Not exactly light-hearted, but certainly not all that dark, barring a few quests/storylines.
For the level adjustments, I thought it would annoy me at first, too, but it’s really not a big deal.
I felt it was perfect - serious enough, but not dark. I felt the same way you did about Morrowind. Cyrodil, until you take on the main quest, is a normal place - with both happy and sad people.
There is a fantastic mod that unscales the game. Unfortunately its name defies me. The only downside is that you cannot install it mid-game.
I got around the scaling issue by never levelling until my skills had reached an acceptable level.
Might be OOO, (someone’s name beginning with O) Oblivion Overhaul, I think. Removes the ‘disneyness’ from it. Of course, if you run into a minotaur or ogre at level 1, you’re up a certain creek without a certain instrument.
The leveled enemies are pretty annoying. I really hope they leave that behind in the next game.
My mage hit level 6 last night and the enemies all took a big leap forward. I had been able to kill enemies with two or three fireballs. Now it takes most of my mana to get one down. Time to start looking into a more powerful spell I suppose.
Sadly, there’s no way to “win” this race. Ever.
The only way to “win” is to not level.
I’ve run into it a bit with my melee characters. It’s very pronounced with a magic only character though.
Sure you can. The creatures don’t “gain” as much as you do at the higher levels.
I’ve played Oblivion on the PC and love it. It’s sort of like Grand Theft Auto in a D&D world. I keep meaning to get back into it.
The cool thing about the PC is you can mod the game. You can change the graphics, interface, sounds, gameplay, it’s pretty much all open. One of the coolest mods makes the trees much larger, as good as the landscapes looked before they look completely amazing with the modified foliage.
I mastered the Assassin’s Guild the other day. Just the Thieves’ Guild remains, and I don’t much like them, so it might be a while. Soon I will go back into Shivering Isles.
I guess at some point maybe I should actually play the game. Oblivion, the place, is scary.
The assassin guild’s quests were some of my favorite. I didn’t like the thieve’s guild ones half as much.
I recall, going to a city and talking to every NPC and collecting every quest, then doing every single one before moving to the next city.
Man, that was fun, but I wish I hadn’t done that my first time around. I never actually finished the main quest, but I’ve played every other quest, so re-playability for me is a bit limited.
Agreed. My level 47 fella can give fireball enemas to just about anything.
Oh, and for those who think that the Dark Brotherhood was the best quest line in the game (and if you disagree, you are wrong - it was) I heard that the guy who wrote that quest line is one of the key people in writing the Fallout 3 main story.
Also heard some familiar voices out of trailers from Fallout 3 - tell me the guy in the hat and the glasses ain’t Lucien Lachance!
I liked all three of the other guilds; Fighter’s, Mage’s and Assassin’s. I just think Thieves’ is kind of boring, mainly because i have to fool around fencing a bunch of stuff before I can do the next quest. I didn’t have to kill a certain amount of people for the Dark Brotherhood, did I? Just the one. I wanna get to the quests!
I started the Main Quest tonight. It’s actually my second time. When we first got the game, I did play with a male char for a little while. But now my char is level 24.
It got really hard really fast but it was fun. I haven’t gotten far into it, but farther than I did last time.
It was too short, but the Knights of the Nine quest was my favorite. The Dark Brotherhood was a close second though, & Shadowmere rocks.
Yep, you only need one; and for the message “Your killing has been observed by forces unknown” to come up. If you want a ‘guilt-free’ way of entering the Dark Brotherhood, do the quest for the Gray Prince in the Arena. When you come to fight him in the Arena questline he’ll demand you put him out of his misery, and it will count as a murder. Then take a nap!
That happened to me the first time! The second time:
I got so annoyed with my Arena Fan I finally whacked him, and it said the same thing. I like him OK, but he would run away when I got to bandit camps, causing the bandits to chase him all over the map instead of attacking me!
Even the bandits find him annoying. Don’t get too comfortable though,
…because no matter how many times you brutally slay the pointy-haired goon, he returns!
Yeah, I know - I
I left him in front of my Skingrad home.
I loved the bleakness of Morrowind, and even the ugliness of all the characters. Oblivion seemed a bit generic and tedious to me, until I discovered this little gem:
Unique Landscapes (scroll over to the images tab and prepare to get blown away)
It’s made Cyrodil a truly vibrant and fantastic place, and they’ve got even more planned for the future!