oblivion, again, this time: main quest first

so, i bought oblivion for the 360. well, first, i bought a 360. little backstory, bought & played a few games already, in the order of viking (awesome), dragon age (awesome), and fable 2 (decent), and having beaten all of those, i was ready for something new. trekking down to the local gamestop, which by the way, seems to have a way larger xbox section than anything else, and talked to the counter-guy whereupon i decided on an oblivion re-buy, having already had it for PC. now, again, with that, i'd done the side-quests first, and by the time i came 'round to the main story, i was through, and never played more than the first 10% of it, so there was still new content yet to be played through by me on it. with that being said, i've spent the past few days hacking and slashing through oblivion gates and helping out the last of the septim bloodline restore order to cyrodil. interesting stuff. i created a new-custom class, scholar, focused entirely on magic, well as much as possible, with the thought that in order to level, i'd have to do more than just "play the game" as i usually hack n slash with a smattering of healing to boot (the paladin gameplay style, a layover from the EQ days i suppose). but yeah, so having played through, i'm now only level 3, and even that's from sleeping AFTER the main quest was completed, so the majority of the game (main-quest) was played through at level 1 and the tail end at level 2. now that's kinda neat eh? i tried it the other way last time, being 50 something, with my thieves den and all the other trappings and downloads available.

but yeah, so one thing i know im going to miss is the user-made downloads that enhance the game after completion & boredom. i mean, i bought the xbox because... well that's a topic on its own. "Why I bought the Xbox?" i already had a wii, but that more or less defaulted to Anita and i hardly bothered touching it during its lengthy time in my basement. just wasn't for me. but i guess the PC / laptop i'd kept around had me gaming for a while longer, but while the games were fun (most recently Guild Wars) i was suffering badly from tinnitus brought on by the loudness of the laptop fan built in so i set it aside for health sake after much internal struggle about loss of net and the like (you know the story, can't get rid of it because life too entwined) and eventually moved onto paper-journals for blogging (journaling it became). anyhow, eventually i broke down and bought a 360, all the games i was trying and failing to run on my PC were out on it (Dragon Age for instance) and it just seemed like a convenience to have all these discs be pre-tuned to run on this game-box smoother than my overpriced bucket of a laptop. so i broke down, bought the thing, and four games later here i am. i might as well catch you up on those games as well while im at it.

viking, the first one, was short, but very cool. the graphics were nice, and its the fighter-hero-army deal kinda like kindom of fire or whatever the title is. but yeah. the whole mythology aspect was cool, pulling from gods i'd read about and it's all up my alley given the fact that i've got the whole nordic fixation with the iceland tie, i'd been there twice after hearing the well known band sigur ros's work (got me through college, and the rock-bottom years after dropping out) and in my searchings to piece that shattered life back together and essentially "finding myself" i found myself in reykjavik and instantly enamoured in the local tradition of elf-belief and natural formation of the isle: glacier, geysir, lava, black-rock-mountains, fragile green mosses softer than your most expensive luxery rug, horses bred anew in seclusion, puffin, roaring winds, and piercing friendliness of the locals. a great place to put ones life back together, nearly. but it wasn't meant to be, visas, cash, and committments kept me away for anything longer than a week. pictures on the walls of my basement kept me looking upward as i planned my comeback. but this game was sort of a homecoming for me, a return to console games with not a better pick out there for a first game. great experience, entirely due to my background.

second on the list was dragon age origins. so essentially i'd bought this already, and probably still have the box laying around someplace, for the PC, but my heaping hunk of laptop just couldn't cut it, and i was running on minimum graphic settings, or absolute crap framerates. given that, i just never bothered past the intro dwarf story. but beyond that, i went back, chosing the dwarf scoundrel again, a warrior, and played all the way through. i don't remember any of the proper names from the story line, except perhaps the wardens, with whom you ally with. actually i kinda liked how i was conscripted against my will by the grey warden in town while facing a death sentance in the dwarven city. a fitting start to a well written tale. the graphics were great, and i got close to that everquest feel, which honestly has become one of those essential elements for me in a game for it to really take the cake. of course with games such as these there just isn't enough content, and it's funny i've mentioned that as i've just gone out and bought a 40 dollar "expansion" promising at least 12 more hours of play. who'd've thought? (rolls eyes). but yeah, give me dwarf, and i give you thumbs up. such was my dragon age experience. good story, graphics pretty, and all but the last third of the game had me hooked. (unforunately)

fable 2 was next, suggested by the guy who got me EQ back in '00. so i of course had to get it, which turned out to be a big mistake, at first. i played through, and beyond the opening cutscene which certainly was eyecatching, there just wasn't anything victorian about the game besides the top hat on the seller of odd goods in the caravan in that opening sequence. that to me smacks of false advertising. the game itself just felt too crap to be good, although the depth of the world was notable. sitting back and playing through, you could tell the god-fearing death-respecting and slightly depressing vibe of the maker, the quests would have you running through the same field fourty times for various errands, and i just couldn't see myself doing that. he wanted you to call it home, but i just felt it was more of a hardcore's dream-addiction. so it just wasn't for me, 8 years of everquest teaches you a thing or two about that, its less about content, less about grind, more about connection, fun, frenetic moment to moment hysteria, i want a game i can revel in, not one that lulls me into depression. but such ended up being the case with fable 2, as the whole revere your ancestors thing just got a bit too much for me. if i wanted to be this depressed, i'd just watch a horror movie. good effort, but bad outcome.

which brings me to oblivion. so like i said, i've played this already. i've seen this world, i've marveled at alchemy. i had my wizards tower. but this time i wanted to beat the game, so thats what i sought to do. perhaps three days later, goal was achieved, and honestly, i feel somewhat robbed from expectation. it was satisfying, in a rather hollow way, to get these quests done, but its still the same world, and i still have little motivation to bother poking around the expansion. who knows, maybe in months to come i may revisit this game and perhaps poke around the shivering isles, or bother completing the knights of the nine quest. as of right now however, i'm done with cyrodil. i will say this though, the xbox controller from the keyboard layover was a bit of a doozey, but with a little work and a few hours practice, i was soon on my way slashing again at all manner oof beast. i will say that the one thing that really put me off about this game was the level requirement midway through for many of the daedric artifacts, one of which is necessary for the storyline to continue. why bother forching your players to grind out needless levels? OR google alternative sercretive hackish manipulations having you hopping in every dungeon trying to up your acrobatics to get on "the ledge" and kill the level 50 with ease.