can read about it. The trial of. Oh, no, wait. That was a forum post and not in the games. I mean it is canon if you manage to be battle spires since they had to invent some bull[____] to make it possible to defeat Megan’s Dagon at the end. Talk about
Nonsense justifying a mistake by referencing a law argument that happens in a game. A grand total of like 17 people ever be. Hey, if it’s as easy as saying Maroons dig on base and reference ID, then how come we’re bothering to go to Paradise
And all and not just waiting for him to turn up so we can see the magic words and make him disappear? I guess that would be pretty anticlimactic all. So maybe it’s better if we leave the Nimc surgery stuff out. Look at it like this.
There is zero and I mean absolutely zero story benefits to having mangaka and be the son of him in camera and beyond. Being able to draw a lower connection to dagger fall, I guess. Instead, let’s redraft this first fix. Just make him a Basma.
You might say that looks silly, but given the number of people who swear by Fargo author, I would argue that having the main villain be a Basma would actually be the best thing that happened to the word elf, since it would help uplift that race out of perpetual
Meme status. Second proposal This is now man Kirk Cameron, last king of the aliens. His bloodline was the first of the dragonborn to wear the Amulet of Kings before Alicia stole it. And later history was revised to
Claim that she was the originator. Main car was born in the final days of aliens presence on Sierra Dale near the end of the second era, when Tiber Septum finally extinguished their culture completely. As a young man, he ventured through Tamriel, experiencing
The various cultures, the elves, and realized that American culture could potentially be unified through a mutual hatred of TALOS. The upper echelon of the mythic dawn would be committed to the reversal of war. Can scheme to create mortality and effectively restoring the world to its primordial and timeless
State. By the time the men of the Mythic Dawn realized what was happening, they would arrive in paradise. They would be perpetually tormented in order to maintain a purity of rank. In essence, the mythic Dawn would become the genesis of the Thelma. Except without man car, it becomes about an
Ultimate dominion over a tamriel instead of the restoration of alien culture. You could even link it to several conspiracies to create Elvish superpowers such as Dunmore Mythic Dawn Members Awakening Day Gotham, or playing a part in the Fall of Digg author and by extension, the tribunal returning the Dunmore to danger worship.
How about the mythic dawn propping up the Necromancer cult and creating an Elvish for R.K. Man of Marko, while at the same time undermining the Empire’s major’s guilt? You don’t have to use all of those ideas, but making Bancor an actual alien king would resolve several of the issues. Of course,
The biggest issue with this is giving Terence stamp more lines, and that means paying him more money. According to Michael Kirkbride Main car speech came from an email where he was just writing dialog to help with his work on the commentaries, and Todd Howard ended up using it as
Dialog on short notice, which is why Man Car gets several details wrong. His line many of their names and the names of their masters. The Code Harbor of Meridian permeates quagmire. The ten Moon Shadows of Mythology, and he attributes the wrong planes of Oblivion to the wrong gauge of
Princes because man car’s wrong. In some respects, people have used this too easily, and smugly discount his entire thesis. Let’s at least listen to what he has to say. So the cut score of the Septimus arrives
At last. You didn’t think could take me unawares here, of all places, in the paradise that I created. Look now, upon my paradise, Gaia. A lot in the old tongue. A vision of the past and the future. Behold the savage
Garden where my disciples attempted for a higher destiny to rule over Tamriel reborn. How little you understand, You cannot stop. Lord Daigle. The principalities sparkle as gems in the black reaches of Oblivion. Since the first morning, many of their names and the names of their masters, the Code Harbor of Meridian permeates quagmire.
The ten moon shadows of Messala and and Dawn’s beauty, the Prince, Them of Law Kong and this name by deluded mortals. Yes, You understand. Now, Tamriel is just one more Diedrich Realm of Oblivion long since lost to its prince when he was betrayed by those that served him.
Lord Dagon cannot invade Tamriel his birthright. He comes to liberate the occupied lands. Ask yourself, how is it that mighty gods die? Yet the dangerous and incorruptible. How is it that the danger of forthrightly proclaim themselves to man while the gods
Cower behind statues and the faithless words of traitor priests? It is simple. They are not gods at all. The truth has been in front of you since you first were born. The Dadra are the true gods of this universe. Julian US, DiBella and stunned are all lore and
Betrayers, posing as divinities in the principality that has lost its guiding light for our scholarship, love and mercy when compared to fate, Night and destruction. The God worship are trifling shadows of first causes. They have tricked you for ages. Why do you think your world has always been contested?
Ground the Arena of powers and immortals. It is tamriel the realm of change, brother to madness, sister to deceit. Your false gods not entirely rewrite history. Thus you remember tales of lore and vilified
A dead trickster whose heart came to tamriel. But if a God can die, how does his heart survive? He is data of Tamriel I Data of this heart is the heart of the world, for one was made to satisfy the other.
You all remember this. It is in every legend. Danger cannot die. So your so-called gods cannot erase him from your minds completely. Well done, Champion. Your progress is swift and sure. Perhaps You will reach me after all. You think I mock you? Not at all. In your
Coming, I hear the footsteps of fate. You are the last defender of decadent tamriel. I am the midwife of the mythic dawn. Tamriel reborn. I welcome you. If you truly are the agent of fate, I tire of the self-styled heroes who set themselves
In my path only to prove unworthy in the event. I have waited a long time for you. Champion of old Tamriel. You are the last gasp of a dying age. You breathe the stale air of false hope. How little you understand. You cannot stop. Lord,
Take on the walls between our world are crumbling. The mythic dawn grows nearer with every rift in the firmament. Very soon, the lines now blurred will be erased. Tamriel and Oblivion rejoined the mythic age. Reborn. Lord on child walk Tamriel again. The world shall be remade.
The new age shall rise from the ashes of the old. My vision shall be realized. Weakness will be purged from the world. And mortal and immortal alike. Purified in the refiners. Fire. My long duel with the Septimus over. And I have the mastery. The Emperor is dead. The amulet of kings
Is mine. And the last defender of the last ragged Septimus before me in the heart of my power. Let us see who at last has proved the stronger God. All that. All of that had to have gone through an
Editor. Because when compared to the commentaries, it’s at least comprehensible as to his theories. In my eyes, it’s not entirely improbable, but also likely not accurate. War can isn’t really a danger. It’s more than he defies classification because he died before the difference in age and danger even existed.
Assuming he didn’t die then would be a danger. But that would also mean that Lacan would be around somewhere in that. Maroons plan to conquer Tamriel as an act of liberation, even though arguably Lacan doesn’t need, as this may well be, his intended
Outcome. In any event, it’s impossible to ignore Marins Dagon is a party in this story. Now we could put off a discussion of Marin’s take on until. He shows up in the final quest. But let’s not Marin’s
Dagon. I mean, look at the guy. What other impressions could you possibly have about him? His visual design goes back to battle. Spirt and Morrowind would add many of the more demonic details to his character. But it was
Oblivion that decided to make him bright red, 50 feet tall, and filled his plain with obvious health symbolism. A layperson who doesn’t know Elder Scrolls takes one look at this character and assumes everything
There is to know about him. But what if I told you that I was about to blow your mind? That I could recontextualize everything about the story and that I’ve come to the conclusion that people have been sleeping on Oblivion. Main quest being one of the best quest lines and Howard’s elder Scrolls.
Don’t believe. Maroons Marin’s Dagon set man car Cameron up for failure. In fact, his goal was never to successfully invade Tamriel or to install a new empire. And even better, Marin’s Dagon got his desired outcome. Again, a normal person looks at Marin’s day going and sees Satan. No, not even that
Satan. This Satan. Hey Satan, the comical Satan that somehow has the power to stand against God. And who is endeavoring in every aspect of life to undermine the good morals of honest Americans? This gets into
Actual religious lore, so I’ll try to keep it brief. In the Bible, God tells the guy to not go back to a city. This is Old Testament where God was a lot more hands on. God ends up sending an angel to Earth to stop this guy
Who doesn’t immediately see the angel and needs his ass to tell him to shape up in the presence of divinity. Satan essentially starts his presence in the Bible, an agent of God and later in the story, powered up from blocking asses to delivering a plague to punish David. Obviously, the writers
Have realized that having God himself do these terrible things is bad for the moral of the story, and so are using Satan as a character to divorce God from the things God is doing. This trend continues into the story of Jobe. Now, Satan isn’t referred directly by
Name. Rather, the word Satan is used to describe the role of the Angels playing in these stories. In the story of Jobe, however, he refers to this character effectively using Satan as a title. And Satan tells him that he’s been roaming the realms of men.
This is the first story where Satan is allowed to be evil, where he destroys Job’s life under the pretense that even as a devotee of God, Joe will abandon his faith. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s called a job, read this story. Funny thing is, right, you’re always basically letting
Satan run a train on this poor guy’s life just to prove how much of a loser incel Satan is. Which is a pretty good indicator of where the mentality of the writers room was at this point in the series. It
Didn’t help that Zoroastrianism started influencing the writers and suddenly the angels were having human temptations, probably without realizing it. They had effectively implied that by sheer contact with humans, these angels were being turned to sin. This set a bad precedent that the splinter religions and their fan fictions would take into full effect.
Satan’s characterization would take a ramp up in the New Testament after the property changed hands. His retconning story was that Satan was a fallen angel and now a tempter to the ways of evil. This poor guy
Who started as an angel just trying to do his job and stop a guy from disobeying God, now trying to trick Jesus Christ himself into sin so that he can prove once and for all that He is not in fact an incel loser.
This whole character arc screams unplanned writing and would have been better handled if there was a clear moment for Satan’s character where he actually fell from grace, and that explained why he was so resolute on trying to prove God wrong or establishing kind of stakes to power
That would make it so that God couldn’t just immediately erases character from existence. At the first sign of back, says Satan’s poor character writing, or with many of the same flaws as Judas character writing led to over a millennia of reinterpretation and fan fiction. Are
The kids being bad? Tell them that Satan was snatch him in the woods. Are the adults not donating 10% of their income like good Christians? Tell them that Satan will [____] their ass in hell. It’s not necessarily the fault of the believers that they use Satan like this,
Considering the precedent was set all the way back. The story of Jobe. I mean, if the main point of your story is that anyone is capable of receiving the Lord’s forgiveness, then surely Satan is pretty high up on the list of characters deserving of redemption arc.
In any event, popular culture first obsessed with Satan, is a figure who represented evil and then is an example of where you’ll end up if you are evil. But at some point the message got corrupted and became this confusing modern narrative that Satan
Is the Lord of Hell. Which leads us to Bethesda, who, in an effort to make a story about good versus evil, abandoned pretense entirely and converted one of their de-aged princes into the pop culture icon of Satan, complete with religious revisionism.
So let’s strip that back. Maroons Only real presence in the game is as the antagonist of the main quest. Some people like to point out the Maroons Razer plug in, although since you can’t sacrifice the razor and there isn’t much lore about Dagon in the DLC, it’s not really relevant.
The first piece we have is the Mysterium Xerxes, a book directly written by Marins de Gon himself. Martin indicates the book is dangerous to read without magical protection, but really it’s unclear if he means the book has the power to corrupt its reader or if the book contains information
That inevitably corrupts its reader. That might seem like minutiae, but that second detail is important. If you consider the Maroons day, gone is the day Erik Prince of Destruction and Revolution. The book may well contain some inevitable truths that would push even the most devout down the wrong path. It’s possible
That there isn’t anything actually written in the book until it is opened, at which point it’s filled with whatever truth is necessary to sway the reader to a mimetic truth that changes its meaning to fit the reader. The thing is,
Martin seems to have far too easy a time deciphering the Xerxes to recreate the ritual, to open a portal to paradise. My argument is this Maroons dig on wanted Martin to complete the ritual for the player to kill
Man and for Martin to then die at the temple of the one. Why? Menkaure did not want to change the status quo of Tamriel? Not really. He was more so advocating that the Septem empire be replaced
With the Cameron Empire, a beneficial position to be in when the world reverts to the mythic age. To be sure, Maroons doesn’t really want that. And as Jesus pointed out to Satan. Why would you give someone the power that you know is going to usurp you at the same time?
Maroons Dagon has no interest in installing another septum to the throne, especially given his involvement with the other two emperors. Instead, neither party got the throne. The Serpent dynasty fell and Tamriel returned to a state where conflict plagued the land.
However, it’s important to that being the Prince of Revolution is not being the prince of chaos. If that were the case, then Maroons would absolutely have gone for the plan to restore the mythic edge, even if it meant getting stuck with a Perich like man corps.
The thing about revolution is that it requires a sense of linear time. In some respects Maroons Dagon couldn’t really exist as he truly is without Lacan’s plan, so Maroons used man Carr’s ambition as a ploy to host his own revolution against the Septem dynasty. And then when Man Corps Cameron held
The upper hand, used the players tenacity as a ploy to host a revolution against the mythic dawn. After we returned from paradise, we take the amulet to the Imperial City and try to light the dragon fires, only to find that Maroons dig on in the forces of Oblivion have
Invaded, unmasked. However, if you look at the actual game files maker, Cameron’s death actually marks a point where the gates slowed down the rate at which they open. This isn’t communicated to the player directly, but the percentage chance of a gate opening
In a spot is determined by a variable. The chance raising and lowering based on the events, the quests. But why? If the dragon fires being unleashed is impetus enough for the danger to invade, then surely Maroons Dagon would have just turned up and destroyed the city by now.
At the very least you would think that he would destroy the Temple of the Wonder. Straight up game over the Empire. The answer is that this is all going according to Maroons Dragons. Extremely convoluted plan. Being the Prince of destruction is all well and good until
You’ve won and realized that there isn’t anyone around to build things for you to destroy. Just like how Maroons isn’t going to work towards putting someone in power that would try to prevent him from throwing a revolution. Maroons is also motivated to pull back at the last moment from
Winning so that the world can recover and ripen up fresh for another destruction in the future. But why then would Maroons effectively be responsible for permanently closing the door to future invasions? Well, we’ll talk about that more when we discuss Martin’s character. For now, I want to show you Maroons
Dragons most loyal servant Elder Mill. Elder Mill does have a line about making prayers to Ashutosh, but that’s a red herring. The Divines generally don’t work in such direct ways and given the timeline, Elder Mill
Gives us, it’s fair to say that we were probably on our way here long before Elder Mills started praying. See, we to answer the question of why all these loyal subjects of the Mythic Dawn are being tortured. At face value, we take it as Maroons and man being evil bastards, or
That they’re really trying to harden and test their devotees. I think in reality what it represents is a punishment for those who don’t understand the truth of immigrants. Dagon These were the blind worshipers of Marin’s Dagon who thought he be a path to domination over others and not liberation. In
The same vein, the only people in paradise who are having a good time right now are the worshipers we see who trapped in axes by revolting against their masters. They earn the chance to stay in the nice part of paradise, but its natural order for capital to
Eventually crush that revolution through the Xerxes Maroons showed Man Corps exactly what Cameron needed to see to get the ball rolling. If you compare the mythic Don commentaries to an actual translation of the Mythic Dawn, you find the Man Corps actually caught quite a bit of information out of the book. This
Is because he was proactive, so he needed a lot more than what Martin needed as Martin was reactive. Note that the characterization of Maroons Dagon exactly that outlandish. Marines oppose the tribunal on several occasions, likely because the tribunal was a dogmatic religion,
Hellbent on maintaining themselves and their status quo. Yet, despite having opportunities in the past to invade Morrowind, his antics never went too far. Then again, it was the tribunal, and that’s Morrowind Law. So it doesn’t debating here. Maroons could have invaded Tamriel at any time.
The dragon fires weren’t lit. Remember when I mentioned that Tiber stepped in and had to get the Amulet of Kings off the body of In the third year? Rehman’s death marked the end of the first era in Tiber. Septimus Conquest marked the beginning of the third era. Put two and two together
And that’s almost 900 years of Maroons day gone, having the door open and doing nothing with it. Of course, there’s the ESL law that Moloch Ball copied the plot of Oblivion and invaded Tamriel in the second era. But he also isn’t canned into Oblivion and you just
Have to accept that while the prophecy of the narrow bearing can be interpreted as the end of the tribunal, I have always seen it as a prediction of hope and peace. With this contextualization in mind, the main quest goes from mediocre to mindblowing. Why the danger invade
Coverage but failed to take the chapel? The one thing they came there to do to motivate Martin into rebelling against the tyranny of Cameron. Why didn’t the enemy take steps to stop us from completing the ritual to make
It possible? Why did the siege engine take 15 minutes to emerge from the portal so we could get the sigil stone? Why Merrin? Stay on delay his invasion of the Imperial City until after Martin’s arrival to ensure that Martin would be forced to sacrifice himself. Mantle? Ashutosh and end the Septem dynasty. The
Only problem with this is it’s super subtle. Maron’s dig on didn’t have a single voice line in the entire game, so we’re never given the impression that he’s actually playing both sides of the conflict. Morrowind didn’t sit the player down and force them to read every interpretation of the murder of
Navarre for people to love that Questline So the fact that most people don’t consider this plot point when discussing Oblivion is a good sign that we may have gone too far in a few places in terms of
Subtlety. I can’t help but feel that most of the pieces are here for this to have been an amazing story. I mean, Kirk Coleman started the series with Red Guard and still contributes at Bethesda. Ken Rolston wrote
More ones being questioned and Michael Kirkbride on hand, willing to handle the higher lore concepts. And given that they were willing to pay for not one but three celebrity voice cameos for this one, Questline, you would
Think that it would have been a priority of Bethesda to make sure that this was the best questline in the game. Instead, most people just like to brag that they’ve never done a Bolivians main quest and people who do
Play Oblivion. Main quests tend to write it off as a boring and generic story, in large part because you can get all the pieces together for a good story. But if you never actually place them all on the board for the
Player to see, then the only people who are really going to get it are detailed, focused nerds like myself. Finally, we arrive at Martin’s character. A common interpretation of Martin’s character is that he is the chosen one of the story, a twist on the narrative main story by that role away from
The player. Less common, in fact, a rarity is any interpretation which states who chose Martin. The near covering was chosen by a Zora for the purpose of ending Thor and the False Tribunal. And the Dragonborn was chosen by Akito for the purpose of reminding Alden of his role in the
Mythos as a destroyer, not as a dominator. The question is who chose Martin and for what purpose? One might think archetypes. After all, Martin is a priest of Scottish elder Mal praised for mankind’s defeat, and Ashutosh shows up after the amulet is sacrificed to defeat Marin’s Dagon.
So case closed. Right? Here’s the thing. If you read about the origin The Amulet of Kings discounting the stuff from years ago. The tides of the lore can. The ambulance is said to originate from Aker Tosh’s heart when he made a compact with Alicia that would prevent the invasion of
Danger. Tamriel. As long as the Dragonborn sit on the throne and maintain the dragon fires. First, we have to ask the question of how Natchitoches accomplishes this, which is speculation, of course, but what mechanism of architecture enables him to prevent the hostile invasion of Dadra Ashutosh and by extension the Dragons and
Jills as well represent time and each of those aspects generally has a role to play in its maintenance. The gills sweep up the mess of dragon breaks when an event occurs involving divinity that temporarily reverts an area to non-linear time.
A dragon break is how both or citium was founded and Mana Marco ascended to godhood at the end of dagger Fall. Despite the impossibility of that being the case, the Dragons seemed to play a role as mobile anchors of time, which is why their departure
From Matt Mora caused it to freeze over both literally and figuratively. In any case, Aki torture’s main domain time, so it’s possible that Ashutosh isn’t blocking tamriel like invasions as much as he’s delaying them to the end of linear time.
Which begs the next question why is that Kitteridge playing this role and what is his motivation to do so? This gets into a really complicated discussion of tamriel like lore and religious interpretations about the relationship between Natchitoches and can. Look, if you want my opinion on
This, make an Elder Scrolls game set in that era. You don’t have to concretely answer what happened. Just boil it down to a couple of clean theories. In any event, Ashutosh was apparently the one
Responsible for the death of law Captain. If such a thing is even believed to have happened and this event generally marks the schism in most belief structures in Tamriel, it makes sense for the Elvish believers
Of Ashutosh, who knew him as Oriole to claim that Oriel was responsible for the death of war Khan. Considering they’re all very, very mad about that mortal odd thing that Lore can did. However, given that
Workman was considered a hero to men, it’s hard to believe that Ashutosh would become the effective head of the imperial pantheon under this narrative. It’s possible that we have a situation similar to the interpretation some people have of Judas Iscariot. It’s classically believed by most Christians that Judas was a traitor to Jesus.
However, a minority of people believe that Jesus actually intended for Judas to play this role in the story. And Judas is in fact the most loyal of Jesus as apostle for his sacrifice. In the same vein, it’s possible that Ashutosh is worshiped by men because he played the critical
Role in the murder of law in which lore can intended to have happened from the beginning. The age are generally to have gotten a raw deal out of convention, having been promised to be lords of Mons while the danger got to be lords of their own planes without a fraction of
The sacrifice. If Manohar were correct that Lord Khan is a danger and that Tamriel is his plane of Oblivion, then it doesn’t stand to reason that Natchitoches would bother to protect it. However, a case could be that Natchitoches is protecting Mons from Oblivion as atonement for his transgression
Against Lord Khan, and that the end of time represents a point at which Ashutosh is forgiven. Now that we have the how and why of Ashutosh covered, we have to answer the final question. If Maroons dig on
Intended for this outcome, why would he do so in a way that would end the dangerous ability invade Tamriel? This is where we introduce the concept of mental scene, which is super important in the story of the Shivering Isles and why I think they handled it the way they did in
Elder Scrolls. It is generally considered to be possible for a mortal being to become a God. This is seen in three big instances the dweller, Tiber Septum and the tribunal. However, this isn’t as straightforward as meeting a few conditions and having a switch flipped for you. Rather, the process of
Becoming too divine is usually destructive to the person who that process. The dormer. When they mental there’s a race disappeared from existence and arguably became the godlike Gollum Numidia. Tiber Septum went on to mental Lorcan and the tribunal went on to
Mantle, Azura, McFarlane and Poesia, although arguably they failed as they attempted to retain their personalities in this process. In this game, I would argue that Martin, with the combined souls of all the dragonborn who had lit the Dragon
Fires before him. Mantle the archetype in this scene. The Biggest piece of evidence for this is actually Skyrim, where the player is the first dragonborn to have been created in millennia and whose main plight required this event to have occurred with avatars replaced and suddenly more active in the world stage.
Martin can confidently make the promise that the Oblivion gates are closed forever. At least the hostile gates are closed forever, yet Maroons dig on. The other, less friendly princes are still active in the world after Oblivion. Let’s look at it like this.
Maroons dig on did not wish to conquer or destroy tamriel as is feared by the mortals. Rather maroons Dagon wanted to create the circumstances that the trader archetype would be Manchild, so that architect would get off his couch and actually start doing his job again and
Stop using the dragonborn for that purpose. Molly Ball and Jiggly Egg are pretty much the only guys around that would actually bother to invade other places for the purposes of controlling. So who chose Martin? I don’t think it was Ashutosh. I think it was Maroons.
Dagon. I think the Boris’s line, if he survives to the end, sums up the story best. The scholars and priests can debate what happened to Martin in the end. A lot of the inequities with the Bolivians main quest can be boiled down to this.
Ken Rolston, who decided to take a hands off approach when it came to writing Oblivion. Michael Kirkbride was not as involved the project as a writer. Kirk Coleman did a good job of creating quests to the
Specification of his bosses, and it was ultimately Todd Howard that looked at this quest line and saw none of the problems. To quote Rolston, Morrowind is to Oblivion what Moby [____] is to The Da Vinci Code.
It’s no comment. So now that we’ve ended the main quest, Oblivion is over, right? It seems hard to justify a character continuing from here, given the sheer cult of personality that would be created around a figure like the champion of Serial. To me, this is the problem with the urgency
Of Oblivion. Introduction. If you role play the character, you can’t really ignore the main quest. But by the end, how are you supposed to justify going back to the mundanity of Arena or Fighters Guild? Still, it’s nice to see the remnants of the main quest, the closed
Oblivion gates that dot the landscape, the battle damage Temple district, the new statue of Ashutosh, The Leftovers from the Battle of Bruma and a statue constructed in her honor. It has a unique method of determining what items to put on the statue for. It prioritized putting the cabbage back
In my hands over the ebony blade that I actively used. Still, I have one more thing to mention, and that was the time I crashed the game multiple times with the unofficial patch and the crash prevention mod. See, there are tons
Of fun little staves with interesting effects that may or may not cause issues with how certain quests are scripted. So when I fought MANKOFF, I decided to go all out Max in the difficulty to make up for minimizing it during the Battle of Bruma and use most of the tools I collected
At this point. Some of the A clone someone resurrected someone else use the Cabbage Act to shapeshift. Someone made use of all these fancy powers I’ve been collecting. I’m being general because I don’t remember the specific details. Anyways, having the slightest bit of fun with this fight and
Of course it breaks. The first time seems to be because the game is checking to see when the daughters die to progress. The question since one of them is technically alive, due to being reanimated. It broke. The second time the game crash was when
A clone of man CR Cameron some integer more of that shot lightning to hit the original main car instantly crashing the game. The third time I managed to be the one to land the killing blow and it let me pass. I’ll
Tell you more about all those fun tools in part nine where we discuss the danger. For now, let’s do the opposite opposite. Knights of the Night Oblivion, the first major DLC that most of its players will have actually played a massive hole that was left in the design.
A serial in its religious core. Despite being the home of the chapel in the name of vines, very little of the base game story has anything to do with the atrix side of the Pantheon. You’ll just have to notice that each of Sierra, those nine major cities corresponds to a different
Adra. Or you’ll have to explore the otherwise empty arboretum and notice all the statues. This is kind of obviously a problem, since if there was any game where it was appropriate to actually explore the imperial religion, culture and history. This was the game. However,
Fans at the time were concerned about whether Bethesda was even going to make an expansion to Oblivion, seeing as they seemed content to just release the official plugins for sale. Still native, the name would come out by the end of 26 first being accidentally leaked as a PS3
Exclusive Questline called Knights of the White Stallion. So how is Knights of the Nine? Well, it’s an 11 part Quest series. It shorter than most of the factions in the game. And I went from beginning to
End in just over three and a half hours, falling a little short of the 20 hours of content promised. Despite those massive limitations, arguably, Knights of the Nine is a highlight of the Oblivion experience. However, I don’t think it fares as favorably
On the quality versus quantity spectrum as people like to think. Like most Elder Scrolls expansions, Knights of the Nine has a rough start. I guess it could be seen as a product of the times. Personally, I think they should have learned from tribunal and Blood Moon or any of the DLC released
Leading up to now that assuming people of the future playing the game aren’t just going to have the expansions installed from the get go is a mistake. This more so applies to the plug ins, however, regardless. Things start when we hear
A rumor that the Chapel of DiBella and Anvil was attacked. Are you here to end this nightmare and free your soul from the savage garden? Everyone here died in the Master’s service. As the master promised, We are now immortal, but our life here is a nightmare.
The creatures of, the garden torment us endlessly. When they kill us, we are soon reborn. And the cycle begins again. He preaches an anvil appeared right after the attack on the chapel. There. Sounds like the usual doomsaying nonsense. Anvil also has a new
Homeless man going by the name Prophet, claiming that this is a sign of the times. So really, nothing new. We’re supposed to figure out that the rambling, insane man is, in fact, the key to starting the questline. Our clue being his unique voice. He’ll establish
The ones responsible as umaro and his gaggle of Auror ends. The Prophet then says that Emerald can only be stopped with the aid of the Divines, and that means the Crusaders relics. If we say we’re going to get the relics, the Prophet will ask for our resume, which is
Actually a trap. As West Johnson will demean you for every response than humility and never let anyone forget it. Champion. I salute you. Yes. This small matter of the Crusaders relic should be a trifle for a legend such as yourself. I apologize for even asking the question.
Most esteemed master, please do not allow me to interrupt your quest for the relics. Oh, my. The grand champion of whole Serra. Do I consider my etc., etc.? Indeed. Surely there can be no better preparation for becoming a holy night than a career spent slots a ring
For the public’s entertainment and a worthy successor to Hannibal Traven. I have no doubt. I’m sure arcane Arts will locate the lost relics for you in no time. Hmm. Well, then. Hey, you. Hero of the batch. Let me add one more voice to the never ending chorus of
Praise. I’m sure one of your many devotees be able to guide you on your way to find the Crusaders relics. And I’m sure you will have no trouble finding the relics on your own.
You clearly need no from man or God. Why do you come to me for aid? Well, the knight. I know what the quest is trying to do here. Just feel that not making it possible to complete this quest
Without the submission part is cheap. Once we eat the prophet’s ass, he’s willing to point us in the right direction, telling us to complete a pilgrimage to waste shrines of the Nine Divines. This is obviously a recreation of the quest Pilgrimage of the Seven Graces from the Tribunal Temple
Questline in Morrowind. The difference is that the Seven Graces were seven fixed locations that shared various lessons in the lore and culture of the tribunal. Temple. The way shrines are generic exist in multiples without actual rhyme or reason to their locations and only spelt generic platitudes.
It’s possible this is a hereditary problem in that Bethesda may have had issues with revamping the game away shrines for existing saves that already had their effects and variables stored. As it stands, the only thing to spice this quest up is potentially running into a couple of guys who are doing the pilgrimage.
I didn’t because I had already gotten six of the shrines in my adventure prior to starting this quest. If you visit all the shrines and also very importantly, call the prophet DADI, then you’ll be approached by the specter of Pelon or White Strake. Unsurprisingly, a guy who died in the
First age has zero idea where his armor is millennia later and can only us towards a shrine built on the site of his death. Since it’s in a submerged alien city, the shrine is untouched. Although centuries ago one Sir Amil managed to almost the shrine. It’s surprising that despite the
Criticism, Knights of the Nine is still willing to throw us into an Iliad ruin slash imperial sewer area full of the undead. Also If you have high acrobatics, you can just pop the fence. It’s pretty cool. This
Is also the point where the game decides whether you receive the light or heavy version of the armor. I didn’t know this was thing. I always just assumed the game would trust the player to play content called the Knights of the Nine as well. A Knight character. I mean, I understand
Not wanting to exclude players, but I think having slightly worse stats is preferable to variable armor weights. Or maybe his gear could be some kind of in-between of heavy and light. Is there a word for that? With the usual Elder Scrolls Skill Crunch, Oblivion decided to cut medium armor in
Unarmored. Unarmored is still in the game, though encouraged by spell effectiveness. Honestly, I think the skill crunch is stupid and cutting on armor, despite keeping its mechanics and incentives in the game is asinine. Monks have been in fantasy forever, so I don’t understand why we’re cutting the core skills of their class.
Medium armor, on the other hand, has been cut entirely. Different armor types fill the nation Morrowind of providing the player with countless options for how they approach designing their character. You could range from going naked to just running light breakers or a shoulder pad tube for Dedrick armor. The difference
Was all in your encumbrance. Less Armor might mean an extra weapon or potions or more loot on the way back. How much gear you wore or what combination of gear you wore was a decision each player had to make
In crafting their character. Oblivion changed things up by encouraging players to commit to an armor style. If you wear a light armor, you might as well wear full light armor. Same with heavy armor or unarmed. The first three perks or up to level 50 with armor skills affect how quickly your armor degrades.
We’ll talk about durability in a bit. The 75 and 100 perks. How much the armor weighs the player down at heavy armor 100, which I reached. Heavy armor had zero impact on my encumbrance as long as I
Was wearing it. While I feel like this is a smart of sidestepping the late game encumbrance issues, encumbrance has become an increasingly prevalent problem in the series, including the fallout games. People don’t like encumbrance because. They don’t like being told that they can’t pick up everything
Which isn’t helped with. The game’s increasingly encouraging you to pick up random trash that serves obscure purposes. Honestly, I think this is a UI problem. I was attentive and made sure I was routinely cleaning my inventory out of useless saw gems, potions, scrolls and ingredients.
But people who aren’t as attentive are probably accumulating an increasing hoard of potions they then try to avoid using. And I think it’s because it’s easy to not realize how many you have with the newer user interfaces.
Wow. This section stands at City Point is ENCUMBRANCE has been shifted away from regulating how much equipment the player can carry to how much loot the player can carry, which would be understandably frustrating if. Oblivion Economy didn’t break at level 20. Still, it turns into a genetic problem for the series
When you cut out the magical solutions to high encumbrance. Sure, being able to permanently boost your carry weight with feather on the cheap was busted in Oblivion and the design should be more so towards adding an additional weight for a short time so you can take all the loot home in one trip.
But that’s not grounds to give up on spell idea entirely. But I do think I am on to something with this UI idea. You can only see six things at any given time in the Oblivion UI and with the
Large number of potion types and sub levels of potion types plus custom potions, it’s pretty easy to realize you’ve accidentally been carrying a frost resistance potion for the last 6 hours. Part of it is a lack of variation in Potion makes it so you can’t tell which potions you do and don’t
Want. Morrowind had five different models and icons to distinguish potions, so you could easily tell what was probably cheap garbage and what was worth keeping. Skyrim addressed that problem by removing item icons entirely. Although at least in fairness, I can see more than six things at once in Skyrim’s menu.
Their UI is for another day. For now, let’s go town by tab and discuss the Oblivion user interface. There is no more or less information to be gleaned from the Oblivion UI compared to its Morrowind predecessor. However, Morrowind had two different user interfaces this godly PC user interface
And a panel based version on the Xbox. Oblivion inherited the panel based design, which is fine. I guess I would prefer my old system of pressing one button and having all the information I need on one screen, but dividing this into four separate screens to more information is fine as well.
Except it doesn’t. You can see your entire attribute in skill alignment as well as detailed health, magic and fatigue values with screen space to spare to waste on telling us our name and class. If we scroll the skills down, we can see our faction and ranks, as well as our reputation
And bounty. That’s four different Oblivion in one panel. I Bolivians First panel tells us our base character information. The only reason to come here is if you’ve loaded someone else’s save or want specific information about exactly how much health, magic or fatigue you have.
The next panel is entirely dedicated to the attribute page. There are two reasons to come here. You want to know what skills are under what attributes or. You want to see if your attributes are damaged. The next screen is the skill page.
The smartest thing about this page is putting all the major skills on a single panel. This is one of the more useful panels you’ll be coming back to as it tells you the leveling progress of skills and what skills belong to what attributes.
So very useful. The next page tells you what factions you’re in and what ranks you are. However, since rank requirements were removed, this is pointless information and there’s no reason you wouldn’t put this at the bottom of the same page where our name in class is. Because the only reason
You’ll come here again is if you’re loading someone else’s save and need to see where they’re at. The next page is the bulk of new information, which is the statistics page. The first section is useful information like days passed and the number quests you’ve completed. Then there’s this section
About your skills that I really don’t need to know about. And then at the bottom of this is your bounty, fame and infamy. This would all fit neatly except the Shivering Isles has an independent bounty. Which means you have to scroll to sea infamy now. It was so close, and the expansion
Messed it up. The rest of the page is statistical information that 100 percenters use to track their. It’s for somebody, so it’s fine. Next is the inventory screen, which wastes the first tab on an all items panel. Stop right there. You are scum.
If you’re only going to me six things at once like the other screens do, then this is pointless. Here was the chance to zoom this panel out so we could get a bird’s eye view on our inventory and the individual
Tabs would be in the big. Either cut this panel or rescale this text. Next, this is the weapons tab, then the armor tab, then the potions and ingredients tab, and then everything else is shoved into the right.
Okay, cut the all tab and add a section specifically for scrolls. Saw gem, several stones and walking stones, please. There’s way too much stuff in this tab, especially compared to the weapons tab that could have just been combined with the armor tab because a lot of people just like their weapons.
Anyways, whose great idea was it to have me scroll through all these keys just to get to the sole gems? Next is the magic tab. We have another useless all spells tab that only shows you six spells.
Skyrim added a favorites system that would fit in better here. Since I have way too many to scroll through, the tabs are divided into how they’re applied, so a target tab, a touch tab and a self tab spell is going to be divided into either alphabetical order or by magic.
A cost. Protip use letters at the start of your custom spell names in order to organize them, because otherwise this menu will turn into a mess. Between this and the miscellaneous tab, I have a feeling I know the UX designer doesn’t use magic. The final tab is your active
Effects section. Also, spell effectiveness is just tucked into the bottom of the screen here. Just peeking out for you. Since an armor doesn’t have a skill, guess it has nowhere else to go. So yeah. Homeless user interface elements. This UI is also wasting a lot of potential screen space for the benefit of
Showing the player character’s goofy expressions at all times. Except on the info tab. In other words, we could have had an intelligent usage of the entire screen with a button on the inventory to glance at our character.
And they even went so far as to use that idea, but not for the tabs that really need it. The final tab is for information, starting with the local map. You can’t zoom, so you have to scroll this lumbering beast around to actually use this thing in dungeons.
Otherwise I approve. I’m torn on whether Oblivion or Morrowind had a better auto map. Next is the world map screen and boy does not. Being able to zoom out makes me angry. I’m sure you probably could
At some point during development and somebody use the command to unlock all waypoints in the map turned into a mess. So that’s why we can’t zoom out. It’s just so claustrophobic. The best back handed I can give is that it
Encourages people to learn the maps so they don’t have to take so long scrolling around looking for their objective. One problem is that a Bolivians map does a bad job communicating elevation the player. So you can’t look at the map and come up with an intelligent plan to navigate mountainous
Terrain. Because all the map tells you is that the area is mountainous. Also at the top is the name of the interior cell and a detailed breakdown of the date and time. In case you were curious. I’ve never understood displaying the time in a UI that’s paused.
