Thread: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

You want to know how good this game is? I got it on Tuesday afternoon and have been playing it so much that this is the second time I've opened my browser (I had to look up movie times for my mother) since I got it, and it's now Saturday night. (This is coming from someone who usually spends at least an hour a day staring just at these forums on his screen)

I love just about everything in this game. I haven't really enjoyed the melee combat much yet though since my only current character is a super sneaky thief. He kicks butt at ranged combat, but his sword skills are still lacking. He spends so much time reeling after each blow that I never get a chance to attack back. Normally I sneak around in the dark and snipe things with my bow, so I have little need for melee combat except for the quests where you have to get ambushed to finish them though. (You'll understand once you find one).

My other big complaint is that there is very little stuff that is worth stealing. Most of the merchants only carry basic armour and weapons. Sometimes they'll have one really good piece of equipment, but it will be one of those items that only show up in their inventory when you want to buy something. It doesn't physically exist in their shop or on their person, so you can't steal it, even if you kill the person. The fighters guilds often have display cases that are locked with 'Very Hard' level locks (the hardest ones I've ever come across) and they appear to have Elven, Glass, and Dwarven equipment. Of course I want to steal that, so I bust into the guild at 3am, pick the locks after many attempts, and then finally get to the goods only to find out that they're all fakes. Every fighters' guild I've broken into has FAKE weapons!

The last thing that really bugs me is that the Kajit and Argonian females all have the same voice (same voice actor) and they are all really annoying. The other races have more varitey, but those two seem to have none. Other than those three things, I have found pretty much nothing that I dislike about this game.

I have a few questions for the others here who have been playing though too. Where is the cheapest house you can buy? The only one I've seen was 10,000 gold. I only have ~6,500 but I'd also like to buy a horse (one of those super fast black ones). I have yet to find any secure location to store things. I tried storing my spare stuff in a chest in the mages guild, and it stayed there for a while (a few hours in real life , I think), but it eventually all disappeared when I came to use it.

Does anyone know exactly how vampirism works? The best I've figured out is that if you contract the disease (and don't cure yourself) that will get a message after you've rested a cretain amount of time that you'v become a vampire. You get the 'Hunter's Vision' lesser power and +5 point boosts to a bunch of stats. If you don't bite anyone for long enough then you get another cryptic message and then you have +10 stat boosts and you take damage from the sun. Then if you do bite someone again you go back to +5 stat boosts and you no longer get damage from the sun. Is this all that happens or is there more? In Morrowind vampires got HUGE stat bonuses (like +30 in some skills). Have the bonuses been decreased in Oblivion or have I just not found them all?

Has anyone else found any NPCs that have multiple voices? I've found one or two that change voices mid conversation (before I even click a response), but the most common ones I've found are the beggars who have a really whiny voice normally, but if you ask them about something for a quest (usually for the theive's guild) then they switch to a normal voice to talk about that.

Geez, that was long!