Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Everybody remembers Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind? Yes? No? You should! Not only have these games marked their time, but the fourth opus of the Elder Scrolls series is now to come soon… very soon… on our beloved machines. I’ve seen a pretty snazzy demo of the game recently, and both my boyfriend and I were in awe while watching it. Not only were the graphisms stunning, but they also leave room to much interaction with the background and the items pertaining to it (even animals, too; the demo showed one NPC ’shooting’ her dog with some kind of calming spell, and it was quite funny to watch).

In any case, for more information about this sure-to-be monster of gaming, here’s what IGN published about it yesterday:

We played through much of the same areas we saw at X05, which is basically the training area for Oblivion. At the start you’ll pick your race and customize your character’s appearance, eventually you’ll pick a birth sign, and a little while after that you’ll be charged with selecting your major skills and attributes. When you go to pick all your final attributes you’ll also be given the choice to change any of the conditions you’d previously selected, right down to your character’s name.

As you select what kind of character you want to be you can pick warrior or thief presets from a list, modify them, or create and name your own class, much like in Morrowind. Unlike Morrowind, Oblivion gives you the chance to try out some of the game’s skills before you finalize everything.

On our way through the training catacombs we were able to pick locks. These sequences switch to a different screen where you’re tasked with tapping tumblers into an unlocked position. As the tumblers move upward you need to press A at their apex to correctly fix them in place so you can open the container or door. Your security skill determines how difficult the tumblers are to manipulate and how many tumblers you’ll need to tap. You can also tell the game to automatically resolve the lockpick sequence instead of doing it manually, but this seemed to result more often than not in broken picks.

An article a tad bit technical, about the various character and skills possibilities, but doesn’t it make you wish that it was already available? For me, it sure does.