Surely it would be for an unpaused UI. The player could pay attention to what time it is in game. The next panel is the Active Quests tab, which includes a handy list of all your relevant journal entries and a button to take you straight to the map marker on the world map.
Then we have the current Quest tab, which lists all of the quests you weren’t able to say no to before they got added to your log. And finally you have the completed Quests tab, which shows you every single quest you’ve completed naturally. You can even read all journal entries here
If you want, although it’s a shadow of the old book UI for the journal with its topic organizer. I’ve trashed this UI and a lot of people do. Which begs the question of who okayed it. And the answer seems to be Todd Howard. Specifically, when asked about what mods Todd uses
For Oblivion, he answered. Interface mods. He goes on to talk about how they couldn’t work out a good system for giving the player the choice between a PC and console scaled UI. So they went with this giant user interface for safety reasons. Here’s your executive
Producer saying this is a problem as he’s advertising the expansion to this game, as he’s saying someone’s already fixed it for free and they’ve clearly with the UI to accommodate their expansion. Hint, hint. And they didn’t try to fix it. Like what was a toggle button?
Impossible. I know it took years of begging to. Implement a field of view slider, but come on. All right, let’s turn this around with some praise. Credit goes to Natalia Smirnova. I think your user interface art looks great. I can easily tell each tab
Is supposed to be just from the pictographs. Like how all the quests are three cups. The current quest is one cup and the active quest has a hand holding the cup. Oblivion has a pretty clear, consistent
Visual design focus, similar to how Skyrim has a consistent design with minimalism. Don’t let people criticizing the UX get you down. They just don’t get that You were handed an interface and told make it look good. It’s very obvious you
Know what you’re doing and it’s your boss’s fault that you aren’t allowed to design amazing piece of interfaces as well. Remember when I promised We talk about durability for what, third time? So when I made the Morrowind video that came with a
Somewhat controversial section about durability, mechanics and intentional annoyances, and I’ve come to see the lines. I still believe my original position, not the light I’ve seen, is why people were annoyed by this mechanic. It’s fine in Morrowind,
But I think a lot of people arguing against my point were doing so from the perspective of never having played Morrowind. And so we’re imagining Oblivion where it’s busted Oblivion. Armor Skills would add these perks related to
The way armor degrades and quality novices break their gear 50% faster. A purchases break it at quote normal rate, end quote, and journeyman break it 50% slower. So when you start the game, your gear starts breaking faster than it did Morrowind. Then you have the armor perk which themselves start limiting the player.
So novices and apprentices in armor can’t repair magic gear. So if you have enchanted armor, you have to go to a provider, which can be a pain because it means if all your gear is enchanted,
You can’t train armor in the field anymore. And then you add on top of this that as the player levels gain access to new item sets, which themselves see increases in their total durability. Oh, and armor and weapons stats are tied to durability. A sword at 90% does 90% its normal
Damage rating. All of these factors mean that early game Oblivion is going to involve a bunch of broken armor while late game Oblivion just forgets about the mechanic. I think this system has left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths, which is significant.
If Oblivion was your first role playing game back on the 360. What’s funny is that Armor Level 75 is actually brilliant at this level. You can actually repair your gear up to 125% durability, which increases its effectiveness. But okay. Why should games keep annoying
Mechanics like durability around? It’s a relic of the past with no place in the modern industry. You’re being had. As I pointed out, there’s not much of a difference between a hunger meter and a durability meter.
Both are obstacles the player has to overcome with routine preventative maintenance. Both are mechanics. The player has to plan around during play. I’m sorry, but explain to me how it’s unacceptable for modern use to have durability
Mechanics. But it’s fine when survival games do exactly the same thing, sometimes even with actual equipment durability. 6 million people bought valheim and were clearly fine with playing a game with equipment, durability and hunger. It’s one thing to see equipment upkeep as annoying, it’s another thing to be happy at its removal
Because it annoys you. These people are actively celebrating the oversimplification of their games because they refuse to acknowledge the mechanical and emergent storytelling benefits equipment, durability. And I suspect they do that because they were emotionally annoyed at the one time they forgot
To repair their stuff and had to suffer consequences for it. After all, durability mechanics form a negative feedback loop. You’re implicitly biased towards remembering all the times you were annoyed by the system, and most people don’t recognize the benefits as a result.
But what possible benefit could there be? Scenario Your weapon breaks. What do you do? If the answer is low to save back in town and redo the trip, this time with repaired gear, you’re a player.
Video games are too complex for you. Go back to movies. The correct answer is adapt. If you didn’t bring a backup weapon and are completely incapable of using fists or magic find a new weapon. Retreat to a prior enemy who wielded a sword or grab one of numerous spare weapons
That dungeons. Did you think they were there just for esthetics? It might be tough, but I’m sure you’ll remember to keep your gear in good shape in the future. As a result, you’ll be a better player, one whose character is actually forged by experience.
A weapon breaking on its wielder is pretty dangerous. Do you know what else is dangerous? Archers running out of arrows should MLB infinite to avoid the annoying mechanics of keeping track of your ammo supply. Should potions be infinite? It’s inconvenient to get more and
Running out in a fight is dangerous. You might say that this hypothetical is absurd, except there are plenty of series which removed getting arrows for your bows in of having infinite ammo or even keeping a supply of potions ready in favor of an infinite potion on cooldown.
It’s more likely than you think. Where do you draw the line? Are you going to celebrate when Elder Scrolls six doesn’t have arrows or potions anymore? Where the Morrowind argument really started to get stupid was people saying that my logic was flawed because
A see RPG with a focus. The minutiae of adventure focuses on the minutiae of adventure. It’s somewhat disturbing the number of people who came to the nudist colony and then started complaining about how everyone isn’t wearing clothes. I get it subjective and you don’t like it, which
Is why you play games that cater to your specific interests. And I play games that cater to mine. Where we have a problem is when you start demanding that my games change to suit your interests.
I’ve never looked at a Call of Duty game and said, This is fine and all, but what this really needs is hardcore military simulation. No Call of duty fills a niche. It’s an action title. It’s remarkably simple because that’s what the audience wants from it.
To not have to think about it. I would change it, but at its core, my Call of Duty is still an action title, just like I would add prostitutes to Truck Sims, but not take away the truck driving part of the game to focus on the bisexual road trip aspects.
However, unlike Call of Duty or truck driving Sims, there aren’t a lot of games purely like Morrowind. It’s a niche. So when one of the few companies catering to that niche starts changing aspects of the formula to broaden the appeal by shaving off the edges, it stops being
The original niche. It happened to the dagger fall fans. It happened to the Morrowind fans. It even happened to the Oblivion, and it’ll likely happen to the Skyrim fans. Not because any of our expectations were unrealistic. All we wanted was the same thing with less flaws, but because it
Was determined that not using the new accessibility features was adequate for the old fans and finding minds to re-implement the old mechanics that were cut was an adequate answer to the old fans.
The other thing I try to do is that in Coming Off A Thief, which is a game all about stealth and sneaking. So it was like, how could I get some of that into Oblivion? You know, some of that.
You know how to try to capture a little bit of the charm of the thief games. It occurred to me, like shortly after the game is released, the Mod community is going to do what they will.
And sure enough, there is like a complete like, thief plug in with all of Gareth’s tools from Thief. You know what I mean? Like water arrows and moss arrows and the blackjack and all this stuff. So I sort of knew that that
Was going to. I was like, This is going to happen anyway. That’s meal. Pagliarulo, a current lead designer at Bethesda, admitting that he has no problem with leaving it up to the community to add features to their games.
Ceremonials Journal points out a priory where his order was based, which was centered around collecting the armor of Pelon or white Strake. This order was the titular Knights of the nine. Using a ring we honorably looted off of ceremonials corpse reveals a hidden undercroft, and we’re confronted by
Both the spirit of ceremonial as well as seven of his buddies who proceed to try and kick her ass. Technically, it’s a test of worthiness, although I don’t know if a guy wielding a quarter of the Diedrich Pantheon’s artifacts is worthy or just good at exercising with ghosts. It’s
Actually a pretty cool sequence. The line. So night in 300 years, none have stood against us and lived. How could I possibly not be the first person in 300 years to come down here. Getting here required a signet ring off your corpse, buddy. Also, ignore the fact there
Were already a third of the way through the content where the knight commander of this order now and have acquired the helm and curious of the Crusader for the ghosts will start quest to find the other artifacts. But all eight have some interesting information.
The history of the Knights as an order. Their goal was to locate and safeguard the relics of Pelon or white Streak. Surprisingly, despite being over a thousand years late, they managed to recover most of the artifacts, but their fall would come when they began
Increasingly wearing them. Then the war of the Red Diamond happened and the order lost. Ser Barrick, who took two of the artifacts with him to Skyrim to fight in the war. Our job now is to travel, clear it all, to piece together and fix the long dead issues of the
Order. Let’s take a detour and discuss the soundtrack. Oblivion sees. The return of Jeremy Sole, well-known video game composer who’s worked on dozens of games over the years. His career becomes even more impressive considering how many scores he composed in just 25 years, scoring
Eight different games to come out the same year as Morrowind and four different games and four expansions to come out the same year as Oblivion. The number of jobs sold took on slow down in the 20 tens, so he got
More time to compose for Skyrim, hence why he has the biggest and arguably best soundtrack of the series. Not a lot has changed about how music works between Morrowind and Oblivion. Tracks are still divided between exploration and battle themes which are played in their respective contexts. Start a fight and the
Music immediately changes to a battle theme in the fight. In the music immediately changes back to an explore theme. Oblivion, however, add two additional modes for music, one for towns and one for dungeons. So now, instead of hearing chirpy tunes in dank caves, music is more appropriate for the
Situation. It’s Still simple compared to modern music techniques and games, but this small change helps the atmosphere of dungeons quite a bit. Let’s get into the tracks proper, most of which you’ll have heard by now in the video Oblivion titles theme draws heavily from Morrowind.
Those uninformed in the topic of music took this as an insult when I showed how Skyrim incorporated themes for Morrowind. So allow me to explain how motifs work. Motifs are simple parts of music which provide part of the basic identity
Of the song you’re listening to. For Elder Scrolls, this is a recurring motif. This musical idea is present in each iteration of the theme, not because soul is stealing from himself, but because that’s how composition works. Oblivion Theme is more bombastic
Than Morrison’s, however, its highs are higher, but it also has lows. This single two minute song captures, The Essence of the Oblivion soundtrack by touching all four corners. The other two special tracks are for Leveling Up and Dying exactly like Morrowind. All right,
Let’s do the town tracks. Here’s some snippets from all five of them to give you a feel for what town music sounds like. An idea reiterated upon from Morrowind is the idea that the contracts are not defined by percussion. I feel if anything, has contributed the most of the mimetic element.
NBC’s In Oblivion. It’s the immediately recognizable music that most people instantly associate with NPC hubs onto the atmospheric tracks which play when exploring. There are seven of these, and here’s a montage for many people discussing the soundtrack
Comment on a car accident. Jeremy Sole was involved in and informed the soundtrack of Oblivion. What they often leave out is that a third of the soundtrack had already been composed for the game, or that there were few revisions to the soundtrack.
Jeremy Sole didn’t just knock it out of the park, but wrote two thirds of the soundtrack just from emotion he felt without any need or desire for revision. I think I noticed is that because the load been lightened, tracks don’t have to cover as much ground as
They did in Morrowind. A Morrowind ambient track had to cover towns, Wilderness and kids. It’s easy for me to listen to the soundtrack because thanks to its increased length, there’s more variety. Speaking of caves, the new Dungeon tracks a Bolivians dungeon seem to
Be defined by long, dissonant notes. The notes sit so long as to be unnerving until a roll of timpani is in the background reminds you that you’re still trapped inside the earth. While over half the soundtrack is dedicated to town and exploration tracks. There are
Only seven and a half minutes of dungeon themes, and the similarity does lead to in this respect. Is it possible part of the reason dungeons feel repetitive in Oblivion is the music? It’s more likely than you think your brain pays attention to this kind of stuff.
Finally, there are the battle tracks. I think it’s fair to say I know which third of the soundtrack Jeremy Soul had written before the accident. One thing I did note in the Morrowind soundtrack was that Brass seemed to be the theme for the Imperials, while strings seem to be for the Dunmore. This
Dichotomy has shifted into brass being the sound of battle and strings being the sound of peace. One idea I posited was that Solo didn’t really care about the Morrowind soundtrack, as evidenced by the original titles versus the
Remaster titles after the game was successful. This is more likely than people seem to realize. Soul had worked on the Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights soundtracks the same year as Morrowind, and while he did work on a lot of projects at the same time as Oblivion,
His output seemed slow down after the wreck, as though he started wanting to take more pride in the soundtracks he was working on. For Elder Scrolls, this culminated in the Skyrim soundtrack, which is not only longer than the Morrowind
And Oblivion soundtracks combined, but is a masterpiece in terms of implementation into gameplay as well. Oblivion Dungeons are well, they simply Dungeon Crawling is a stated aspect of Elder Scrolls a consequence of the tabletop translation. The issue is that dungeons are fun with friends at a table, but none.
The test games are cooperative with our minds. Thus, the role dungeons have to play in the games requires necessary alteration to better translate them into a single player experience. How you accomplish this has been a core issue The games have always grappled
With. The easy answer is to set quests inside them, but many dungeons have no related quests. They simply are. The Morrowind dancer then is to populate dungeons with logical groups of people. Colts be they dangerous, sixth house or vampiric? Many dungeons are also tied to serving as tombs full
Of undead protectors. Even normal bandit dungeons are provided with some ceremony usually tied to the themes of and fell being a quarantined region with large criminal smuggling operations in Oblivion. There aren’t ancestral tombs outside of vague reference in one of the Fighters Guild quests. There
Also aren’t many danger cults instead being replaced with generic conjurer groups in blue robes. Maybe those guys should have been mythic Dawn. Vampire dens are also barely distinguishable from bandit caves. There are only three dungeon types that aren’t caves, alien ruins, abandoned forts and Oblivion gates.
The alien ruins are full of untapped end, and voila, stones centuries later. But no records of their civilization dweller ruins and Morrowind were always full of little mementos of their culture. Random gears and cups and tools in armor and books. Alien ruins become interchangeable once you realize
The only variation is in the generic enemies you find, not the stories the areas themselves tell. Abandoned forts are similar. There’s no telling the age of each fort based on its design or contents. There were many empires that could have built them, but their cultures do not possess them. Oblivion gates are
Not ruins, but their literal repetition as well as simple characterization also leads to them being generic. How Do you make hell boring? Contrary to popular belief, Oblivion dungeons were not designed by one guy.
Leaning on copy and paste. But it isn’t hard for people to perpetuate that legend anyways because they feel like they were. It makes you wonder whether Bethesda got better at Dungeon Creation or better at the illusion of Good Dungeons and what
The difference really is. The formula is pretty simple. The player finds an area, they go inside, find out what enemy type the dungeon is, and then they either fight or run past all the enemies looting, all the leveled containers before exiting.
There’s not entirely an incentive to do dungeons for the money because what are you going to spend it on? Training. And the combat is in a state that fighting for the sake of fighting also isn’t fun. So the only thing left is the ceremony of doing dungeon. But dungeons don’t have ceremony.
Dungeon diving in Oblivion is just doing quests without the context or rewards of doing quests. It’s like dagger fall without the verticality quote. There are plenty of very large dungeons to be sure. We’re trying to provide a higher density of content than we did in Morrowind. Gavin Carter.
Source ten Honor Quest. I start with the boots, which Sir Jenkins saw and failed to retrieve. He doesn’t have much information to share with us other than the location of a shrine of Kindred. This makes her the only of the Nine Divines to have a shrine in the wilds similar to the shrines.
Although it plays into her roles as a divine. We head over to the Kenneth Worthiness Testing Grotto and get mauled by a giant bear for about 15 seconds before the test complete. I guess the moral is if a
Wild animal attacks you, you just let it happen because or has clearly decided your time has come. This would be fine. Except Cyril’s are littered with critters. She’s actually pulling double duty as nature goddess, considering her actual domain is the sky. Anyways, in the grotto are two
Friendly springs and boots. There’s a free point of infamy if you try to fight the springs wordlessly. The second we pick up the boots, the chapel of Belleville gets attacked by a warrens. I always thought this was a weak point in the Questline. But it’s supposed to be an escalation
In the conflict and a driver of the tension. But chances are pretty good if the player does end up visiting the chapel before the end of the Questline and the NPCs get replaced. They won’t exactly what caused the attack and if you haven’t visited the chapel, you might not even notice.
All the NPCs are different and well, even when we do know there’s not a logical line to follow. It’s completely arbitrary. Next I went to Leo when to get the mace. The guy will greet us at the door, telling us that he tried to get the mace and failed and mostly
Spends his days now protecting the chapel. He does have a pretty clue for getting the mace. Although, see, we pray to the Tomb of Saint Cowardice and get transported to avoid the requires the boots to cross. This is because Zenith is the God of trades and
Commerce, and thereby relies on Penrith’s new nature motif to function. However, this also means that the Akinori quest is a prerequisite to this one, which is a cool idea. The player has a chance to diegetic. We failed the same way several of us did. And let’s be honest, I
Wouldn’t be surprised if at least one person threw themselves off the ledge 100 times, not understanding what they did wrong. However, against this general motif, there’s actually another way to get the mace. Once we leave, the chapel of DiBella is under attack from the Auroras and we have to them off.
This can be particularly ugly if it happens to be Sunday morning during the service when they show up. Courageous is a big help, though. When he asked to join our order after the battle of the original order, Sir Henrik was by far the most successful. And then he found a relic. Never used
It for ill intentions and then safeguarded it inside a fort, which to this day kept the relic safe. A bunch of conquerors have taken over the fort in search of the shield, but the traps and puzzles are just
Too great for what are generally the smartest type of bandit. There are three main to Fort Bulwark. The first is a pressure plate puzzle involving four series of three plates that require a specific combination
To pass. Okay, less of a puzzle and more of a door code since isn’t any consequence for getting it wrong. The Condor has already figured this one out in place. Candles to hint at the solution. The next puzzle is the guardians. You’ll spend hours over setting the right orientations
To oh, just point them at the symbol in the middle phrase kept coming up. In the writings I found when the eyes of the guardians are upon you. Juliana’s will show you favor. I’m not sure how, but I just know it’s a clue for making it safely through these
Ruins. The third puzzle at least, has no obvious solution pretending to be a clue. This is rod Guard’s equipment puzzle. A pressure plate in the middle will randomly highlight one of the statue’s items. Statue has an item, but only shows up one at a time.
At the same time, a random item is populated in the central chest. The goal is to match these items to the correct statues. This is only difficult if you don’t get the pen and paper out and just write down what statues correspond to what items. Which
Of course means the conjurer is would have starved to death trying to solve this one. Elder Scrolls has always had a complicated relationship with puzzles. A lot of people like to point out the simple matching puzzles of Skyrim, but honestly, that’s not much of a simplification over how it’s always been. Barring
Stuff like the one where you drown yourself in Morrowind or the Black Rock Cave in Oblivion, which isn’t a puzzle per se, but is just an obscure abstraction, said Elder Scrolls isn’t really known as that puzzling a game.
The reason, I think, comes down to the fact that the designers don’t want to stop the flow of a playthrough because someone has a challenging time with a puzzle. And I don’t mean this from just an accessibility. I’m sure we
Can all think of at least one out of place puzzle in a game that did this. Elder Scrolls bits, a generalist sort of niche in that rather than focusing on doing one thing really well, it tries to do a lot of different things.
And because this isn’t a puzzle game, stopping the player to sit down and cogitate for a bit can be out of place. Then you add on that stipulation that everything has to be possible for the player who plays in 30 minute segments on the couch. And yeah, an incentive exists
To not make the puzzles more difficult for the sake of the minority of players want that. I think the solution looks something like this. Bethesda hires a guy who’s good at crafting puzzles. Each Elder Scrolls game could incorporate puzzles, but with a clear design ethos that the
Only thing you get from them is optional rewards. So the player who knows that challenging puzzles aren’t in their wheelhouse can skip them. And players who like completing puzzles can them. Maybe a few side quests, a couple of mages and thieves guild quests. And one main quest would incorporate
These challenging puzzles. That way, when you have a quest where the difficulty of the puzzle has been a hindrance to progress with this quest or the mages Guilt quest or the pillar, instead of making the characters look like imbeciles for not figuring it out, you could have inappropriately challenging puzzle.
Otherwise, you eventually end up with the black rage puzzle, you know, the one where you span the buttons and don’t really understand what it is you’re trying to solve. But it still has to be there to why the Elder Scrolls hadn’t been already recovered.
With the puzzle down, we get our hands on the shield of the Crusader and leave. I should mention, Sir Cedric, but should I really? Regardless of if we meet him or not, he’ll come to the
Priory and ask to join our order. The excuse given is that we diverted the Condor as attention. But even if we’ve still, through the entire and steal the shield non-lethal, he still somehow escapes. It’s not the biggest deal since Stealth Playstyles aren’t really encouraged to play through Knights of the Nine.
Except for the fact that the armor will convert itself to light armor and stealth is only tied to infamy via its factions, not its playstyle and illusion. Magic is part of the actual Knight class. Our final quest for this leg is to the gloves. Sir,
Casimir was a knight who went with Sir Barrack to war, and this had changed him. He had this to say about the gloves. I attempted to return to the service of the nine, but the war had changed me. I no longer had sympathy for
The weak or pity for the suffering. In the brief time I was there. I did more to hurt the chapel than help it. It was there that I was coerced. A beggar who came to the chapel each day for help. Tried my patience. One
Too many times. I lost my temper and struck him. My blow landed harder than I had intended, and he fell to the floor dead. Killed in the very chapel of the God of mercy. I left the chapel at once, of course, but the damage was done.
I was weak, constantly weary, and lacked the energy to do almost anything. As proof of the deed, when I struck the poor man, the gantlet slipped right off my hands and fell to the floor. Heavy as stone. They would not move. None could lift them. I suspect
They lie there still in Coral’s Chapel. The set up for this quest is super interesting. The quest itself is not and super questionable. The Gantlets are, as Casimir says, immovable. One of the priests or elder tells the basic story and mentions that a descendant of Casimir is not only at the
Church, but has been forced to bear the same curse as ancestor received for his crime. We speak to Kellan, who seems convinced a relative is holding out information as well as you’ve seen them, I assume.
The only evidence of what happened so many years ago. Do you know that? I thought perhaps I could lift them, that somehow this curse would be lifted if I could pick them up? I tried for hours until
My whole body ached and I could barely move. I lay there on the floor next to them, weeping. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been at the end of my rope for far too long to be ashamed of anything.
I’ve seen plenty of pity in people’s eyes over the years. I grew up recognizing it, but with her elder, something else there. And when he speaks to me, there are times I’d swear he sounds apologetic. Guilty, even. Why would that be? What reason does he
Have to hold back information despite being a quest solely about talking to people? There’s some great moments here. A writer was holding out on Kellen out of selfishness because he knew full well that removing Killen’s curse would entail taking it upon himself. Were then given the objective
To do so ourselves, Collins enthused. And we’re stuck with the damage fatigue effect for the requests. All right. I’ve holding back the criticism because I wanted to get the quest over with before we got there.
Stendhal, the divine of mercy, justice and compassion is apparently also intergenerational at this point. Not only has it been long enough that the priests don’t really know the full story behind the gantlets, which is odd enough given that someone would have written the story down like that somewhere. But
Kellen didn’t even know Sir Casimir, considering it would be around ten generations in his past, this entire family was cursed in order to punish Casimir
Just so that one day in the far future, someone could come along on a quest and find some magic hand condoms and have their willingness to show mercy tested. Given how simple the effect is, surely Kelvin’s or the church, for that matter, could have scrounged
Up what a petty soul and ask the Mages Guild for a ring of fortified fatigue. I get that Restore fatigue was lost as an enchanting fact after Morrowind, but if the game can have a magical widget to treat her condition, then I’m sure Kellan would have gotten something for his chronic fatigue.
Never mind that the actual evildoer is being redeemed by proxy, or that there’s no option to force or elder to actually show the mercy he’s supposed to as a priest of cinder rewrite time. Kellan tries to pick
Up Gantlet to take up the mantle of his ancestor Casimir, but gets hit with a fatigue curse as a result. Our elders been holding out on the fix for his problem because his father was the guy Casimir killed.
He’s elf, after all, so it’s easily possible. The quest is now about resolving the conflict between these two men. A elder has to learn to set aside his personal feelings and do his duty as a healer and kill and has to realize that
His ancestor wasn’t entirely noble and try to right the wrongs of the past. The player has the option to assume the curse still, but if the player successful, they can not only redeem both men, but can recruit both into the order.
And can you see them develop a friendship as comrades, as they overcome their generational grudges? With this leg of the quest, it’s time to return to the Priory with most of the Crusaders relics. We’ll find it’s been repaired,
And several of the people we’ve met along the way will ask to join the Knights of the Nine. While I don’t see a reason anyone would ever say no, I have to at least appreciate that the player is being given a choice here.
We also get a blacksmith, although with the unofficial power of the player doesn’t speak to Sir Cedric. Here. Before this point, the Smith doesn’t show up. It’s a bit comical to enter the Priory to find it full of applicants
Anyways. A man named Lathan approaches us to tell us that Sir Roderick is dead. I didn’t actually meet later on in Sir Roderick on this playthrough, since they appear on the way Shrine quests and I’d done most of them already.
So later on will tell us that he thinks Rodrick is dead, even though we have no clue. That is. I think Bethesda has generally done a better job with stuff like this in Skyrim, although that can probably be attributed to more essential
Flags and less optional moments like meeting Sir Roderick. The way you fix this is to have a journal stage for whether the player has met Sir Rodrick, and if they haven’t, then Nathan’s dialog changes to an introduction and request for aid.
He gives us the greaves that they had retrieved and tells us that Roderick fell, attempting to retrieve the Sword of the Crusader from under Paul Cave. This quest is just another dungeon run, but it’s notable because it ends in us. Sir
Barrack, the man whose conflict with Sir Emil, ended the original Knights of the Knight Circus. One of the ghosts says of Sir Barak’s fall was his fault as Caius had started and lost a fight with Beric resulting in his death and corruption.
Sir Roderick, you were a brave knight and good master. Long may your be remembered in the annals of the realms. Yeah. Sorry, kid. Let me introduce you to something called the Creation Club. When we get the sword, the player is given instructions to take it to the chapel of arcane shading hall
To consecrate the blade, lay thorn or beric, or even the spirit of personnel doesn’t tell us this. The player just intuits it and writes it down in the journal as the next step. This is just a reference to divine influence on the
Mind, or it’s just lazy. After all, we have to go to Shading Hall in order to defend its chapel from attack in Aurora. I’ll point out that similar to the Mages Guild Questline where the Necromancers managed to sneak into Bruma and destroyed the Guild Hall without
Resistance or even notice from the guards, especially since my character at that point had brought Martin to a cloud rule or temple. So the guards were on the lookout for cult activity. The chapels are actively being attacked without any of the guards putting
Up any resistance in a post Oblivion crisis world where the guards aren’t having to fight danger anymore. Hell, that raises the question of how the auroras are even getting here. The Auroras, If you don’t know, are minions of Meridia, as evidenced
By the danger cards they drop, will later be told that Martin’s ban on daydream invasions only applied to hostile invasions. But isn’t this hostile? Or has Umaro been hiding in a ruin, gradually doing permanent summons of auroras and
Building up a force for the day he would launch terror attacks across the Mirador. Another to note is the restoration Master trainer becomes inaccessible to the player after this quest. They don’t have the unofficial patch since
Both people who can give the player the necessary reference are scripted to die as part of this questline. Just to show how much thought Bethesda put in to their trainer inbox with the sword purified, we have all the relics.
Each of the artifacts belongs to one the eight Divines. And in theory, each of these quests should have shown some of the lore behind these entities. The fact that the Curious and Grieves belonged to either Mara or Ashutosh says
This premise has failed, as most of the artifacts have a superficial connection to their respective creator at best. And even when we got a few details connections, it was something like Kin wrath making us endure a couple of swings from a Bear or Stendhal dishing out some Old
Testament punishments for our benefit. Speaking of the curse, when we return to the Priory, we’ll find out. West Johnson has swung by to give a sermon to the order. He gives the Knights of the Nine a quest to defeat Emerald. However, he states that our
Current form will suffer the same fate as peeling a white Drake with the apotheosis of Tiber septum. The face of the divine was transformed, TALOS ascended, and the eight became Oh nine. TALOS, via the Prophet, gives us his blessing, providing an edge against Umaro.
Although the Prophet has this funny line as a proven guardian of this realm and of warrior, the likes of which have not been seen in millennia, TALOS grants you his sacred. The champion of seer at all. The New Riverine, The agent and the internal champion are all
Literally shaking right now. For [____]’s sake, then are over and literally got a blessing. An avatar of TALOS on his way to fight Dig author The night of the Nine did a bunch of dungeons and talk to a bunch of people and is now a warrior the likes of which have not been
Seen in millennia. Maybe it’s a subtle dis or I guess all the other protagonists are confirmed mages. Who knows? So we rally all the knights regardless malathaat for the final battle.
This quest broke the first time and I had to go back to a prior save because for some reason one of the triggers wasn’t firing, and so I couldn’t actually advance through the ruin. It’s a shame they didn’t reuse any of the assets
From paradise to make this area more pristine, maintained alien ruin. I mean, the interior cell of Carrick Aguila was one model, so I guess they would have had to create a bunch of new interior models, and that was just too much work.
Plus, the DLC was 155 megabytes on 26 Internet, so adding a bunch of new models to one dungeon could stand out would have been wasteful. None of your companions are essential, so the player may be motivated to try and keep everyone alive, but there’s not really
Any benefit to doing so. Honestly, it makes the game feel a little more believable. If these named NPCs do end up dying in the fight. Aside from the compulsive looting, the final battle with the immoral is all right. The problem with making a final battle focused on
The merely side of Oblivion is that it’s more Oblivion. Melee combat. Mind you, that this character has maxed out the heavy armor skill and was using Blade for the entire main quest. I’m basically primed this Subaru fighting like a giant copy of the other drawings is pretty sad.
Humeral is an alien sorcerer, a king whose father was a divine, and he also has the blessing of Meridia. This guy is begging to be the battle mage boss and deserves to have more than one spell
To his name. What’s the point of even having him be weakened by the divine aura of the armor? Is it to reward the player for wearing the armor from Knights of the Nine and fighting the boss of Knights of the Nine? All of this is to assemble every
Crusader relic so can go and kill Umaro. Except I forgot to bring most of these items with us to Umar’s hideout, so we had to fight them the conventional way. Umaro goes down easy and we use Tali’s blessing to pursue his spirit. The second
Phase where we fight him in the sky is exactly the same mechanically, but the Arena is way better. And it’s much more enjoyable to have a second go at him. With Umaro finally dead for good, we fall back to Tamriel and awaken in the Undercroft of the Priory.
You had no wounds on your body, but you were dead. I saw it with my own eyes. You did not draw breath straight. How long has my brain been deprived of oxygen? Cedric Gives a short speech to the Knights announcing our victory. And with the
Armor placed on the rack in the Undercroft, Knights of the Nine has been concluded. Or is it? There’s one character left to mention. Was there when Helena White Strake is the original divine Crusader of the First Era is both one of the main characters in Knights of the Nine
And almost completely irrelevant If your knowledge of this DLC was limited to Tez meme culture, you’d assume that Helena White’s Drake would have been the main focus of the entire story. Instead, the characters of the original Knights of the Nine like Sir Amiel and Sir Barrack, are way more focused
In screentime than Palin or White Straight. And this is an order that was founded over a millennia after Helena’s death. Indeed, most of the lore surrounding the star made knight exists pretty much entirely within the Song of
Purnell, an eight part Kirkbride story that the player can find in the chapels when they have this expansion installed. Most of the dialog, the actual Pelon or White’s Drake we meet has refers to our quest for the relics, and he has little light to shine on himself beyond the line.
Your need must be great for the gods to allow us to speak as humor. The Accursed found a way back to the last of a foul race. A thousand curses upon his unholy name. I. I had one, but I should have known. The slave masters are cunning. Three who found a way
To cheat death as he could not who know. So let’s discuss the song of Pelant. The First six parts come from a removed manuscript. Part seven comes from an older manuscript predating the fall of the Elysian Empire. And part eight appears to contain a fragment of the original song.
It Goes something like this. Conal appeared something immediately being apparently odd about his arrival, his personality, his phenotypic description and his armor are big signifiers that he wasn’t of that era. Theories vary from possibly being a time traveler to being a manifestation of the divine will against the aliens
And their enslavement of mankind. When Pelant a white streak depicted as a terminator with a laser cannon. Yeah, that’s a valid interpretation, according to the song. However, given that the Elder Scrolls favorite trick in the law is the unreliable narrator, it’s also that Helena was just a normal guy with
Albinism who happened to be blessed by the Divines and won every battle. He fought until the last one that killed him. That characterization is a lot closer to the man we see than the Elvish Terminator. People love the meme about. And for good reason. Elves aren’t exactly given the most charitable of racial
Characterizations, especially in Oblivion, where all of them share to voice actors. If you told me there was a guy out there wiping the smug off their faces, I’d ask for a link to his Patreon. This brings us to
The concept of the scissoring GSR Was the Cyrillic version of Lacan to the elves and sure to the north. It’s generally believed that Lacan, since the supposed death, has been wandering tamriel in various mortal incarnations. Some of these are substantiated by the lore of a lot
Of this comes down to Kirkbride isms as probably a future plot point, potentially even for Skyrim that has yet to really make the cut due to the series stalling in the 20 tens. It’s disappointing to me that Kirkbride wasn’t really given the time to fully flesh out
The history of Cyril’s various empires. He tries his best, get quite a bit more content on the aliens and their history and culture. We also learn more about Alisha and Moorhouse, like how, despite all the man statues and man armor, Moorhouse was actually a miniature.
It’s just a shame that pretty much none of this is actually conveyed to the player through the Questline itself. I’m not going to offer a redraft because that would require a foundation or restore of knights of
Nine. Instead, I’ll do what I’m best at tearing stuff down by making unfair comparisons. Knights of the Nine sits in the same position as tribunal and dawn Guard as the story expansions of their respective games.
But how do they compare? Tribunal featured a 19 part Questline that tied up the fate of the tribunal in King Hell. Seth, leader of Morrowind. This wasn’t like Knights of the Nine, which stretched out quests multiple parts, like how the Faithful Squire is literally a single conversation. Tribunal’s quests actually
Raises the bar for Morrowind, while Knights of the Nine rolled around in the mediocrity of Oblivion. Knights of the Nine is also set in Sierra Idyl unlike tribunal’s new locale of the city of Maun hold. Dawn guard would continue this trend basically taking place in a few hidden parts of broader
Skyrim, although dawn Guard would also provide two exclusive quests, lines and factions to choose from a rework of werewolves and vampires and new areas like the sole Charon and Forgotten Vale. I mean, sure, it’s not fair to compare Knights of the Nine to a DLC that would come
Out half a decade later. But it is fair to say that Knights of the Night didn’t do for Oblivion what Dawn Guard did for Skyrim. That wouldn’t happen until Shivering Isles, which is a ways away in this video. What’s going to be a forever away is the Holidays DLC.
You know, one of the towns were hacked yesterday, so. And you can go to town and all the crimes in the town are 50% off. So you get caught doing a crime and a guard comes to rescue you. You pay half as much as you normally because
It’s kind of everybody screwing around, being a goofball. So if you’ve been following the trajectory of our player character and maybe looking ahead at the future sections, what’s about to happen is a very confusing he’ll turn. Before I played Oblivion, I laid out an outline of the Order of Quest lines I was
Going to do, and I had several ideas how I could justify the transition. I think the core of the problem is that people are assigning moralities to factions inaccurately. As the Prophet points out, the Arena isn’t exactly a morally great place to work.
The Fighters Guild is about snuffing out free market competition and the Majors Guild is so incompetent as to become dangerous. The main quest is guided by ends justifying the means. The players never assigned any motivation beyond what they assumed The champion is
Serious motivation to be the Knights of the Nine is the only morally good story in the game. And even that is full of its own questionable moments. So the only difficult part of our character starting the Thieves Guild is justifying why they would turn to petty crime. The actual
Reason has to do with level scaling. I kind of had to do the Mages Guild between levels 15 and 25 to be at the right level to get well skilled rewards but still have magic effects.
Apply properly. And the next two factions don’t exactly involve a lot of leveling up in Oblivion really, in terms of writing an Oblivion character who does every faction. It makes the most sense for players to start with
The Thieves Guild or Arena. After breaking out of the Imperial City prison at the beginning, which is why the condition where the player gets invited to the Thieves Guild for doing time never sat well with me personally.
