arudius

(Warning: This is simply a post from a happy Oblivion player gushing about mods and the mod community) Lame question: if you were given the choice to only play one game on your computer for the next 5 years, what would it be? My Lame Answer: Oblivion + access to TESNEXUS.com for mods Oblivion, still to this day, strikes me as a timeless game. After having given it a break since about January 2009, I recently just re-installed it fresh and added only a few-but-substantial mods. The game never gets old to me. Each time I start fresh with it, I always find something different to do that makes the experience almost as fun as the first time playing. The mods I'm running are, admittedly, few, but substantially game-changing. Right now I'm running: - OOO 1.33 - Unofficial Oblivion Patch - ALL Unique Landscape mods - All Natural (amazing!) - Quarl and Timeslip's Depth Of Field (also amazing!) - Illumination within - Kvatch Rebuilt - Fran's Leveled Creatures and Items - Bob's Armory - Knightly Armory Now this is coming from after having played with FCOM Convergence for a while back in late 2008 and early 2009. It got to a point where I started getting too many crashes, and I had such a bulky Data folder that I decided to just give it a rest. Now, though, I'm happy with those mods. The game definitely feels "new". I highly recommend the All Natural mod as well as Illumination Within. Combined, they create a whole new atmosphere at night in cities that I haven't really felt since playing Daggerfall back in 1997 (the cities always felt cool at night with the windows being lit). The depth-of-field mod has given this a modern sheen. After playing Borderlands for many months now, I've become so used to seeing a depth-of-field effect. I highly recommend that one. The vanilla Oblivion leveling and items system used to really get me down. It always seemed way too easy to go through the arena, though I know you can always shift the Difficulty slider to make things more difficult. With the couple of mods that add items, plus Fran's mod to keep creatures leveled very specifically (maybe it's OOO that's doing it actually), the game feels much more dynamic. I enjoy going into dungeons where I have to save before entering an unknown area, only to find that I have to return to that savegame after discovering that I'm not at all ready to take on whatever enemy lurks. It reminds me of classic RPGs, and also for whatever reason Daggerfall. So anyway, that's it for my gushing. It's good to be back...next thing I know I'll be firing up Half Life 1 and playing through all the way to the end of HL2:EP2...the only other game in recent memory that strikes me like Oblivion does. -Arudius

If I may, I'm going to tie Oblivion into the GTA IV topic: I still love Oblivion just as much as the day I started it, but GTA IV really took immersion to another level. I often wonder what it would be like if a lot of the elements in GTA IV were translated to Oblivion, such as having allies that you could possibly have currier contact with, have options to go on side quests or do jobs for them in particular, etc. GTA IV on PC is what I play, simply because I don't own any consoles at the moment. Considering a PS3 so my girlfriend and I can play more games together instead of me having to play after she's gone to sleep.

Ivellon has caught my attention as it seems to be very dank, dark (glad they nixed the ambient light), and challenging. I'm currently playing with FCOM (though, considering doing another fresh install of Oblivion and trying another start at various game experiences), do you think that may have any affect on Ivellon? I can't imagine it would affect monster count...FCOM is notorious for crazy monster mobs!

The Oblivion Lost mod for S:SoC makes that game one of the most palpably atmospheric games I've played since the System Shock series.

Thank you kindly! I've actually been eying Gates To Aesgard I and II since writing this post. I've never heard of Dungeons of Ivellon and reading about it, it sounds very cool! The Lost Spires was somewhat slow for me when I tried it about a year ago. Are there any more? Thanks again!

I'm hoping something already exists that fulfills this request, but what I'm looking for is a dungeon, or perhaps set of dungeon-oriented-quests. The major difference I'm looking for between this and what's already part of the game is that the dungeon is exceedingly huge, and could take hours to complete. Something vast, and even with the potential of getting lost. I come from the old Dungeon Master and Ultima Underworld era of games and I really miss the days when you actually could find yourself disoriented and lost (probably more attributed to the controls than anything back then). Is this something anyone else finds appealing? The thought that there's an enormous underground world that progresses as you go deeper and deeper, similar to the classic dungeon crawlers, would be fantastic. Perhaps starting out in caves, going deeper to find the entrance to a dungeon, and maybe after many levels of dungeon (each vast in itself), you maybe find yourself in the oblivion-world texture-set of caves, etc. etc. If I was a better modder, I'd try and create this myself. However, I feel since my skills are lacking, I'd probably make a better creative director for such a mod. Hopefully I'm stirring up interest in some of you others! -Arudius