A Gaming Diary
Posts tagged elder scrolls
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Mar 27th
I’m not sure whether I should be feeling like a cheat or congratulating myself on my cunning and skill.
I did a mission a couple of nights ago that was pretty much beyond my capabilities. Enemies that I could just about kill one-on-one, but more than one and I was dead.
No spoilers, but it was just a “get item and get out mission”, though, so I found a way.
First up, part of the mission involved swimming through an underground passage. Just after it I ran into some horrible great bastard with a great big sword and eyes like a hawk. I ran. He followed me back to the underwater passage.
He followed me into it.
He didn’t follow me out. I used a Detect Life spell and couldn’t see him. So I gingerly edged forwards as slowly as I could with a diminishing oxygen bar and found his corpse floating by the ceiling. Seems he needs to breathe, too.
So the next few minutes involved me waving at enemies and then running away and diving into the water laughing to myself as they followed. Killed a couple more that way, but after that the enemies wouldn’t follow me back that far.
So I ran past them. I ran and I ran and got to the end, where the item I needed to steal was. Up some stairs, hammering my heal spell, a huge leap over a massive gap, into a room, picked up the item I needed, leapt on to a desk, back over the heads of the enemies that had followed me in and all the way back through the “dungeon” and out into the open air.
All that practice jumping over the rooftops of Brauma and the Waterfront paid off.
After that it was an easy matter to find my way back to my contact. I was torn between feeling cunning and cool (and some of that jumping was just excellent) in a Zorro type way and feeling like I’d somehow done it “wrong” and should have killed all the enemies like in a normal RPG. Even the “boss” was still alive, probably wondering what the hell had just happened.
But my very, very favourite so far was stealing an item from someone’s bedroom while they were asleep and then causally picking up an apple from their fruit bowl on the way to the door. I just felt so much like a movie-style cheeky kind of rogue.
I fell asleep on the train on the way home from London and dreamt about Oblivion. And I’m dreaming about it every night.
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Mar 26th
Wasn’t go to play it this evening, because I new that I’d end up going to bed late. But I couldn’t seem to resist.
Did a quest – not too long, excellent rewards – and bought a horse and joined the Mages Guild and started another quest but failed it by getting the person who’d given it to me killed.
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Mar 25th
After a total of thirty hours or so it feels almost exactly like Morrowind to me. Do like the way the combat model means it’s possible to win fights that there’d have been no way to win in Morrowind.
In fact, it’s better than Morrowind in almost every way. I like the way Morrowind’s map filled in, Oblivion doesn’t do that on the main map. That’s an incredibly petty complaint, mind.
The other thing is that I liked Morrowind’s alien landscape and wildlife. So far in Morrowind I’ve just seen deer, horses, dogs and sheep as non-enemy animals. Not quite the same as giant flying jellyfish things.
I bought a horse today, finally. Almost cried when it died after riding it a bit too hard over some mountains. I normally fast-travel to places when doing quests, but this time I decided to ride over the mountains at night while it was snowing. Beautiful, until I got my horse to gallop down a steep slope and it fell out from under me and crashed all the way down, twisting in an utterly sickening fashion. Poor thing. We were only about fifty yards from my destination, too.
Also bought a house from somone. Cheap… but, er… needed some work done… There’s no way I’m giving spoilers for that quest. You’ll have fun.
The quests are just getting better and better, actually. And they’re all side quests.
One day I might even do some of the story stuff, maybe.
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Mar 24th
Twelve hours in, character from old quest starts haunting me.
For reasons I won’t go into, I’ve not been able to close the quest off, so after a while the game seemed to decide to send this NPC around to haunt me in a way that’s very, very obviously not meant to happen.
In other words, the game broke.
So I started again from the beginning.
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Mar 22nd
It’s brilliant. Of course.
What have I done? Ooooh, loads. Started a new character, a Breton. Custom class, Wanderer. Spells and thieving. Been caught looting a pub’s basement. Broken into a farmhouse to steal the few items of any value inside. Picked flowers and vegetables. Killed a highwayman. Found a horse. Killed the same horse after it went mad after I accidentally slashed it while we were fighting a wolf. Failed to kill any deer. Raided a tomb filled with imps and traps. Sneaked past a monster unleashed by a well-intentioned man. Wandered round the Imperial City, mostly lost. Stolen goods from the Imperial Prison. Walked into an Oblivon gate and died.