That and you’ll be approached even if your crime wasn’t thievery related, even for instance, murder. We’ll talk about the weird world of crime in Oblivion. Don’t worry. Another path in the guild is to talk to city swimmer,
A beginner level sneak trainer living in Brazil and drawing attention as the resident stealth specialist. If she’s alive, she’ll point you in the direction of joining the Thieves Guild despite not being a member herself. The assumption, I guess, is if the player is seeking out sneak training, then they probably want to be
In a faction involving stealth, even though by itself Sneaky isn’t only tied to a thievery playstyle. Still, that’s a fine if obscure path into the guild. The last one is to read one of the wanted
Posters for the gray fox and then to ask and convince a beggar to point you in the right direction. All roads lead to a place called the Garden of Darrow, lost in the waterfront at midnight. It’s weird because
The Darrow lore thing is only referenced after the conclusion of the Questline, so trying to use it as an actual clue is impossible at this stage. That said, since the waterfront district has seven buildings and our
Mine hosts the meeting with a torch, it’s not exactly that difficult to locate people like the Thieves Guild. Introduction of Oblivion because it’s not as weak as Skyrim or Morrowind introduction. In Morrowind, you just walk up,
Ask to join and you’re in. Which would be fine if the main plot of the Questline wasn’t dealing with a rival criminal syndicate. In Skyrim, you can’t enjoy the rift and market area without getting propositioned for a scheme. I feel a reference
System is more appropriate for a Thieves Guild steal enough and maybe you impress a member and they end up referring you. In fact, that’s basically what. Hang on. I have to look it up here. In fact, that’s
Basically what does for the player after we impress him. The only thing I would change or the circumstances necessary for meeting Benioff in the first place. Like, maybe the player needs a certain number of stolen items to their before burning off extends their offer at the market.
Armand introduces himself as a doyen of the guild and decides to hold a contest for the chance to join. Where to steal a journal by sunrise, and whoever brings it back gets to join the guild.
And get this, we’re not just given a quest marker to follow, to know where to go for about 5 seconds before I kick a homeless in the stomach and toss them a favor to tell me where the guy lives.
Then I get not only a marker to the guy’s house, but to the specific drawer where he keeps the journal. This path may not be as obvious for the player who didn’t pay a homeless guy for the clue related to the Thieves Guild, but not to despair.
You can technically steal the journal off meth. Read Hill. No, seriously. Her name is Meth Red Hill. You could or even looted out of her house because for some reason she doesn’t immediately bring it to our mind. Instead waiting at least a day
And possibly two to do so should the still manage to fail, This incredibly forgiving test or mind will extend an exclusive offer to instead steal a sword from the shop. Meth riddle is given the second chance. If and when we succeed in amici, the third contender is left out to dry, at
Least until way later. In the questline a monte selectors was killed during a burglary. They see the house was ransacked. Take care. I’m a monte of selectors. The writer. Wait, what? So now we’re in the guild. Let’s talk about the massive
Thieves Guild rewrite that occurred between Morrowind and Oblivion. The person we have to thank for this is Bruce Nesmith, who started at Bethesda with Dagger Fall, but appears to have been absent for the development of Morrowind. However,
His career extends back to TSR in the eighties writing modules for the first two editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Nesmith would leave TSR in 1995 to join Bethesda. Unsurprising since the Elder Scrolls was an attempt at making a
Computer version of Tabletop. Also, TSR had basically gone defunct by that point and would be bought out by wizards of the coast in 97. So. Well, that was also a factor. I’m going to put this bluntly. It feels like Nesmith took one
Look at the Ballmer lag immersive questline in the Thieves Guild and that he wanted that to be an entire faction. There’s a telling quote to Todd Howard asked me to create and present a questline for the Thieves
Guild. So I put together rambling presentation of the 20 quests I had planned in the meeting. I got one sentence out before Todd stopped me a little. Tell it from the players point of view. I had gotten so wrapped up in the back story that I was telling rather than the players story.
By the end of the day, almost half of the quests had been cut, making it much better. Since then, I’ve never forgotten that Remake’s for the player, not for ourselves. In essence, Nesmith may not have been entirely to blame for the Thieves Guild. Make it a heel turn from
Pseudo official criminal syndicate to Robin Hood. Run from the rich and give to the poor. That’s right. If you don’t believe me. Well, this quest is about bringing a guard to justice for taxing the poor of the
Waterfront. This quest is about stealing the statue, planting it on a traitor, and then turning them in, returning the statue to its owner. This quest is about recovering a stolen ring that belongs to a widow and returning it to this quest
Is about stealing items from the Mages Guild to call guards off searching the waterfront and then return the items. This quest is actually about stealing a book and then not returning it, but involves helping a friend in
Need. This quest is about getting a guard captain harassing other poor people in the waterfront reassigned to Anvil. Many of the quests are made easy when you tip the homeless for a tip in return. The player also actually forbidden from stealing from the poor, which includes everyone in the waterfront and beggar factions.
Not that it would be lucrative to do so. Oh, and speaking of rule, changes Second, never kill anyone on the job. This is not the dock Brotherhood. Animals and monsters can be slain if necessary. Now, in principle. Having this as a rule for the writers
And designers is a good thing. Having this as a hard rule for the player is not. The Morrowind Thieves Guild understood that things happen on the job, like the time the major was supposed to be empty,
But one of its members stayed behind to protect the hall and tried to kill us simply for entering. It’s not like Morrowind didn’t have the capacity to check if NPCs are still alive, thanks to text based dialog. I could literally make a modern an
Hour that would add a check for this guy’s health and a penalty of the player kills them without any kind of extra scripting. In fact, one of the first missions you get, Belmore does exactly that because there’s no
Point in stealing a key from a dead man who won’t produce future goods to steal. Hell, a couple of the missions involved carrying out hits on Enemies of the Thieves Guild, including ranking members of the Fighter’s Guild in the interest of preserving the faction.
Now, there is a reason you want the player to typically avoid murder. All of those interesting stealth sequences are somewhat invalidated. The player decides to rush into the room with their ax just murdering all resistance. The way you handle that is to make the pieces in the quests
Especially prone to placing trespassing bounties for caught and murder bounties for killing. Note that this is functionally the same system as the blood price without the arbitrary rules. Money minded players are going to look at a quest where they got a 3000 gold bounty on only 500 gold
Out of the job and decide on a more pacifistic route in the future. This way you can instead design the quest around how the player decides to handle jobs make a habit of killing marks on the job. The Thieves Guild earns a reputation as a bloodthirsty syndicate. Maybe the guards put up
More of a resistance in the future. Maybe the public against the Thieves Guild. Like the chaos system from Dishonored, the romanticize Alexius line where he refers to his own death as an oversight. But it also shows the Bethesda is prepared to account for the player killing these NPCs.
I don’t think it would have been that much extra disk space to include lines and scripting for the player making a habit out of murder. Fail to play along with the men in tight Charade and you define the Thieves Guild as just another dirty criminal syndicate. Maintain
The Gray Fox’s public relations focused strategy and you get a positive reputation instead. Even Jim Stassi, that resurrecting the Bell melodrama was a PR stunt to ingratiate themselves with the dunmurry. You could even do it where the darker path leads to receiving more gold, which is
Pretty basic as as mechanical choice and games go. But it’s a lot more than what we got, isn’t it? Okay, fine. Let’s do a quest. In order to get our first job, we need to fence 50 gold worth items.
I enjoy the premise of having the steel to get future jobs, but the player only has to steal 1000 gold worth of items to unlock all the quests, which is extremely easy to do in Oblivion. That And
Access to fences is restricted by rank. I assume the idea is to protect the higher level fences, but let’s say that we follow the progression of the quest where we went through an independent theft. That means each leg involves a trip to another city because an Imperial city based
Organization has no resources for fencing goods in the imperial City. Is anyone still doing a no fast travel run at this point? Still, I think the premise is a fine idea. Gating thievery related quests behind. Well, thievery is effectively a soft faction skill requirement.
It’s no substitute because you don’t have to do that much stealing to be considered a master thief. Whereas a hard skill requirement of asking the player to be a skill level and any of the stealth skills would mean the title would actually be accurate. Our first actual job after
Fencing 50 golden items is literally called on taxing the poor Hieronymus Lex, a guard captain. We actually met after the final battle in the Temple district, went around and collected taxes from the poor in the waterfront as a message warning them against cooperation with the
Gray fox and the Thieves Guild. In retaliation, the gray fox wants both the money and the tax records stolen back. Simple as. Technically you’re supposed to wait for the shift change. You can actually just run through the various levels without getting a trespassing bounty. That’s because
Lock picking has been reworked to be far less nuanced a skill than its Morrowind predecessor in. Morrowind. This is what lock picking looks like. It doesn’t look impressive, but this system would have actually played really well in Oblivion. The chance of succeeding a lockpick attempt hinges on several factors.
Skill level, lock level. The lock pick, quality humidity, the curvature of the earth. All of that would be calculated in real time. So when you attempted to break into a house, you ran the risk of getting caught by a passer by. However,
More wins passer by is only consisted of NPCs randomly wandering around unlike Oblivion, which actually has full radiant A.I. NPC locations are now determined by time of day and activity, and yet the lock picking system has been reduced.
This isn’t just about the mini game. This is about the fact that lock picking now freezes time. The trick here is to be in lock, picking the door to the captain’s quarters in the half second interim where the guards are loading into the current room because they managed to start the
Mini game. In that brief moment of time, I’m now free to fail many times as necessary to get in. If we had Morrowind system here, it might take me a couple attempts in which time I would
Be caught and gone. Stop. You the law. Now, of course you could just propose we take the current mini game and make it real time. One that would be kind of awkward because you lose the ability to check your surroundings during attempts and the mini game has its own problems.
So we’re bouncing tumblers to unlock doors and chests. The number of them depends on the difficulty of the lock. If the tumbler goes up fast, it’ll break the pick. If it goes down slowly, it’ll stick.
It’s a simple game. The interface is a bit buggy and the cursor tends to get stuck inside it. However, if you don’t like playing it and at level you can do nocturnals quests, which awards the skeleton key. We’ll discuss the quest proper later, but the skeleton key basically allows you to
Ignore the mini game and spam the auto attempt button until you complete it. Since the skeleton key doesn’t break like normal lock picks, it also boosts your security 40 points to increase your success rate. In essence, you have the option to turn off the mini.
That’s notably differ from the Morrowind Skeleton Key, which was a super high quality lockpick that could bust open almost anything but only had 50 uses. Okay, Oblivion who didn’t play Morrowind? There were different pick levels with different degrees of usefulness. An apprentice pick had a quality of one while
A master pick had a quality of 1.4. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is a big modifier in the formula. The skeleton key had a quality of five. That’s how much better it was, which is why it
Was the in-game Thieves Guild reward. And I suppose that brings us to the other mini game of Oblivion Persuasion pie. To quote Ken Rolston, there were many, many games that were proposed for Oblivion. That a period of time when many games were really, really cool.
There are a lot of opinions shared about persuasion pie and how it’s bad, but nobody ever really explains why. You can give an anecdote about how it’s weird if you think about it, and I think the concept needed a
Second. I guess in this case, a third, a third design pass. Because yeah, asking someone if they want to hear a joke engaging the response is awkward as hell and being forced into using all the categories is again weird.
But I feel like not a lot of people mentioned the rotate ability or or flipping the table using a charm spell. And honestly, playing persuasion pie isn’t even that bad. It’s got nothing on the Morrowind Persuasion system, which was only annoying
In that you had to move the mouse A bunch to spam admires and taunts. Maybe if there was a list of all your options like taunt, boast, intimidate, joke, admire, etc. and the player had to learn which NPCs like white is part of their personality.
So the Joker guy in the Bruma Mages Guild might like jokes, whereas any Nord warrior might like boasting. And instead of being forced to do all, you just pick an option from a list based on your experience with the NPC. And then skill
Value would influence how well it works in influencing their disposition. One problem with persuasion is the assumption that the player only wants disposition to go up when there are cases where you should be using it to go down.
Similar to taunting in Morrowind, however as you level speech craft up, you only get better at improving disposition and when you max maximum NPC disposition, they can no longer play pie with you. The problem with making mini games out of mechanics that it places more emphasis on player
Skill rather than character skill. Character skill is super important in a role playing game. I may not be good at like picking in real life, but that doesn’t matter if I’m playing a character who’s good at lock picking. Of course you can just auto attempt. But here’s
The thing. I ran out of lock picks at one point and couldn’t get any more because you can only find them in dungeons if you don’t join the Thieves Guild or Dark brotherhood. That’s not a big deal since I was a mage and had open spells. But a warrior character is
Basically locked out of content because there aren’t open scrolls that can be reliably. And of course lock picking becomes a universal skill in Skyrim since the spell alternative was cut, meaning all playstyles get funneled into the mini and least if they wanted to open locked chests.
I’m not going to bother saying one games is better than the other or point of the Skyrim’s mini game is just a risk in a fallout threes. What I will say is I think we’re missing here with magical locks. In Fallout three,
You had computer puzzles which satirically represented hacking. I guess there’s a whole game here, not just with the word guessing, but identifying the patterns and removing the dud answers or getting a replenishment. Now, it might not be fair to say Oblivion should have a feature that came later to the series,
But I do think that Elder Scrolls would benefit from some kind of magical lock system. For instance, if you’re looting a conjurer dungeon, you might find the chests are all magically locked instead of mechanically locked. You could even bring back the lock spell for this purpose.
Players using magic would have an easier time unlocking the magic locks versus players doing it with a pick and vice versa. Players using the security skill would an easier time with mechanical locks versus magical locks. Since we’re stealing ideas from Fallout, why not steal their traps as well? But they are fairly basic.
Honestly, the lethal part of traps is touching the side of a stationary blade and taking damage anyways. With this much is obvious since Bethesda would rebalance the traps in Skyrim to be way faster and way more deceptive like those swinging spike wall traps that I die to on stream. What we’re missing
Here is the skill based disarmament. In Fallout, you can find traps which can be disarmed if you have the necessary skill to do so, serving as a way to bypass traps and a reward for having those skills.
I feel traps are only made more interesting if it’s possible for your character to have the skill to avoid them. Although I recognize it’s a lot easier with the fallout skill set to design traps around that premise. Still, I would like some continuation of the Morrowind Traps. Magic traps. The player had
To either probe using their security skill or remotely trip using telekinesis or tank the effect of. In summary, removing dice roll lock picking in favor of player skill like picking is a towards the action adventure
Formula. It’s now about getting in during that half second interim instead of having the actual skill level to unlock doors on the first attempt. Oblivion inherited crime system for more wins with some alterations and additions. What was called
Trespassing is now called lock picking due to there being a new system to actually catch the player out for trespassing. NPCs tend to be a lot more forgiving about you being in their house than most people in real life would be. The notable exceptions being some areas like castles where this courtesies not
Extended for theft. Bounties now translate to half of the value of the items stolen instead of the value in Morrowind. That’s an interesting change that I don’t really have strong feelings about. Either way, I guess it makes sense that the player can no longer get a bounty higher than a murder
Just from stealing. Pickpocket, in theory, works the same, but has been reworked. Calculation wise to actually be possible in Oblivion. There’s also reverse pickpocketing where you place items into an NPC’s inventory. Nothing but approval. Assault and murder work the same are more relevant later.
There are two new crimes stealing horses and breaking out of jail. You couldn’t break out of jail in Morrowind and in Oblivion. When you break out of jail, the guards just forget about your bounty. Skyrim would iterate upon this by adding the jailbreak bounty to your original bounty so you could escape,
But you would still be wanted. Skyrim would also improve upon the ability to be friends with guards. Oblivion would allow you to get away with a sub 1000 gold bounty if the guard had a disposition above 90. It was also supposed to have bribery, although I’m sure balancing
The difference between paying and paying bribes was not something Bethesda had time to figure out. We grabbed the tax record and gold all 53 of it and returned to our mind. He lets us keep the money Which is kind of weird, right? Amon says that the guild has the capital
To compensate the people who got taxed. And this is our payment just for getting the record. It just strikes me as off that we’re being rewarded with money that was taken from these people directly. Like
It might be more appropriate to take the tax money and give us an item reward in these circumstances. There was a minor hiccup where in the interest of grabbing Hieronymus Norton at Plant, I ended up getting caught out for trespassing and this clipped stuff. You violated the law. Been too
Long since I’ve seen a good draw. I’m just wondering if you were supposed to be. It kind of shows a problem with the guards. I’m across town being chased by guards over a five gold bounty. First of all, guards in Morrowind wouldn’t really pursue you that hard for minor crimes.
They would try to catch you if you were in their immediate periphery. But you left the area, you’d basically go free. Remember the time my main Quest character had a 300 gold bounty throughout 75% of the main quest. Not in to get the guards to cut me a break.
I have to skip town out of range of them, let some time pass, and then head back into town. Going back to the waterfront while being chased by guards is really bad idea because as a member of the Thieves Guild, I get a disposition boost with all the waterfront residents, which in turn
Means that some or even many of them will actually attempt to fight the guards on my behalf. This guy Kremen, Graham, A-Rod, we’ve never met before. I haven’t done his related quest. I’ve never talked to him. And he’s prepared to fight without any kind of weapons
Or armor against fully armed and armored Imperial Guards to the death to save my life. You would not believe the morning I’ve heard you were chasing a man. No, a devil. A thief who every day robs from the common folk bread, laundry off of clotheslines and even water
Melons. Today, things got a little out of hand. And a lot of good people are dead. I’m not even wanted for stealing the tax money. This is a five gold bounty because Captain Lex up and I was in
His bedroom. Even better, the doyen darker mind offers the service of wiping bounties for half price. There’s no reason not to do this right. So the game says it wants. Three gold to take care of the five gold bounty our mine then takes to gold. Because
Simple stuff like taking the amount of money the game says it costs is impossible. I feel like a single line of code clamping the bounty value would fix this. After completing the Quest three receive two points of infamy. Reputation for Morrowind was split into
Fame and infamy. One of the areas where I think Oblivion somewhat improved over Morrowind just getting generic reputation regardless of faction morality, which results in a disposition boost is a bit busted. If the system was the same, people would like the player more after completing the dark brotherhood.
So infamy is a good thing where it kind of feels there’s a disconnect between the quests and what fame it awards the players. When we steal the tax records and return the money taken from the poor of the waterfront, we receive two points of infamy. An assassination
Mission from the Dark Brotherhood where we end a person’s life awards one of infamy. Infamy also lowers the player’s disposition with NPCs who have high responsibility rating mid and even low tier responsible NPCs. Loose disposition slower but still lose it only in pieces with close to zero, responsibility
Will raise and disposition for increases in infamy. This might work if there were still bandit communities. The player could find and join. That might be only usable for players consistently on the wrong side of the law. Instead, the bandit community was turned into generic leveled enemies whom the player can’t talk to.
After another 50 gold of independent thievery which can go by instantly if the player has already fenced over 100 gold, we get our next mission where to steal the bust made of the Countess of Sheldon Hall. It’s been 20 years or more since the Count
Married La Forza. She was a beautiful elven bride. She remained young while he aged. Not too long ago, she was found slain. It’s all hush hush. Nobody knows exactly what happened. That’s of weird, given the count is also a Dunmore. Anyways, stealing the statue is super easy as there’s only one guard.
However, on our return from Sheridan Hall, we find the waterfront is full of guards searching for our mind. The player just intuits that they’re searching for our mind on arrival and writes it down in their journal.
Math. Redhill tells us the entire mission was a ploy to a traitor in the ranks. Malvina Erano. Her name actually comes up as exempt on the tax record. So good writing, even though the tax is still pitiful, that surely Hieronymus could have just fudged the numbers to cover for the
Traitor. We plant the bust in her cupboard, tell Lex that she was a thief, but he doubts us. After two bribes totaling 282 gold, he believes us. He even takes us to arrest her, which is a
Karen’s wet dream for how law enforcement works. It would be really awkward if later in the we were to reassign Lex to protect the Gray Foxes wife due to his unwavering loyalty. So for our next task were sent to seek out Scrivener, who will be our new doyenne for the next four quests.
Also, this is a me that I had to go to a fence to unlock the next few quests, so there was a bonus trip down to Leo and back. She wants us to go to recover a ring for a widow of one of the guilds fences who
Lived in Guess Where Leo Win? The Guild frowns on freelance. Really? Then shouldn’t membership be more inclusive? Because. Well, funnily enough, said Freelance Thief is amici. The Oregonian thief that Armand decides isn’t worthy of joining the
Guild. When we meet with a daji, she calls Amici a filthy lizard and asks us to recover her ring and to kill him. We Can only abide one of those things for her stupid guild rules. He is only an hour gone and he is less than human and much less than gadget.
I disavow So Amazon. I got arrested after attempting to swindle the Countess. Wait, that’s illegal. Thankfully, bribery isn’t illegal, and we can bribe the jailer to get access to him. Or you can just save 20 gold like I did and break in.
The guard doesn’t actually sit at the door to stop you. MSR is less than thrilled. He’d only had to resort to freelance thievery because of his rejection from the Guild. We can offer him a lockpick in exchange
For the information. Although, since I had the skeleton key, I didn’t actually have a lockpick to offer him. Thankfully This isn’t like Morrowind, which probably would have just given him the skeleton key anyways. So I just unlock the cell by hand, at which point some of you might be screaming because you know
That this doesn’t work. The unofficial patch fixes that issue and a whole host of issues with this quest. There are ten separate fixes tied to just this quest, and it’s kind of a massive problem that a quest is so fundamentally broken, which is a problem because there were six patches for this game.
Oh, but it costs money to do patches on export. No, I’m talking about shipping fixes for one of the main quest lines in Oblivion with the patches that were already released. For instance, you can staff locks the Thieves Guild by asking about the job, but initially declining it. Sanguins quest involves
The Countess and can create problems if done simultaneously or if you do the Thieves Guild quest. After saying Queen’s where the Countess will take up permanent residence. The dining room. If you enter the castle on the
15th, through the 17th of each in-game month, the quest soft locks now really showing up on the wrong day can break the game because that’s when the Countess leaves town to visit her mother in Coral. There’s also a bug where the Countess will refuse
To sleep if she’s the big spoon, which is tragic because Count Marius Caro is famous for being the little spoon again. No, really. If she doesn’t get the left side of the bed in the base game, she’ll just stand
There staring at her husband all night. And then you might get this far. Find out the ring just isn’t there. And there’s a bunch of different reasons why. Including the fact that if she goes to sleep on the left side of the bed, she won’t put the ring in the jewelry box.
Got It. If she gets the right side of the bed, she’ll put the ring away, but maintain constant vigilance. And if she gets the left side of the bed, she won’t put the ring in the box, but she’ll sleep. So why is this quest in particular so broken? Is it that complex?
The answer is no. You talk to someone, talk to another person, and then steal a ring. The most complex part is that the Countess puts her ring in the jewelry box at night, and it’s just poor implementation that there are so many issues tied to that single function. It’s
A shame, too, because this quest is all right. It’s it’s one of the few moments the game addresses. Leo In Central theme of racial conflict, Adalja is racist towards our opponents. It turns out the count has a sex dungeon where he tortures Oregonians. The
Guards are all corrupt. In Paramus, I tried to join the Thieves Guild in an attempt to escape what is a pretty horrible situation. Yes, I stole that ring from a dodgy when I went to sell it. That fence told me I was too hot for him.
He Showed me an inscription on the inside to Alicia that had to be the Countess of Leo. In the damn ring was stolen property. Well, I figured I would ransom it back to the Countess, except she tricked me. I was arrested for theft, and she kept the ring. Okay, dude, slow down. First
Of all, how did no one point out that amici said that he not The ring was too hot for the fence? Prude. Second, how did Amazon get to offense? I had to actually join the guild to get access to events. If
Missed, I already knew offense. What was his motivation for joining doing good for the community. Third, of course, trying to sell the ring with a stolen flag to its owner. Got you busted by the guards. The way you
Actually handled that situation is to pretend you found the ring and hope you get a reward it which you wouldn’t. Given the nobility here a racist. So maybe you should try cutting in an imperial on the hustle
Instead. I mean, worst case scenario, you serve two days for the 150 gold bounty for stealing the ring. I guess MSA was destined for the Oregonian sex dungeon, so it’s rather timely that we got here when we did. Also There’s a letter labeled Divining the Elder Skull’s typo included.
That’s worth stealing as well, given both its tangible value and its plot relevance. We go to get our award 100 gold. Wait, it can be 200 if we tell a dodgy MSN. I tried to sell the ring, but we can only do that if we return to
Her. Between our meeting with amici and us stealing ring. Who had that idea? Screven then gives us our next task, which is to go back up to the waterfront. Hieronymus Lex and a bunch of guards have taken over
The waterfront, arresting thieves, placing Armand under house arrest and searching the district for the gray fox. I love that Screven opens by saying This is a small problem. Meth. Redhill drafting the response. She figures that if we and four other thieves
Simultaneously hit different locations with high profile robberies, that Lex will be pressured to pull the guards out of the waterfront. Your target is the arcane university. Yeah. You should probably know that there’s a conflict of interest with your plan. But fine. It’s neat seeing the factions overlap at some.
We walk into our own room at the university. Still, the IFE staff that only appears as soon as it’s relevant. Drop a note in our own nightstand and take the staff back to meth.
Red Hill. She then has us eavesdrop on Lex, who gets a note from a messenger sent by reminisce. The messenger is a Remora, which is an extremely bad idea to use given the Oblivion crisis. I mean, might be over, but that didn’t
Stop the massive anti conjugation push in post Oblivion and Sierra Doe reminisce also somehow knows the staff was stolen, even though we didn’t tell him so guess he sneaks into our room to sniff our panties or something. The journal acknowledging the problems with the set up are also an addition of the
Unofficial patch, something I don’t approve of because for a decent of the script, I just assumed that was in the base game. I wonder how many people are giving credit to Bethesda for being self-aware here and didn’t realize it was the patch all along.
All right. So how do fix this? Simply, instead of putting the know in our end table, if we are the arch mage, we instead deliver the note to Rhamnosus and tell them that we want our guards redeployed back at the university. It’s that easy. After that Lexx pulls out of the waterfront
Again and we return the ICE staff to a former university researchers chest and call it a day. This is also a quest which in is reliant on timeliness, but there is no consequence for dependent on the Thieves Guild for over a year to do other content. The
Whole point of the operation is that five targets get hit at once. There should be a penalty if the player fails to complete their objective in a timely manner. The same is technically true of the other quests, but it stands out here because of how the quest
Is framed. Delivery. A fellow guild member has gone missing searching for the book. Lost histories of Tamriel and skin grabbed. This happened to the Fighters Guild and they immediately assumed a dereliction of duty. Whereas the Thieves Guild gives its errant member the benefit of the doubt.
This could subtly reflect the differences of the factions or the differences in the writers or the writers may not have realized that Orian can’t just assume someone abandoned their mission instead of failing to complete it. This is also the first time that my general rapport with the
Thieves Guild is high enough that homeless people I’ve never met willing to help me out for free. The latter half of that last sentence is bizarre. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the homeless are something
Else. I’m saving up enough for some medicine that’s. But they can’t even do a consistent homeless accent between lines. I’m saving up enough for some medicine. Here’s what I know. The real redness was drinking at the two
Sisters lodge, so fairness was bragging at the end about stealing from the castle, which is all sympathy gone. When Captain Deon overheard him, he got arrested. Unlike amici, we can’t bribe the guard to let us see him. Nesmith was really obsessed with giving people accents. Visitors ain’t
Allowed down, is. But it will earn you two years and skin grudge. Dungeon. I didn’t do it. But you do have the option to sign up as the guy who delivers food to the prisoners. Sounds kind of familiar. We had in and there’s only ignored president. We offered to let
Him out and he tells us that fairness was sharing a cell with an outgoing eon and that someone called the Pale Lady took him. The lady took him days ago. Every few days she comes for one of us. Some return, some don’t. Those that are taken three times never return.
It’s fortunate because The Oregonian was taken less than an hour ago. So I left the castle and ventured through all of Sierra those dungeons to no consequence because the pale lady was willing to wait for me. If you take a job, you should expect the game to want you to complete
It in a timely manner. If you weren’t going to do the quest immediately, why did you accept it? It wouldn’t be hard to account for the players shoving off their responsibilities. If the player starts the
Quest but doesn’t arrive in time, MSA could perish to the pale lady and this would make the quest more difficult as a result. If hammer space is the concept used to explain how characters stuff so much volume is stuffed into
Their pockets, then I propose hammer time be used to describe how quests effectively and wait for the player. That or we could call it Solipsism Escape. The pale lady has been stealing prisoners for their blood, which poses some issues. Let’s go back. Oh, I will find that mistress. You’re not
Going to spoil a future quest now, but if you remember the count of skin grand Janice Haskell door was able to sense the presence of vampires to threaten the population of his town. Here’s a vampire living in his own castle, stealing without any consequence. It’s just messy. And it’s not the first
Time Naismith has stepped over another writer to tell his story. Judging by what Ken Rolston said, his approach as the lead designer changed between Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind had a more rigid outline for its factions, so
When the quest lines intersected, there was a higher standard of quality control, which is how it should be handled. The lead designer is responsible for the consistency of the writing in a game. In this instance, Nesmith is
Stepping on Brian Chabon’s characterization and writing for the Major Skilled. It’s nice to see the crossovers, at least at a surface level, because it makes the world feel bigger. But unlike Morrowind, which had several, there’s not as much consistency because Rolston is allowing the writers the freedom to do as they wish.
The writer wanted the player to find himself in jail again and to save them the skin grid vampire. However, I’m guessing the identity of the Pale Lady was changed amid development. And now there’s a vampire that has a door should recognize as a threat to his citizens, but doesn’t.
We breakout with amici and he tells us where Theron has told him he had hidden the book. Note that this is the first Thieves Guild quest did not involve returning something to its rightful owner,
As in, this is the first Thieves Guild job to be about stealing something and we weren’t actually the ones to steal it. There’s multiple things going on here, so let’s tackle the first one aside from independent thievery. There’s never really any Thieves Guild mission where we’re out there doing Thieves Guild stuff.
What I mean is the Fighters Guild, up until its third act, has the player just going out and doing jobs. The Majors Guild has the player out there going out and doing jobs, and the Dark Brotherhood will have the player out
There going out and doing jobs. There’s never a quest where the players tasked with stealing something for the sake of generating revenue for the Guild, something that Skyrim tried to improve on with its radiant thievery quests.
Instead, each task is either relevant to the central conflict of the Guild or to some minor character story that’s being told. Note that this is usually a criticism of Oblivion Factions. Not all of them are focused like
The Thieves Guild on its central story. Well, I wouldn’t call the story of the Thieves Guild great. It manages to avoid some of the fundamental problems of the other factions by focusing on a more intimate conflict.
I don’t think every faction should have a particularly high stakes story, and I think that stylistically you can capture factions during the laws and their history in order to better contrast the stories that are more
Urgent. A Bolivians main quest might not have been as well received compared to more wins because a Bolivians main quest had to share the spotlight rather than how moral wins Main Quest overshadowed all other stories. I think that independent thievery was meant to supplement the actual criminal part of the Guild
But the part that every player would consistently see when doing the faction was controlled in such a way to not dictate morality on the player. In essence, it’s not a stretch to say that a moral character would do the Thieves Guild because so far we’ve really done more good than evil or harm.
Not that the Thieves Guild is particularly evil, but they are a faction ostensibly for the selfish. More When Thieves Guild had a story to tell, it was about the guild establishing itself in a foreign land and performing its function of helping root out criminal syndicates,
Namely the commodity and the tong would murder and use coercion to ply their trade. And that was usually pretty bad for foreigners, although their thugs in Oblivion are pretty chill. Hello. What can I do for you tonight? I might swim more if it weren’t for the slaughter fish. Sharp teeth and
Some carry disease. Farewell the Thieves Guild. Only by comparison to the tongue was a good thing. But that itself was balanced out by the player being sent to liberate commoners and nobles of their valuables. Now we’re in SERE Atoll, where the concept of the Imperial Thieves Guild originated. The Thieves Guilds should
Be intricately woven into the imperial government. Only magistrates and guard captains seen as they’re older than the Septem dynasty. Hieronymus Lex is actually a great antagonist for such an organization. A rising star in the Imperial Legion, committed to stamping out the corruption that allowed such an organization to exist.
It was an honor to speak with you. Champion Uriel Sefton’s death could even tie into it. Perhaps Uriel was the one that was holding back any meaningful resistance against the reforms. Corruption Because again, the purpose of the Guild was to oppose foreign criminal
Rings. And it only got bad in Syria at all due to the lack of criminal competition. With the symptoms gone, Captain Lex is actually a threat because he is now unrestrained in his mission. But we know that this isn’t the case because criminals are everywhere. They
Just aren’t organized yet. At least not until Titus Mean became the bandit game. It’s a shame we didn’t get a more Criminal Thieves Guild considering the advancements in Radiant A.I.. People like to meme on Radiant A.I. because of goofy conversations, poignant other games
Before Oblivion with similar systems. Radiant A.I. is a package system for the NBC’s to develop a schedule. The packages essentially exist like functions, reusable verbs, if you will. Every time you eat can be boiled down to the same basic thing. You find food, you eat it.
Radiant air adds modifiers based on hidden stats like responsibility for how the NPC might find the food. But otherwise NPCs eating is because they have a basic package telling them to perform the same basic scripted function. If you wanted NPCs to do that in Morrowind, you’d have to include a
Huge script and if you wanted NPC to do that repeatedly, then an even bigger script would be involved. That’s a lot of work testing just to make one NPC eat lunch and sleep at night. So creating an easily reusable
System where the designer can slap two packages on and have them do the basics is an impressive. It’s easy to point out that Oblivion has only a third the NPCs of Morrowind, but I will admit that every NPC in the
Game having a routine where they eat and sleep makes the seasonal Oblivion that downgrade in population size. Because now, instead of breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night and seeing them in the same spot they always stand in. Now they sleep and means there’s
Consistent times of day to break in and steal stuff where thievery before was simply a game of line of sight or using chameleon. Now the name of the game is timing actual stealth. Trespassing is now actually a crime, so the player has to be more considerate. Merchants
Try to keep an eye on the player. Of course, there is still the option of using Chameleon. I would be loath to forget to mention more in depth how chameleon works. As I did promise to mention it later and later is now. Chameleon works like invisibility.
Except can still interact with objects. It’s also much cheaper at the cost of being in perfect. A few points of Chameleon is like having a small boost to your sneak skill, which means a lot points is quite the
Boost. Surely it would be difficult to do something like that though, right? The Ring of community from Mauritius Quest gives a consistent 35% chameleon serum stones provide access to level chameleon enchantments. Starting at level nine, you can get a 20% chameleon effect from a single stone, and
At level 17 you can get up to 30%. You can also get 20% chameleon from a grand level sole, which are the most common souls in the game with black soul gems. Putting all that info together. You may have realized that 100% Chameleon is pretty easy to acquire.
It’s actually easier in Oblivion since they removed the caste effects from clothing. So that’s a constant 100% chameleon. In Morrowind could get 100% chameleon pretty easily, but it had a time limit where effectively invisible at all times, now only detectable by the sound we make. This was probably reason that Chameleon
Was removed from Skyrim because if Oblivion broke something from Morrowind, Skyrim usually removed it. Now, as nice as the novelty of being able to run around invisibly with people is, it’s obviously a wrench being
Thrown in the cogs of Oblivion. Thus I provide a solution. Detect life. One of the uses for detect life is finding who rendered themselves invisible men. A marco did this, for instance, of the Major’s guild. That’s pretty rare,
Since you can usually deduce the spell caster who went invisible a second ago, is still standing in the same spot. A change I’ve been discussing online is to incorporate new battle mage guards. They could be signified by
Blue hoods and would have access to magic like detect life and paralyze in order to better fight crime. A guard patrolling an area with detect life would invalidate stealth even players using chameleon. So the way
Around that problem is to simply make them use the spell if they suspect an invisible person is in the area. Same thing with shopkeepers with a modicum of magical talent. If all your items start disappearing from in front
You, the shopkeeper might use the checked life to try and find the thief. Another thing that’s been removed from Morrowind was shopkeepers detecting illicit goods on the player. There’s been some discussion on this, but to simply
Say that it’s unreasonable that a shopkeeper even knows the player has moon sugar on them isn’t entirely accurate. Again, this is a setting with mysticism magic. If the criticism was that there were too many merchants who
Avoided illicit goods. Sure. But to say that merchants can’t outright detect them in a world with magic is kind of crazy to me. Oblivion removed this because players complained about not being able to sell Sukuma to upstanding
Citizens. So now the player can, which is a missed opportunity in terms of using the responsibility stat anyways. That’s not the only thing. Alien Ruins should honestly have the same moratorium placed on looting them the same way Dweller Ruins didn’t Morrowind. Since we see even experienced
Warriors lose their lives to their traps. But no, the only thing NPCs refuse to deal in is stolen goods. And. Excuse me. How does this guy know it’s stolen in Morrowind? You could sell stolen goods to any merchant, provided they weren’t the original owner. So we’ve gotten
Rid of contraband but made it so most responsible NPCs, which is all but the fences and one extra won’t buy a stolen item despite there being a thousand possible explanations for how the player got their
Hands on it. That wasn’t thievery. A woman pays me for saving her children by giving me her wedding ring. Or maybe I acquire the wedding ring by stealing it off her finger when she sleeps. How does the merchant know the difference? If the answer is magic, I rest my case. You Can’t
Have the stolen item flag system and remove contraband. That just doesn’t make sense. Again, instead of fixing the issues with contraband, they just cut the idea entirely. We’re on to this grievous final quest, the gray fox. Once Hieronymus Lex reassigned to
Anne Boleyn, she notes that the Countess of Anvil is under the Gray Foxes protection. For some reason, we are thieves, not murderers. Oh, please. I specialize in making it look like self-defense. We have to steal a letter of recommendation and forge Lexi’s on to it.
