{"id":1400,"date":"2007-01-28T22:59:18","date_gmt":"2007-01-29T02:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1400"},"modified":"2007-12-22T20:48:40","modified_gmt":"2007-12-23T00:48:40","slug":"the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1400","title":{"rendered":"The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span><a id=\"p1399\" rel=\"attachment\" class=\"imagelink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?attachment_id=1399\" title=\"View on Imperial City from the mountains\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/obl_iv_ion.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"View on Imperial City from the mountains\" \/><\/a>&#8216;ve been hesitant writing about the game <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion\">Oblivion<\/a> (link goes to Wikipedia). The game was passed on to me by Alfons, who complained that (while amazing) the game concept didn&#8217;t really appeal to him: too long and dreary. It appears that after the first few hours of playing, I was hooked: Oblivion is literally, the ultimate open-ending RPG game you can play. Beside the main quest, there are hundreds of other quests you can follow and play. Actually, you don&#8217;t need to finish or follow the main quest: if you feel like strolling around, you can do so. This is basically what I&#8217;ve been doing too: strolling around in the game, going from city to city; so once in a while solving puzzles, advancing levels and ignoring the main quest. There&#8217;s too much to  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uesp.net\/wiki\/Oblivion:Things_to_Do_When_You%27re_Bored\">discover and too much to see<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>But lets take a step back and look at the requirements: obviously you need hardware to get this game to run in high resolutions. Even my latest hardware has troubles running Oblivion in full screen mode, so in my case I still have to run the game in 800&#215;600 mode. When installing the game, I was also surprised to find that (at this stage) only one patch was ever released for the game: While generally stable, the game has booted out a couple of times: from hard resets [blue screens] to lockups. Most of these problematic cases seem to point to the video. On the good side, the game does use &#8216;autosave&#8217; extensively so after every crash, you magically begin at the point where the game crashed.\n<\/p>\n<p>Game play is as simple as playing other First Person Shooter games, however, so once in a while, fighting (still) feels like a turn-based game. Take for example the fact that switching and selecting weapons still requires you to go to the a secondary screen: time stops briefly too. Combat can also be quite obnoxious when battling multiple attackers: this is mainly due to how the combat vs. experience system has been implemented. Basically, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uesp.net\/wiki\/Oblivion:Under_Leveling\">monsters &#8220;level&#8221; with you<\/a>: so in many cases, you may want to clear out areas before actually levelling up.\n<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, gameplay can be dreary when walking on the roads: I choose that above riding the horse (you can pick up that horse at the priory). Battling enemies and animals on a horse is literally impossible.\n<\/p>\n<p>But yes, Oblivion is for sure a highlight in the gaming industry: it&#8217;s huge, it allows plenty of freedom and the scenery can be totally amazing (as you can tell from the picture above). On my game rating system (aka <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1155\">&#8216;Frustation level&#8217;<\/a>), this game is definitely &#8216;Smooth sailing&#8217;. As in enjoyable if you like these kind of games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8216;ve been hesitant writing about the game Oblivion (link goes to Wikipedia). The game was passed on to me by Alfons, who complained that (while amazing) the game concept didn&#8217;t really appeal to him: too long and dreary. It appears &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1400\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[185,240,187],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}