That sort of thing.
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Mar 22nd
It is a glorious day.
I got out of bed at 5:15am. By 6:00am Oblivion had been installed on my PC.
(I’d downloaded overnight. I have two copies arriving some time this week, one PC, one 360, so I don’t feel guilty about downloading it a day or two early. I had to install some software called Daemon Tools to run it. I hope it’s not going to do anything nasty to my PC. I don’t know much about downloading games and that. I was so worried I actually deleted all the personal information – e.g. Firefox passwords – off my PC before running anything.)
I played it for just over an hour, through the helpful tutorial section (that will no doubt get annoying when starting new characters) and out the other side. On my PC it looks great. Once out in the world I died, a lot. I only had about ten minutes out there and about five deaths. It’s no less harsh than Morrowind in that respect. Do stupid stuff, you die. And I did a lot of stupid stuff, just to test things out. In fact, everything about it is very Morrowind. The combat system’s been changed a bit, the interface has been mucked about with, but it feels just like Morrowind to me. I didn’t, however, see any enemy health bars. Hopefully I just didn’t notice them because I was gawping at the graphics. If they’re not there then I may cry.
Anyway, I had to leave for work, but it’s a lovely sunny day and I read great interviews with Peter Ackroyd and the Pet Shop Boys on the bus and after all the anticipation and build up to Oblivion I now feel sated. Itching to leave work, go home and plunge back in, but at a manageable level. The wait to play it at all was sending me slightly crazy, I must admit.
Now I’m okay. I’m fine. It reminds me of when I used to be a hardcore smoker and lit up a fag after an enforced period without.
And I’m rubbish at sneaking.
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Mar 16th
So, it all started because I got stuck in some scenery.
Well, no, it started because I was wondering what type of character to play in Oblivion when it comes out. In Morrowind both my characters where pretty much straight fighters, but I was thinking a sneaky, stealthy character might be fun. So I used an a web page to plot out a custom class in Oblivion. Wasn’t sure how it would play… and then realised I could make a very similar character in Morrowind as a test.
So I did. I made a custom class called the “Facilitator’. Basically, it’s a sweet-talker who’s sneaky enough to be a thief and not bad with a short blade when required. Made myself one of the cat people for the extra agility and the night vision. So, ignoring deaths and restarts, this is what happened in my evening’s play…
In the starting town I managed to get stuck on some scenery. That’s never happened to me before. Luckily, I’d bought a scroll that magics me back to the nearest temple, which happened to be in Vivec. Now I wouldn’t have thought to go to Vivec so soon, but as I was there I popped through a doorway and found myself in some woman’s home. She was home. I checked her stuff to see if it was worth killing her for her stuff. She had some nice expensive clothes and she looked weak, so I decided it would be. She took a while to go down, but she wasn’t much of a fighter and didn’t even leave a scratch on me. As she fell the floor she used her last breath to exhale the word “stupid”. I don’t know if she meant her or me, but it was unsettling and somehow reminded me that my first act of note in this world was the cold-blooded murder of someone for their clothes.
Wandering outside and up some stairs I found myself in the commercial quarter of this area of the city. I talked to a woman who asked me to steal some valuable cups and bowls from a ship in Ebonheart. I said I’d do it, but I didn’t mean it. It’s been a while since I’d been to Ebonheart with my other characters, so I couldn’t remember where it was.
Wandering around some more, an invisible man came up and begged me to help him. Turned out he’d been cursed by a wizard and everybody was thinking he was a ghost. So I went and found the wizard, who told a slightly different story. The guy had begged to be made invisible, so the wizard had obliged. However, the man hadn’t then paid the fee so the wizard refused to make him visible again. I didn’t have the money to pay the debt and I probably wouldn’t have anyway, so I wandered back to the guy to tell him so. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to be able to understand that fact. As he was invisisble and complaining everyone thought he was a ghost I wondered if anyone would mind if I killed him. So I took a swipe and a guard ran over and arrested me. Rather than pay a fine, I chose to go to prison.