And a beggar points us at the Castle Smith. He shows us the entrance to a hidden passage system in the castle. You’re not supposed to be in here. Stop. Intruder in the castle, Protector. Stay away. Good day. Good day. I know. Show me.
Yeah. That’s radiant eye in a nutshell. All these people like me for my heroic deeds and for closing the Oblivion gate at Anvil. So despite losing Derek Hill’s desk in front of her, she’s willing to actually fight the guards that she called to protect me from The guards she called.
It’ll be really funny, if she gets mad at us later. She wants me to tip you. You add insult to injury, you cost my cousin a chance at that job. Take your money and get out of my sight. Before that, though, we have to forge the letter. A beggar
Points us towards a guy in Anvil, known only as a stranger about the gray fox. He’s quite skeptical of the gray fox and then offers to do the forgery in exchange for money. I wonder who this
Unnamed character could possibly be. A day in 500 Gold. Later we head back to the Imperial City to seal the letter with the seal of the Imperial Legion Commander and then go back to Anvil to deliver it personally to the
Countess, who’s still cool with us, despite taking an arrow to the head to defend us against her own guards. This is kind of an unenviable problem for anyone writing a thievery related story. Despite stealing the letter in
Front of Derek Hill and objectively failing to do it stealthily and despite the count as being there and likely asking Derek Hill about had happened. The authenticity of this letter is not drawn into question at all. It is nice that
The player can be penalized for giving the fourth letter to Derek Hill because she won’t give it to the Countess. So we have to steal it back again and do it right. Also, again, it’s funny that Odin’s invidious gets disqualified for questionable morals when earlier we bribed Hieronymus
Lex as part of the quest. We’re the one to personally deliver Lex’s transfer. Orders to him had been reassigned. This is outrageous. Gray Fox had a hand in this. I know it.
From here on, we’re getting work directly from the Gray fox, who sends messengers to tell us where to meet him. This is the genesis of the Skyrim Courier. Also the thematic conclusion to the stories of math Redhill and amici who were so successful in their
Careers that they’re relegated to delivering the mail between more successful thieves. Anyways, we meet the gray fox up at hell via CC his house in Bruma, despite being the greatest martial artist in Sierra, while he’s also just a bandit in the Thieves Guild.
No, that’s a rank bandit. If you don’t slobber on the Gray Fox’s [____] in the opening of the dialog, then he immediately ends the conversation. Despite this transparently being the same guy, the stranger who obviously doesn’t like the overstated reputation the foxes earned. Also capital.
Hey, Oblivion fans, Did you remember the part where said Well, focus on the Gray Foxes character? More in a bit. For now he has a laundry list of items he needs for a big heist. Although the heist is not presented to the player until the day of it’s a minor
Thing by itself. It doesn’t really break the story. I just feel at this stage in the questline, the players should be in the loop as the story being told here. It’s neat to have the player can find along the way, but if the player isn’t aware that the
End goal is stealing an elder scroll, then it just feels like lore accessories that aren’t tied into the story properly. It’s weird to tell a heist story where the character who’s going to be doing the heist is going through the planning phase, not knowing that’s what they’re doing.
The reason you don’t keep thieves in the dark about what their inner target is, is you don’t want them getting cold feet because they didn’t realize the danger. What was the Gray Foxes plan if the player character decided they weren’t going
To go through with the heist, was he going to have meth? Red Hill or amici do it? We first have to acquire the Villa Stone, which the Gray Fox uses to perform reconnaissance on the Imperial Palace. It’s located at the temple of the Ancestor Moth, the retirement home for moth priests blinded
By their career choice of reading Elder Scrolls. It’s an interesting quest focused on the audible aspects of stealth, even if Oblivion doesn’t really have any kind of advanced system for audio detection.
Our next task has as traveling to coral. This time the gray fox needs the arrow of extrication which has a key shaped arrowhead. It’s in farthest eren’s tower, but it’s locked from the outside and needs to be infiltrated via a secret passage in the reveal castle. The
Passage is labyrinthine in nature and quite extensive. I’m genuinely impressed with this area, and the only fault is that since the tower area is an exterior location, thatthis can’t actually bust us for trespassing and the chest the arrowhead is kept in is an owned by him.
So we can take it from in front of him without any issue. This arrowhead advances my plan to live. Never mind. We give the fox the arrowhead and then are told to meet him in Shady Hall. I have another message from. The gray fox. The Gray Fox
Requests a meeting. Please travel to Gamora. Those house in shade in a may shadow you. Now he says he needs the boots of Springhill Jack. The only clue we have is his last living relative,
The Earl of Noble, in the Imperial City. Why did we meet in Shane Hall? We were. So we find the Earl’s house. We’re supposed to steal his genealogy first, but I end up running into him despite it
Being the dead of night when he supposedly goes out for walks as a healthy, pure blooded, rutting noble. He, of course, cowers in fear and gives us the key to his basement, which is actually full of vampires. So where was the order of the virtuous blood on this one? We
Find a note indicating that Jack Boone is actually Springhill. Jack long lived due to his affliction. I mean, I guess livid is also true. He then tries to kill us. We kill him and take his boots back to Shane Hall. Then we’re set to meet
With the fox for the big day again. Bear in mind that until this point, the player has not been told. This is what it’s been leading to in the Imperial City. The gray fox lays out his plan that he’s been building for 11 years.
Our objective is an Elder scroll located the Imperial Palace, for whatever reason, will assume magic. We can’t enter the traditional way from the ground floor. Instead, we’re to sneak in and go into the basement to activate a giant hourglass, which will open the old way. Note
That this is actually broken without the unofficial patches, and it’s completely optional. It’s like one flag to fix this. Surely, which I think is actually the more fantastic look. If you know what able do the original for whatever reason will assume magic. We can’t enter the traditional way from
The ground floor. And the idea that a member of the Thieves Guild would condone us learning levitation magic and flying up to the roof is far outside the moral bounds of what the gray fox is prepared to permit.
Instead, we’re to sneak and go into the basement to activate a giant hourglass, which will open the old way. And note that this is actually broken without the unofficial patch and completely optional. It’s like
One flag to fix this. Surely they could have. After this, we enter the Imperial sewers in the south east tunnel. After a lengthy sewer level, we encounter a locked door by a key the fox stole from Accardo himself. This leads into the palace sewers that a Timberwolf that a Timberwolf has somehow gotten
Inside. Anyways, the palace sewers eventually lead to a door in a lost ruin called the Old way. You know, it’s a pretty big deal anytime someone becomes a letch. So running into five of them is pretty questionable. The old imperial ruin gives way to an old alien ruin.
We stand in the right spot. Fire the arrow of extrication across the room into a keyhole. And this opens the way into the palace. A couple of statues also come to life or whatever. They don’t stand a chance against 100% chameleon Iran visible.
I’m going to say it’s serious. I don’t think I’m in any kind of grave danger. Who said that? This leads into the fireplace of the Imperial Guard quarters in the palace past this area, and we get into the Imperial. I mean, the Elder Scrolls Library. The priests are actually expecting
One. Celia Cameron. And we have arrived in her stead. The priests bring us the particular scroll we need and we escape. We had hired into the palace and use the chimney and Okada’s bedroom to slip out. This drops us back into the old way and requires us to use Springfield Jack’s boots
To survive the fall. Although they break in the process because Bethesda fun and we retrace your steps back to the great Fox. All right, so not the most elaborate heist. In fact, most of it was just a dungeon crawl graded on the Elder Scrolls curve then.
Yeah, it’s an amazing and unparalleled heist. But start asking questions like, weren’t the moth priests in the palace supposed to still have their vision? And who is Sylvia Cameron? Does she have any relation to Man Carr? Cameron. And why is she given access to an elder scroll? I can also tell
That none of the emperors were ever fat because, good Lord, living in this palace be miserable. I’m surprised teleportation was legalized when such a massive tower exists with the elder scroll in hand. The gray fox asks us for one last thing where to deliver
A ring to the Countess of Anvil and report back to him how she reacts. I used to admire you, but it turns out you’re just a sinner like all the rest of us. You know, I’ve basically spent the last 3 hours donating to the poor, returning stolen
Property, and protecting the waterfront. Right. How am I a bad guy? We give her the ring and she wishes she could see her husband. To which the stranger appears and dons the cowl of Nocturnal revealing himself the gray fox. My stars and garters. Can we hurry this up?
I want to get to the dark brotherhood already. Mr. Corvus Umber Ox reveals the truth and also states that he alter by lifting the curse of nocturnal. This allows us to take the cowl without inheriting its property of making the wearer unrecognizable when not
Worn. It also gives us a headquarters in the waterfront. But that’s not really that much. The cowl is basically an alter ego we can use to commit crimes without attaching a bounty to our real identity. It’s also got some useful enchantments. It. Like 200 points of
Feather, and that’s it. The Thieves Guild is the only faction to not have any kind of post faction content. But what about the Gray Fox? Right. Right. He’s a character, all right? He says he inherited the cowl from the previous guild master. How and why count? Umbra
Knox has returned after years. He just walked back into Anvil. Yeah, that’s basically the extent of the answer we get. We’re also told that the gray fox has been a thing in the Thieves Guild for 300 years, which is why Oblivion is the first we hear of it.
Corvus. I can’t believe they named him that. Corvus also mentions that the cowl is the root of the guild’s bad luck, to which, ask what bad luck that a guard captain recently decided to do his job. The bad luck line Turn me off of this questline, which isn’t really a Bolivians
Fault. It just reminds me of that stupid bad luck meme from the Skyrim Thieves Guild. Now, come to think of it, the Skyrim Thieves Guild will use the same exact premise The Gray Foxes obsession with helping the poor of zero two is stated to be a somewhat
Recent development in the Guild’s history, something probably attributed to Corvus Rain, which is something that can only be speculated on as basic empathy and not much else. I tried to read some law books on the topic and found it rather Beren Thief of Virtue, for
Instance, doesn’t really explain it. Rather, it’s about a guy who breaks into a castle and ends up banging a noble man’s wife because he valued sex more than the money he stole. Perhaps the idea is that the gray fox was only able to concretely unify the around a mission of philanthropy.
If the Guild focused on selfish profit, it would constantly be betrayed for money like we see happen with Iran. So it’s easy to speculate when the game neither nor tells us what the point of this is because Todd Howard decided he wanted it to be a
Personally exciting story and had all the parts about the organization itself cut. If I could add the parts of the sequence where I stood in a corner and ground levels, then the entire guild as a four hour distraction is shorter than the six hour majors guild and eight
Hour Fighters Guild, because it was decided that having fluff was bad. Some might call this trim inefficient. I personally call it starved of context and again, to the benefit of what. Exactly. Bruce Nesmith joined Bethesda with Dagger Fall and having a career working on modules for DH, and he worked under
Ken Ralston, who joined Bethesda with Battle Spire, who also had his roots in Tabletop gaming. In fact, Ralston and Nesmith had worked together on Link Moore City of Adventure in 1985. I just spent like an hour reading about Dungeons and Dragons,
And I’ve come to the conclusion generally their Thieves Guild don’t tend to operate like how they do in Oblivion Shadow. An interesting thing to note is that a cave underneath castle armor knocks is in fact the home of the
Thief. DLC Holm Dunn Burakov. It’s a pirate themed home with lots of features. The basic law details is that The Cove is the burial place of the Black Flag, a ship belonging to infamous pirate Captain Duggal, whose
Death marked the beginning of the Ember Knox reign in Anvil and his from Pirate Haven to Imperial City. You clear out the cove, which is full of skeletons now. Claim it for yourself and then purchase upgrades for
The ship. These upgrades as you buy them. Come with crewmen, a merchant, a fence, a security trainer, a marksman supplier and trainer. And a weapons merchant and sneak trainer. Once you have the complete crew, you can send them
Out plundering and after a week in game time, they will return with 100 times your level in gold maxing at 2000. This DLC is part Red Guard and part Pirates of the Caribbean, but I always liked it. Having a living fence means an easy way to store and gradually offload your merchandise,
Even if that’s not really a big issue in Oblivion. You can also get some pretty powerful sabers that do quite a bit of damage. They max out at Ebony, but that’s not a bad thing. Having a fence does somewhat break the Thieves Guild, since the whole premise of joining is gaining access to
That service. And he isn’t just a fence, he’s a better fence than the best you unlock from the guild. He has 1500 gold like the best fence, but has a consistent place you can find him. Unlike Mathis Pulis, who travels between
Coral, the Imperial City Fathers, is also a master of Mercantile, so it’s harder to get good prices with him. This DLC also provides easier access to enchanted arrows, which continue to be an experimental idea. Elder
Scrolls has gone back and forth on this. Back in Morrowind, you could find enchanted arrows, but not too consistently, mostly from lists. There was also a free plugin that added an NPC who sold arrows with area of effect enchantments, but it’s somewhat obscure and isn’t shipped with the steam version of the game.
Oblivion limited it to a couple NPCs the drop them some that carry but don’t sell them and one that does sell them but gets killed as part of a quest. Millions Sells enchanted arrows but only a couple. If you want to absolutely maximize your damage, then you’ll need them. Honestly,
I wouldn’t mind having the ability to arrows. It would be annoying to do them one at a time. Sure. So maybe a single soul can enchant 20 arrows all at once. It might actually help me break the
Habit of saving all my valuable arrows for never getting used. There’s also a chest that comes with the cove that can’t be opened. Designed for players who wish to practice their security skill. While this house has a lot of upsides, the only downside is there’s no fast travel point straight to it.
So you always have to run a small distance from Anvil to reach it. And It’s in the corner of the map. If you’re not doing a fast travel playthrough by now, we’ve established that the Thieves Guild is a morally good faction roleplaying as bad guys. So let’s discuss the actual
Evil faction in Oblivion. The dark Brotherhood. This is the work of one Emil Pagliarulo. Not that he would let you forget it. What he would like you to forget is the Arena. Which is why it’s a fitting conclusion to the factions. Starting and ending with the same designer,
Emil Pagliarulo, in recent times has come under fire for his work on Fallout four and his general mentality towards writing and how he handles criticism, which is to say he doesn’t. So let’s take it back to the beginning. To thief Emil didn’t work on this game. Rather, he was a popular
Reviewer and eventually in chief at Adrenaline Vault, who was hired on to work on three, five, two levels. Two months after the game’s release, Looking Glass Studios closed down after two years working on presumably anachronistic status. Sorry, Deus Ex, Invisible War and Thief Deadly Shadows at Iron Austin.
Emil apparently reached out to his friend from his days of working at a journal and vault. None other than the great Pete Hines, VP of Marketing in Bethesda. He also apparently knew Todd while working at Iron Austin. Yep.
Emil went on to do side quests, work on Blood Moon. I pointed out in the Morrowind video that the Blood Moon side quests were a bit referential, but that’s a pretty good foot in the door as far as Bethesda designers go.
And Oblivion was his big shot. Skipping ahead, the dark Brotherhood was far and away considered a highlight of Oblivion. Ken Ralston left Bethesda in the lead design position, was open for the taking on Fallout three in only five years and one game, Emil had
Gone from a junior designer to the lead designer at Bethesda. Bruce Nesmith, second place for his work on the Thieves Guild, will take on the lead designer role for Skyrim, with Emil getting credited as a senior designer and writer separate from the plebs.
Emil would then get Fallout four as lead designer again, and that was when he started getting criticized for his work. Fallout will have to come another day. For now, let’s stick to his work on Oblivion.
Let’s keep it to the simple question. Is the dark brotherhood really that good? To join, you have to murder someone. Chances are, if you’re playing unpatched Oblivion for more than 10 hours, you already have. Not because You’re a monster per se. But because what gets counted as murder can be goofy.
The gray Prince. If you do his quest and he asks you to kill him, is it originally counted as murder? The game. Kevin Alder, The Ultima Woman Whaling merchants on the Anvil Road in the Majors Guild is another person the player may be credited for murdering if they kill her early.
Umbra If you visit her out of sequence, will also be counted as murder when killed. You’ll know it when you see the words you’re killing has been observed by forces . Personally, I think this ruins the surprise of Lucy
And the chance visit when you sleep. And I don’t see any benefit to the message. I do understand how the Brotherhood witnesses a murder in the middle of nowhere without having spent months telling me and the power of this.
I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said it like that. Anyways, I send the adoring fan flying and after an hour’s rest at the top of this cliff, Lachance arrives to La Chance. Arrives to induct us into the Brotherhood. Murders. All right. But I’m not prepared to be associated with an
Organization that utilizes teleport Haitian magic. That kind of criminality is a step too far. All right, West Johnson, show us some vocal range. You sleep rather soundly for a murderer. That’s good. You’ll need a clear conscience for what I’m about to propose. The
Chances in just one of the best sounding characters in the game that wasn’t listed in Todd Howard’s star studded cast. His character model also looks like a normal human being. Like everyone hopes of Martin, But that face might have looked mediocre at best. Discuss Later.
While the challenge may have gotten special attention to his face right now. Let’s hear him out. I bear an offering, an opportunity to join our rather unique family. Now, what’s great is you can kill the chance here. Ending the quest and closing him off from the dark brotherhood.
Or you can let him do it himself. Your path is clear. Send Rufio to his death. And the dark brotherhood will embrace you as family. Anyways, in order to complete our induction, we need to take this ebony
Blade of well and kill a man named Rufio at the inevitable moment. The blade itself is rather weak, though comparable in damage to a steel dagger and using its arsenal, its full strength gets drawn out later. So let’s get our hand on a real knife. Maroons Razor. The razor
Wasn’t part of the base game, otherwise it would have been the perfect sacrifice to Martin. Rather, it came as a DLC for $3. It Comes with a massive dungeon, a couple of new items, and the titular razor.
We start the game and hear an omniscient rumor that points us to center Kliff Watch where a rogue tell Varney, Give it up, everybody. This may be the last time we see Rogue tell Varney the dungeon is extensive, going from fort to cave to alien ruins, starting with
Dunmore mercenaries who we eventually see battling with the vampire natives of this ruin. And you can easily see why it’s well remembered. We see how the people here are living with little stories that can be learned about the goings on here. It’s also obviously
Chock of Morrowind references at least the surface level. At the end we find the long buried Maroons razor long buried, and it definitely didn’t show up in Morrowind. Six years prior or Dagger fall ten years before that. I’m just poking fun. Half the places
Artifacts end up tend to be goofy. Like that time Orioles Bow was hidden in the Forgotten Vale for thousands of years, but also in the hands of an auditor at the Ghost Gate. Anyways, we end with a final confrontation between ourselves, the guardian of the blade and the rogue tail.
Varney Our end reward is the razor, a powerful dagger which has the chance of instantly killing your opponent. Scale to the player’s luck attribute. The dagger actually works the same way in Skyrim, except since there isn’t a luck attribute, its maximum chance
Is now the minimum as well. Anyways, this is a much more fitting dagger for an assassin. If there wasn’t an even better tool. The bow. We’ll get into that later. For now, let’s get into the dark brotherhood. We head out to The Omen, also known as the Tavern of Transparent Portent. The
Publican won’t think anything of us asking about Rufio, even when he ends up dead. The tavern keeper is also the only NPC in the game to purchase stolen goods that isn’t aligned with a faction.
The task is simple and the thrust of the quest is more so the implication of the player actually going through with it. Rufio doesn’t fight back and sleeps 20 hours a day. We can actually get some clues
About who it is that wants Rufio dead. The Blackhorse Courier ran an article about Knight mother ritual, stating one Claudius Arcadia had performed the sacrament that summons a brotherhood representative. Later in the questline, we get the key. We need to visit Arcadius house and find
His journal indicating he was the one to hire the Brotherhood to kill Rufio. But he doesn’t get a motive beyond revenge. Rufio. If you managed to kill him during his waking hours, will hint that he had killed a woman. That’s the extent of it.
And it means we’re not really bad guys. So the deed is done. TALOS US with Corpus going around, we need to social distance. So Lucien explains the rules and structures of the brotherhood makes sense. Unlike the other guilds, which generally let us in for a little effort, we’ve made a commitment to
Come this far. Unfortunately, this means we may have also signed up for a cult like Maroons raiser. The Dark Brotherhood was all over the place throughout the series until Oblivion starting to see this God of Death
Worshipers transferring to a follow in dagger form. Then it turned out that the more Achtung were the original, the fall worshipers and the dark brotherhood had broken off from them. They weren’t characterized as particularly religious and
Moral. And in fact, during the more Achtung Questline, they’re mostly characterized as a religious and money focused. While the Achtung are the ones with values. Macfarlane’s quest even starts in the Tong headquarters. Smith has also undergone some back and forth in the series. He’s not part
Of the Rick or Diedrich Pantheon. He started life as a generic death God and a step sideways into a position of representing chaos. What chaos has to do with dressing in BDSM? Tight leather and pleasuring yourself in the act of murder? I couldn’t tell you. It’s almost like it’s
A superficial downgrade from the pragmatic assassins of before. And no, just because one of sprites and dagger fall shirtless doesn’t excuse it. Every faction had half naked sprites and dagger fall. At best, I can say the only reason Oblivion made the dark brotherhood so colorful was maybe a ratings reason.
Like Bethesda was worried if the professional assassins were well-adjusted people, there might be backlash. Or maybe it’s just stylized meant to be that way. Well, the game got off on the gore, but ended up having hidden titty models be its downfall. Or, as I’ve alluded to already, it’s possible Bethesda wasn’t
Entirely comfortable giving the player a genuinely evil faction and ratcheted up the cheese factor to 11. If you look at the the the fiction of the Dark Brotherhood, it’s in Oblivion. It’s actually sort of like dark, perverted version of the Catholic Church. You
Know, there is the set, this is God and the Knight mother is Mary. And I just sort of took those experiences and sort of flip them around. I wanted to have it. I wanted to I wanted to have a certain tone like, you know, a very sort of I, I didn’t want
The player to be that grisly in what he did. So, like, the tone is more like it’s very sort of darkly comedic. And I thought the player if you do dark brotherhood, the player is guilty by
Association like I was able to like the other people who were in the dark brotherhood with you. Your other family members are like, they’re like the psychotic. Like there’s the one who talks about, you know, killing a little girl at a birthday party and there’s everybody else is
Way more evil than you. But you feel guilty by association just hanging around them. Here’s your free set of shrouded armor outside of its marginal enchantment. You can easily do better. The only notable property is that since they have value of zero, that can be fully repaired
By a smith for only one gold. We’re sent a vision to the resident vampire and he gives our first job in a general pattern for the Guild. You a job. You may get an additional condition that will pay extra, and then you can ask your guild mates for advice on completing the job.
Why should anyone bother with all that sneaking and skulking? Yes. Yes, of course. I value our secrets and I’ve never betrayed them. But using stealth to kill, it’s just so weak. Bonuses are useless, I say. Gold and magical trinkets are no substitute for the freedom to slaughter anyone I please at
Any time. Oh, go, Granny. You’re not. This may be crude, but Your heart is always in the right place. Our first task is to sneak aboard a ship docked at the waterfront and assassinate its captain. The first mate has been giving us trouble the entire game. And any time we got near
The ship, which is often considering, they parked it right next to my house in the Imperial City. Beautiful, isn’t she? The Maria Lina damned fine ship with a damn fine crew. I should know. I’m her first mate, so believe me when I tell we don’t like it when people
Snoop around in our affairs. Go grow on figures that since we aren’t getting a bonus, we might as well go in guns blazing. It’ll give us the option to use a one liner. Also scratched the line about go grind, killing a six year old at her birthday party off your bingo card.
Kill a little gnawed girl. Antonietta, meanwhile, will say the ship may be full of nooks and crannies to hide in. Thanks for the advice, guys. Our options are to go in through the main deck, but have our hands full of pirates who the guards will actually assist us against because Oblivion can’t do
Trespassing in exterior cells. We can hop up onto the balcony and break into the cabin directly. Or we can stow aboard some cargo and sneak through the ship. So we’ve got options once we get to the cabin, we could just stab the captain. But that draws the
Attention of the pirates. Instead, this quest is the debut of the poisoned Apple. Simply place it down and then viciously down every other piece of food in the area. And then after several minutes of waiting in place, watch as he eats the apple and then spends the next 30 seconds slowly
Dying before eventually wrangling in his chair. I mean, I market, but yeah, that’s cool. I remember when Morrowind tried to poison inquest. It didn’t work that well. But how does the lore feel about murder? Oblivion has made his commission
Murder easier than Morrowind, which is funny considering the more active long had writs making the assassinations legal. There still isn’t a good witness system, so you have people who can report their own murders. Murder also earns you infamy points, but only if it meets the arbitrary marker
Of murder. And infamy can easily be cleared out by completing a pilgrimage to the Nine Divines. The problem that leads to a lot of quick loads is the hyperactive guards. They don’t just chase you through the streets now, but when they’ll come in and pursue you into buildings
As well. Even going so far as to instantaneously manifest inside homes when you assault someone. God, stop. Crime in Oblivion was at an awkward crossroads. The Simplicity of Morrowind didn’t work and it wasn’t as sophisticated as it Skyrim incarnation. Which is why for a lot of people, the Oblivion Guards symbolize the game.
But let’s not fooled. You know, each faction, barring the Arena, starts with a question of the players given multiple paths to completion. Surely it won’t hold. Right? Our next task is to assassinate a bomber named Balan with a bonus if we drop a mounted
Head that hangs over his favorite chair onto his head. And yeah, it’s that easy. I Think this quest suffers from giving the player way too much information to start? Like, maybe the bonus could just specify that Balan needs to die in an accident. As in not be found with wounds that could
Point to murder or poison in his blood, and the player could work out the rest from clues in his house, like a note saying he needs someone nimble to get into the crawl space to tighten up the mounted head.
It’s Fairly obvious this is an inheritance play given that Balan’s nephew moves in not long after. Our next target is Val Andress, our former lawyer that got us a multi-year prison sentence in Tamriel. Actually, I find it funny that Claudius Arcadia is serving a permanent sentence for
Hiring a murderer, but would only serve a ten day sentence if they’d killed Rufio themselves. Hell, honestly, given my average rate in the Brotherhood, I’d say it’s probably cheaper to do it yourself and pay off the bounty instead of paying the brotherhood. Obviously this
Is a game play concession. Don’t get mad. This quest is fun in that you have to retrace your steps through the tutorial and see just how short it could have been, but it wasn’t. Our bonus comes from completing this job without killing any guards. If the bonuses come from
The clients, as is an implied, it’s possible whoever wants dressed dead works at the prison and wants to die before his upcoming release. It doesn’t help that the Legion had recently busted in and decided to publicize the materials of the Black Sacrament in leads for researching the ritual.
Wait. I know you. You You’re the one. The day the Emperor was killed, they went through your cell. You lucky bastard. But you came back. Come on. You’ve got to help me. Let old villain out of this cell. You’ve got your freedom. Now give
Me mine. What do you say, huh? Come on, friend. Yeah. No. After that, fast. You call the legal defense. What? You felt the little nugget. When I get out of here, you are dead. You hear me? Dead. Ah. Bonus is the scales of pitiless justice, which. Okay, so they fortify strength,
Agility and intelligence by two points at the cost of two points of personality. They don’t work like a typical fortify item because they aren’t an equitable item, so it has to run off a script. It’s just an odd item because of how not weak, but how minimal its effect is
A powerful tool indeed. I think it needed a second design pass personally. Our next job is to cut our client with a poison knife which will allow him to fake his own death order to escape debt. He owes money to the wrong kind of people.
Yeah, I guess owing money to the Fighters Guild can be rough. Seriously, is there a secret underground bank? Any out loans to people with bad terms? Or was there a payday loan office in Brazil that I just barely missed? Francois here wants us to do it in front of the unnamed organization’s enforcer.
Then, after a day were to sneak into the chapel, Undercroft and revive him with the antidote. You can actually fail this if Francois dies or if we go against the terms and kill the and the consequences are handled
Properly, we aren’t rewarded. Our rank is delayed in our relationship with our bosses worsened, albeit in a really extreme manner. Vision de deciding to kick her ass for messing the job up is a bit extreme. Still, I have to appreciate
That the player is at least allowed to fail despite the fact that failure is more difficult than success here. That’s our final contract from Vincent. Although he does have a final offer as a vampire, I may my gift on to others as I see fit. You have served me well,
And I choose now to extend that gift to you. Shall I use my dark powers and turn you into a vampire? Awesome. Let’s do it. Wait. What kind of vampire? The cosmopolitan hide inside your house. Starving. Sierra Delic clan. Vocal horror. What? I was
Stricken with vampirism 300 years ago while on an expedition deep into the ash lands of Varden fell. Yeah. What clan? Normally, I’d hope Brandy. But willpower is my dumb stat now, so I’m really hoping for Quora. Oh, well, I guess he was lying since we still end up being Cyrillic vampire.
But our transformation will complete until after we finish the questline because it takes three days. And believe me, the rest of the questline not take that long. We’re taking jobs from Yeshiva now. The Oregonian, who greeted us at the door when we first arrived.
Her first contract is To Kill Felon and Ultimate Scum addict in the Imperial City. However, our bonuses to avoid doing it in public as that would draw the attention of the Legion. We can ask the aliens girlfriend about him, which should raise a red flag but
Doesn’t. We can also ask for Alien who only talks if we provide him schema. Either path points at law Commerce House in the afternoon, which is where family hides to do a schema. This satisfies the condition of making the murder not public, but doesn’t answer the question of who exactly wants fairly
And dead. I think it’s the girlfriend because she talks like she wants him to reform and he’s already lost all his money. So it’s not an inheritance play. The publican of the Tiber SEPTA Motel, where the two stay. Maybe she doesn’t have anything nice
To say about Filion, but that isn’t a motive, especially with how dangerous the Black Sacrament would be to her reputation. A guy got life in prison for the ritual for actual revenge, let alone just an eviction. You can find law. C’mere. The homeowner dead in the basement. A trainer refers to The house
Is deserted. The freshness of work Mare’s corpse and the place is already trashed. My theory thus is that Fillion’s summoned the dark brotherhood upon himself, which holes in it? I know, but we have the body parts, the dagger, the candles. The only thing that will
Complete this picture would be to have the nightshade leaves still. And the Blackhorse Courier literally printed the entire ritual in their newspaper. So maybe in a haze fairly and reproduced it. The only problem is how would fairly and pay for our services.
He’s broke. And even if he had the money, wouldn’t the brother who came to arrange the murder just stab him on the spot? Don’t tell me it was made a legit contract as a challenger test either. Beilein was more of a test. Our bonus reward shows a similar
Level of amateur design. Shadow Hunt’s bottom two effects turn on in weakness to poison. Don’t actually do anything. They don’t have a duration, meaning that the undead hit would flee and rally in the same
Second. And weakness? The poison doesn’t work for the poison that attack. You have to weaken first and poison second. But the weakness effect would fade before then. So it’s worthless. The damage value also just a hair above steel and
Quickly made irrelevant by generic loot except in weight, which is such a pedantic category to favor a weapon for. If you hold out until level 30 to get the best possible effect values, you’ll already have plentiful access to Dedrick
Bows and grand souls to do better. You might counter that you can’t get a damage health and magic effect to that powerful with the grand soul. And I would say one how did they enchant this weapon and to damage Magica is such a meme
In a game where every enemy has regenerating magica, especially since just focusing damage works way better in Oblivion. So we get our next quests to take care of a warlord who’s taken up residence at Fort Such
And we need to make it look like his illness has taken his life by switching out his medicine with poison whilst undetected. Cool. But I think this quest highlights a problem with the general writing behind the Dark Brotherhood, which is that it fumbles a lot of the details.
It feels like Rolston really needed to be more active in making sure that Mule was developing his ideas correctly. You might be surprised to learn that Warlord as a title is exceedingly rare in Elder Scrolls. It’s actually
More so used to describe generic, high level enemies like orc, warlords and dagger fall drag warlords and Morrowind and Marauder warlords in Oblivion than it is to describe characters like warlord Gath Rick in Skyrim. That’s a super minor thing, but seeing that word made it really stand out to me.
Look at it like this. Rufio was staying in a place called the of Ill Omen. There’s a pirate ship docked in the Imperial City waterfront feet from guards searching for the gray fox. Someone has hired a manservant, a prisoner is serving a multi-year sentence.
An criminal organization is sending enforcers to kill people on the principle of owing money. A house in a luxurious part of imperial capital city is deserted with a body rotting inside it. An scuba addict using it as a den. And now there’s a warlord with mercenaries controlling a fort.
None of these things are wrong per se, but they are incongruent with Oblivion and Elder scrolls. It’s a slight deviation in the pattern. The problem is that and Nesmith weren’t in harmony with Chapin, Nelson and Coleman. I mean, Ralston said as much in an interview, quote, I was the one who sketched the
General history, the history of the different factions. But this time I strongly encouraged the designers to move away from these models or even ignore them completely, depending on their tastes and skills.
Source 11 And Emile agrees. In the fifth anniversary podcast, Dark Brotherhood was was cool because I took a different approach. Like I didn’t
Know a lot about the Elder Scrolls Lore. So I sort of I took a step back from it and I, I grew up a good Catholic boy and in, in Boston. So I,
I suppose, we should talk about Pagliarulo is resume of the thief two levels if you don’t know thief two was a counterpoint to thief and that the levels were designed first and the story was wrapped around whereas Thief one wrote a story first and made levels around those story beats.
And the end result of that was that nobody really agrees which game was better. But it may inform the design of the dark Brotherhood quests. After all, many of them sound like they were designed first and written second. Like someone wrote down the idea guy fixes on death on a whiteboard and then
Made a quest. And thanks to the contract nature of the dark Brotherhood, it’s able to fit together. But a lot of the missions read like white board level ideas, sneak aboard a pirate ship, do the tutorial backwards, replace the guy’s medicine with
Poison. And again, it doesn’t really seem to hold any advantage over, say, Ned Smith style, writing out a story first and making the missions around it. But it does have its disadvantages. Firstly, if it’s fair to criticize the Fighters Guild for not entirely being about the conflict with, the
Blackwood Company, then it’s absolutely fair to criticize the Dark Brotherhood for waiting until the halfway point to tell a consistent narrative. Note that I disagree with this notion. The Brotherhood can be about contract assassinations all day. It’s just a stylistic difference.
But these disconnected level ideas seem to have spawned the tendency of the dark Brotherhood to be off with the little details because, again, in a vacuum, they don’t really stand out. It is kind of weird that you got the guy who worked on Thief to make
The Dark and the guy who worked on Dungeons and Dragons to make the Thieves Guild, but I’ll assume that’s what they all wanted. So how are Emile’s thief? Two levels. His first levels Eavesdropping. In this mission, we break into a church and overhear a meeting.
We then have to steal a safe deposit box key, make a wax impression, and return it. Which means a lot of backtracking through the level. I think my work here is done. The key location is actually random, so I probably just happened to get
The worst location, which was the top of the eastern tower on the opposite side of the building from the wax. His last mission is precious cargo, which is the level where you find the underground base, a
Lighthouse. And then there’s life of the party, which, as everyone says, is really two levels inside of one. I found a meal to be a bit key heavy in its design. Precious is two separate levels, separated by a single locked door. In the main thrust of the final part of the mission
Is just finding a key. And then there’s life of the party. Yeah. The rooftop sequence is pretty good, but the actual mechanism tower is super tedious in my opinion. The key to the guys office is in the ballroom 20 feet away, and the objective where
You find the scriptures annoying because it’s hidden in boxes that don’t show any external indicators that they can be locked, picked like every other single lock in thief too. So I spent a while searching for keys to them that just didn’t exist.
It wasn’t very exciting to have the alarm going off as they escaped, considering I’d already knocked everyone in the building out during the numerous backtracks had to do while searching for all the recordings. I don’t know. I just liked the bank mission and the one at
The sheriff’s office. Way more. Bigger doesn’t mean better. You have to earn your immensity. My opinion? Most of the actual level is the same size as any other level in Thief too. There’s just more filler that would logically exist in life of the party and
A lot of fun moments to set it apart. But now we’re at the point that everyone discusses the pivotal moment. Whodunnit. A murder mystery where we play the murderer. Our bonus comes from not being suspected by the other guests. I am guessing this is
To a surface and not actually a condition of our contract. All five guests form a complicated web of relationships, and there are many different ways to do the quest. Turning the guests against each other. Now, I’ll tell you what. I didn’t tell everyone else.
This quest is broken. Without the official patch, the guests can actually detect. When you murder someone with melee, you can run in fist swinging and drop everyone in 15 seconds. Even with the patch, it’s not difficult. In the harder you push it, the more
Ridiculous it becomes. The guests all have ESP and know when the others have been slain. Even if it happened 2 seconds prior on a different floor. Ground. This house is a death trap for being killed off one by one. If you use illusion spells like frenzy,
Rally and command, you can completely break this. Watches the old woman murders all the guests around her and nobody suspects her. Even if they watch her do it. Drop poisoned apples everywhere and watches all but one of the guests them anyways, even after
Their fellow guests died from the poison. Now, let’s be fair. The complexity of this quest and the sheer amount of dialog that had to be recorded, especially in of the 26 release, is impressive. It’s a shame the only people trying to one up it are in the multiplayer space.
