RPGWatch Feature: Oblivion - The Unoblivionated Version

Dhruin

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VoxClamant turns his attention to Oblivion to continue his love affair with mods, after selecting six content mods and choosing to ignore the storyline. Here's a sample:
After replaying Morrowind early this summer with a bunch of mods to improve and add to gameplay, I decided to revisit the state of mods for Oblivion. I was stunned at how much had been added in the couple years since I last looked at them. What really struck me was the wealth of content mods - not just UI, companions, appearance and armor/weapons.
And that led to a fascinating question - Could you get hours of RPG fun out of Oblivion without ever doing a single guild quest or main line quest? How much fun could you have if you never closed an Oblivion gate? Could I benefit from the Oblivion engine but try to get Dragon Age content?
Read it here.
More information.
 
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/smack (to me)

One error — Abandoned Shack should be Abandoned Mountain Shack.

And just in the weeks since researching and writing this there are new revisions out. Vilja, Hentai and Viconia all have revisions. The Hentai one says it adds a new questline to the mod. Vilja apparently added a second quest when you complete the potion line.

Looking forward to trying them both!! :)

BTW — note to Bemushroomed — I remembered to mention PES in this one.
 
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Thanks for the review, and glad you enjoyed AFK_Weye. A couple of comments, if I might:

- Since you're noting updates, you may expect AFK_Weye 2.2 in the hopefully not so distant future.

- Crossroads Keep fan though I am, the inspiration for AFK_Weye's manor is actually the Raven Rock questline from Bloodmoon. If anyone's spent much time with Morrowind and its expansions/DLCs, you'll recognize a few other shout-outs to that game. One or two. Maybe.

- If you'll forgive the criticism, I'm not sure that the comparison to KotN is entirely apt, here. I can't really speak to Viconia, and I'll let others decide if AFK_Weye is quite on the same level, but I'd think the proper comparison for something like Lost Spires is closer to Shivering Isles than Knights of the Nine, just in terms of sheer content addition.

Too, as a modder I'm always uncomfortable comparing myself with the Bethesda DLCs in any case. Different scopes in the case of time and effort expended, among other things. In the case of AFK_Weye, it took me about 4 years to get it to its current state (impossible for a DLC, obviously), and the couple of thousand lines of dialogue AFK_Weye has would bankrupt the company that tried to voice act it.

Which is all to say that I love mods, run about a hundred of them, but I think the official DLCs have their place as well.

In any event, thanks again for the review.
 
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Good review, this game definitely has plenty of ways to engross yourself. You aren't alone in having liked KOTN, I liked it too.

Another really good mod you might want to consider is Heart of the Dead. Be sure to grab the most recent version and it's patch update so you can get the full voice acting. It's easily on par with Lost Spires in terms of content and quality, although it does have a couple of minor bugs.
 
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I'm pretty sure it was SultericDrums wife who voiced Viconia and he also did another comprehensive mod with full voice for Valeria the young paladin from BG as well.

Though he actually got complaints about Valeria for her age, even though it wasn't his original mod and the fact that most 16 year old girls in medieval times were married with a couple of kids or sadly forced into other things by cruel and evil men.
 
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Yes. I was playing it last weekend for about 12 hours. As far as I've played, I love it. This is not a "mod", it is really a new game (similar to Gothic series) that uses the Oblivion engine.

I just started, and it's looking good. Yep, it's a new game with a familiar feel. It's even installed separately from Oblivion, so you can switch back and forth without Oblivion being altered in any way. ( Don't forget to check out the simple instructions in the readme file, so you don't waste as much time as I did getting it to start properly. :p )

And it seems more of a traditional RPG, i.e. earning experience to buy new skills instead of leveling skills through use and getting in over your head wandering into the wrong area too early like Gothic and Morrowind. The scalable foes so many people hated in Oblivion are gone. Think one of the reviews I mentioned above said 40 to 50 hours of gameplay. Not bad for free. =P
 
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IMO, in Nehrim, just the first dungeon is more interesting, challenging and richer in details than all pseudo-random dungeons in Oblivion. It's amazing how Bethesa is put to shame by a group of modders.
I think that the game will take me more than 50 hours. The continent is huge and everything is hand made, so the exploration is worth. Also, the world is very challenging even in normal difficulty mode. You have to be very carefull with where you go. For example, if you leave a path and go to the wilderness you can be killed very easily. Fortunately, the worst design flaw of Oblivion (all enemies, loot… scale with your level) is gone in Nehrim.
 
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The only mild criticism I have to this article is, that it doesn't mention compatibility top other language versions of Oblivion.

But on the other hand it could be too much to expect this, because who has other languages of games actually installed on his or her computing machine ?


Apart from that, it's a very nice article. Thanks. for writing it, now I know what I should look out for if I manage to get Oblivion GOTY one day. ;)
 
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Just to clear up one inaccuracy above: You still level skills just like you did in Oblivion; what is different is that you actually increase character level by gaining experience points and when you gain a level you earn learning points, which you can spend to further increase your skills. Note that if you want attribute modifiers then training via learning points is not ideal. Also note that you really don't need the +5 modifiers in this game. I'm spending some of my learning points on skills that are vital and level up much too slowly otherwise. For me, restoration takes forever to go up, so I use my learning points there.
 
