Oblivion Official Game Guide

[Stampede]

My guide that I ordered arrived today, so I shut my office door and got down to the very important task of reading it.

 

First of all I was pleasantly surprised by its size. It measures in at 21.5 across and 27.5cm vertically (approx) best of all it is a fat 368 pages thick book. All in full colour!

 

It is a softcover book with a the nice quiet design of the Oblivion regular edition box as its cover. What may dissapoint some people is that the pages are not glossy but regular (if somewhat thick) paper. However it is quite hardy but might tear under wreckless abuse. The binding seems nice and strong though.

 

As for the contents...woah...I don't even know where to begin. As I said, every page is in full colour with in game shots on all of them. All the pictures seem to be good quality and easy to make out. Though the lighting on some pics is a bit harsh. There are oodles of maps with numbered keys for just about every part of the main quest. Not to mention the plethora of maps at the back of the book covering every city.

 

There is a character creation guide that actually has some interesting revelations regarding male versus female characters for certain races. There is a step by step guide to the main quest, faction quests, misc quests...etc.

 

The best parts though are the easter eggs and the tips on how to infuriate NPCs and play them off against each other. For example, the "Fun with Goblins" section is purely sadistic! Did you know there are seven goblin tribes? Who hate each other and will attack one another on site. There are guides to hunting, mining, general city antics as well as who is having an affair with who. Basically you learn some incredible things just by watching NPCs

 

There is an explanation and list for just about all your questions, including a bestiary and best fighting tactics.

 

It cost me about R230. That is an average price for a book of this size and quality.

 

To summarize though, I am extremely happy with my purchase and can't wait to start reading it without fear of interruption.

[Gafnab]

Thats all that i need to know...where did you get your book.

[Stampede]

I ordered mine from a local South African site www.kalahari.net.

 

Amazon will definitely stock it.

[Malchik]

Does it give a walk through of all quests? If so it's something I wouldn't want until after I have played the game. But your comment on goblins is interesting. It must somewhere be available in game I assume. I certainly don't see the point in creating the clans otherwise. Maybe in a planned expansion you have to become a good goblin!!!

[Stampede]

Well, I know I have encountered one tribe already, even before I bought the guide. The something scale tribe...they carried fish scales with them and were duking it out with undead for control of a dungeon.

 

And yes, it seems they have a walkthrough for all the quests. Misc and otherwise.

[Thinman]

Amazon will definitely stock it.

True enough. Here it is. Current price: $12 (US), plus shipping.

[Banana12]

I have the book and have been using it for some 30 hours now. It's the size and thickness of a telephone directory and is in colour throughout. Overall, well worth getting. Especially for people who are new to complex role-playing-games (or even to computer games in general, drawn in by the excellent Oblivion reviews - certainly get it if you are giving the game as a present to someone who's likely to get frustrated with the game at times).

 

Is the book just a giant 'plot spolier'? Like any tool, if it's 'good' or 'bad' all depends on how you use it. If you just read through the whole book, then the game will be completely spoiled for you. If you look at it "a bit at a time" and only use it cautiously (i.e.: you never look at the Main Quest pages unless you go only to the specific page, and then shield upcoming paragraphs with your hands) where you are really stuck somewhere in the game, then it can aid the pleasure of playing the game, but without revealing more than one or two spoilers. One of the big drawbacks of playing these kinds of massive games is the hours of useless frustrated activity, running around getting dizzy looking for X or Y. This very comprehensive guide helps smooth out those frustrating times, and thus makes the game more enjoyable for me.

 

Overall, the writing and print quality is excellent, for the price. One thing I didn't like was the snide and cynical tone that kept creeping into the writing - the author often implies that "suspending one's disbelief" in a RPG game is a bit silly and purile, and keeps pointing out logical inconsistencies. We don't need to know that, just how to play the game. The Index could have been much much better. It isn't hard to auto-generate a very good and complete index using software, these days.

[Stampede]

I have not read it entirely so I have yet to encounter anything truly cynical, some stuff has made me laugh...but I can actually sort of see where you are coming from. I was annoyed when the author said regarding the arena, that the "yellow teams red room does not exist." I take it he means it was not programmed in, of course it exists in the "arena" so to speak, you just cannot access it.

 

There are other parts that are pretty well written and enjoyable, for me so far two higlights are the 'romances' section and the Daedric Quests part. The author is also very quick to point out little details that people might not take into account, which is nice.

 

And yeah, I don't even bother using the index anymore, I find the contents page more handy.

 

I love my book and am really glad I bought it, but I would give it 4/5 stars, the index and one or two other points just stopping it from being a 5 star product.