It seems like there would be a fantastic opportunity to make a murder work in Elder Scrolls, where the player has the power to influence other people to become the murderer. I hope Elder Scrolls six recreates this premise,
But accounts for all the different disposition options because well, disposition will come back in the illusion magic won’t be cut because it’d be cool to see a version of this quest that responds to power gaming in some way.
So for sissies sake, do not wear your hood. You have the incentive to do the bonus condition and not just kill everyone as fast as possible as the bonuses to free skill points in marksman security, sneak acrobatics and blade. I do have to wonder if the
Inability to fail in the console ports has contributed to the popularity of this quest. The premise alone convinces people to do the quest through dialog. Isolating guests and slowly picking them off. The Dark Brotherhood features a great deal more dialog than any of the other question.
Oblivion, usually with three consistent personality. If there’s one thing I can’t criticize Fallout three for, it’s expanding the number of dialog options given to the player over Elder Scrolls. Sorry kid. Pale Cub Scouts and you look pretty broke to me. You grownups are all the same. All you care
About is your stuff. My papa is missing, and I think the ants may have gotten him. Hope they get you to one. Philosophy isn’t better than the other. However, I would just prefer Elder Scrolls keep doing its thing
And not feel compelled by other games until leaning into their BioWare CD Projekt Red of player dialog. However, the elephant in the room with Oblivion dialog is the transition from the text based dialog of Morrowind to a fully
Voiced acted dialog system in Oblivion. In my last video, I presented the idea that text based dialog was superior to full voice acting for a few reasons. One is that from a designer perspective, it’s far easier to implement quests with textual dialog
Than it is voice acting, because voice acting adds additional considerations when it comes to disk space and voice actor pay. I mean, one the things I don’t know, people know this, but one of the things we really struggled on Oblivion is,
You know, fitting all the audio assets on the disc and we had too much dialog. However, the downside of this is that most people don’t like text based dialog because they can’t read. One interesting outcome of the more when video was
A mix of dyslexic people who disagree on Morrowind, some argued the game and helped them overcome their condition. Others argued that it inhibited them from getting into the game. Then the topic of text to speech came up
Using a rudimentary mind. Give all the dialog basic voice acting. In the time since writing my Morrowind video and now there’s been a significant advancement in using A.I. learning for text to speech to the point that Witcher three are able to create rudimentary dialog for Geralt without needing the voice actor.
One of my big oppositions to voice acting in the Elder Scrolls was the inhibition of quest mods. My first run in with this was the false guard mod back in 2013. Less the mod area itself and more the
Contrast in quality from the regular NPCs to the one in Skyrim. That element of textual dialog being a benefit for designers goes doubly so for modders who don’t have as consistent access to voice talent. OB VA, however, is a tool created for mod makers to synthesize new dialog using A.I. trained on
The game’s existing dialog. I can make the NPC say whatever I want and there is nothing to stop and subscribe to patrician TV now. The thing is, you and I are both fully aware the Bethesda and
Other studios with budgets higher than the price of a car or never going back to the text based. In fact, I was pretty confident that it was a dead issue in the Morrowind video. I more so made my case as a demonstration of the advantages of the system. The
Thing is, I stand that position. Just like with fast travel and quest markers, there’s no reason there can’t be a middle ground in text based dialog as well. Thing is, all of this dialog already textual exists in the game because it’s in the
Subtitles. Whenever I actually play Oblivion or Skyrim, I usually just read through the words on screen and skip on to the next line of dialog. I very rarely just sit back and listen to NPCs talk, so this is what dialog actually looks like when I play for myself.
The sixth guest has finally arrived. Whoever invited us here must at least know us. Don’t you think the rest of us have already treated introductions? Now, who might you be? I can read very quickly a necessary part of both my job and my hobbies. Plus, it doesn’t help that Oblivion and even
Skyrim have awkward, noticeable pauses between lines of dialog or being stalked like in the forest. I’m still not sure if the killer is one of the other guests or is hiding somewhere in the house. One thing I do know is that the killer won’t just stop with two. They never do.
You and I, we need to watch each other’s backs. I’ve got my old legion armor and sword in a chest upstairs. It’s. I geared up and showed this coward just who he’s dealing with now.
My proposed system would be a toggle option between a classic window and a normal window for dialog. Normal modern dialog would happen, as always, in real time, with options
Occasionally appearing when available in the classic window, dialog would appear in a text box, additional either unspoken or radiantly generated dialog that would appear as well.
This way you could include that superfluous information that slows a normal conversation and down normies can play a version of the game that’s fast and quick and just follow
The quest markers while role players can get the additional dialog with all those directions and lore details and encyclopedic dialog people like to complain about in Morrowind. However, this design philosophy requires two things a desire to cater to all fans
Of the series, new and old and the drive to do that extra work. I think Nehls drinks to forget we’re on a Chivas final quest. We’ve been authorized to take down a famous Phyllida, who, you know, the guy we were supposed to avoid in the Imperial City.
The the guy who’s been spearheading the campaign against the dark Brotherhood. Adams Phyllida The guy is supposed to be an antagonist for the Dark Brotherhood, but because he’s only mentioned in passing once and otherwise only exists in a newspaper article, he just doesn’t have the presence
That Hieronymus Lex had. This is one of those disadvantages of the disconnected quest design theory. For all its benefits, it’s hard to have an antagonist in a storyline with so many disjointed missions. Tying a thread between all of these quests to involve Phyllida is effectively impossible. Which is a shame
Because Phyllida is said to have both interfered with contracts and to have survived three different assassination attempts. Maybe he could have shown up during the job in the prison and interfered with the contract.
Like we kill our target. And then he appears and now we have to escape him because our conditions say that we can’t kill him. Maybe it’s even possible The guards intentionally drew us here to kill a prisoner or to increase the likelihood of
Him us. Regardless, Phyllida is retiring now and has moved down to Leeuwin. But the Brotherhood being spiteful pricks want to have the final word, so they fashioned two rows of ciphers, Special arrow, which will instantly kill its target.
In this case, Phyllida. He lives in his armor, however, and the game won’t recognize if we nail the shot through the slit in his helmet. He only it off to sleep and for swims hitting him when he sleeps is difficult, but possible depending on how hard you power game. He has
A bodyguard which maintains a constant vigil over him, sleeping and breaking into the city. Watch barracks itself is a challenge. Each door is lit and under constant supervision, with only a small lip that the player can lockpick the door from. If we go invisible immediately, the bodyguard should open the door.
We had to fill it as room. And then from the corner we shoot the rose. We have to shoot from here because we’ll become visible when we start to draw our arrow and in that time can be caught if we’re standing anywhere else.
This is not how the quest is meant to be completed, as evidenced by the ever awake bodyguard. So to do it right have to follow Phyllida around until he eventually goes for a five hour swim in the public watering hole. This man only sleeps 4 hours
A night, so he spends more time of the day, the water than he does in his bed. Was his first passion, endurance, swimming. And he only settled for the Legion. Either way, Phyllida is dead, and
We cut off the finger wearing his legion ring. We place in his replacements desk. This is our bonus objective, which exists so we can send a message knowing what happens next. Makes this gesture quite ironic. Our work with Akiva
Is done, and we’ve received a letter from our recruiter, Lucien, inviting us out to his hideout at Fort Farragut. It’s a dungeon quest set in a generic fort full of undead. Yes, I’ll acknowledge the back door, but you have to admit that most players aren’t going to find it on their initial arrival,
Considering it’s facing 180 degrees away from the road and checking for back doors just isn’t consistent in Oblivion. We meet with Lucien, who is impressed with our career and has a use for us. A traitor has infested the brotherhood and they are most certainly, definitely in the shade and
Hall branch. We’re new, having only been with the Guild for at most a week, so we’re cleared of suspicion. Thus there is only one path a thorough investigation and spy system to monitor all Guild Hall members for traitorous behavior. No where to murder everyone in the right of purification.
This is pure pathos, as the purification is both an absurd ritual and dissonant with other law. Its only motive is to pit the player against NPCs the player may have formed a connection with in order to drive home emotionally
Resonant point that the player is a murderer. Take another read at it and the player will be responsible for dispatching a group of evil murderers while themselves barely their own hands with the blood of innocents. Kill a little Nord girl and the Dark Brotherhood. Which was cool because I took a
Different approach. Like didn’t know a lot about the Elder Scrolls lore. So I sort of. I took a step back from it, and I. I grew up a good Catholic boy and in Boston. So I if you look at the the the fiction of the Dark Brotherhood, it’s in Oblivion.
It’s actually sort of like dark, perverted version of the Catholic. You know, there is the sit this is God and the night mother is Mary. And I just sort of took those experiences and sort of flipped them around. I wanted to have it. I wanted to I to have a certain tone
Like, you know, very sort of I, I didn’t want the player to be that grisly and what he did. So, like the tone is more like it’s very sort of darkly comedic. And I the player, if you do the dark brotherhood,
The player is guilty by association like I was able to like the people who were in the dark brotherhood with you. Your other family members are like, they’re like the psychotic. Like, there’s the one guy who talks
About, you know, killing a little girl on her birthday party and as everybody else is way more evil than you. But you feel guilty by association just by hanging around them. And a game like Oblivion, where you kill hundreds of people through the course of the game. What makes
It special about being an assassin? You know what I mean? Big deal. I can kill people. Okay? If you just think about it. How many people that go to frequent use?
So that’s why I try to, like, work in some of the novelty, like, you know, dropping the head on the guy and, you know, it’s obvious again that the idea came first. Some of the assassins in the sanctuary have strengths and weaknesses the
Player can account for, like placing garlic on Vincent Chase person to weaken him. The player can also miss out on two quests if they rush the questline like losing the chance to be properly sired as a vampire or the renegade shadow Quest.
The Shadow scale quest is interesting. One of the titular shadow scales and Oregonian, born under the Shadow sign, has broken the code by abandoning his life in the Brotherhood. It’s kind of weird. The shadow Scales vowed not to harm other shadow scales, because how are they normally supposed to
Deal with situations like this? Otherwise, we track the shadow scale down and he presents as a choice. We can take our proof, a shadow scale heart from a nearby corpse, and he’ll tell us where some loot
Is. Or we can kill him and take his heart. Or we play both sides, taking the false heart, getting the treasures location, and then killing the traitor. Your choice is entirely based on your character’s thought process. Wait, why is there a shadow corpse here where they dispatch to take care of him?
What about that vow? Anyways, we wipe out the sanctuary and we’re now officially a member of the Black Hand. The Black Hand is a reference to the Serbian secret society responsible for a couple of high profile assassinations, including Franz Ferdinand, which resulted in the crisis leading to the First World war. The
Organization works like this. There’s a listener who deals with the Night mother, and there are four speakers. Each of these speakers, in addition to presumably having their own sanctuary, We have a personal silencer, which is the role we now feel for
Lucien. We never see any of the other sanctuaries. We’re told they exist, but that for the secrecy of the Guild we can’t know about, which makes it weird that we so consistently operate outside of Shedden Hall, considering there must be sanctuaries in at least a couple of the
Cities we operated in just inefficient to have a Shedden Hall guy performing jobs in Coral or Leo when if there happens to be a sanctuary there. That’s all I’m saying. This marks the beginning of the second half of the guild where we receive
Our next orders with our payment from the prior job at various locations across Parador. We’ve also been gifted Shadow Muir, an immortal, powerful horse, and we ride off to the first dead drop. If we mark up what I really need because there is no God like horse [____], send your [_______] into shock.
Shadow Mirror is the fastest horse in the game, in addition to not being able to die. Which is funny considering you can still get him a nice of horse armor. Our first task is to drop a necromancer. Going through the process of becoming knowledge. We find his journal where he spends an entire
Paragraph discussing at length about how must never lose his vital factory during the process. And it’s done. This is another one of those whiteboard ideas that probably didn’t get as much time as was hoped. The dead drop quests are markedly simpler than the prior dark brotherhood
Quests, so I posit a theory that all the quests were created and then the ideas that got developed ended up as sanctuary quests, and the ideas that ended up just being Go to X and Kill. Why ended up as dead drop quests? Emil Pagliarulo is big Secret is a classic trick that all
Creatives consider some point. Put your best foot forward even if your work is terrible. If the first section can hold people, that increases your likelihood of success. That’s why the Questline starts with a good looking NPC using a unique voice who proceeds to disappear for 90% of the questline.
Indeed, it’s interesting how many people praised the dark Brotherhood while glossing over the latter half of the questline. It’s really telling that everyone’s example of the quirky dialog is the line where Gagarin says he killed the little girl because it’s the first piece of advice. Go Grand gives.
The player. Emil started strong, but it’s obvious he didn’t get to fully develop all of his ideas. Anyone who made it this far is going to write out the rest of the questline so it doesn’t to be as good. Next of kin has us killing a mother and then using a shopping list
To track down her four children. Note that by this stage we have long given up on hinting who hired the assassins. After this were sent to kill a martial artist in Bruma. No, not the master hand and trainer. Then we take on a psychopathic murderer hiding in a cave.
Then we get to our other standout where we have to track down a mobile merchant who travel secretly over the course of a week. What’s the news from the other parts of Tamriel? Rumor has it the
Narrow Marine has left Marlin on an expedition to occur here and has not been heard from since. It seems that these are turbulent times in the land of the murder. Not only is it a stand up for
Using a schedule and the actual in-game weekdays as a method of working out his location rather than a question. Oh, no. Sorry. We’re still given a question Marker. You have the choice of ambushing him on the road, murdering him and in or poisoning him with meat, which he’s allergic to.
It’s also possible he’ll have long since died while traveling the road, since he’s never flagged as essential. Which this is the point of essential flags, isn’t it? To make sure quests don’t end before they start. We’re then sent to get revenge on a Nordic murderer who fled
South Slime and finally a Basma in Brazil likes to parade to the statue of the lucky lady. Lucien arrives and congratulations on a job well done and were promoted to the leader of the faction.
The third dead drop is an marked change in the nature of the targets. We go after the dead drop orders. Icons change from a neat letter to a torn out page icon and the prose of orders changes markedly as
Well. Lucien is writing in spoken tone, lacks emotional inflection, his coldness spilling onto the page. After the second mission, the writing is suddenly much more emotional and plays more on our emotions as a killer. We’ve been
Taken for a ride, and despite possibly immediately noticing the change, there’s nothing the player do about it except play the fool. You can’t return to Lucien as you’ll go mysteriously missing until after Angela’s death in Brazil. You also can’t speak
To any of the targets who become immediately obvious as either skilled assassins or speakers with hints littered all over. Indeed, our most recent target was the listener of the dark Brotherhood himself. Despite still being more
Speakers and silencers to kill. This questline is as cynical as it gets about the players so sure that they will just follow the quest markers and not notice clues as to not provide the player with any measure of
Escaping this trap. Solutions pissed naturally, except the Black Hand is apparently blaming him and not us. No, no. We were just following orders. Which. Okay, that’s true. But if the black Hand is suspecting Lucien, he should be able to make an easy case by pointing out all the
Targets and dead drops. Lucien Assigned us that we just didn’t do. Anyways, rather than doing the smart thing and coming with us to Anvil to our next dead drop to investigate it. He instead decides to wait an Apple Watch despite stating that he’s being pursued by the black
Hand. Okay, buddy, it was nice knowing you. At our next dead drop, we confront the person who drops it off. But it’s just a Basma and Basma can’t be villains, so you’re free to go. He points us at the lighthouse, and after an intimidation play, we make it into the cellar.
It’s a bit rough, but fairly clean compared to the average Youtuber’s house. We find a severed head we telepathically intuit as belonging to the guy’s mother and a journal outlining all the points of this story. This kid
Watched his mom get assassinated, Lucien. So he joined the Brotherhood and has been slowly climbing the ranks until the day that he felt confident he could assassinate the entire black hand and the night mother herself. So Lucien has been murdered. Naturally. And it doesn’t matter if we slap the members of
The Black Hand with the journal itself. All of them will refuse to listen and our character will refuse to speak. Because this is a theme park. And we’re along for the ride. At midnight, we speak to Tarquin, who utilizes illegal teleportation magic to transport us to prevail.
I’m murder’s one thing, but there’s no coming back from a crime like this. Luckily, most of these characters die when the traitor reveals themself and we put them down. He did miss a spot, though. Honored listener I offer myself as your humble
Servant and guide. Please allow me to mentor you in your new role. I don’t need you. You’re lucky your flag essential. So Bella might was the traitor. And the only flaw in his plan was that the night Mother is a ghost. She’s known all along that
He was a traitor. Which, like, is she omniscient? Her seeing the rituals is fine, as well as her being able to watch her members of her cult. It’s all tied to her. But apparently she sees everything and elected not to tell anyone because she wanted this outcome.
Okay. If Mr. Next Listener Lucien Lachance was actually fated for that position, then you didn’t see this coming. Also, the purification is not complete. There’s still one dumb ass left to kill. But I know what you’re thinking. The nightmare has the benefit of her patron, Smiths, right?
If you believe in synthesis an entity, you are being had. This is my fault. Anticipation of Vivek. She’s big into murder and deception. So much so that she’s the data prince of those concepts. And this is Seth. This.
He’s a tumor. Despite representing the general concept of chaos as a duelist, a counterpoint to a new who represents the general concept of the writers have tried to cram synths into the mythos as a more active entity.
The book Fire in Darkness, which can be found during the Thieves Guild and not the Dark Brotherhood, attempts to, make the claim that the more tongue were in fact actually Smiths worshipers. Which would have no doubt
Been of immense interest to Vivek. The book makes what are likely intentionally poor arguments for this position. Like that, the more Achtung Assassins wrote poetry that were clearly dog whistles for synthesis worship. Guys, you have to trust me on this one, okay? They’re totally it’s clearly wrong because later it posits that Vivek
Stopped the more tongue from worshiping of Fala, which he largely didn’t. And then the book claims that Vivek allowed them to continue worshiping Synthes, which they never did. Dualism is a concept of two forces that balance each other,
Which in our world extended to religions like Hinduism and Zoroaster and ism, and then later Judeo Christianity. The idea is that you have a good God and knew that all the beggars praise and you have a bad God. PADMÉ. AK Seth is a new represents order Sith. This represents
Chaos reality than exists in the balance of these two forces. Too much a new is how the world was before this conflict. Orderly and dead. Too much stuff. This is how the world was during the mythic age, chaotic and difficult to live in. Both entities have been
Anthropomorphized by various religious sects on turn. But unlike Adrian Danger, which were verifiable entities that either used to or continue to interact with worshipers. Citizen And you don’t. The closest we get to a new
Doing anything, a new evil in the ultima pantheon whose sole action was giving Oriol his bow to kill Lorcan. In effect, this is a metaphorical explanation for why Oriol a gay archetype filled the position of time.
God, which was the news domain, is the conception of order. What about PADMÉ a.k.a. Surface? PADMÉ Like a new only a vicarious contribution to the world, which was his son, Lacan. If you’re not getting the picture yet,
Lacan and Natchitoches are the actual gods, and they simply each have a dualistic conception assigned to them. Ashutosh got order work and got chaos. But what about all the meddling Sith this does? He sends wraiths
Down to attack the player If they break tenets four and five and well, that’s basically it. And there’s nothing there to indicate that McFarlane isn’t the one doing that. But we get the word of worshipers of sith’s all end up being to some degree, insane latex bound fetishists trying to justify their actions.
Okay, but the night mother mentions this as well, even though the night mother is certainly just a follower in disguise. In essence, I posit that the worship of Sith, this is a ruse made up by a follower and probably more can. To some
Extent. We get access to deep Hollow, a DLC home for evil characters. Notable is that it has a shrine, Tacitus, which depicts a statue of a robed man missing a heart, which is a very striking visual choice to make when designing the statue.
It’s probably that this visual representation is inspired by Lacan. There are some other features of the house. We get a cattle cell containing a sleeping person that we can feed on. We get a small garden full of various poisonous plants and we get the font of
Renewal, which will cheaply and easily cure vampirism at any time without much effort. Given we just got this power and we already have a means of removing it. Let’s discuss vampirism. Oblivion overhauled vampirism into its more recognizable form in Skyrim. In Morrowind, vampires were effectively
Cursed with never being able to really do quests or use services in pieces ever again. Oblivion. A stage system where depending on how often you feed, you may be able to keep your vampirism under wraps.
At the first stage you’ll be able to move around outside without issue. You gain the hunter spell which cast night iron, detect life. We become immune to disease and paralysis or acrobatics, athletics, destruction, hand-to-hand, illusion, mysticism and sneak skills will all see a plus five bonus, as will our strength,
Willpower and speed attributes. We only have a 20% weakness to fire and a 5% normal weapon’s resistance. On the second day without blood, our skill and attribute bonuses go up to ten. Our weakness increases to
30% and our resistance goes up to 10%. We also start to take damage the sun, meaning we can no longer fast travel or wait outside during the day. We also gain the vampire seduction ability, which allows us to heavily
Charming NPC once a day on, the third day with our blood, our skill and attribute bonuses go up to 15. Our weakness increases to 40% and our resistance goes up to 15%. We take four times as much
Damage the sun during the day and we gain the reign of terror spell which casts silence and demoralizes once per day. Finally, on the fourth day and beyond our skill and attribute bonuses, Max 20 points. Our fire weakness reaches 50%. Our normal weapons resistance reaches 20%.
We take eight times as much sun damage and we gain embrace of shadows allows us to go invisible and use Night II for 3 minutes. Once per day, NPCs will generally stop providing services to the player at this stage, however, so feeding on a sleeping NPC to revert to 25% is a good
Choice. My only real change would be to make it so that feeding reverts back only one stage. So if players are comfortable playing a stage two or stage three, they don’t have to constantly keep reverting back to stage one. Playing the entire game is a vampire is
Actually fairly viable in Oblivion. You’re only combat weakness is fire, and you can either play a dumber, use the next signing a couple of items to easily offset that weakness. People only notice your vampirism at stage four and liberal usage of charm spells can offset that. And
Since most people in the game have sleep packages. It’s easy to find fresh food. Sadly, none of the games contain accounts for vampirism. Nobody ever mentions the player’s rather obvious affliction in quests, and unlike Morrowind and Skyrim, there aren’t any special quests just for vampires except for the Cure.
The player can approach healers about the subject to point to reminisce, pull us at the major skills. Who himself points to this count of skin grabbed Oblivion is kind of weird about how it approaches the subject of vampires. You have several stories like The Great Prince, whose father
Was a vampire. The multiple quests surrounding the Countess skin grid, the Springfield, Jack Quest. Vincent is a vampire, and you have the order of the virtuous blood, a vampire hunting order. The player can join and paid for
Vampire dust. And as there is quests about vampires too, but you don’t see any kind of replacement or expansion on the vampire clans idea from Morrowind, the concepts just sort of in this transitory phase that lasted until the Dawn Guard DLC from Skyrim,
The Countess Skin grad and his wife became vampires 50 years ago, and while the count was fine with it, the Countess was not. She refused to feed and eventually slipped into a coma. The count since then has sought a cure, but is
Somewhat trapped in the castle for the sake of protecting citizenry. So he passes the search off to us. He has heard that a Witch of Glen Moral is near the Corps. BOLO River. Glenmore. All witches have existed since
Dagger Fall, but have been performing thankless task of curing lycanthropy and vampirism since Blood Moon. This witch Melisandre demands five grand soul gems as payment tours. Take them. I don’t need them. I can get them black. And for you, if that’s what you want as well. She’ll then give the player a
Shopping list of ingredients for the cure. Blood, grass, garlic, nightshade are gone in blood in the ashes. A powerful vampire. This doesn’t mean Janice, however, no sacrifices necessary hindering. A powerful vampire was trapped in a cave by hunters. He hasn’t fallen into a coma
From sadness. So we have to fight him. Ingredients in hand. We return to Melisandre, who takes a day to brew the potion. We then take two doses, one for ourself and one for the Countess. And return to skin Gretel. We go to where the Countess is resting.
Melisandre, who shows up for some reason, awakens her, and the count gives her the cure, whereupon she dies. And a day later paid what is probably the highest scaling gold reward in the game, with 10,000 gold being the rewarded level 30 oh. People actually consider this quest particularly lengthy.
I think that might only be true if you do it at a lower level when grand soul gems are much rarer. I like this quest, but it does the question of what the hell was going on with the Pale lady. I’m guessing originally the Pale lady was the Countess, and this was
Reworked after the Vampire Cure Quest was written. There’s also the Purge blood. Find if the players lazy and had a couple of dollars to burn in the vile, layered DLC. So in conclusion, the dark brotherhood, probably the best content of the base game, that being
An exceptionally low bar to reach when you have a game as iconic as Oblivion was back in the day, the person who made the highlight content is fated to do well as a meal Pagliarulo did. He’s taken the reins as a lead designer at Bethesda, potentially even a successor to the Howard Crown.
When Starfield is finished and Todd resumes as aging. I’m the only alchemist and skinned grad. Not much business here, but I can’t go back to Morrowind. It’s just like anywhere else in the Empire. By the way, do you happen to know what the fun is here
In Sarah Dale for necrophilia? Just asking. Is it your first offense? Let’s assume no. Then it’s at least 500 gold. That’s nothing compared to Morrowind. Thanks. Before we head on to the Shivering Isles, there’s a bit more base game content left that bears mentioning.
These are the day and some select side quests of Oblivion. The data quests are the work of Mark Nelson. At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe. And nobody’s taking credit. These, despite many of them being some of the best content Oblivion has to offer.
The quests are gated by level requirements, and I did many of them during the events of the other quests. So you’ll be seeing our character jumping around various parts of the playthrough. We’ll handle these in the order that I did them. So let’s begin.
Also, I should throw in here many of the daybreak princess have sibilance issues where the sharp sounds are piercing. I’ve tried to correct that for your benefit, but it does bear mentioning Sheil Guerra’s Sugar
F’s quest is offered at level two. All 15 of the available de princess have shrines, and most of them have offerings the player must give to get the quest which the player can learn at the shrine from the priest.
So funny thing, the Making of Oblivion documentary shows Nelson and Ken Ralston trying to fix a bug with the dangerous shrines where the NPCs walk around constantly, which can be annoying if you’re trying to record footage of the princess monologuing, you keep getting pushed around. The NPCs can’t decide which patch of grass
To pray at. Sugar Path in particular wants an offering of a lesser soul gym ahead of lettuce and some yarn. He’s a bit random. Come visit again when I look out your eyes. Oh right. The name in Morrowind
We get this line. What is it? Mortal? Have you come to be of service to Sugar Wrath? Despite putting that in the video and pointing out that this is the pronunciation of the name that Morrowind gives you, people still leave embarrassing comments about how I said the name wrong.
But yeah, when the voice actor changed from Geoff Baker to West Johnson, it came with some changes to his character. Oh, but West Johnson was not the original figurative voice actor in Oblivion. Pressuring I was the actor was correct. Sickler, who voiced all
Of the Elven film Boys and their immortal dares to summon me and Ray. I’m all aboard. But enough about me. Let’s talk about how to turn you into a goat or a puddle. What a bad idea. I could make you eat your own fingers or fall in love with a cloud.
Perhaps I could make it into something useful. Let’s find out. What is it? Share growth presentation in Morrowind was very deadpan. He asked you to do something ridiculous, but he asked normally because being ridiculous was his normal. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in the Shivering Nails section. For
Now, let’s focus on our task. Shaggy wants us to mess with a gadget settlement that is superstitious. Where to go? There. Ask about the Kucherov prophecy and then fulfill its were directed to Rebus, who, after a disposition check, will tell us of three plagues, vermin,
Famine and fear. We have to figure out on our own. But it turns out the local tavern keepers, a cheese collector who keeps a potent old Roy Cheese locked in a display box. We steal the cheese and place it in a pot over a fire, which draws a swarm of rats
To the village, revised the panics and places rat poison everywhere, killing all the rats. He’s taken this as potentially the first stage of the prophecy. If we then take the rat poison and place it in the sheep trail, they’ll eat it and die.
Whereupon Scheer Gareth congratulates us and handles the third step for us, making it rain, burning dogs. This doesn’t look good, though. He’s good at puffing, but he’s a bad puppy. The village is in panic and share. Gareth pleased
Awards us the way BoJack the way BoJack transforms creatures into other forms. Sometimes Less dangerous, usually more dangerous. It’s a fine toy, but that it only works on creatures as well as the limited number of uses means.
It’s easy to forget about. Still, I enjoy the idea of a powerful lich who spent years uncovering and undergoing a ritual to attain immortality unparalleled in power by the mortal world and immune to the effects of age and disease getting smoked in the side of the
Head by the of Jack and turning into a sheep, then dying almost instantly in the mirror. You dare approach my shrine, child as light you who walks this brain basking in the light of the one cruise son Niemeyer’s quest is available at level five and requires no offering, but
Does necessitate the player’s personality value be below 20, which is impossible. Default and requires every character to use some kind of supplements like cheap wine to reach that value. Nomura wants to help some Skyrim fans who are being harassed by priests of Arcadia who won’t stop
Trying to get them to go outside. She wants us to help by putting out the torches and letting her followers kill them. If we touch the priests ourselves will fail. The quest. Overall, it’s pretty easy. You have cleansed my followers. Profit, darkness, the forgotten are free to wallow in their misery.
Take my ring. Let it ring. Paige. Mothers who would wish it upon you, not me. Bless you. The ring of Nomura has a static effect which reflects damage percent and reflect spells 10%. I kept this ring throughout the entire game, which should speak volumes to its usefulness to the
Player, despite how simple her quest is. Otherwise, her Asura Osiris Quest unlocks a level, too. It may seem that I’ve done things out of order, however, a Zeus offering is glow dust, which comes from Willow, the wisps who only start showing up at level nine as bosses in level 11 as general
Enemies. There are only two ways to get glow dust before level nine, which are the quests at Haaland’s Watch late in the Fighters Guild or Blood of the Danger midway through the main quest. We don’t eat at the hours of dawn or dusk, and I have seen all day long modes which included
Twilight lost the service which holds promise of reward Asura requests. We slay some of her followers who’ve been afflicted with vampirism. Harsh. Just like Morrowind, the followers had acquired the affliction after slaying a vampire themselves and then sealed themselves away in its lair.
Guys, you had three days to go pray at a shrine to get cured. Shepherd’s pie and mandrake root would also do it. No. Okay. I just think you’re being overdramatic. I mean, how I’ve been cured or played. No, this is earlier in the timeline. I’ll
Get cured later. Thank you, mortal. Yes, you did. Suffering. It’s false. The Goth. Let’s try five Bright candle shall burn forever in memory. The sacrifice for your service takes us to the Georgia. You might be interested in the book of Satan’s Osiris. Star is well. Do I
Need to even introduce it? It’s funny that this is the artifact. The game suggests you sacrifice part of the main quest. I can only imagine the horror from the thought of sacrificing this item. Is there a star as a reusable soldier in which can fit any creature soul, big or small? It Can’t
Accept black souls, yet as a star is so ubiquitous with Elder Scrolls that it exists in the Oblivion construction set? Even if you haven’t loaded Oblivion yet, it’s important if you plan on making a consistent use out of enchanted items with charge like the web Jack as a poor example.
It also, however, invalidates any of the lesser soul gems the process. Since you don’t really need to keep any of those around anymore. One way to get good use out of it is to key bind. A super
Lethal soul trap spelled a one button in the starts the next to make sure you keep your topped off. Sanguine Sanguins Quest opens up at level eight and requires a pricey bottle of Cyrillic brandy. I tried failed to do this while doing the fighter’s guild work. I’m fairly certain it ended
Up breaking the infiltration quest my first time around anyways. Another comes a section to add a bit of spice to an otherwise drab existence. Sanguine wants us to go to a dinner party in Leo in tomorrow night. Buddy, your shrine is halfway across the continent from Leo.
Doesn’t matter. The party is delayed until our arrival. Despite not being invited. Where to attend the party and cast the stark reality spell on the guests. It has a small greenhouse effect which registers as assault when it hits all of the guests,
Ourselves included, lose all of our items and will immediately find ourselves wanted. However, doing what I call a pro gamer move, you can cast the spell and then immediately use an invisibility potion to bypass the legal challenge of this quest.
We still have to get back to the shrine despite losing all of our items, which is a challenge and involved in months of horror in ourselves out of taverns to pay for carriage rides. Skin graft is quite a ways away from Leo, and after
All, a rousing success for and it appears you join in the festivities as well. Good for you. You need to lighten up a bit. You’ll find your equipment in that chest over here. And here’s a little something for your efforts. Maybe we’re celebrating getting some
Sanguins Rose Martin has an interesting line about it. I never thought to see this again. I once possessed it briefly. A lifetime ago. It seems now to obtain it and then give it up. I honor your dedication to our cause. The implications of. All the Diedrich Princess
For Martin to have served. You picked singing. I hope it’s not because his shrine is close to coverage. Or I hope you didn’t move his shrine close coverage because of that line of dialog. The rose When its bell hits a target summons a random deidre to age you.
It’s not necessarily an ally to the player, so it is effectively a wild card in fights at level eight. It’s great because the danger you summon can be more powerful than the enemies you’re fighting. Later on, less so. Nocturnal Nocturnal Quest is only
One of two which have no extra requirements. You just have to hit level ten, right? I love the strange shifts in the nocturnal scenes, but my playing is why Crouch stole from his charm and his to steal from my God is most of the wilds. Nocturnal wants us to retrieve her
Eye, which was stolen from her. This happens to you a lot, doesn’t it? How come Azura doesn’t have these issues? First the gray cowl, then the eye of nocturnal, and soon the skeleton key. I cannot help but think you’re either enabling this kind of behavior or lying in simply saying
The previous person you’ve rewarded actually stole from you. After a short investigation, Leo, in an an eavesdropping section that requires a small amount of stealth, they put the AI in a cave full of trolls, which is fair enough, since it probably won’t get taken.
But that’s a huge of risk to rely on being able to sneak past trolls just to stash your goods. All these trolls are named Ash Clan or Caterpillar clan trolls. Maybe we were going to get more named Monsters originally. One Dungeon Crawl
Later and I in three times and I once again see the darkness that is your world. We mark the squad. This means what’s you what mate means? You shall open the secrets of dark places for you. Wait. The skeleton key to the skeleton. Cause it’s a stupid joke.
But I’m going to make it as often as this is the first thing I think of. Hey, Nocturnal, Isn’t this thing super dangerous? Like marin’s razor changing into the Dragonborn. Kind of dangerous. Unlocking metaphysical concepts. Dangerous. I guess that part of the lore wasn’t
Written until Skyrim. The Skeleton Key. As mentioned previously, is an unbreakable lockpick that also boosts security by 40 points. It basically allows you to turn off the lock picking minigame and just spam auto attempts. This is because they change the fundamental way lock picking works.
So the skeleton key has to be a good alternative to normal lock picks, which are universally homogenous in quality. I favored lock picking on my character as opposed to using magic due to my condition where I don’t naturally regenerate magic. Discouraging casual use of magic. Simply put, the skeleton
Key is too valuable. An artifact for an astronaut to even contemplate sacrifice into Martin. For everyone else, though, why aren’t you using alteration magic? Perry eight. Perry also requires no extra sacrifice, although this time that’s likely because the worshipers who usually
Tell you what the princess wants are all frozen in place. This one is a welcome change. So mortal, you have found my shrine and you have seen my followers. They are very similar to me.
The fables cast a spell with the hopes of something in me to death. It was prideful and foolish, and it has proved its consequences. Perry Yates followers attempted to summon him, but failed and ended up trapping themselves in Oblivion. Oh, and adventure in a game called Oblivion to a Dedrick Prince. It’s
Just the dead lands. You guys couldn’t make a basic ass enclosed swamp area for Perry Yates realm. Perry, right. With his disease themes, misses his chance to be relevant in Morrowind, and he’s not making up for that by having us do the 61st Oblivion game, this time without the Sigil Stone. You have
Returned my followers Mortal. The natural order is restored, and for this I thank you. Perhaps the folly of attempting to touch on the drone, which Take this with my blessed me and bring you order. Still, despite all that, Perry’s reward is substantial spell breaker. It’s hardly the most
Powerful shield the player can get in armor value, but its reflect spell 30% Enchantment is insane, especially when paired with our natural percent spell absorption. You aren’t capable of making anything even as remotely powerful in Oblivion. You may say the discussion of coral is better.
I would counter that it only gets better after level 25 and I ended the play through at level 28, whereas I was able to get spell breaker a quarter of the way through my playthrough. Malakoff Mal Kass
Quest is available at level ten and he likes troll fat. Let’s hear what he has to say. That characterizing a whole species in your game as ugly warlike and benevolent might be harmful to real world groups. Regularly mischaracterized as ugly, warlike and benevolent. Sorry, let’s use the better or exclusive
Version. I love green skin ark content. That’s what I’m all about. Yeah. Nice threats and good. And from a nice hook to double the orcs are smart. They know you want something. You do what boss tells. So this good Lord tried took my ogres. Foxy white Skin says he owns them like maggots.