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Viconia was voiced by Grey DeLisle, who also did the voices for Therese/Jeanette/Tourette in VtM:B, and Velanna in DA: Awakenings.
I see she was for BG, for this mod or is his wife Grey DeLisle?

I was on the boards posting in his thread when he was doing Valeria and forming his ideas for Viconia, he seemed extremely convinced she would be perfect and only needed to worry about other voice talent. Maybe their friends from the business pitched in to help. ;)
 
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Good article! Out of that list, the only one I've tried is Lost Spires. And I think it blew everything from the original game out of the water. Better than KotN and SI, in my book.
 
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A couple random comments based on all the emails I have received and these posts …..

Viconia: There were two different voices. The first half (before Underdark) was the person who voiced the original BG work. The second was different. If I understand comments from above, it appears SultericDrums' wife may have been voice #2 and Grey DeLisle was voice #1. LOL — I am getting confused on who was who now, and which name waxs the 1st or the 2nd. Several people above seem to have a far better understanding of who was who than I have. Either way — they were both excellent.

Vilja: One of the co-authors, Emma, advised me that I missed Vilja can also heal you. She also suggested a handful of adventure/quest mods that she feels are excellent that I missed — I will pass those on if she does not post them herself. Several people have added recommended mod names above — methinks I will make a list of them and post it at some point. The Nehrim one certainly sounds worth loading.

Abandoned Mountain Shack: Yet ANOTHER dope slap to me … I forgot to mention one of the greatest features of AMS when I did this piece. You can see out through the windows, and you can enter it without zoning in — just walk inside. You will be surprised how neat a feature that is — especially when looking at the view across the valley to the capital.

AFK_Weye: Somehow I am not surprised that Weye took more than 4 years to develop. Most of the lead mods in the artical took at least a man-year of development time. And I think Dwip was correct — a better comparison for these mods would have been to Shivering Isles rather than Knights.

Based on a lot of activity I have seen in emails and at TESnexus, it is nice seeing the cross-communication developing here between the leading modders and the RPGwatch gamers. I am convinced that many gamers were like me — well aware of all the companion, armor, and UI mods, yet relatively unaware of the amazing adventure/quest mods that have been developed. In the month since I wrote this piece I have already learned of another half-dozen mods, many via these RPGwatch threads, that sound to be the equal of those I found. It sounds to me that this winter, when the latest Fallout, Gothic, Spellforce, etc are winding down, there will be some great new Oblivion mods to play by the winter fire. :)
 
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I came for the review of Vilja, which is one of my favorite mods, and then I saw the wonderful review of Viconia. Just to clarify, I am the voice actress for Viconia Part 2 and I am credited in the Readme (GreyDeLisle was the Part 1/ pre-Underdark VA), also I am happily married but NOT to Sulteric Drums. I've seen that rumor floating around and have no idea where it comes from. Thanks for the kind words about my performance, and for highlighting just a few of the achievements of this amazing community. :)

-greenwarden
 
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You won´t make your game really "Unoblivionated" by installing few randomly chosen quest mods. The gameplay will still suck and the environments will be still bland.
Also, I don´t think that including mods that give the vanilla lore-ignorance run for its money is a right way to go about it. How the hell did Hentai Mania end there anyway?!

Install FCOM, Oblivion XP, L.A.M.E., Deadly Reflex, Thieves Arsenal and your game will become quite "Unoblivionated" gameplay wise.
Install Better Cities, Unique Landscapes, Animated Window Lighting, All Natural, DarkUId DarN to end up with a bit more inspired environments.
Then, assuming they´re good, the chosen quest mods won´t be bogged down by other vanilla shortcomings.
Best quest mod for the game is Integration - The Stranded Light, no buts. Best dungeon crawl I´ve tried was The Dungeons of Ivellon.
 
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Shack Notes

I was glad to see my Abandoned Mountain Shack included in your article. Also, Vox, thanks for your comment noting that the Shack's interior is embedded in the exterior world. It is truly a different experience to be able to see out the windows, hear the wind blowing through the trees, and so forth. However, it does have it's downside as you can see in the attached screen shot.

I was also glad to see Vilja included as it is certainly an extraordinary mod. Sometimes Vilja does seem to have a mind of her own. Recently co-author Emma was helping me make sure my shack was companion friendly. In checking Vilja's behaviour in the basement (a normal interior cell), Vilja used the furniture as expected. However, upstairs, which is really outside, things did not go quite as expected. Rather than sitting in a chair near the PC, Vilja went to the door, opened it, walked out onto the porch, right passed the porch swing, walked around back, opened the door to the outhouse, said "Now that's interesting", and set down on the outhouse throne!

On a different note, you mentioned some of the characters you remember from past RPG's. You might be surprised to know that my all time favorite is that tiny ball of fury, Mazzy Fentan.
 

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Vince,

has the credit already been corrected or is the article still wrong?
 
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