Soooo.... now I'm playing Oblivion... again.

[CrazyBernie]

I downloaded the Gothic III demo... and I was very NOT impressed. The fact that I couldn't back up and swing my weapon at the same time immediately turned me off. DELETE!

Unfortunately it made me want to play either Oblivion or Two Worlds *again*... Oblivion won out 'cause I've had it the longest. I spent almost two days looking at and downloading Oblivion Mods.

The easiest picks were:

Qarl's Texture Pack 3 Redimized (could have gone with a non-reduced texture pack, but the file was huge and I wanted to save FPS for other mods)
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Improved Facial Textures
Facial Textures by Enayla
Improved Doors and Flora
Improved Trees and Flora 1 & 2
Cyrodiil Terrain Map (awesome "satellite view" map replacer)
Unique Landscapes Compilation Mod

The texture/landscape upgrades make the terrain look great... the way the game should have been released (even though it still looked awesome when it first came out). Oscuro's Overhaul adds a host of gameplay changes that make it a completely different game. Enemies don't level with you, so some areas will kick your ass if you aren't prepared. With the current setup, it should take about 3x as long to level up... although I think it's longer than that based on my playing style. Merchants are harder to haggle, and items have a supply and demand value. It certainly makes the game more interesting to play.

The improved facial textures helped the denziens of Oblivion... but I still wasn't satisfied... I didn't want to run around stealing from these potato-head looking freaks. So I tried some body-replacer mods. First I downloaded the HGEC Female Body Replacer (Bernie, you're such a pig!), and to be fair I grabbed Rob's Male Body Replacer (ok, maybe not a pig, but just a superficial bastard). Problem is, they mess up the clothing-to-body-part seams... throws off the skin colors and looks odd. I tried some clothing/armor replacers, and those only work so-so. Unfortunately, no one seems to have an all-in-one "Denziens of Oblivion Upgrade" package that fixes the NPCs AND their clothing/equipment. Jerks. I'll keep looking.

I also downloaded the Unofficial Oblivion Patch, a Weather/Seasons mod, and a few others, but there's conflicts that may occur, so i haven't installed them yet.

But who knows... maybe I'll finish the game this time around.... *snicker*

[sirdilznik]

TES IV: Oblivion is a great game and it has tons of great mods. You'll have fun playing it again. Not so sure about Two Worlds, always thought that game was pretty pathetic, but to each his own. As far as Gothic III goes, the game was never completed how Piranha Bytes envisioned it due to a dispute with publisher JoWood. Anyway if you want to play a game that is what Gothic III should have been, try out Risen, it's a really excellent RPG using the same engine, but perfected.

Anyway, going back to Oblivion, what always brings me back to that game is the amazing Shivering Isles expansion. The biggest problem with Oblivion is that outside the Dark Brootherhood quests, most of of Oblivion's quests are pretty cookie-cutter and/or dull. In contrast the Shivering Isles quests (mainline or side) are fun, imaginitive, and different). If only the majority of the Oblivion main campaingn was as fun and imaginative as the Shivering Isles campaign.

[CrazyBernie]

Yeah... I tried Risen, and I wasn't a big fan of that either. I guess there's just something about their games that rubs me the wrong way. I enjoyed Two Worlds, but it's another game I never finished... and the multiplayer didn't do much for me.


I have my fingers crossed for Fallout: New Vegas... >.< Of course, I still have to get some moola together and re-buy Fallout 3 with all the DLC stuffs... or maybe I'll get the rest of the DLC for Borderlands... decisions, decisions!

[CrazyBernie]

*sigh*

After some dissatisfaction with the performance of the texture upgrades and some of the other "look improvement" mods, I'm uninstalling Oblivion, and reinstalling it with just a couple of mods. Mainly the Oscuro's Overhaul, the Unofficial Oblivion Patch, and perhaps the Weather/Seasons mod. The game was stuttering in areas that it shouldn't have (given my hardware), and there were some annoying crashes. Go figure. I'm willing to sacrifice some visual eyecandy for smooth, fluid gameplay.

[Sslaxx]

Interesting. Sounds like it might be the texture/model replacement mods. This PC has a fairly crappy graphics card (and crappy early PCI-E 1 motherboard - if I want to upgrade I have to get a whole new motherboard and CPU), so as much as I may want to I tend to avoid those types of mod. OOO is pretty good though, wouldn't go back to the game without it.

[CrazyBernie]

Yeah, I'm still getting some odd stability issues... usually it just crashes when I exit. Of course, I seem to recall having issues with Fallout 3 on Win7, so it could be engine/driver related.

When I reinstalled the OOO, I decided to go with the option to not be able to QT unless you've already been there... and it conveniently forgot where I had already been. -_- I guess it must store that info outside of the save directory... or somehow reset it.

I sort of wish I hadn't gone with the 3x long leveling... it's going to slow down my progress quite a bit, I think.