They’re my ogres. So this Lord dread, He puts my little brothers in chains working in the mines. And it makes mad. So you get over to Lord Dread to state, Get my old guns loose and get them out. Do it now for me. The boss Lord Drought is a Dunmore skirting the
Empire’s very incredibly violent history with abolition by using ogres of humans as slaves. Of course, this isn’t the only reason Malekith is invested. I bought it for a song from a foolish orc. My OGAs mind the gold and I reap the reward when the ogres afraid they’ll
Attempt to kill the guards and enslave the dreads to work the fields. This pleases Malekith. Good job. No one hands angles through and I fix that rocket legal truck driver turn. You guys are present. Keep up the good work. I’d be nice to partner Toll Brothers. Yeah, That’s
Not going to happen if ogres keep being generic enemies anyways. Malekith doesn’t get the cycle of retaliation or more likely, really doesn’t care as. The green skin’s continued. Societal subsistence is crucial to his continued worship. Truly, what an amazing parallel to real life races.
Whenever I think of works, I’m immediately reminded of the struggle of inner Australian rock warblers and their plight compared to their mouse warbler counterparts. And while of. It’s not popular at parties, you don’t say. Our reward is volunteering, which is kind of terrible. It’s interesting that the Hammer, which originally belonged
To the dwarves but was taken over by Malekith, has had an increasingly corrupted appearance as time has gone on. A neat visual detail that is so completely missed by just reiterating Skyrim design win during that time period,
It would have looked like it belonged in a Warhammer game. Anyways, it’s a two handed blunt weapon in its notable quality as being exceptionally. It does middling damage, however, and its enchantment does not substitute its later game weakness. Drain health five points for 20 seconds means the target’s health is drained.
Five but restores at the end of those 20 seconds. It’s only temporary damage and as such, you typically need a large amount of drain health to offset that weakness. It does paralyze for 3 seconds, which is good, but it’s charge to cost ratio is such that you may
Find yourself having to recharge the weapon every two or three enemies you fight with it. All of that and the general against two headed weapons in Oblivion makes volunteering a good pick for the sacrifice, which is a shame. I had this realization that there is an infinite
Lockpick for thieves and an infinite sole gym for mages, but no infinite repair hammer for fighters. Perhaps volunteering would have been suited to serving a double role as such. I can’t really think where else as such a hammer would fit, considering none of the danger
Really represents smithing. That’s more a zenith or thing really for enemies. Meridia Meridian’s quest unlocks at level ten and requires an offering of an undead ingredient like bone meal, ectoplasm, or more to flesh the chief Justice of the proceedings. I am brought in.
But you’re offering you just me the same love interest the young do the central unnatural things. Some of my great pleasure is abominations not familiar. I wish these creatures destroyed. There’s actually some ectoplasm submerged in the ground at the shrine,
Likely as a development tool. Although don’t know why you wouldn’t just use a console command in testing. Birdie is Quest a super basic go to a cave, kill five necromancers and return well to those creatures far enough to only have paid the price for their actions.
She had to go with my blessing. Merida is ring. The ring of fire is very powerful. There is no consistency between the quality or complexity of the dagger quest in its reward. You may spend half an hour fulfilling a prophecy to get a toy like the rabbit Jack, and
You might spend a couple of minutes doing a short dungeon to get a ring with 35% chameleon. The ring of courgette is also kind of weird in that twice it was used as a Meridia reward and once as a mere follower reward. Despite the enchantment clearly leaning towards my follower, that’s
Sort of thing that causes decades long law discussions about the intricate relationship between Meridia and MMA follow. Yeah, okay, we can do that. But I’m going to need reference photos. Okay. Basically, I the wrong prints got the wrong item because they have similar
Names. It’s that easy to follow. Funny we mentioned Buffalo because it’s time for her quests at level 15 with an offering of nightshade. Call me. Let’s talk about a single and a weave on that. Yeah. Tell me why Meridia has your ring. Don’t spoil my.
Steve Macfarlane notes that the Village of Lakers Way has two families living in it, one Nordic and one Gunma who are living in harmony. She wants to upset this balance by staging two murders and planting evidence.
Yes, this is the person who is definitely not making up that Sith worship stuff. It’s weird that the conflict starts after both family patriarchs are framed for the other’s murder like they both died on the same night.
It’s not possible for them to have murdered each other. It might be better if the quest plays out differently based on how the player approaches it. Like maybe if the Nord is burned death and the daggers planted, one of the Dunmore might point out that the cause of
Death doesn’t match the murder weapon. Well, the little Westerner is there on your side. Friends At war. Take pleasure in this strife you have caused you to save the divine essence of a well spun plot and years of
Need to help you stitch your own tangled tapestries. Our reward is the ebony blade. A blade that is appeared in every Elder Scrolls game except Morrowind. Surprisingly, it’s quite powerful, only really topped by a Dedrick long sword with an absorb
Health trends in it several stone, which is a mouthful, but it isn’t that far from players at level 15 because it absorbs health. As long as the player keeps this thing charged, they can funnel their offense into their
Defense. Their mina very mina is a level five danger quest, which seems like I may have forgotten about her the first time around. But no, she wants Black Soul Gym. So I had to wait until I was a ways into the Mages Guild questline to be able to do this again.
What will we have in the match before letting you know it? I’m not. When you must miss me, you speak to me when you wake. Let sweat. You’ve just left my house. I age well in your dream. I see you like I might now.
You seem very. Mina wants us to retrieve her orb from the wizard arc of. It has, however, transformed his tower into a nightmare. It’s interesting to see all the different ways the designer can recycle other level props, which is not a diss. This whole section
Is quite creative. You have the upside down dining hall, then later it’s we get to Darkseid’s bedchamber and grab the OR. He’s permanently asleep. So he’s not a boss or anything like that. I have this feature and I can’t really live out the rest of his days. Night it.
You have proved yourself what it is fitting as well that you should be. Am I vermin as reward is the scale of corruption which creates a corrupted of its target in PC for 30 seconds. This is pretty fun and I like to bringing it out for boss fights.
It’s also buggy due to how it works. There’s a duplication glitch tied to it. If have the staff of worms. There’s also two different methods of making a permanent clone of yourself using the skull of corruption here. Seen here. Seeing my man. Welcome back from the blood moon. He’s a level 17 danger
And wants a wolf or bear pelt as an offering something in my brain crouches before the foxes muscle. Perhaps I should ask you also sent you to hunt for my amusements. Jonathan Brice is that voice. And if
You’re ever convinced the voice, accurate as in Oblivion, are bad, recognize that this guy also voiced The Oregonian because Jeet Nord’s and ORC mails most of the day. Erik Prince is served as an opportunity for the normal voice actors to flex their muscles, even if their recordings have some sibilance issues.
Here’s the King wants US to hunt the last Unicorn. Oh, sorry. Second to last Unicorn. Thanks. Creation Club. The Unicorn is an exceptionally tough creature resisting normal weapons, paralysis, poison and resisting 50% of magic and reflecting 20% of physical damage. If that isn’t tough
Enough, it’s guarded by three special monitors, all of whom would be challenging in their own right. Their main weakness is the hunters tool, the fireball. I mean, the bow reflects damage only works on physical damage, not ranged damage, which may well be intentional given.
We’re working for the hunter God. So after a few minutes of backtracking and taking pot shots, the four enemies go down. And with the unicorn horn in hand, I return to his scene. Yes, Hunter, make your offering. Did you taste its flesh? Drink it, but never waste the spoils of a kill. You.
Pleased to be hot Chocolate. Take my joke inquiry. When you’re asked to take your prey, it’s whisper my name. Our reward is the Savior’s hide, which has quite literally gotten weaker with each iteration. It started life as an
Armored set designed to help the player Marines dig on in Battle Spear by reflecting 100% of physical damage. And then in Morrowind, it was downgraded to resisting magic of 60%, which was still pretty. Now it’s down to 25%. Resist Magic and in Skyrim, it will drop further to 15%.
Resist magic, go with 50% poison resistance and blades, which I don’t normally count as an Elder Scrolls game anyways, lowered the effect to just six points of spell resistance. Oblivion incarnation is still better than the best resist magic Sigil Stone. I suspect the goal was
To avoid players heavily stacking resist magic like in Morrowind to invalidates spell casters. To that I would say change weakness to magic so that it can apply to targets with 100%. Resist magic anyways and make NPCs who can recognize when their spells aren’t doing anything and switch out to a weakness.
The magic spell to compensate. That be well outside the bounds of Oblivion. I’m talking six magic tactics here. More like ball. Poor mole leg ball. You didn’t ask to be the day trick face of Elder Scrolls online. You were thrust into that role copying a
Younger sexier day trick Prince’s plan to conquer Tamriel. You were better than that. You were the guy who taught Vivek about CHIM. You were the originator of vampires. Your only crime was resembling the other half of Satan. Moloch Ball is a level 17 prince who wants an offering of a lion pelt for
Some reason, another model cop to go by PD. I only wish something. And then, you know, more lag wants us to go to a guy’s house who has sworn against violence and push him into murdering us with a cursed mace.
The player has to figure out both the best time to provoke him and figure out how to get the mace into his hands, which is to drop it and start a fight. This take a while. Given how horror health is, it reminds me of the pilgrimage quests where the players expected
To drown themselves in Morrowind. It seems you’ve accomplished the tasks out for you. Well done. Another bad dam, another ruin so that you’ll still get your prize while still. I think it was worth it, don’t you? Keep up the good work, Little. Little. This was also Jonathan
Bryce’s voice, and I think he was leaning a little heavily into the cagey voice for this. It’s funny because West Johnson’s more like ball from Morrowind fit the character way better. The Mason more like Ball does a lot of damage, but it comes with a terrible enchantment. Absorb
Magica is an awesome effect. I wish it showed up way more often. Even Fighter in DC still have magic of values that we can steal from, but absorb strength while sounding good has no effect curation meaning that without the unofficial patch it doesn’t actually do anything.
Man deems Bowie Thea Bowie is one of the three day differences that require the highest level to start their quest. Level 20. His offering is a day trick, heart wide or something. You are not part of my reason. You hope to be captured by chosen. Then prove yourself to be more. He’s also
Presenting as a male and Sierra Doe Dedrick Prince is don’t have genders because they don’t have sex. Okay. We did talk about Malik Ball just now. So to clarify, they don’t reproduce. Instead, they simply take forms that fall into mortal gender definitions. That’s why the big tatted goth dad or girlfriend
Is called a Prince Bowie Thea doesn’t care, which makes having lengthy arguments about his gender pointless. Bowie Thea wants us to enter his realm, which of course, is just the dead lands again. Although at least this time it fits in fight in a tournament. Are nine champions at the
Beach, all of whom align with a different race. And we replace the 10th Breton champion. Since we’re at level 20, all of the champions will be armed and armored extremely well. Come with a host of spells, poisons and potions to boot, and we can’t leave until we’re done.
Which is one of the few times Bethesda really makes the player commit to a gantlet in Oblivion. It can cheesy, however, since this is the dead land. It’s easy to make NPCs go into the lava and just die. I personally would have set this in a closed
Environment, just a series of rooms forming circle with the starting point in the middle. Upon our departure, I reach chosen one of three by two of the top ten springs. Great Take shootings and your enemies have awful gas. So that’s praise to me. Gold
Brand is one of the best swords in Oblivion terms of raw damage potential. You can barely edge it out with a day trick. Long sword using a transcendent central stone. Let’s hold a best sword contest later. Clavicles vile. I find it funny that since Slavic Savile’s quest involves Todd Howard as
A voice actor, it’s a bit broken. A mortal. Wonderful. Always a pleasure. Perhaps a disservice for me, myself. And I’ll reward you a fair bargain. Don’t you think? At level 20 clavicles wants an offering of $60? However, for most people, this is not how
The quest starts, because the quest does not enable Umbra after starting, Umbra can actually be visited at any time any level. Her sword is very powerful and her armor, while leveled, can be taken off at level one and
Is identical in stature to orcus or taken off at level 15 and will be identical to ebony armor. And since her sword is a quest item, it currently has zero weight. She’s a challenging fight, but a lot of meta gamers do it early for the waitlist and keep it until level 20.
The sequence is actually supposed to go like this. Clavicle sends us to get the sword Umbra from Hell’s Gate Umbra. If you recall a Morrowind character and weapon. The player can encounter Umbra who will tell them that they’ve done everything and only wish to die in battle, which I obliged. The last
Living dwarf Yaga Meagan wrote in Morrowind that Umbra was created by an ancient witch to trap souls. The book Umbral would expand on this law to make Umbra a clavicles vile originally, which is why Barnabas is servant, comes with us and insists that we shouldn’t bring the sword to
Clavicles. I guess the implication is that the evil part of clavicle was split off into the sword and he’ll stop being the dangerous prince of fun mercantilism if he reunites with it.
I guess him getting it back is now confirmed. Not Canon. Thanks Club. Anyways, Apple’s Gate Villagers says their apprentice came in contact with the sword and left with it and is now staying at a nearby alien ruin. A convenient one later. And we’re presented with a choice.
Alpha male where we go to have a kiss and tell them that we’re keeping the sword or beta male where we go to clavicles, give him the sword and take his mask or omega male where we keep the sword as long as we fancy and return it later for that sweet 100% completion.
My son, it is your choice. Do you take this sword Umbra capable of perpetually soul trapping your enemies? Or do you take the mask of clavicles via a heavy armor helm equal to a dangerous helm that fortifies personality 20 points? You throw brought the sword
As we agreed. I’m Brian. I have unfinished business. Yes And that’s a physical side. But the physical soul in exchange for a mask fit for a god. You’ve gotten the better of this sparkling water. How This is to attempt to run along. Perhaps I’ll
Be looking for you again. No. And you would dare. We had a bargain, little hero. You would risk my wrath and a little sword. I will be watching you more time. I take the biggest sign of proof that Umbra isn’t Diedrich in nature as the fact that the
Player can’t sacrifice the sword to Martin. That said, I do wish he counted on the artifacts collection sheet so that players trying to 100% weren’t forced to choose the mask option every time personalities. A dumpster at the helm of the Crusader is a way better version of this helmet.
It’s a shame, too, because the mask is awesome looking and used to be useful back in Morrowind where you’ll find a lot of perma mora Hermes mora. The final day prints. Oh yeah. Marin’s de Jong didn’t get a quest, but that was because he was kind of the
Antagonist of the game. And as we discussed, we did his bidding during the main queue. Anyways, after completing the 14 other major quests and after starting Blood of the Deirdre, the may be approached by cast of slavers in their sleep, so many of them to the shrine of
Herman Mora. So by necessity the player has to be level 20. I suspect this may be a quest last resort for the player if they somehow managed to lose every other possible sacrifice or costs.
My brother to read all your reverence and future or want to read Skyrim definitely improved his voice, no question. Which is funny because both iterations are actually just West Johnson Hermits. Mora wants us to capture a soul from
Each of the ten races, which is easy if you target the bandit population, the world’s most brutal bad guy, aka this, you might go, No, you invite me to all it rules order with their leader in order to yourself or good all good or evil.
Double the dogma Infinium, similar to the bitter Cup of Morrowind is a powerful tool for leveling kind of since you can’t get the dogma Infinium until level 20. The early game benefit of, say, raising your endurance isn’t able to be appreciated when you read it it
Offers the player three paths, each boosting two attributes and three skills ten points. Firstly, there are no benefits to using the book to boost skills. Past skill level hundred. None of the skills you can boost with it will do anything extra at 110. So me getting to
Heavy armor 110 is pointless attributes. However will you will to increase your max encumbrance with strength, speed with speed, magic with intelligence and magic of regeneration. With willpower, you can optimize using book if you get all three skills to 90 and the
Attributes to 100, the best use in that respect would be the path of spirit. As destruction and restoration are handily the worst skills to level of the bunch. I don’t really see any benefits
To the path of shadow as its skills are easy to train and agility is a shadow of its former self. Path of steel then is what I chose for the strength and speed benefits. With this marks the end of the danger section. It’s a mix of interesting and boring quests and
I’ve been led to believe it’s the work of Mark Nelson. He created the data requests for Morrowind and would go on to fill the lead design position for the Shivering Isles. While Bruce Nesmith was in the design director position, the Thing is, a lot of these danger quests
Feel exactly like their Morrowind iterations. You talk to a statue, it tells you to go somewhere and either kill something or perform some task. You return and get rewarded with an item. The falter here is fast travel. Ken Ralston said in an interview that Mark Nelson hated fast travel.
I pointed out in the fighters skill section how that stance didn’t make sense with how the quests were written, and it’s possible that it was designed after this issue was resolved at Bethesda, whereas most of the major quests were paper before then. See, the thing is,
The reason the days requested Morrowind worked was that they were exactly that quests. Most of the time you had a amount of traveling through dangerous territory, both to find the shrine and then to do the quest proper. I was playing some Test three amp with a friend and we decided to
Do more like balls quest to get him the mace. And we failed the quest not because we did it wrong, but because even with two of us, our characters just weren’t prepared for the high level challenge.
Plus, you can’t reload saves in multiplayer, so when you die, you just go back to a shrine and warlock balls. Quest is literally just go to this cave, kill these Deidra Despite failing, this quest was a highlight of our
Adventure due to the navigation and exploration that was involved. Despite myself having done this same exact quest, only a couple months prior for the Morrowind video in Oblivion, travel is never a factor in the quest itself. Thanks to fast travel. Recognizing this, you may have noticed most of these quests took place
In areas that were extremely close to the shrine itself, the notable exception being Sanguine. QUEST Likely because it may have taken place in skin the Wine City originally and was changed when the vampire stuff got added. If you don’t know, Oblivion was designed in whitebox environments.
This means that rather than Bethesda loading up the entire game to test their ideas. You were always working with just a couple cells and whatever items you wanted or needed that day. From a design perspective, it’s easier if most of the danger question involved the player just
Going over the next hill and completing it. There’s almost a sense of rebellion from this. Like Nelson is challenging Howard’s fast travel philosophy and in watching a lot of videos on Oblivion. I’ve yet to actually see anyone else point out that most of these quests take
Place in the same general area as the statue, probably because these people, even if they played Morrowind, found relief in having the adventure part of their adventure game cut out. The problem is when you remove the travel element from these quests, having a quest where you go to X and kill Y is
Suddenly extremely barebones and Nelson probably understood that, which is why he opposed the idea. Bethesda was essentially themselves in a situation where their old standards of quests just didn’t work, not because the idea isn’t sound, but
Because accessibility trumped esthetic style, which is probably why my fall as quest was the exception rather than the rule. Still, between the unique idea of sacrificing items to access the quests, love requirements and general idea of working for actual guides, the data quests generally remain a
Highlight of the game for me, and here we’re nearing the end here and I’ve just thrown a bunch of different items at you, so I feel it’s necessary to discuss leveled items. Meta gaming if the daydream items aren’t leveled. Likely another holdover of Nelson’s old school design philosophy. There’s
Rarely any leveled items in the Fighters Guild as well. Go figure. Now the idea behind item scaling or leveled items probably went as follows Players are getting powerful items very easily in our game. Morrowind, We don’t want to get bored
At level 15, so let’s make it so that the player is constantly challenged and constantly receiving even better items. This is an attempt to solve that power threshold problem I mentioned in Morrowind. Now the funny thing is this design philosophy would actually have worked better on Vardenafil, where
There was so much more content, but they this design philosophy while simultaneously cutting back on the amount of content in the game. The example I like is the spell drinker amulet. This is the only amulet in the game the player can get with spell absorption, which won’t come
From randomized to loot, but it’s leveled in four level intervals. The effectiveness of its enchantment comes from the moment the player completes the ulterior motives quest for the major skilled. I got it at level 15, which means I got its version that only does 18% spell absorption.
The problem is. I use this amulet throughout the entire game not because of any personal connection to it. It’s a piece of bling that Romanus gives us that we’re not mad at him for betraying our trust but because even with all of the dungeons and
Oblivion gates I ran after this point, I didn’t find anything to really replace it. The problem isn’t that I was stuck with one amulet for most the game most of my Morrowind characters were. The problem is that I’m stuck with
Its weaker form. The game is almost challenging the player to grind to level 30, so they get of the best leveled items. This actually got worse with Skyrim, which cut back on the overall number of leveled items, but greatly expanded the level ranges of the ones that still exist I personally
Would prefer to get consistent items at consistent times, even if it’s like the ebony blade where the sword will be outclassed in ten levels. The solution to that system is not to make the ebony blade leveled. The solution is to
Raise its rank in the totem pole, which is what Skyrim did. Skyrim largely addressed this problem. I take the few leveled that do exist as a rebellious designer and nothing more. You can practically see the divisions and staff on the topic just by their quests.
Coleman, Nesmith and Nelson didn’t seem to like leveled items, so they rarely rewarded them. Chapman and Pagliarulo seemed to love leveled items, Emil, especially given how many bonus items he awarded with level scaling. Is it any wonder, then, that Fallout four
Ended up being a looter shooter? I think one potential fix to the system may be some kind of upgrade system where once you reach the higher level brackets, enchantment can be leveled up to what you would have gotten if you’d completed the quest at that level.
So what is the best of the best? Let’s put the build I came up with forward. Then to start Bret in nature Neck, resist magic 50%. Absorb magic 50%. I’m basically already an anime protagonist shrugging off all the special attacks or spell breaker from paradise shrine reflect spell 30% spell drinker
Absorb spell 26% only 18 on my character Ring of Nomura spell 10% reflect damage 12% blade turn hood from the mirror ruins Razer DLC reflect damage 15% resist normal weapons 15% shields percent raiment of the crimson scar from vile layer DLC reflect damage 35% in total 40% Spell reflection 76%.
Absorption 50%. Magic Resistance 62%. Damage Reflection 15%. Normal Weapons Resistance 17% Shield. If someone attacks me with magic or physical damage, they’ll do more damage to themselves than to me. And we’ve still got a free ring slot
For a wild card. Now for the weapons Daisuke Bow enchanted to do points of shock damage for 3 seconds. Even with console commands, I couldn’t reopen the Oblivion gates, which means I was cut off from the very best transcendent sigil stones.
Otherwise I opt for a transcendent serial stone with damage health, which will also do 30 damage, but instantly and you get nine more uses. Sneak attacks with a bow will give us three times damage, which is not as powerful as people make it out to be because it only applies to
The damage of the bow and arrow, not the enchantment or poison, which is where the fun begins. So first have our character who I’m going off of the final save so they have a marksman skill of 56. I’ll put the USB numbers next to it, which assumes a maxed marksman value
Of 100. The Dedrick bow does 12 damage and the Diedrich Arrow does nine damage, which is a cumulative 21 damage for an ordinary shot and 63 damage for our stealth attack. That’s pretty good. Our character with a blade of 66 can only pull 42 damage out of
Gold brand in a single swing and can up that to 252 damage with a six times sneak attack. However, the Daisuke bow is ranged making stealth far easier, but gold brand can hit multiple times in the time it takes to land a second shot with a bow.
It’s fairly balanced. Let’s introduce a dump truck to the equation. This is my super poison. I call it Game over. I don’t even know what’s in it anymore before I show you what it does. This is the best the default poison can do. Damage health 30
Points. It’s a nice topper to our bow damage. Time for the dump truck damage health. Six points. 25 seconds. Fire damage, eight points. 31 seconds. Shock damage, eight points, 30 seconds. Add all that damage up and you get 638 points of damage. Some characters might resist the fire
Damage and some characters might resist the magic damage and organisms will resist the poison. But in general, if this arrow hits you let alone from a stealth attack, that’s 701 points of damage. I don’t even need the stealth damage at this point. I can just run around putting this poison in people
And watches the bodies hit the floor. And if they resisted, I made a spell that does 100% poison weakness, doubling the damage in a normal person, and rendering people formerly immune to poison, now vulnerable nothing is funnier than an ancient lich suddenly being vulnerable to poison and dying from a single cut.
Players Getting to use weapon poison was new in Oblivion in. Morrowind. It was represented in shorthand with an actual poison spell, which means that we’re basically seeing the Morrowind version of weapon poison late in Oblivion, hence why it’s so unbalanced. This must have been frustrating to the designer
That worked so hard to put balance in a single player game, only to find out that super poisons existed. This isn’t even a matter of playtest. The designers probably just didn’t realize the potential of this system. I suppose.
Then a small contest of the best swords is in order. Swords tend to be massively overrepresented in fantasy. Our first contender is the Ebony Blade 23 Damage Absorb health eight points. Silence for 10 seconds. While I like the utility value of
Silence, having it constantly applied means enemies aren’t using magic, which means the absurd amount of spell resistance. Absorption in a reflection is just going to waste. I want enemies to use magic on me because that means I’m either going to get more magic back or do more damage to them.
Absorbing health is nice though, but only 45 uses. Bruh gold brand 25 damage, 22 points of fire damage and 76 use is really good. A very popular pick with good reason. Umbra 28 Damage Soul trap for 120 seconds. Soul trapping for so long with the
Sword is only sensible if you’re using poisons. And even then most custom poisons go on for like 30 seconds. I just think the sword would be better if Soul Trap only lasted 20 seconds, but it got a lot more uses. Not that 125 uses is that bad.
The problem is that because it does less damage than other swords overall, it takes more swings. Thus you use more uses. And while it might keep your soul gems fall, that also means gym cycling. That said, Umbra has
Zero. Wait until you complete the related quests, which is the real reason it’s so popular in Oblivion. I actually never understood why weapon weight unequipped weapons wasn’t an expert or master perk in Oblivion. Finally the generic Dedrick long sword 24 damage with a transcendent central stone, you can apply 25 points of
Absorb health which will have 40 uses. Well, it does really good damage and heals too, but it’s also really ugly. On to our DLC options. Sort of the crusader getting in at level 21 or higher. It’ll do 25 damage with 14 points
Of fire damage for 2 seconds or 28 fire damage and 40 points of magic damage on top with a total of 62 uses. Uses are weird because for this sword in particular, it’s use number is parabolic. At level seven through nine you’ll get a sword 125 uses for instance that
Or horncastle adds the dragon sort of lenglen without the unofficial patch. The highest level version you can get is the level 20 version. IT skills to ward
Cane and not the player, and he maxes at level 20 instead of going up to 25 where you get the best version unpatched, the sword will do 18 damage with absorb
Fatigue, 21 points for 5 seconds and 20 points of fire damage with only 26 uses patched and you can get the sword to 21 damage with 23 points of absorb fatigue for 5 seconds and 25 points of fire damage fatigue is kind of a meme in Oblivion and level 25.
You really shouldn’t be losing so much fatigue in combat as to necessitate shredding damage for absorb fatigue. The Dragon Sword does look cool though. Then we have these Shivering Isles swords, Dawn Fang and Dusk Fang are actually a single blade alternating form with the time of day.
During the day it’ll do fire damage and at night it’ll do frost damage. Notable, however, is that if the sword lands 12 blows in a single 12 hour period, the next phase will be superior. Absorbing health during the day and absorbing magic at night. The best version is available at
Level 30 and beyond, doing 25 damage with 15 points of elemental damage and seven points of absorb. It also recharges when it changes shape, but the nourishment only works when it’s charged, so you have to keep it topped off if you want to get the superior effect. It also looks super
Edgy. Personally, I don’t like its design. It feels like the origin of the paddle of Skyrim. There’s also Amber and Madness weapons, which are slightly better than Dietrich’s base stats. Same principle, just with one more point of damage. But what about two handed weapons? Personally, I
Find the loss and speed to be too big a detriment for two handers in Oblivion. Because of the way combat works, there’s more of an incentive to get more swings downrange than big high damage swings, and it doesn’t help that Oblivion itself is pretty biased towards giving the player one handed weapons anyways.
And what about blunt weapons? Again, the sword bias strong. You don’t get a lot of options for maces and even less for axes. And this held true through the expansions. The Mesa the Crusader has turned undead on. It grows and Shivering Isles provides nerve shatter
A hammer with a zero second weakness. The shock effect on it that doesn’t do anything. If you’re playing with blunt weapons, you’re basically holding out for Shadow Orange near the end of the Shivering Isles expansion just to get a weapon with comparable stats to
A sword. And it’s two handed and there’s a sword version of Shadow End. All right, There’s one more thing I want to get off my chest in a discussion of magic items in Oblivion.
And that’s how terrible a lot of them are. There are a ton of unique enchanted items sold at Merchant’s terrible effects. Picking a random example off a lengthy list, Ages of the Apocalypse fortifies blade blunt and heavy armor five
Points drains like five points drains health ten points. Why? Why are there so many base game items sold by merchants, usually for tens thousands of gold that are balanced in their spell effects like the truncheon of submission?
It’s funny because it heals the target. That’s worth a laugh when you see it. But the hell the ferocity drains, intelligence, willpower and personality, and only for the paltry benefit of five points to your favorite combat stat. It’s not like five blade is worth anything to a hand-to-hand fighter, is it?
And you get the tower of the nine, which isn’t even a tower shield which drains light armor ten points. I mean, yeah, it’s a heavy shield, but why does it have that effect? The problem is that negative effects
Still increase the value of enchanted items. It would be one thing if they were cheaper due to having downsides, but they aren’t. They’re more expensive. I’m not even against this idea. I actually like the mentality of having a trade off with an item as long as the cost is balanced around that tradeoff.
I’m not paying 10,000 gold for an item that is handily outclassed Random dungeon loot. Another thing would be the number of items that just demonstrate a lack of understanding of the game’s mechanics. I’ve detailed various items which in the
Base game have no enchantment because they last for 0 seconds or hour weakness effects that don’t apply on strike because that’s not how it works in Oblivion or armor for spell casters in the where spell casters are penalized for wearing armor.
How about this one? The circlet of Omnipotence. Omnipotence Unlimited power. Find this ring in a random easily missed chest during the pale past quest. And all it does is fortify agility, endurance, speed, strength and willpower by points. Three You seriously expect someone to give up a valuable
Ring slot for an enchantment so paltry most players wouldn’t even notice the when they wore it. So with our anime protagonist character who reverses a ton of damage on his enemies and is capable of melting hardy opponents, there’s only a few side quests left in Serial for
Us to. Do Oblivion is a world full of side quests. Each city has around a half dozen side quests not tied to any of the factions, and there are more spread out throughout world. These can be hit or miss due to the nature of how quests are made at Bethesda. If a programmer
Decides he wants to make a quest about retrieving a woman’s potatoes from an ogre well, I guess he can. Not that I know who made the potato quest again. The nature of credits in these games means that unless it’s stated, we don’t actually really know who made what in Oblivion.
But I don’t see a problem with getting a potato quest. Sure, it’s not complicated. It’s go to X, kill Y in retrieve Z. One of the most basic quest designs. It’s fairly similar in that structure to a lot of other side quests. The only difference is instead of fetching
Something of lower significance or character implication, it’s just prized jumbo potatoes. I think a lot of people who complain about there being simple quests are not thinking about the implications of their request. They are essentially asking every single quest they get have stakes
And lasting consequences, and that’s really not a good thing If you are the person listening to this video. Want to do a real life quest right now, do you want to know what that quest would be?
Food delivery? Maybe. If you’re lucky, someone might need a pest taking care of the nice thing about mundane quests is that it doesn’t take long 5 minutes for a little bit of flavor and probably only an hour for the designer to make little tasks are
Nice because they make the world feel more grounded. If every quest involves deception and murder and the sins of the past and the cycle of retaliation in a threat that challenges very fabric of reality, then that makes the main quest feel pointless.
I’m supposed to be saving these people, but it turns out that everyone in Serial has to have some dirty secret and covered by a quest. What’s the point of saving a world where everyone is a bastard in a role playing game? The players should be able to define their own reason
For their actions, but that means the game also to have ample opportunity in which to do so. I’m saving the world so that these people can enjoy their quaint lives of waking up in the morning going for a casual stroll in the park eating lunch and then doing
2 hours of work before socializing at a tavern. Or maybe I am the bastard and I’m saving the world so that a guy like me can take advantage of all these simple. The same is true in reverse, of course, having quests where the player can find and beat the scum of society
Is great if you’re role playing a vigilante sort of character. I wouldn’t the world to be whitewashed with morally good and simple tasks. It’s the diversity of content that makes a role playing game thrive. So it bothers
Me when people look at that variety, say there should only be x, only be wire, or it should be more like Z. If you’re heading, let’s start with a fan favorite, a brush with death. When deciding quest to cover, I went off
Of a couple lists of fan favorite side quests and without fail, this quest has always made it in shade and Hall. A famous painter has gone missing. I guess the guards in Local Mages Guild are not interested in how this guy just
Magically disappeared from his studio, or his wife has only told us that he disappeared from within a locked room. Even with the unofficial patch, there’s a clipping issue where two dressers are clipping through the second floor. Amazing. Our main advantage over the other investigators is being able to intuit
Doors are and this painting is one of them which transports us into the painted world. When people praise this quest, it isn’t because it’s particularly complex, but because of how creative world is. Allan Nanas is the man behind this quest. I don’t know if he came up with all of these assets,
But he seems to have had the idea to actually make the trees, rock, sky and even creatures appear painted. To me, this shows the potential of a game called Oblivion to realize all the different realms of Oblivion, like how Paradise was visually distinct with just a few minor alterations.
The visual esthetic of the game. Here’s scenes Realme is probably just a Black forest now. Malekith cast would be in a more mountainous area. We know Bethesda’s capable of doing it because we got, the Shivering Isles and Hermanus more as Roman Dragonborn. The only limitation
For Oblivion is file space and development time. Another victim of the release date curse. So the painters trapped in this painted world after losing his paintbrush to a thief. The brush was given to him by DiBella and exists as a vanilla example of an artifact we could have given to
Martin. This brush allows its wielder to paint their imagination into this world, which then appears on the canvas. So why does he have a sketch of a forest if he isn’t actually a classical painter?
Is it to trick people into thinking he’s an oil painter when actually all he does is just a VR painting? Which is harder, by the way. Also, side note if the painting is his imagination, then why is it an impressionist style? Shouldn’t it be a realist style since Ries would be imagining realistic
Objects? Or is the implication that it’s going off of his memories, which are now impressions? I suspect the answer really is that the style has to be impressionist to convey that it’s a painted world because Bethesda’s already attempting to convey realism in their normal esthetic. While we’re killing
Painted trolls with turpentine, let’s discuss the Bolivians esthetic style. When people discuss in Howard’s Elder Scrolls, realism is the word of the day, and I don’t think it’s accurate in the least. In fact, each Elder Scrolls game has come with its own unique visual, esthetic Arena and
Dagger Fall have very similar styles due to their proximity and release dates. They draw visually from like Dungeons and Dragons with an emphasis on the human form and contrasting colors with the background. Morrowind inherited the former, but lost a lot of the latter.
That’s why shirtless old dudes are jacked and faces are super exaggerated. Its environment was fairly desaturated, however, and the only time you would see the use of contrast was when characters were dressed brightly
Compared to their environments. Or maybe you would see a blue or red candle lighting up an area. Oblivion is almost counter statement to that. Everything is bright and colorful except dungeons, which are desaturated and moody. The unique usage of lighting is gone. In Morrowind, enemies followed a rule of opposing parties.
The brighter and more colorful they were, the more dangerous they would be. In Oblivion, every enemy is bright and colorful, and level scaling removes most of the danger. The problem is the bulk of this visual discussion almost always stays in the great forest and around the red ring road.
When Oblivion offers so much more than that, the Gold Coast and Reserve feature a more golden landscape. Skin grid is intentionally meant to evoke the imagery of a city in the Alps. Blackwood is darker and more humid, fitting a swamp while. The more mountainous regions
Near shaded hall in Bruma are desaturated full of grays and whites. To simply say that a Bolivians world is bright and colorful and cheery is dishonest is akin to saying that Vardhan Fell was entirely in ashy wasteland even when he actually has trees and like garden falls.
I’m not going to focus on Skyrim’s visual yet because this isn’t the video for it. I don’t think they improved, but I do think that Skyrim is beautiful. Anyways, we managed to get to the thief’s
Body who was killed by his own painted trolls and the painter uses it to teleport us out of the painted world. He gives us his apron, which fortifies agility and intelligence of all things. And yeah, this quest really is popular just because it’s visually distinct. It goes to show a short dungeon
Crawl can be made interesting when you use a unique design where spirits have less. Something new to Oblivion is the ability to buy houses in Morrowind. The only player home you could get legally were the strongholds, which
Weren’t always ideal, given they weren’t in central locations and were gated behind the great house content. Oblivion changed this for the better by offering houses for sale in each city. This was one of the main money things in Oblivion since houses cost thousand gold, if not tens of thousands of gold. The
DLC would then break that by offering houses for real money that were effectively free once you installed them. Anvil Offers the player a moderately sized house on the cheap as well and only 5000 gold. So when the player turns around to find that the house is haunted, well, this caught people
By surprise. This is another one of those essential quests that people recommend, though in Ventress, the guy who sold us this place immediately skips town as soon as he has his money. We confront him in the city and he feels guilty and is willing to return with us to Anvil.
He offers to help us with exercising in the place as his blood is needed to open a wall in the basement. He flees as soon as open and we confront the lich longer and business down in the basement. This quest is pretty simple,
And it involves traveling back and forth a lot, but it’s themed really well. The basement is and there’s even a Necronomicon, which I consider a fun element to the house since it sticks around even after the house is restored.
I know I’ve read this and I can say the chance to atone for what I see. The things I’ve done to the people live in the horror sequel lacks a great man who was justified in his actions. I mean, was the only way.
