...and then I fell into Oblivion....

Well it happened this past sunday I got the automated call from gamestop that my pre-order of The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion would be in and ready for me to purchase on monday!!! I was soooo excited as this has been one of the biggest games I have been looking forward to for the xbox 360 and one of the big reasons I wanted to get a 360 in the first place. Unfortunately I have gotten this game during one of the worst weeks possible in that We are doing major "spring cleaning" and so most of my time is consumed by chores around the house. In fact I took a personal day off of work yesterday and spent most of the day cleaning and doing chores. This is how my week is pretty much going to look leading up to the weekend when Chris, Kerry, and Jenny!!! arrive. (side note. Chris you may want to extend your vacation b/c once you see oblivion well yeah your going to want to stick around longer! and kerry im sorry for whatever impulses chris leaves our house with ^_^ ) SO anyway I did get to play for a few hours tuesday morning and WOW thats all I can say. The intro is awesome. I started playing around 8 am and I did not finish the "intro" stuff till about 10. I then ran around a little bit and killed some wild dogs and started to make my way on my first quest. SO why did it take so long? whats so wow about it? If you care read on if you dont thanks for coming by and I will catch you next time.

Why the intro takes so long and the WOW factor.

First off let me say that I have NEVER played a game that gave you so much control over how your character physically looks. Im not talking armor, hairstyles or tatoos im talking full on control of how your character looks. Oblivion uses a series of slider bars to allow you to customize every feature of a persons face. I have to say that there are at least 30 aspects of the face you can change. That combined with the like 6-8 character classes and that each one can be either male or female and you can spend a TON of time creating your character. I spent probably a good I dunno 45 min on mine. I had a pretty specific idea of what I was going to pick and what she, yes she, would look like. I picked a female wood elf b/c I like elves and high elves are tooo pretentious and dark elves, well lets just face it dark elves just look mean all the time and are not very pretty so I chose a nice wood elf. My only complaint of a characteristic I could not change was the ears. I had a very specific Idea of how I wanted the ears to be and seeing as it was an elf ears play a big part in the appearance and that was not something that I could change. however im still not complaining b/c aside from all the physical facial changes that could be made you also can choose hair style and color. skin color, age, and complexion. SO there are a TON of ways to customize your character and I feel like oblivion has made good on the promises of fable in that I doubt you will find many people playing a character that looks like another one. Now if you dont want to spend the time you can take the defualt or you can hit the random button and it will randomly assign attributes and create a unique character. ITs soooo cool. I still think that I will probably grab a pic of myself and see if I can recreate myself into the game as a playable character. It seems very very possible to me. SO to anyone who says their are no next gen games on the 360 I say phooey! Oblivion is definitly where its at.

Now onto the WOW

Ok like I said I just got started but so far the intro sequence with the NPC's was fantastic and the first dungeon you crawl through it a ton of fun. In Morrowind you basically got dropped off in the middle of a town and pretty much everyone experianced the same feeling for the first 5 min or so which was. ummm like what am I supposed to like ummm do??? Oblivion is totally diff. You hit the ground running and within the first minutes you have a weapon and you are fighting your way through rats and goblins. Collecting items casting magic and in general having a great time. The environments are fantastic and the lighting is amazing. Im not sure yet but while I was underground I had to use a torch for light and since torches are consumable I think the light it provided slowly diminished as the torch was wearing out. However you dont really notice since its soooo gradual your eyes get used to the lesser level of light. SO cool! SO then I finally made it out of the intro dungeon and out into the real world and well it was the middle of the night and it was soo dark I could hardly see anything. It was really overcast so the moon and stars provided little light and I didnt really feel like using all my torches up so I decided to use the wait feature and basically rest till morning. Well I awoke at dusk and got to see a sun rise which was pretty awesome and then I saw something that was just plain cool. Deer. yup I know this should not be that big a deal but animals in games are almost always hostile or they dont care that you are there. Well these deer were not like killer demon deer. They were normal deer out in the morning grazing and when I crested the hill they became aware of me and instantly took off. I gave chase and for a minute or so just enjoyed running after the deer and no I had no intention of killing them. but like I said it was just cool to see passive life in the world that reacted to me being there. Now onto my new best friend -- Mr. Compass. Ahh one of my big complaints with morrowind was sometimes it was hard to know where you were going. However thanks to the addition of the compass as soon as I was out of the dungeon I knew where I was going thanks to a little pointer arrow that is helping me along my way. SO thats really cool. SO far all my major complaints against morrowind have been fixed and that is really cool. I totally cant wait to play this more and hope to get a little bit of time with it tonight maybe. Otherwise it could be saturday till I get a chance to play it and that would just suck. But hey once I get the house spotless I should have some more time. I will post more thoughts as I play through.

cheers!