Turned out that the nearest prison was in Ebonheart. Stroke of luck, eh? I found the ship I needed to steal pulled out my lockpick. Getting into the ship was easy, but on the first level were two imperial guards. I walked past them and they didn’t bat an eyelid. Once I was at the other end of the ship I hid myself in the shadowsk, unlocked the next door and climbed down to the bottom level of the ship. Found the goods I needed and exited. If the guards noticed me walking out of a supposedly locked and secure area of the ship they didn’t indicate it. Odd behaviour indeed, but I’d successfully used my thieving skills – lock-picking and sneaking – to complete a mission. Hooray!
So I took the goods to their new owner. She paid me 1,500 for the lot. A fraction of the full price, but possibly more than I could get elsewhere. And I’d said I’d get them, so I’m a thief with honor.
So I had a fortune. That amount of money is incredible to have so soon. I decided to pop over to Balmora to spend a bit. Walked there without incident. I would have taken public transport, but I couldn’t find it. The fog that blankets Morrowind isn’t helpful when it comes to locating things.
In Balmora I bought a full set of Netch leather armour, before remembering that being a big cat I couldn’t wear shoes. So I sold them back to the armorer. Went and bought a couple of daggers and a bow. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anywhere selling arrows, which is annoying. But I got everything for slightly less than list price using my silver-tongued negotiating skills.
And after that I went over to the guy on the east side of town I was meant to see and handed him a package, finishing off the first proper story mission. And I then fell into bed for a good eighteen hours of sleep.
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Mar 5th
So I left Ginis and wandered around until I found myself in Khuul, a rubbish little fishing village that seems to have slumped into the sea. Wandered into a shack and killed the owner for no reason. No idea why I did that at all. He wasn’t doing my any harm. Sometimes I worry myself, I must say.
Down on a jetty someone offered to give me a lift to the island of Solstheim. I was a bit worried as that’s a big new island that was added in the Bloodmoon expansion pack and thus is meant for high level characters. Not sure that level twelve Nord Knight counts. Thought I’d give it a go, though. After the boat arrived I wandered off into the wilderness, getting quite worried when a wolf ran at me. When I killed him in one hit I became less worried, I must say. Found a Barrow, which I picked my way around in the dark, because I wanted my shield out and you can’t carry a shield and a torch at the same time. I killed all the nasty things inside and then lit my torch to look around. Found a big new axe that’s dead good, but it’s a two-handed axe, meaning I can’t use a shield at all if I want to use it. Hmm. I’ll have to think about that.
After leaving the Barrow I wandered back to the large fort where the boat dropped me off. Huge maze-like place. However, as I’m an agent in the Imperial Guard everyone’s either deferential or friendly and I can use the beds, which is nice. The Captain of the place greeted me warmly and asked me to find out why the morale of the men in the fort is dropping so much. Seems to be a lack of alcohol, but I’ve not quite got to the bottom of it yet.
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Feb 28th
Yes, Oblivion fever sent me back to this. Xbox version, as I didn’t want to bother reinstalling the PC one.
Loaded up my last save, dated 9th February 2004. Yes, over two years ago. Disturbingly, within about two minutes I’d remembered exactly what I was doing. I’d got stuck doing Imperial Guard missions when I got to a locked door in a tower that I couldn’t get past. I also remembered that in the PC version I’d found a key to the door and a bit of nosing around unearthed it. Inside the room was a nasty man who refused to pay his taxes and had imprisoned an orc who’d come to collect them. So I killed him. Harsh, but fair. He had some expensive stuff, so I took that. Freed the orc, went back to my commander. Got promoted to a trooper and got asked to see if I could find proof that some of the soldiers were in a cult planning to kill the Emperor. I had to use a fair bit of cash to bribe people, but I got my answers and found the proof. I was then tasked with killing the two main conspirators. Sorry, not killing, executing. I believe there’s a difference. Anyway, they died and I got promoted to the rank of agent and got given enough new armor to leave me unable to actually move.
I saved it there. I’ll have to drop some stuff when I reload. I probably shouldn’t play this too much before Oblivion appears, lest I get Elder-Scrolled-out. But I may have the bug again.
(And then I played Animal Crossing with p’anther for two hours.)