Stop the madness. I have the exact same. So I made big my final 29 series. Greyjoy Greyjoy. I had to my body only when I went this terrible nightmare. It never seems to realize how important it is to manipulate universes, to see everything carry is close to proving she
Years have gone by since immortality has tied and clashed with mortals estimated their power. I shall not repeat that mistake twice now. Look at We have to kill Laura Green, who has become a letch. But that isn’t a problem because he’s not that powerful. Maybe I might criticize Val for foolishly
Selling the house. He should have invested in hiring an adventurer to take care of the legend. And then the property value would have gone up, resulting in more money for him. But it’s part his
Character, so it fits. I’ll see you get a line from Cara Hill at the local Mages Guild about this. I’ve heard you were able to lift the curse from Belarus Manor and destroy green Belarus once
And for all. I thank you for completing the task I set about to do long ago. His unholy craft will no longer threaten the citizens of Anvil. Well done. Zero visibility. It speaks volumes that such an obvious and intentionally dumb village name is the setting of such a prolific quest.
Everyone in all is well. You know what I’m calling in as well has turned invisible, and they want us to reverse it. Turns out they live near a wizard who they’ve taken to blaming for it. But they can’t confirm this because, well, they can’t find him. I have
To use a detect life spell to track them down. And we find them living in the tower with. A bunch of invisible creatures. He got tired of getting harassed by the villagers, so he cooked up an invisibility spell with an area effect. Only problem was the radius of the spell included the
Village. So unknowingly, he actually turned all of those people invisible. There’s an entire conversation. And unless you’re polite or booster’s disposition, you might not get all the tools you need. He gives us a scroll to reverse the spell, but we have to cast it in the middle of town and he
Can give us a ring while we do it, or it’ll end up damaging our luck. Honestly, why aren’t there more that are made more powerful if you incorporate downsides into them? Our reward for fixing the village is free lodging at the Ales well, in which includes a safe chest to store stuff.
Basically free house to live in. Given its proximity to the starting location, it’s fair to say the developers may have intended us to encounter this village on our way to win in primary as a first quest,
Which is probably it’s so simple, yet popular, a shadow over hacked dirt with its obvious reference to the 1968 film Shadow Over Overrun is another quest considered part of the Essential Oblivion experience. And I’m going to be honest, I don’t get it. I don’t think I’ve ever actually done this quest
Correctly. Or if I have, then I don’t understand what the excitement’s about. The quest apparently starts, with a younger Ghanian woman approaching us. If the footage is missing, it’s because I literally do not remember this happening. Hello? I don’t think we’ve met.
Are you new in town? Oh, well, I’m sorry for bothering you. My mother often says I’m too forward with strangers. I do, however, remember her mother asking me to find her missing daughter, mostly because her mother’s the advanced mercantile trainer and would
Ask me to try and find your missing daughter every time I rolled into Coral for training. No, no, don’t worry. I’ll go looking for her eventually. Dharma, I’m not sure if her name is intentionally meant to refer to the religious concept of Dharma. Volunteered to handle business
For her mother and actor. A village located deep within the Great Forest. It’s not exactly the richest of places. But then again, they did decide to name their settlement hack dirt. So perhaps it’s an intentional living style. It is not. The locals don’t exactly take kindly to strangers
In these parts here. Maybe hacked dirt stands out to people because it’s the only place where NPCs aren’t weirdly cheerful to the player being told the [____] off. Probably caught a lot of people off guard.
The merchant dharma was supposed to meet claims they’ve not seen her and makes demands of us to boot. Nobody else in town is much help, but it’s very apparent they aren’t exactly the kind to trust. That’s Why? It seems questionable that Senior. Wait, seriously. That’s her name. She’s weirdly
Popular with the artistic community too. Anyways, it’s questionable that she would ever in a million years allow her daughter within a mile of actors. I can imagine being called a piece of Dunmore. Farm equipment was the least of the things seniors had to endure while trading with these people. Seed Zine
Suggested that if the villagers didn’t know where her daughter was to look for her daughter’s beloved horse blossom and sure enough, we find it without daughter, a villager will deny foul play, saying that they’ve owned the horse for years. We’re eventually approached and told to stop asking questions lest the brethren get involved.
After trying to persuade several people to help me. There were just no leads. It’s a shame the villagers don’t change their tune with a higher disposition. They’ll have the variable that normally indicates they should the player, and then they’ll still tell us that we’re unwelcome. So eventually I
Just take the looking for clues in people’s houses and eventually find a trapdoor into a cave system. After a small bit of stealth, find dharma in a cage and I set her free and we walk back to Coral with zero resistance. Yeah, I think I did it wrong. There’s a whole
Story here about the history of Hector and how this cult took over. And these creatures that roam the caves and escaping with Dharma is supposed to be a challenge. And despite having done this quest twice, I’ve never experienced any of that. And yet I approve. Thing
Is, having the freedom to somehow mess this quest up enough to actually pull off a rescue without any lives being lost is kind of interesting. It’s apparent from reading the USP that, I missed the one NPC who can actually help us and just barely missed the events where I’m supposed to get ambushed.
I didn’t do it how the designers intended clearly, but I could still do it. And that’s emergent storytelling. I could die at the Berryville. Mages Guild wants us to help her with her missing friend who’s gone missing inside of a dreamworld.
Already? This sounds like two quests we’ve done already smashed into one. I theorized back in the Majors guilt section that this quest in particular may have been the original recommendation quest and grew it to its own dedicated side.
The reason CUDA needs help is that she needs a stranger to enter the dreamworld. If she entered her friend, hint it here would just dismiss her as a memory. Upon entering, we most of our equipment has disappeared, and in order to escape, we have to help Panettiere with four trials to
Escape. If this premise sounds familiar, that’s because the mind of madness would redo this quest. And Skyrim is sheer Gareth’s quest. The first test, the test of perception, is a challenging gantlet of various traps the player may encounter while playing the game. Or it is in
Theory. Had the animations not broken so the traps move in slow motion. The second test, The test of resolve gives us a bunch of freebie gear and pits us against a couple of monitors. The third test, The test of courage, is a short swimming sequence that the game makes sure
To provide ample water breathing potions to help with. It’s not that difficult. Final test is the test of patience. If that isn’t fitting for Oblivion, then I don’t know what is. We’re given a scroll which shows three patterns that match the pressure plate series in front of.
The player can recognize a pattern of similar characters drawing out the path through the plates. Or we could just run through the traps. Don’t spell out death or anything. And doing it right is not a condition escaping. With all four tests completed, hint and tears therapy session
Is over and we return to the real world. We’re given six level scrolls, and that’s the quest. I think this harkens back to our discussion on puzzles. This appears to be the extent that either Bethesda can design puzzles or is
Willing to make them difficult. I’m sure a major with this quest was trapping players inside the dream world who may not have saved before entering its simplicity, maybe for another reason. However, this appears to be the only documented quest of Megan Sawyer, an environmental
Artist you can see in the Making of Oblivion documentary, working on her main job during Oblivion, which was the City of Shade and Hall. What’s funny is I wouldn’t have known Megan Sawyer had worked on this quest if she herself hadn’t put her name on
It, which was apparently an accident. She included it to fill space on the letter puzzle and then forgot. Remove it later. I’m not asking for Metal Gear. Solid V tier credit sequence here is here. But if there was a tag in the
Construction set where devs could leave their signatures, we’d probably have a pretty image of who created what quests. If this accident hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have found Sawyer’s website, which happened to answer the question about the brush of death Quest. I had. Nannies may have designed the
Quest, but the reason people remember it is because of Sawyer’s visual contributions. I took here an order of the virtuous blood after you reach a fame value of five, which is super easy.
A Dunmore woman will approach you in the temple district. Her husband, Gillen, wants us to meet his boyfriend, Dio Brando, who’s heading up a vampire hunting organization. He gives us a name and tells us about how they’re a vampire. And they killed an innocent
Woman, only for it to be revealed on arrival that Roland did no such. Roland will claim that he is not a vampire in that cut up deal that neither party looks like vampires, I guess implying that they fed recently and thus can’t be with just the eye test.
Killing Roland nets an easy 250 GS, but going after DIO is much more profitable since Roland will afterwards pay us 250 gold for each sample of vampire dust we bring him. It’s a shame neither Dio’s nor Roland’s houses have any garlic in them as clues,
Although we do find two bottles of skimmer in Roland’s. Hell, yeah. Cheers, brother. More. Even though Dio is a vampire, he still makes visits over to the first edition to purchase literature. Hey, Fantasy’s venti is always willing to gossip. Tells us that he overheard Dio mentioned Memorial Cave. To who, exactly? Well, whatever.
We head out and find his vampire later where he lives with 12 vampires. Wait, wait. I mean, heading up the only local vampire hunting organization in Sierra Poland and killing off its competent members is certainly a good scam for a vampire to run.
Assuming is the patriarch, Roland has a reward for clearing. His name will give us the ring of sun, fire, resist disease, whatever. But 25% spell reflection at level 25 fair. The game’s over at this point anyways. But still, that’s an
Insane ring, to say the least. The Killing Field website haven’t written it yet. When we step out of the prison sewers and into the world for the first time, the first dungeon that’s immediately visible is delivering delivering features.
An Iliad statue in a to miss location. The statue is extremely valuable, but when you sell it, you’ll eventually be approached and asked to visit Amber Kano Manor in the Imperial City. Amber Kano is a high off collector of alien artifacts, particularly the ten ancestors, a set of statues that
Used to reside in the Imperial City but were scattered across cereal during the slave rebellion. Amber Kano wants to pay us to retrieve the statues for him and will pay us 500 gold per note that he doesn’t give us any clues as to where to go for statue number two. There Are 53
Alien ruins and only nine of them have statues inside them? We do get clues later after we find the second statue, but for now we just have to dungeon dive and hope for the best.
Oh, and in at least one ruin, I managed to miss the location of the statue due to it being hidden. After three statues, we get the next quest. There’s no fancy for completing the set beyond 5000
Gold, plus the 5000 you’ll make from selling the statues. So you might as well not bother. Amber Kano will give us a key and ask that we seek out the location of a ruin called the High Thane. No relation. I’m not sure where, but at some point in the playthrough, I happened
To have read a book called Cleansing the High Thane. So in a rare moment of law integration, our character will actually offer up the name and location of the ruin. You will also know if you’ve been to the ruin as you’ll recognize the drawing.
Otherwise, we head outside and get approached by Claude Merrick. He’s a fellow treasure hunter who works from Bicheno and will heavily push the player towards finding the ruin, which obviously turns out to be a trap when we arrive to find sightseers adorned in Diedrich in glass armor. The ruins. Pretty
Simple. And when we leave, the ambush occurs. I hand over the statue before immediately stealing it back. Because that’s definitely the funniest outcome. It’s also really easy to do because the carving has no value or
Weight, even though it would almost certainly have both. All you get, again, gold for turning in the carving so you could at least let him have it because you’ll still get the third quest. Finally, we’re given the third quest to the
Trilogy and the Kano gives us a thousand gold and tells us to get another collector to turn over their Iliad crown. Said Collector is an alien researcher who reveals that the crown is probably not suited to belonging Kano as he has ulterior motives and suggests that we give him a different crown. I
Steal her crown anyways, and then we get the other crown and head back to Amber Kano. He’s thrilled. Requests. We escort him through the ruined city of Nima later, and he is not essential. So you might want to clear out all ten glitches first. There is some absurd stuff in game,
But the fact that let’s just show up as common enemies and dungeons in the late game is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard. In Broader fantasy, which is a master necromancy, perfecting his art to the degree that he transfers his soul into his own immortal undead body.
This action is not casually performed and glitches are often the primary antagonists of stories either due to some maintenance requirements to keep their form or their magic turning them evil. The idea that multiple witches share a living space or even that two glitches work together is absurd, and the game even represents
This by putting the witches into their own faction with adversarial relationships with necromancers. Yet at level 19 you’ll start finding the alien ruins are full of random witches and masters of conjugation
Can even some in the form of a lich. Sorry for saying it so many times, but come on Dungeon master, spawn in tons of witches in order to kill their players is a known meme. So when Amber Kano sits down on the throne
And it turns him into the king of Nin, a locked and opens two monster closets with four witches inside them. Yeah, I’m fading. I’m pretty fond of the Kano quest. I think it represents some of the things that we wanted
To carry forward into future games, both in terms of pacing, connectivity, making these feel organic in the world, and in terms of how the feel the final encounter was, you know, back in those Wild West days. Sometimes
The final encounter was you put a guy in the world and he’s just really tough and you have to beat him. While here we actually made an actual encounter that you had to deal with. It felt like it was a
Bot, more like a Boss encounter. So I’m particularly fond of that. And when I talk about the natural world stuff with your mechanic quest, you find something in the world. Quest is waiting for that.
And when you find that somebody comes and talks to you so it feels like the world as is natural. And that’s a very cool moment. The only real reward isn’t the generic alien loot We get along
The way and could have gotten from any of the ruins are the two Iliad crowns the crown and a lighter, which fortifies alteration, conjugation 15 points and reflects spells 25% pretty good and the crowned of line day, which fortifies alteration in illusion 15 points and resists magic 35%.
Nice. These are fine rewards except their spell casting focused Helms with armor values, making the whole thing questionable. This is where I’m going to move on from the side quests. But I hear you say, Where’s the ever scamp quest? Where’s
The sirens, deception? Where’s tears of the Savior? Where’s Pale Pass? I to neatly close off this section? Oblivion is fondly remembered for its side quests because many of them tried to have unique or entertaining premises making memorable.
Everybody’s going to have their own side quests. They’ll want to have seed covered, but necessarily can’t be. Not every side. QUEST Is that complicated or interesting? The ship of Anvil is about exorcizing ghosts from a boat. But as I
Said at the beginning, that’s not grounds to cut it simply because it’s not bombastic. To me, there’s this sort of thrill starting to side QUEST that you think is going to be simple only for it to become more complicated as time goes on.
Sanguins Quest in Skyrim is a good example that surprise only works when you have quests around it that aren’t complicated for it to better blend in. If Skyrim only consisted of its top 20 most bombastic quests, then Sanguine would not have been a surprise and thus would not have been as interesting. There’s
One more variety of quest I want to talk about in Oblivion, and those are the master trainer quests. All 21 of them tend to work the exact same way. You reach skill level 70. An advanced trainer will recommend you to a master trainer in order to offer their services. All the master
Trainers will have some sort of request usually related to their skill. The sneak trainer wants you to steal a coin from her. The mysticism trainer wants you to close three Oblivion Gates. The marksman trainer wants you to own an elvin bow. The heavy armor trainer wants you to get him
A set of silver glasses for an innkeeper who likes the hand. A hand trainer wants you to spar with him. The destruction trainer wants to see bear pelts. The conjugation trainer wants you to summon
A ghost. I think the most unique one is the alteration trainer who lives in the nib in bay and. Yeah, He spends most of the day underwater. He’ll only offer training to the player if they can survive underwater for three in-game hours or 6 minutes of real time. This is
Not challenging, especially if you’re skill level 17 alteration, but it is a great quest idea. The players either expected to know magic or be outgoing in Skyrim got lazy. This likely because there weren’t enough people using trainers to even notice the effort that was going into their
Quests. So for the most part, the 18 master trainers of Skyrim simply required you to either be a member of the Stabbers, Smokers or Weird Boys Factions. So I put out some feelers after my Oblivion research streams that anyone who had made an
Oblivion video was invited to do a short collaboration where they discuss a side quest and their experiences with Oblivion. This was intended to be an olive branch of sorts to the channels I covered in my streams. Instead, the two creators I hadn’t covered were the only ones to respond from zero zero
In private sessions. The former, because this video came out after I had finished and private sessions simply because he wasn’t really on anyone’s radar until after a brotherhood. Has the player investigating a murder in the city of Burma. Only thing is the culprit has already been found by
The guards and found not guilty. Reynolds Davis was caught the house belonging to Braydon, and when the guards found him, Raynal claimed to be a vampire hunter and that Braydon had been a vampire living a double life. Due to
Some circumstantial evidence and word from skin grab, the guards of Bruma are quick to believe Reynolds is clean. The only problem is that Braden’s wife is convinced her husband was no vampire. The evidence the guards are leveling against her husband faulty, and she’s able to dismiss it all quite
Readily. Help me clear my husband’s name. Someone needs to get Suki Water under control. She believes. This is a perversion of justice and asks the player to get to the bottom of it. Karius belittles the players involvement in the investigation as he’s already content with a flimsy explanation that
Supports the word of the supposed vampire slayer. Keep up the good work, I suppose, But if the player does a little snooping at the end where Rachel is staying at, they will find a journal to another victim of Raynal, proving that
Braydon Raynal and the Journals author all knew each other years back and found a powerful artifact while adventuring. It would seem Raynal decided to start murdering his former partners for their keys to the chest containing the artifact. When Carice is told this and shown the journal, he does an immediate one and
Puts the player onto Reynolds trail to serve justice at Boreal Stone cave, the player finds the chest in Raynal who decided to wait rather than, you know, use the keys and run off with the amulet.
He to surrender, opting to take his chances in combat rather than rot in a Burma dungeon for a double homicide. He’s really forthcoming with his motivations, more or less narrating, and telegraphing everything he’s
Thinking and about to do. He then wishes the player good luck in killing him and then gets killed by the player. The player then takes possession of the keys and the amulet, which doesn’t seem to do anything special at all. Upon returning to Britain’s widow, she informs the player that Braydon had a
Special spell put on the amulet to mask its true purpose. She whispers the special word that on the spell It’s brotherhood, by the way, and then gives the player the amulet as a reward, which just turns out to be a meager 4 to 5 speed enchantment.
Yeah, that’s right. Three men died over a necklace that fortifies speed. Hello. I am private sessions. You may know me as the owner of a YouTube channel called Private Sessions. I used to have the longest Oblivion retrospective on YouTube until Patrician came along and made one longer.
Patrician asked if I want to cover a question as video and talk about my experiences with Oblivion. So here I am covering a question is video and talking about my experiences with Oblivion. When I started playing Oblivion 15 years ago, I never would have thought it would one day
Make me mildly YouTube famous. It’s a fun and exciting adventure. And is this style of narration really boring and annoying? Because this is literally how this quest is written. Whoever wrote, designed and made this quest seem to not understand what the old writing or
Love show don’t tell means, because this entire quest is spelled out in painfully dull, almost monotonous detail. Like, Let’s just read a couple of excerpts from the Journal. We find it’s quiet out as if the ruins were pings back to the elite inhabitants that disappeared here long ago.
Or how about this one as we carefully walked along? I scanned the floor and the walls very carefully for any type of triggers, trip wires or pressure plates. Such was my specialty. The entire quest sounds, reads
And plays like this is the first story the designer ever wrote. And if Bethesda had even remotely tighter quality control mechanisms, this quest would have at the very least, been rewritten to sound less amateur. And once again, I can’t get over the fact that the key word to unlock the
Amulet is brotherhood. You know, like the name of the quest and the name of the adventuring group and the thing just sort of high speed. Ooh. Anyway, thanks to Patricia for including me in this video. I’ll be looking as a fun game. Go play it.
Hey, there. You probably don’t know me. I am from here to zero. Actually, now that I think about it, you might. Because apparently, after watching an eight hour long Morrowind video, a lot of people went. What’s another one and a half hour? Am I right? Basically, before
Pat uploaded his grandiose eight hour epic, I was sitting at a very modest 11 subscribers. But then suddenly, anyways, a year and a half go by, during which I’m comfortably writing the coattails of seemingly everyone that’s uploaded a video on Morrowind trying to reach out to
Pat with a joke tweet which he replies to and promptly forgets about. Well, who can blame him? This is Twitter. After and working on other projects, I finally released my take on Oblivion. For some reason, my videos on The Elder Scrolls and past sphere of influence seems to be intertwined.
Maybe by sheer coincidence or some other cosmic force, but either way, someone picked up my Oblivion video and posted it in the Patrician TV’s Discord Server. One thing led to another and here I am guest appearing on what I’m certain will be the definitive Oblivion video on YouTube.
But hey, you’re not here to hear me talk about myself. So let’s get into the meat of things. As we all know, a great narrative needs a protagonist that is tailor made for the role, which is why I have crafted the most optimal detective known to man a huge
Cranium to house his galaxy sized brain, pronounced eyebrows for optimal eyebrow movement when scrutinizing his suspect’s huge eyes, whose pupillary distance has been stretched to the very limit of human understanding for unparalleled situational awareness. And, of course, a little something for the ladies. This is for Great detective, his one and only
Purpose. After breaking out of the Imperial prison is to find the perpetrator of a most heinous crime committed against the Countess of Coral. You can go to Castle Coral at any time and talk with Arianna to learn of the ongoing investigations surrounding a stolen painting of her deceased husband.
Canvas The castle, as it’s called, is a somewhat unique quest Oblivion. For one, there’s absolutely no fighting involved. Even if you were to accuse the wrong person. But the quest also expects you to figure things
Out on your without any sort of guide. If you accept the Countess’s plea for help, she’ll point you in the direction of the two last suspects and three witnesses who you’ll need to interrogate to get to the truth.
Interestingly enough, her descriptions of where you can find them are so good that the quest markers become superfluous. Actually After having finished the interrogations, the quest markers disappeared completely. At that point, there’s nothing telling you where to go to look for clues. I think this is the only that happens
In Oblivion. Having the people in question spill the beans is merely a matter of getting them to like you. Enough. But let’s get real here. What’s not likable about this face? Each person gives a small nugget of information that,
When combined with the rest of the testimonies, should give a pretty clear answer to who the culprit is. There is still a need for hard proof, though, so it’s a shame that there’s none of it here. Basically, instead of finding proof that corroborates
With the different pieces of information to add excuse for a pun, paint a picture of what happened on the night of the crime. You find circumstantial evidence as an actual painting in one of the towers. Footprints of
Paint on a carpet in the dining hall and painting supplies that have been hidden in a lectern. Like why wouldn’t you leave your brushes and stuff in a place are protected? How are footprints in the dining room which could have been left there by literally damning evidence?
How do you come to the conclusion that someone being into painting means they also steal paintings? The culprit is, of course, meant to be Chanel. You’d have to have a previously undiscovered level of dyslexia to think that the culprit is ordinal. True. One of the witness
Report states that they saw him drinking in the watchtower the same place as the paintings found. But that same statement also says that he doing it after he was caught. So that theory barely even enters the room
Before it’s flung back out through the window. You can still accuse him of the theft, though, but the only thing that happens is that there’s an added voice line from the countess and a decreased reward. There’s also an option
To straight up lie and say You never found anything in your reward from the Countess is barely worth the effort. But Chanel will be so grateful that she offers to paint you a picture as. Thanks. It’s
Just you have to wait three whole for it to be finished. The and root for the great detective, though, was always meant to be the one where the culprit is exposed and the painting is returned to its rightful owner. He doesn’t give a crap about some lame sob story.
I am ashamed that I took the painting, but my love for the count was greater than you could imagine. Chanel exiled from Coral, and all that’s left is to admire the fruits of. Hang on, admire the fruits of the investigation’s success. It’s almost
Enough to bring a tear to an old hardboiled detective story. This is your last warning. Get out around the restaurant. I made a statement in my Morrowind video that went something like this. The reason people forgive, it’s main quest for fumbling the war and Red Mountain is that thematically, it’s
Concluded by the tribunal DLC. In a sense, people are willing to forgive the inequities of the game if. Its expansion content is good. The Shivering Isles is the awkward middle child to Blood, Moon and Dragonborn. Both of those expansions took place on Souls Time, the middle Ground between Weidenfeld and Skyrim.
Conversely, the Shivering Isles has little thematic relevance to its parent province at the surface level. This is the fault of Oblivion, and Shivering Isles cannot help. That share growth was effectively irrelevant the first time around. So much so they changed the voice actor for The Expanse even for the better, perhaps.
But it kind of shows that this wasn’t entirely planned. If you look at it cynically, Shivering Isles is an olive branch to Morrowind fans. Visually, the Isles look similar to vardenafil, at least superficially. Mania is way more colorful than
The Cascadian Isles or Graceland’s and Dementia is a lot more gloomy than the Bitter Coast. There’s even a point where an area is turned gray and dead, and I stopped and stared at the horizon and realized that I was standing in the ash lands.
I think the worst part of the Shivering Isles is showing the real potential that Bethesda has to make a creatively alien world, a potential that barely ever shown through in Skyrim and we never really saw in
Fallout. Maybe Starfield will get the chance to be truly alien. And I’m not talking about weirdness. If you play the Shivering Isles and just conclude, that’s weird, then you didn’t really try to understand it. There’s a disturbing trend in Oblivion videos of excluding the Shivering Isles almost as though people think,
If they included, it, may invalidate some of their arguments on Oblivion, which isn’t true. The shivery Niles does not try to fix level scaling broken quests, bad storylines or face June, but it does have an interesting questline and it actually somewhat leverages the potato faced freaks into thematically fitting Oblivion tone.
In a sense, the Shivering Isles is probably the best piece of content that could have been made for Oblivion. We start with the personnel change. Ralston is Gone, replaced by Nesmith and Nelson. Allan Nairn is Kurt Coleman, and Bryan Chapman continued as quest designers with two new
Team members. Erik J Caproni and John Paul Duvall, who are both late game additions to Oblivion. Erik Jacob only started at Bethesda after being a mission designer and monolith in 2005. No, he didn’t contribute to fear. He worked on The Matrix online. He was late to
Bethesda in working on Oblivion, contributing at the tail end, and he designed two unspecified DLC pieces as well as working on Knights of the Nine and eventually Shivery Niles. I was not able to find as much information on John Paul Duvall. He showed up one day, got an additional
Design credit on Oblivion, and then became a main designer by Shivering Isles. It’s funny that despite having as many designers on the Shivering Isles, there’s much less content. And obviously this is because it had a shorter dev time with Bethesda aching to move their entire studio on to production of Fallout three.
A gate has opened in the nib in Bay to Share Gareth’s realm of Oblivion, the titular Shivering Isles. And this is because my Lord wills it to be so. It poses no danger to Mundus. No compact has been violated, man. The temple district is still
On fire, and we’ve already retconned never again. In truth, this does not bother me. We see other princes extend invitations to their realms, even potentially after the main quests. Conclusion. My only problem is that there’s never really a plot point about who brought the
Gate here. Puritan polytheism invitations took place at their shrines, but apparently Diedrich Princess can just plop unsolicited gates to their realms down in the middle of a traffic lane. And as long as the attend isn’t set to hostile, the mods won’t get involved. Nor a man dressed as the
Breville guard is standing at the gate warning people not to go in and killing anything hostile that comes out. Now there are gameplay reasons for this, but Gaius here is not a guard. He won’t to arrest the player, and no one in Breville even acknowledges his existence after spitting out a crazy guy.
Who the guard kills, Gareth will invite us into the realm. We’re greeted by the himself, Jeff Baker as Haskell. This guy was the Morrowind voice of the Dunmurry and Imperials. If this voice sounds familiar, but you couldn’t place it. I am Haskell Chamberlain to the lodge here, Gareth.
Great. I’m sure you’ll fit right in. Follow me up to the office and they’ll finish your release. It’s a shame they couldn’t get them for more roles. I absolutely understand. Not wanting to do the gravelly Dunmore voice 4 hours worth of voice lines, even though it’s not necessary, as this was a
Regional thing to the dumber Who lived near Red Mountain. Haskell here lays out the premise for the expansion share. Gareth is looking for a champion and so has taken to inviting mortals to his realm. Whether we or not is our choice. Personally, I would think the $30 this thing cost at launch would
Have been the choice moment. It’s not like you’ve future proofed any of the other DLC in Oblivion. That’s a nice effect. We get deposited into the fringe, a quarantine zone for the Rome proper. We have to either get past the gatekeeper giant flesh Gollum, which possesses the
Keys to the gate, or go mad and get admitted into the Rome proper. Seeing as there is not a way to actually go mad in Oblivion outside of roleplaying, our only option is the former. Which means that canonically the [____] did not go mad. Beating the gatekeeper is interesting
Because while there are ways to make the fight easier, we could also just elect to fight him head on and could even win. Some snooping around reveals that the goblins creator visits him at midnight and she will even say that her tears adversely affect Gatekeeper.
There’s also a local Jay Red ice veins who wants to attempt to fight the gatekeeper to brute force his way into the realm. He posits that the best way to kill things is with its bones. That’s a Nordic philosophy for you. After a short visit to
Where the gatekeeper was built, we’re fashioned with toe gatekeeper bone arrows. Are several different varieties of arrow to be found, all of which are level to the player and the best of which does 16 damage one point more than DAYBREAK Arrows.
Shivering Isles is many ways a horizontal progression to Oblivion rather than a vertical progression like tribunal in Blood Moon, where for Morrowind and that’s not a criticism. Now, before continue, I have to put this out there. It’s fairly evident that with most things I’m not really an expert in the stuff I talk
About outside of like sound engineering and writing, which is tied to my profession as a video editor. The thing is, however, when I butcher music theory in a discussion of the soundtrack, it’s mostly correct for the benefit of the people who don’t know much about that
Subject. And hopefully only minor league cringing for the people who actually study it. At the end of the day, however, if I’m wrong about music, it’s not really that harmful. An inevitable part of this analysis going to be a discussion on mental illness, which
Is where I have the most potential to say something actually harmful if I’m wrong. I’m putting this disclaimer in less so as a way of shielding myself because. People will just ignore it if they want to. And more so as a way to shield you, the listener.
Humans are prone to seeing symptoms in themselves and self diagnosing problems that don’t exist, and also paradoxically ignoring symptoms and conditions that do exist. It’s important to remember that we’re seeing these topics through a lens, through writers themselves have differing levels of experience with
These issues. I don’t like Chagas because they changed his characterization to be random Internet humor. But here’s a post a guy who claims to be bipolar schizoaffective, who says that share growth helps him explain his condition to people in this sort of situation. I personally would defer my
Analysis. Actual scholars. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, nobody’s taking the time to write a thesis about how mental illness is portrayed in the Shivering Isles beyond the surface level. The best I found was an article written by a Doctor of Psychology about how she uses the Shivering Isles
To introduce her students to concepts that she plans to teach. When what I need is, for example, to know what mental illness Romina Branham is suffering from. I would say she’s suffering from psychotic disorder. She routinely tortures people, lacks any sense of except for the delusional relationships.
She does have a motherly relationship towards a flesh golem that is forced to love her back and a parasocial relationship with Cigaret who in reality is just using her talents to make abominations. Her apprentice, Nanette Dunn, opens the way up for us to exploit the weakness of the gatekeeper. She appears suffer from
Schizoaffective disorder. She’s suffering from auditory hallucinations, which could be a whole host of things. But but since the sounds are almost always contextual to the conversation, having and seeing as this is a common trope used for schizophrenia, I think that’s the case. None of the other
Residents of the Fringe seem to be suffering from noticeable mental illness yet, which is the point. The fringe is meant to ripen people into madness before their invitation to the realm proper. Jared Ice Veins is another contender seemingly obsessed with bones autism since he came from Skyrim. His obsession
With bones and social awkwardness are my case. Although our understanding of autism in 2027 was super basic, so I don’t know how, accurate. That assessment is. When we defeat the gatekeeper, we get two keys which
Correspond to the two gates. As Haskell explains, one gate will lead to mania and one gate will lead to dementia. As I’ve said, all choices have consequences. But don’t trouble yourself too much with your decision. Yeah, no kidding. The actual choice isn’t which route we take to to New York, as you could
Use the mania gate and still travel through dementia. Rather, the choice is between two powers which are not communicated to the player. The blessing of mania, a power that casts frenzy. While the blessing of dementia is a power that casts demoralize, fitting one to start fights and one to
End them. There is a large mountain, the middle of the island, meaning that the player is gently pushed towards taking the roads through the middle of each region. There isn’t really much of note until we arrive
At the city of new shapes, which is divided into two districts, each corresponding to their own region. Here will encounter the strange residents of the island before heading up to the palace and meeting with Shell. Gareth. Well, look who’s here. You. How about that? You’ve made it this far. Farther than anyone
Else. Well done. To summarize a lot of dialog share. Gareth is pleased we made it, but needs to replace the gatekeeper or adventurers are going to start showing up and ruining things while this is his realm.
And he could pretty much do anything he wanted to his intruders. He prefers to take a more hands off approach. Unfortunately, I feel like this decision has colored other princes realms in their portrayal. De-Aged princes are effectively omniscient when it comes to their realms.
Maroons allowed the player to close the Bolivian gates order to prop up his chosen boy, Martin. But if you’re in Cold Harbor and Moloch Ball wants you to die, then you better be a God damned
Jerk prince or have charm if you expect to not end up becoming a greasy smear on the side of his maze. Even if share, Gareth isn’t taking an active role in kicking the normals out of his realm, we can probably assume he’s watching everything we do more than he would care to admit.
And I mean, if we try to fight him, he’ll just teleport us into the sky and send us falling to our deaths. It’s a shame. The bounds of imperial law regarding magic reach even into the Mad Gods plane of Oblivion. So we’re sent out to Zealand to reactivate
It. It’s an old tool sheer Gareth used before the gatekeeper to keep the normals out. Now it’s just a grommet. Then grommets appear to be a primitive mortal race. Their nature largely up for speculation. We know they are not danger because they have a reproductive cycle.
Anyways, the book share Gareth gives us details the process of restoring to Dillion. And after doing so, a gate opens to reveal the teleportation pad, which takes us to kill a bend near Randall. Finally, Lord Chair, Gareth has sent someone to assist me. Yeah, dude, he totally did not forget about
Until he needed you. Must kill a band designed this dungeon. And it’s used to lure adventurers here. Kill the bands. Interesting. Almost a mirror to Romina. He was the first. Or maybe just an earlier guy
To create a tool for keeping outsiders out and seems to be delusional about his importance to the realm. But where Romina leaned towards dementia killer band leans more towards mania. Could also be she gets a table disorder. Could also be that whoever wrote this character didn’t do a good job of
Keeping with the motif of the expansion and equated mild eccentricity with madness. Zaillian uses a resonator to draw adventurers, and sure enough, a trio has arrived in time for a demonstration. This quest is fairly memorable for a lot of people, even though it’s just mechanically pushing buttons
And watching the events unfold without you. That speaks to the character of the writing in the premise. The first chamber has a natural in it. It’s small and harmless, and the group shows varying degrees of
Caution about it. One button makes the narwhal huge and pumps LSD into the room driving the rogue insane. The other button releases a swarm of gnarls into the room, which the group fights, and the rogue
Will die in the process. The second chamber has a large mound of treasure inside a cage. The two will be drawn to it, whereupon a button will fire a trap, killing the mage while the other button drops hundreds of keys, driving the mage insane as he searches desperately for the correct key.
The third chamber is full of corpses which unnerves the orc. One button causes him to hallucinate that he died without how driving him insane, while the other animates a bunch of the corpses and he dies in the process. The only downside of this quest is
That there isn’t really commentary or consequence for the player based on their choices. In fact, we only have to make these choices in order to leave. Also, what happens if there’s more than three adventurers? Are there more chambers or he had another friend, one that’s impossible to have more
Than two friends. It was a fatal mistake. Still, it’s a fun quest, and the reward of Don Fang is pretty cool. It’s a unique blade said to Hail from Abacavir, which changes a dawn and dusk version every day.
It also increases in power if the wielder manages to kill 12 enemies that day. During the day, the sword does fire damage and if nourished, it will absorb health night. The sword does frost damage and if nourished, will absorb magica. My only problem really was keeping the
Blade constantly sated. I mean, yeah, you could use some means to do it, but it’s tedious. As we go to leave were greeted by some lads called the Knights of Order. They match the motif of all the gray
Crystals powering the Dillion, which does not bode well. Kilbane tells us that we should immediately inform Cigarets about their arrival share. Gareth’s not actually surprised and says that this happens at the end of every era.
But before he dispatches to deal with the problem, he wants us to learn about the culture of mania and dementia. I think the quests are out of order. Also, we can summon Haskell to us anywhere now. Yeah, he’ll always have a bit of advice
For the player, which I think is mechanically a good idea for something like the Shivering Isles, even if they never really go so crazy as to risk losing the player. So starting with mania, the Duke of mania fade on appears to have had a relationship with
Someone from dementia that resulted in him losing the chalice of reversal, which has complicated his ability to do fell due. He wants it back, but doesn’t give us a whole lot of information. His nearby servant wide. I will tell us where the chalice is and elaborates that this is a sort
Of test that we’ve been sent on. Sure enough, Fell Dew is an addictive substance which we’ll need to ingest in order to access the dungeon to retrieve the chalice. While in theory this quest is about the withdrawal, the player go through without drugs. There’s ample
Enough fell due in the cave that I never actually experienced the withdrawal symptoms. This turns the burrow into a long dungeon crawl, concluding with us, finding the chalice and three addicts who had been using it. We use the showers to cure ourselves of drug addiction because it’s that easy.
An exit only to be ambushed. More Knights of order who have erected some kind of obelisk that is 17 more nights. It’s a microcosm of the Oblivion gates, or maybe more accurately, a proto dragon from Skyrim. We’ll deal with some enemies that are attacking
A random part of the woods and get rewarded with some kind of item in the process. Thankfully, like the Oblivion gates way to disable the on the list comes with it. Which are the hearts of the Knights of Order? There’s a priest in Timmy maintaining the obelisk. But
Since magic doesn’t hurt us, he’s not a problem. Even if he doesn’t die until the obelisk is disabled as a reward for fetching the chalice, the Duke admits us into the court of mania. So I guess we’ve now learned about their culture. I don’t know. I feel like the
Dragonborn chopping wood for somebody to earn the title of Thane was more of a cultural lesson than this. This was a dungeon with a gimmick, a fun, unique gimmick that a lot of people rightfully enjoy. But it was not a lesson in the culture of mania.
A proper opposite, then. Dementia is equivalent. Quest is an adventure among the people of dementia. Still, the Duchess is paranoid that somebody is out to get her. And since we’re new here, we can’t be the suspects. So now we’re the Grand Inquisitor. Is Shade being thrown at the
Purification quest? It is possible, since the meal didn’t contribute to the Shivering Isles. Our torturer is her dear who will be proficient at getting the truth out of people. Oh, and one last thing. If no one is found, you will be held responsible.
I think the only way to properly pay this quest off is well, to make it so that there’s no traitor. We search all of crucible only to come up empty handed. And then we either have to tell a paranoid person who threatened us that they’re or choose
One of the NPCs. We spent the last hour meeting to get punished instead. Naturally, when presented with another unique interactive storytelling opportunity, Bethesda fumbled. And there is actually a conspiracy to uncover hurt here. I am the Grand Inquisitor. Hmm. Are you? Hmm.
I’d expected an with a bit more flair. Oh. Well, perhaps you’ll grow into the role. One Can hope. Mm. Beautiful. Amazing. Thank you. US giant. We really [____]ing talk about leaning on your talons and trusting them to carry you.
Our man Michael Mac in the court will say that on you. Herrick has been acting a tad more suspiciously as of late, and after some encouragement, she’ll point out Maceda, who’s a tough cookie and will hold out without evidence.
Asking around eventually points us to a secret meeting between Maceda and a dark seducer. Oh, yeah. The mania guards are golden saints, like the ones from Morrowind with thirst pounds, and the dementia guards are dark seducers, which are basically just Dunmore with blue eyes instead of red. They’re also looking
Noticeably empowered from their earlier incarnations. Their new designs are, in my opinion, fairly garish. They’re now one giant streak of gold. At least the dark seducers have that little green sash to break up the color. But still, anyways, we overhear a meeting between
Mozart and a dark seducer. And with this knowledge, we confront the KGB again. He offers to cooperate If we meet him at his house in a day. Then we can torture. No. Ring the seducer a few times to get her to admit that the conspiracy leader is marrying Medium. Maceda reveals that he’s
Been murdered. Thankfully, he left evidence in his house. All roads lead to Meereen, who orchestrated the entire plot and would have actually been perfect dimension material if not, for one thing, she got caught. Knowing this, the Duchess executes Meereen
And awards us the Bo Ruins Edge, which casts one of several random spell effects and, gives us a place in the court of dementia. All right. So looking at both of these quests say Don is the Duke of dementia and,
Well, he appears to be in a perpetual state of mania sills role as the duchess. The dementia is less clear because dementia has been equated with depressive manic depression or what is now bipolar affective disorder is the main motive for the expansion.
Well. Well, yeah. I’ve experienced both shades of madness. Wonderful. You seem fulfilled. Sheer growth. This go out and mingle with the twin cultures of new chaos in order to better contextualize our job of saving the realm. He basically lays out his entire plan will become his champion and
Eventually will become him. Before that, however, shared growth wants us to relight the great torch. This has some religious significance to the city, so we’re off to Cylon like you even know where that is. Cylon is currently locked in a red versus blue conflict between the saints and the
Seducers. Which side we pick is superfluous. And that’s the point of the Chiffre miles. There’s no recognizable difference between the saints and the seducers besides their color scheme. This is kind of awkward though, because Skyrim had the identical Imperials versus storm cloaks conflict.
Remember when the series had opposing factions that the player had to choose between? That meant meaningful sacrifices. Now, as a thematic point, we have a faction between sides that is intentionally pointless. At least in this case, though, the player’s final mission is resolving that difference.
All that said, the premise of this quest relies on our neutrality in this situation. You could not do a quest like this with the Storm, cloaks and Imperials. The premise is that each side is in control of an altar, and one side will need both altars to perform the ritual to create the
Cold flame of agnon. There is no peaceful resolution, not for days of fighting internal battles. So we need to pick a side and eliminate the other. At first just seems like picking a team and fighting the other. But there’s actually a surprising degree of deception available to the
Player. The Saints who have to go on the offensive have a scout who informs us of a hidden passage that could be used. However, his commander refuses to listen to him because he’s a male. He’s a male because he’s in a lower position. In normal society. He’s not in a lower position
Because of his gender. They just don’t have genders, remember? If we guide the saints through the tunnel, they can easily win the fight. However, we could also take this information to the seducers and then the Saints into an ambush they don’t stand a chance against.
Or perhaps you tell the seducers that an attack is coming from the tunnel and then lead the saints through the front entrance. Whatever happens the surviving commander then sacrifices themselves to light the fire for us. Don’t worry. All danger canonically respawn. That’s actually why they’re so cavalier
About this situation. All of the sentient daydream races operate in logical manners for a mortal beings. Honor and status would be super important in a society where nobody dies and nobody new was ever born. We return having been lit on fire, and the priests approach us to make their case.
We’re basically choosing which jacket we want. And spoilers Arden Stores is way better share Gore Earth Impressed wants us to take over one of the Duchess and leaves the choice up to us. I just did a favor for mania, so dementia seems the way to go. There are some benefits. Dementia gets a
Better ring. They get to some in dark seducers. And even better, you’ll unlock it even better, spelled as some in golden saints for twice as long by picking dementia. Now. But this is exclusivity. There are things you don’t get after making a decision, even an entire quest that will play out differently.
We’ll start with the ritual of mania. Since not canon. Stayed on as a happy go lucky kind of guy is pretty easy to replace. Satan has to overdose on Green Mountain and we take his heart to the altar. I’m not sure how this ritual is supposed to work. If Satan dies
By other means. Considering vaporization does happen more frequently in this setting. But sure, tailing Satan servant reveals a hidden supply of green motes, but we need to employ stealth to reach it. We poison his food and wine. Satan’s heart will then explode in the middle
Of dinner and we ascend to the Duke of Mania. That’s a fun little quest. But now for the cannon ritual, the one where we go after someone who already believes in assassins on the way. She is accurately paranoid of sheer wanting to replace her, which is, is that blasphemy
Or the ultimate worship our man kill and gets us the key and we kill cell Isaiah’s except it’s a body double which what are the odds of two people looking alike in the Shivering Isles? We have to chase her down using a secret escape tunnel like the tutorial.
Except now where the overpowered assassin chasing the leader. She’s a fighter and she wills the legendary nerve Shatter. What’s that? No one uses this hammer. Yeah, probably because the weakness, the shock effect doesn’t do anything without the unofficial patch. We take her heart
Back to the chapel and fill My SIL is. This copyright. Is this right? What have you done? Have you done this? Hold your tongue, little duke. Or tear it from your mouth? Yeah. That plot point came
Back. Satan decides to turncoat to the Knights of Order, which is a good reason to take care of Sil. She seemed to the more capable of the two. She’ll let him go, however, because he’s happy with how things are
Turning out, not out of madness, but because it confirms that things are playing out differently than before. The forces of order also taken the fringe, which at first may indicate to players that they’re invading from the portal. But really it’s more of a tactical move. Without fresh blood
Entering the realm, the numbers of madness are going to dwindle as the only remaining leader besides sheer, Gareth himself were sent to command our forces in the fringe and retake it. Our forces are four dark seducers whom we can position at will. There’s not as much nuance to this
As the designer was probably hoping. Seen as unit positioning is mostly irrelevant in Oblivion. It’s less like a battle, more like two sponges grinding against each other. The commander assumes the source of the knights is the spire, which is probably being powered underground in some old ruins.
The will stay in pass wall to defend the town and will go disable the spire. And there’s no choice in that matter. For these invader, Xenophon is an interesting dungeon, despite being the same bleak, gray, boring Oblivion fair. There are refugees hiding out in the ruined knights
Rushing from the spire out to battle, and we even run into one of the guys from the beginning. Context and a little bit of scripting turned an average dungeon. Interesting, which is sort of a prelude to how Skyrim would shift its dungeon. Designed with the obelisk down in the Fringe
Handled, we return Chagas as his writing has noticeably changed, and he’s a lot more efficient with his conveyance. Yeah, laugh it up. But the conversation prior he was still his random self. Now he’s a lot more focused, which matches what he’s saying. He’s running short on
Time and we still have several things we need to do. For one, we need to back to Romina and his sister and building a new gatekeeper. Even though the knights can and do pop up wherever. So replacing the gatekeeper in the fringe hardly seems relevant.
It seems like originally the threat may have actually been external. Like, imagine a story where after the player goes in, the Legion decides to shut this gate down and instead of fighting Knights of Order were fighting, Legionaries would make the gatekeepers into the Julian his anti order weapons more accurate. Right? Romina now
Works at the bottom of a dungeon and worse, when she begrudgingly agrees to the building of a new gatekeeper. The building process is yet another dungeon, unlike before, where there’s a direct conflict in stakes. Now we’re dungeon crawling for more esoteric reasons. Sure, the gatekeeper needs
To be built so it’s urgent. But the threats aren’t these flesh shattering acts, which, Well, stellar work. Bethesda. These guys are awesome. I’m going to save us both a lot of time. Skip all of this to the part where we build the gatekeeper. We get to choose all the body
Parts, which directly affects the stats and powers of the gatekeeper. While neat, I really don’t get the of this, so they had to shoehorn in that you could activate the gatekeeper to get one of his powers. Great. Add that to the pile of greater powers I forget to use.
We return to share growth, to report our success only for the next quest to actually start. This is urgency done right? The threat is coming early on, but it’s not immediate that the player feels compelled to drop everything to handle the situation. Sure. Ignoring the orders
Of a God would be a bad idea, but we have plenty of room to go off and do our own thing. Only once the player gets ways down the line, does the imminent threat of the apocalypse get made apparent to the player. Our army is under attack at their spawn point,
Which is bad news for us. The question is where’s jiggle egg? Well, aren’t you precious? Do you really not know? Haven’t noodled it all through yet. Because is me. I’m him. We are bits of each other. Really? Yeah. I won’t be here when he arrives because I will
Be him. A split personality within a split personality? Truly, you are the God. Anyways, we’re off to help the Saints. Although we’d be helping the seducers if we were the of mania. They may not be comfortable with the Duke of Dementia helping them out, but that’s what leadership’s about.
Making people feel uncomfortable. That’s why I feel the canon approach to this questline is to alternate which aspect of the throne you assist instead of just focusing on one side. We free the commander, but now we take care of all the knights before the
Wellspring gets stopped up and all the saints turn to stone. We starter the commander of the Saints is in fact the same golden saint that gets killed during the Zora’s Morrowind Quest where the player has to stop Shagari from interfering with a bet she had made.
The premise is that Satan switching sides used his position to get into the base as though the Saints weren’t told he was no longer the Duke. Perhaps it’s the timing, but we’re implied to have been liberating the fringe for a while, seen as sheer Gwyneth’s demeanor changed over the course of a
Quest. And we rebuilt the gatekeeper. So this is really your fault for not doing something sooner. Speaking of, it’s too late for Gareth. His transformation is beginning and his staff has lost its power. He’s black pilled naturally, which is why Haskell comes in for the assist. Haskell sends
Us to an ancient secret library of jiggle egg. In it, we find deus a servant of jiggle egg and librarian trapped and forbidden to die. He actually helps us for reasons we’ll get into in a bit. But first, a fetch quest. We go into a dungeon, find the grove of reflection, and
Are faced with our clone who is normally a challenging fight, if not for how hard he gets bodied by my super poison. May have thought I needed to learn my own weaknesses, but I already knew them pretty well, which was HBOS and poison damage.
The other item is inside an impossible base heretic faction formed by a survivor of the last gray march consisting of people disillusioned about sheer growth. While we could annihilate the heretics, we could also steal uniform and infiltrate their ranks, supplying any rebel sub faction
With weapons to kill their leader or simply going straight after our target. Uh, faction uniforms. We look out your eyes. Ha ha ha ha ha. And with that, Deus creates the shell of the staff. We’ll still need to empower it. Which we do at the Fountain behind the throne, leading to a lengthy
Dungeon sequence that involves opening and closing doors with items and creatures. It’s interesting. We have to cleanse these pools. And that means killing some priests of order, including theta on. So that was your moment, huh? And you went down like a [_____]. With the staff
Fully powered, we turn to the sacrifice and find the palace is under attack by order, and Giglio is coming to kill us. We take down two obelisks in the courtyard, and then Big Jay shows up to fight. All right, so what have you got?
This ends as it always does. Or shall raid. But I know the chain of stories, so stuff does not give you a day to draw foolish bodied hard. I even checked the difficulty and redid the fight. I feel like I messed something up. Like he ended up getting
Stuck with low health because I saved in the middle of the fight or something. But looking at his stats, his slow gait, and considering the sheer entity we’ve crafted up to this point, I guess it’s no wonder this fight is so ludicrously easy. You know,
I bet the Gray Branch is. For millennia this drama is unfolded and each time I have conquered this lesson, only to be transformed back into that gibbering fool shell gore. It was not always so. Once I grew through a world of perfect order, my dominion extended
Across the seas of Oblivion with each passing on the other branches. Fearful of my collar pushed me with that, and this doomed me to at studio roar of approval from the sole rain in a broken by one speech error, I was followed my dream for conquering this world anew.
And each time I did, the curse was removed. God me to exist. I shall go around. No. You have ended this cycle. You Know all the mantle of madness and good luck. Free to roam the borders of Oblivion once more, I will take my leave and you will remain. You are a mortal
To king God, it seems I’m certain this road as you’ll perhaps you will grow to your station. Fare thee well with, you know, God of fruits of madness. So we, the player, have taken the role
Of the mad God. And what is it? The issue with the quest that eats at me more than anything is the players into God status at the end of the questline. I know I’ve gone over this when I talked
About the Guild master ranks, but becoming a God is on another level of stupidity entirely. I just can’t help but mention it in such a gorgeous stage request. He rains dogs from the sky and unless Bethesda planned on giving the player the same ability, they should have never let the player become
A God in the first place. This is an extremely narrow minded perspective to have when it comes to creativity and I imagine pretty much every single Oblivion fan going to disagree with that perspective. I try to avoid telling artists what they can and can’t do and focus rather on how well
They execute their concepts. Because then I actually agree with well, the powers and responsibilities we gain is sheer growth or not adequate. We can change. The weather Guards will no longer take us to the dungeon. People will refer to us as their Lord.
We’re immortal and can resurrected the palace. It just feels like the reward for becoming sheer growth should have been the designers just going wild with spell ideas and powers. But like the artists who made this game, I’m also ready
To finally bury this thing and get it over with. All right, so let’s tackle my list. First, does this help us if he’s a servant of jig lag, trapped by sheer growth, and it seems like he wouldn’t have made the pivotal plays involved.
Jiggly Egg and Diaz both believe in determinism that possible to accurately predict the outcome of events with logic and have used that to repeatedly curb stomp the Shivering Isles. They were so good, in fact, that the other
Day Erik Prince’s curse jiggled began to becoming cigarets, and they didn’t even try that with more like ball jiggle. Agg is emancipated at the end of the questline, however, he started life as a missing prince and dagger fall.
Ted Peterson, his creator as well as Douglas Goodall, both corroborate the Jig flag’s narrative purpose was to become the 17th Prince. The story ever need one? Normally he wins the gray march and then is reverted back
In to share Gareth at the end. This time, however, we mantel chair grass and were able to defeat jiggle egg. Since he can’t revert back into us, he’s effectively free, which is actually a desirable outcome for Deus.
Yep, we got played again. giving credit where it’s due. That Reddit post I linked earlier about the guy with bipolar schizoaffective disorder remarks that the gray mask is similar to medication, explaining that things become cold when medicated
Which becomes its own form of madness that contributes to many people with the condition entering cycles of medication and madness. The end of the Shivering Isles is basically sheer Gareth shouting to the world that he is done taking his medication.
But the big question is did the [____] become sheer? Gareth? I’ve said before that unless there’s a necessary narrative purpose for characters to cross multiple quest lines, that I generally operate under the rules of assuming that each individual questline was done by its own unique character. The
Narrative hearing the guy who defeated Digg, Arthur, Ore. And potentially went on to defeat Alexia. He was not the guy who solved the disappearance of the dwarves or found Orioles Bo or took down the Thieves Guild. Arguably, he was not even the guy who fought here seen in Blood
Moon. Likewise, I don’t subscribe to the theory that the COC defeated Maroons Dagon and went on to defeat Umaro, the unfettered and then Mantle chair Gareth and defeated Jiggly Egg. It’s fine if you do, you can believe your character did whatever you want them to have
Done, but people get really defensive about this point. It is so ingrained in people’s heads that the COC equal share, Gore said, even mentioning I don’t believe this to be the case, will spark usually citing this line from Skyrim. You are the best Septem that’s ever rule.
Well, except for that Martin fella. But he turned a dragon. God, and that’s hard sport. You know, I was there for that whole sordid affair. Marvelous time, butterflies, blood, a fox, a severed head. Oh, and the cheese to die for. Now, rather than taking this is just a sequel,
Referring to its prior game. People take this line as a hard can in that [____] equal share, Gareth. First, unreliable narrator Literally the most common in Elder Scrolls. Second share. Gareth did participate in the event, even without the Shivering Isles. Considering everyday drink, Prince
Would have been interested in the outcome of the crisis. He also says, I’m a mad God. The mad God, actually. It’s a family title gets passed down to me, to myself every few thousand years. Ieso took this a cue to say Haskell, also mental chair Gareth at one point, which I
Know you’ll be stopping the great March all during the course of events breaking the cycle. We’re going to change things. Know things will be different this time around. You’ll be my champion. You’ll grow powerful. You’ll grow to be me. Prince of Badness.
I know Shia. God has. Or he’ll die trying. I love that about you. Wondering why I let him go. Answer. I can see it. Your face. Mostly in the eyes. I may take those from you in. This is done. This has never happened before. The Ruler of mania,
Turning traitor. Unprecedented, but different is good. A new act in this play. Maybe we’re onto something. We’ll see how it plays out. It can’t be worse than what’s happened before. Following each cycle of the Great March show you Gareth is cashed out or killed every aspect
Of order found in the Shivering Isles. I alone have survived. Share. Gareth cannot bring himself to destroy knowledge that I possess. Instead, he’s confined me to this place and forbidden me to die. I’ve not seen another creature until fate predictably sends you to me. The great March is
A For millennia, this drama is unfolded, and each time I have conquered this lesson only to be transformed into that gibbering, full shell gore of no go. You have ended the cycle. You know all the battle of madness. Gallagher is free to roam the borders of Oblivion once more.
This road is Jewel. Perhaps you will grow to your station, Read the world with your aura of fruits of madness. I’m not just saying it didn’t happen because you can make that case if you want. I’m saying that if you retcon it to have happened, you’re simultaneously making the story
Of the Shivering Isles worse than the process. The point of the Shivering Isles is that share. Gareth is using us to try something new. That jiggle I can’t have accounted for The expansion is essentially an eight hour long diss track about how determinism is wrong. Or is it?
After all, Jiggle Act did account for us and did plan for us to break him free. Then perhaps the point is that everything that happens in the Elder Scrolls Universe is deterministic. Pretty cool, right? It’s a literary mirror to the main quest how both the good and bad guys have an interest
In making a certain outcome occur in order to change things. Except this time where Martin, instead of Haskell and the roles of which side wants change and which side wants order have been reversed. However,
If you are convinced that the carcass ratio and you can’t be swayed, I’ll give you some ammo to fight back. This is the West Johnson theory. West Johnson as the voice of the Imperials, naturally voices a lot of characters
In Oblivion. Then you start to realize the guards are West Johnson. So are the beggars. We start nights of the night. West Johnson’s prophet guides us into becoming West Johnson’s Pelon or white Strake. We arrive at the gate
To the Shivering Isles to be greeted by West Johnson as a guard and are invited in by West Johnson is Shagari. All of these characters are actually share Gareth gradually guiding the [____] towards this fate. Lucy and legends West
Johnson reminisce Polis West Johnson version is daunting. West Johnson heard here. West Johnson. Cathy Tete the Dreamer in Paradise. West Johnson Hieronymus Lex and the Gray Fox, West Johnson and West Johnson, The Arena ANNOUNCER. From
The very beginning of this play through West’s Johnson, I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head. Hello. The funny thing is, I stopped playing this character shortly after completion and only started it up again to fact check some stuff. And within a couple of minutes I got this
Notification. I didn’t realize, but we went from zero to mad God in less than a week and even less time than that considering done Burakov was before the entire dark brotherhood Questline. We’ve got one more quest that it only felt appropriate to handle now, thanks to our new position
Paranoia. The second time I visited Skinned grabbed, I was chased down in the dead of night to outside the city where I was to meet the Count’s manservant turned necromancer. Despite meeting us out in the vineyard in the dead of night, he’s insistent we find a more secluded spot behind the chapel.
Vauthier here is paranoid that there is a conspiracy of people out to get him. And he’s absolutely right. As a responsible patron deity, we take to helping him out. The quest involves four phases. In the first three, we’re
Given a name and tasked with following them. The is to find evidence that these people are spying on him. Although all we really find is that during certain parts of the day they cross paths, giving Arthur ample suspicion.
Most of them will put on an act that they don’t know who he is or only know him as the town eccentric. The conspiracy runs deep, however, running from a commoner woman up to the and even the proprietors
Of the local vineyard. We aren’t doing this for the money Arthur offers us, but to help support his cause, our testimony alone is evidence enough, and eventually he’ll task us with eliminating his enemies. Nobody. This is something you have to do. This is your metamorphosis. Go get him Tiger. They think. I don’t
Know. You think I don’t see him here? Oh, well, no. You die, huh? Oh, I’m not a worm. Oh. Oh, You didn’t even manage to kill any of them. Still, there are plenty of other ways to proceed. You can tell, Gloria
That nobody is stalking him, at which point he assumes that you’re in on the conspiracy and attacks you. You can also take his note to the guards as proof of conspiracy to commit murder, and they’ll kill him. I assume you guys attempted to arrest him first, right? You can’t, of course, murder
His targets, which will change based on who you implicate. The best way to handle this is probably the only implicates to the sex while. There isn’t any downside to killing Bernadette. For David, Toothless is the only one of three that really deserves it. Perhaps you should seek out a
Priest, perhaps a beggar or guardsman. You and I, we have nothing in common. What could we possibly talk about? Dude, you’re a noble. I’m a God. Ultimately, returning to Oblivion after the Shivering Isles is like watching a tick talk. After this video, I had to get B-roll and did a few side quests.
The novelty of the game has long since worn out and seen almost everything done better does not help. Having gone from being the protagonist of Oblivion to becoming the protagonist of the Shivering Niles, it’s only fitting to end on sheer Gareth share. Gareth has fundamentally changed. He’s a
Pleb tier character now. Jeez, I do not find the personality shifts mid-conversation entertaining. He was made this way to amuse, not to truly portray madness. His Morrowind quest tasked us with taking a fork and killing flying jellyfish with it, and he asked for that with a
Straight face. Shivering Wilshere Gareth feels like he’s in on the joke. It’s iconic, but it’s also a shame. That said, Share. Gareth also truly does feel like the patron of madness. He seems to know everybody native to his realm by name, and going back to Cyril to do mundane
Quests seems like something that he would do. In a way, Shivering Isles was exactly the perfect setting for an Oblivion expansion. It wouldn’t have worked for Morrowind and it wouldn’t have worked for Skyrim. You needed the bat[____] lunacy of Oblivion to sell this idea.
We made it to the end. I’m hundreds of pages and over 100,000 words into the script. And now it’s time to wind things down and bring you a conclusion. Endings are hard, even harder than beginnings. So let’s start with our thesis. Hopefully by now you can see
The effect pushing to be an Xbox 360 launch title had on the development of Oblivion. It is fun to imagine the game we could have gotten if Bethesda had gone at their own pace. But you then also have to wonder where Bethesda would be in the industry if
They had done that. How much of the nostalgia and success surrounding this game can be owed to its release date to people who had never played an RPG in their life? Trying this game out and discovering the unique gameplay formula that Bethesda was offering?
Bethesda might not have ever gotten their chance of Oblivion had come out in thousand seven a perfect RPG to an industry that doesn’t care because they have Halo three. Despite that, I don’t think it’s a valid excuse to blame all of the iniquities of the game on a deadline.
After all, in terms of man hours, Bethesda still had as much time, if not more time, than they had spent on Morrowind. Morrowind didn’t start real development until after the Y2K disaster had ravaged all of the computers. But
Oblivion had a larger team, more designers, more artists, more visions of what Elder Scrolls is 20 may have been a limiting factor to Oblivion, but it will never be as limiting as the changes in design philosophy at Bethesda.
A design philosophy that says that content can’t be exclusive, that writers to be inconsistent with their work is preferable to restricting their design, that large dungeons don’t need context to be interesting. They’re making the daydream more palatable to a Christian culture
Was better than making them unique that the premise trumps the execution in they’re making the game more accessible to the lazy who feel satisfaction in checking off boxes is preferable to maintaining the series roots and requiring the spirit of adventure from its players.
Todd Howard is still doing his thing at Bethesda as executive producer, selling his games and shielding his from purse holders. Ken Ralston retired after Oblivion,
But not for long as he moved on to the canceled Ascendant and from there led the development of kingdoms of Amala. Mark Nelson would go with him. But more
Interesting than that is the duality of two Shivering Isles designers almost matching the theme of the Shivering Isles expansion are John Paul and Eric Jacob Pony
Company would go on to work on Fallout three and even took a lead design position on its DLC, The Pit, before joining Nelson in Rolleston on Kingdoms of Ambler. Inversely you have Duvall. Duvall went on to design for Fallout three and then Skyrim and then Fallout Shelter
And then Fallout four and then Fallout 76. It’s the duality of artists. One took a risk on a game, the other stayed in a comfortable, if increasingly stagnant position. Kingdoms of Avalor failed, by the way, while an EEA
Partnership was definitely a bad move, the real lethal mistake was not understanding their place in the industry. A freshman studio needing to sell 3 million copies just to break even is. A sign that you sold your idea to
Investors way bigger than you could actually manage. Hell, a new studio with Just star Power selling 1.2 million copies in three months is by itself impressive. Bethesda’s next move was Fallout three. They had acquired a
License to make a game in the franchise and in 27 would acquire full ownership of the intellectual property. After that, Elder Scrolls would see the first and only game of the 20 tens Skyrim. Elder Scrolls Six has been announced, but only as a marketing ploy. Bethesda has been
Busy working on Starfield and as of writing, this has not finished development on that game yet. Ultimately, Elder Scrolls seems to have left a hole in a lot of people. There’s something about these games in particular leaves a feeling of unresolved apprehension. I
Don’t think, however, that the future of the franchise informs Oblivion. Did Bethesda learn? Yes. But in opinion, they learned all the wrong lessons. They learned what was necessary to broaden their appeal beyond the breadth. That was Oblivion for April Fool’s. I made them out of Oblivion.
Next 50 of its dungeons to the tutorial, effectively turning the game into a roguelike unexpectedly. I’ve been told that this actually makes the game kind of fun. It focuses, you into the mechanical mindset of the game, making you appreciate aspects of it most people just ignore. In a way, it takes all of
The nostalgic baggage away, and I think at the end of this, nostalgia is the game’s biggest obstacle. It’s not about how good a game is, it’s about how a game made you feel at a particular moment in your life.
Skyrim Fans should look at how Oblivion really is and realize the only reason that hasn’t happened yet to Skyrim is because it has six hasn’t come out yet. So let’s strip the nostalgia back last time. Oblivion is
A game with goofy voices and goofy your faces that tells bad stories and makes the act of leveling tedious. It made stealth archery overpowered in made combat boring, and it squandered the creative potential of magic in
Favor of balance. It’s full of dungeons that are so repetitive that people believe they’re all just copy pieces of each other. It effectively started the practice of downloadable content and it watered down its setting and mechanics to broaden its appeal. Despite that, it brought us another masterpiece of a Jeremy Soul soundtrack.
There’s lot of lower contributions that are positive, just not to their full potential. And Oblivion had a lot of concepts that evolved into better quests in Skyrim. It brought a new generation into roleplaying games, some of whom would even become more interested in what was at the time,
Just a niche genre section by section. The combat rework is at odds with the new leveling system. In fact, the new combat could work if the game wasn’t raising the bar on new enemies as you progress. Instead, it becomes instead a game of weaving outside of the eyes attack range
And blocking choreographed attacks while magic suffers because it’s extremely difficult to stay at a level where it feels good to use and the enemies won’t take too much damage. And the stealth overshadows all because it’s now on the other side of the spectrum from where it was
Morrowind going from the weakest playstyle to becoming the dominant strategy of the game, even without poison. In turn, the leveling attempted to take steps towards trying to improve the overall experience. In theory, the players should no longer step into a random dungeon and find themselves completely outclassed.
In practice, the player has to play a very specific way to not find themselves outclassed. In all dungeons in the late game. Perks are a good addition to the game, providing new mechanical potential to mastery of skills. I think the only problem is that there really isn’t a way to
Check out your perks in-game in Oblivion as once the prompt is dismissed, it’s gone forever. The problem is that there’s simply too much incentive to grind the skills we want to use instead of the stated goal the system,
Which is to have the character develop around the playstyle instead of the traditional way. Things work in RPGs where players have to develop around their character. The other problem is that equipment scales with the world is, well, less an issue because
Bandits are wearing Dedrick and glass and more an issue where the player has no reason to commit themselves to low level gear. You inevitably realize will be outclassed. The worst incarnation of this is the realization that rewards are leveled and that random dungeon trash will outclass your special amulet simply
Because you made the mistake of doing the content you were most interested in first instead of last. And that content is in varying shades of quality, most of which simply aren’t good. It feels like all the play testing went towards finding bugs instead of performing the
Introspection to determine if the quest lines told good stories and finding out the game was fun. I think that all of these quest lines have solid premises. Why? I didn’t really hate any of them. It’s just bad execution. What I did hate was nothing, really.
There’s nothing in Oblivion that inspired hatred in me. It’s not my most or even second most played test game, but it’s far from my least played Howard game. Perhaps at some point I would have handily affixed to the pleb tier title in Oblivion. But now I finally
Come to an understanding of it that so few can give, despite how many that have tried. The Arena is clearly unfinished. It tried something interesting, but once you’ve cleared all the human enemies, there isn’t anything to it. In a game that has radiantly generated lists
Of characters it can use built right into the editor. The Fighters Guild is more of a Travelers Guild, but in a game where any character can freely teleport, travel is meaningless. The Majors Guild is a mess of a story, isn’t even really sure what it
Wants to be about. The main quest does know what it wants to be about, but it was far too ambitious with what it wanted to accomplish. The Knights of the Nine Mediocre. It gives a lot to think about, but not a lot to do.
The Thieves Guild is a better story than most, but it hardly projects the criminal fantasy unto the player, instead providing a stealthy shade of. The dark brotherhood is not heroic, but there also isn’t much of a story to it. More of a loose collection of quest ideas. There is creativity
To the quests, but not consistency. The daydream and side content of the game is also a mixed bag. In a world as culturally diverse as Syria, while the NPCs are homogenous. The writers didn’t for Colombia and Lebanon being of different
Cultures, but alone, of course, the jungle thing. The sound engineers didn’t have any other way of organizing voice lines then. Alphabetical order. The only thing that differentiates the races are height, sliders and skin tones. We’re in the heart of the empire,
The home of a religion older than Christianity, and they have no militant branch, no political connections, barely even a priestly body. The Imperial Cult had much more of a presence in Morrowind, a land where they were missionary invaders.
The Imperial Legion barely any soldiers, most of them performing simple guard duty in the Imperial City. They aren’t join a ball and they have no character. They could all literally be clones for all we see of them in Morrowind, there was a legion of predominantly orcs with a variety of characters and motivations.
Even a cult which plan to assassinate the Emperor. And that was just one fort. Now we’re in the heartland where we should be seeing all sorts of legionaries. Where are the Red Guard warriors loyal to the Empire? Where are the ultimate battle mages? Where the bosses
Mercy outs? There isn’t really much of a cultural overlap with the neighboring provinces. You might notice an increase in a certain race, but there are unique cultural identities are suppressed because it was outside the scope of what this game could accomplish. Imagine
How the Britons are portrayed in Skyrim, but for every race in Oblivion, I don’t have a fitting conclusion for our character. Nothing like stepping off the dock at Raven Rock because. The [____] isn’t a character, not like the Morrowind characters were, who all made choices and had
Quirks that defined them. This character did not make decisions. They had no morality, they had no, you know, character. I can’t even really pin down with their motivations were to begin with. All I have is the moment where I play him for the last time, where I play Oblivion for the last time.
And like Morrowind, I doubt I’ll ever do a play through a Vanilla Oblivion ever again. I guess I’ll get this one out of the way. Have I tried playing near him? For those unaware near him was a German game made using the construction set
And Oblivion assets. And the answer is not really. I started near him and was then forced through the Oblivion intro dungeon on steroids before stopping for the day and never picking it back up again because I had moved a new computer.
I might have been more enthused to pick it up again had it not decided on such a at times literally railroaded introduction. The next thing would be to talk about more Oblivion, sky Oblivion, whatever port me and you have names we’re using right now. I’m
Not really sure why you would choose to play more Oblivion over just playing Morrowind. Short of being really, really bad at Morrowind. It just doesn’t seem ideal to stamp Oblivion gameplay over Morrowind world. I guess that logic would apply to Oblivion. Although if
All it takes are a couple of gameplay mods to make Oblivion fun. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t go that route Skyrim in Oblivion at least mechanically. Don’t have that much in common. Do people like Skyrim gameplay but Oblivion world that much? I’m I’ll try it at some
Point. I do want to do a heavily modded playthrough of the 10th series to showcase the potential. I guess I also should say that I’m looking for feedback in regards to the level of research in this video as well as the sections where I included other Oblivion videos.
This was experimental for me, so I need to know what didn’t work ahead of any future Skyrim I plan on doing. You probably don’t know that I streamed some of the research process, mostly the note taking on Oblivion videos. These streams were a lot of fun, but a couple of people who think
Media analysis should just be a row of walled gardens, so we’re probably going to do them again. Literature reviews are in fact part of the academic process, and it’s handy to have words straight from the horse’s mouth instead of
Always having to present a straw man which aren’t actually straw men. Because I’m usually recounting actual arguments people make, Hey, you took English comp and want to justify learning about all those logical fallacies. If we do end up hitting towards Skyrim, that
Water is going to get a lot more red because there’s a lot content creators but also heavily ingrained senses of nostalgia to overcome. So hopefully this video does well and I can justify doing that. Ironically, I had originally
Started my channel in the interest of doing a long form video on Skyrim and just never did it. Although they are threatening to rerelease it again, which is awkward because I may actually have to wait for that before making any moves. Maybe I’ll finally review Odesk.
You know, I only reviewed Morrowind because Odesk got rereleased on PC so I no longer had to play my 360 copy and well now I may end up doing Odesk because Skyrim is getting rereleased again. Funny
How things come full circle. Welcome to the credits. Don’t dip out just yet. This is more than a sales pitch. Moments like these are some of the few times I get to express myself after months. Torturous editing and I do mean months to a lot of people who saw the Morrowind video.
I just appeared in their lives one day. While it might not seem unreasonable to assume the Oblivion video wasn’t happening after only three months, it is unreasonable to the person who has to live this. Thank you. If you started at the beginning and made it here.
It means a lot to me that people do that. I have a hard time believing people sat through the entire Morrowind video in a single sitting doing nothing else but watching. But that idea only inspired me to do a better job with this one. Objectively think
The standards have been raised for myself. I like to think that there is going to be a Skyrim video, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen until I start the project, and that can only happen after this video is published, not in Elder Scrolls.
Standards should put that on a shirt at some point. I have other content and if you like that content then you should subscribe. I don’t know how sustainable these really long videos are. Let’s give out things first to Bethesda for creating Oblivion and for
All the people who worked on this game. I spent 12 hours mercilessly shredding apart. That’s a joke. Of course. Thanks. Go out to the unofficial Elder Scrolls pages for maintaining the superior wiki. It really helps when you are validating information three months after your playthrough.
So does having a handy research team on the Discord server. These guys helped with some of the more annoying aspects of research, like when an archivist decides to just delete a bunch of old Xbox.
I also want to thank all the people who left comments on my previous videos and also participated in the live streams and the community and well, the broader Elder Scrolls community deserves thanks as well. This video is literally
Impossible without the foundation that these guys provide. Finally, I want to thank my incredibly patient patrons. I Told them upfront it was going to be a long project, but even then I still feel they were very patient through this process.
We’re going on nine months now, which was half the time of the Morrowind video. Anyone who donated since January of 2021 is currently scrolling by on the screen. I really do appreciate the people who. Anyway, this is hard because I’m on page 303 and doing this at the very end of the
Project. I’m the sort of person that when I have an emotional reaction, I usually just go Spartan. I guess if you haven’t, you can go watch the Morrowind video now, or if I do end up making it and
It’s out by now. The Skyrim video. I guess I’ll see you around. All hail the champion of Serra do. Oh, yeah. And one last thing I know. I said illegal wrong. That was intentional. Mispronunciations drive up engagement more efficiently than asking people to comment like or subscribe ever has.
Okay, it’s time to wake up. You’ve massively overslept.
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