Elder Scrolls library

Another great site, for all you fans of the Elder Scrolls series, is the Imperial Library website, which collects all of the different stories from the various games and compiles them all onto a website -- it's a good way to catch oneself up on the mythology of this land.

http://til.gamingsource.net/

That's another good argument AGAINST the Final Fantasy way of doing things -- in FF, you're just waiting to see Cid and the airship, and the alternating main characters "I'm young and brash" (FF 7, 10) or "I'm dark, moody, and don't say anything." (FF 8) We could go back to earlier FF's and argue the chain of things, but that's the idea, and because each world is it's own world, you essentially have to re-invent the wheel every time.

With series, such as Ultima, TES, &c., you look forward to going back and seeing how things have changed, or what new things are going on, in the world. It's like a vacation, in that sense, you go back, and some things never change, and other things are decidedly different, for better, or in the case of Oblivion, worse ;-) Nah, I haven't actually made up my mind about that yet. It's that history, though, that sense of place and time, that sucks you into a story -- be it Lord of the Rings (I mean, let's read on for the Silmarillon and the rest of the "history" of the place), Conan novels, or games.

We could argue that's why the first of the "new" Star Wars sucked so badly -- because, being a prequel, Lucas had the opportunity to not only tap into good writers, i.e., the ones who have been writing the Star Wars books over the last 20 years, but also mix it up into whatever sort of history he wanted -- instead, he didn't tell us anything we didn't know, and managed to piss off everyone with his worthless story and his "Oops, I by accident wandered into this ship at age 2 and blew up an entire space fleet" ending. I mean, really, am I the only one to think that like it's just a little bit wrong that Amedalia or whatever, who's got like 10 years on the kid, would fall in love with him later on in life? It's like, I don't know, I think that a "baby brother" type feeling doesn't go away like that :-) It's alright, after screwing up two movies he did a pretty good job with the third -- minus the frankenstein scene with Darth Vader...

Oblivion First Thoughts

Just played through the first Oblivion gate in -- Oblivion, and I had some thoughts on the matter.

First, the game looks gorgeous up close, sometimes, but is severely lacking farther away. The textures, especially in the cities, I thought were rather bland and unattractive. I'm sure they needed to keep the texture sizes down for propriety's sake (which is to say framerate and the wide range of hardware out there), and I'm sure that was also the reason for the increased muddiness of the textures as the distance panned out, but it's like, man, rather unfortunate. I guess it sort of reminds me of Rowan's Battle of Britain when compared to the newer IL-2 range -- the ground just looks really sort of muddy and unattractive farther out. They did do a great job, though, with both the design of the place and that sense of really being someplace else. Standing on the parapet of the little Blades' fortress, looking down on that small city and castle below, wow, that's like really something. Things do appear, cursorily, to be too close together, but we're told that's not the case, that it's in fact bigger than Morrowind...

I guess I get to look forward to the leveling problem that people have been complaining about -- and I'm kind of with the complainers in that category. Dogs and rats don't suddenly get more powerful because you do, nor to bandits start wielding Daedric arms, and at the same time it becomes less fun to go and explore dungeons, because you won't be able to find uber weapons and whatnot and just survive by the skin of your teeth getting in and out. That isn't something that's likely to get fixed in a patch :-) The other thing is the quick movement -- while it let me skip all sorts of unnecessary walking, it also took away some of the grandeur and danger of hiking it up from one place to another. I think that was the thing with Morrowind -- you could have started out taking the Silt Strider, but it was more fun to walk, and the Silt Strider had the downside of costing money -- the quick movement does not.

My final gripe, minus the CTD's which are expected, are the shadows, which don't seem to work well at all with NPC's casting shadows on themselves, and the HDR support on my X800, which both egosoft and valve managed to get into X3: Reunion and Half-Life 2, respectively, but which seemed not to make it into Bethesda's offering. Well, putting on the HDR also takes off the AA, and I think I would rather have the latter than the day-glo effects of the former. I guess that's the thing with HDR -- sure, it makes things more "lively" in a sense, but not a realistic way -- if you take a look at the screenshots of Oblivion in HDR, take a look at the grass and trees, and then look outside your window at work some day during the summer (when there are some leaves on the trees!), and see if it has this unearthly day-glo effect. Right.

The other thing that Oblivion got real right is the NPC schedules and the sense of wildlife -- I was tooling around, and this cute little deer, just like the day-glo one above, came prancing on by, and it was like, hells yeah. Why it wasn't frightened of the guy with the sword is irrelevant, maybe it's a Beast Master thing. I think, since the days of Ultima (we're going waaaay back now), we've been waiting for that Ultima IX, the real, true successor, in bright, beautiful 3d, riding the dragons, with horses, with members of your "party," that aren't dumb as doornails. Richard Garriot really let us down with that one, and regardless of his whiny frustrations with EA or his bizarre thoughts on life scattered throughout Ultima IX, he sort of owed it to the fans to do a good job. Instead, as one reviewer put it, we got 'Al Gore on valium.' I'll grant it that Ultima IX was as ambitious as Oblivion is today -- but both fail.

They're fun, enjoyable, and as I'm want to mention, it's a good enjoyment/price level. (i.e. hours of entertainment / price) That's why console games typically don't do it for me, it's like, why spend $60 for 6 hours of fun, at $10 / hr. fun, when you could do, say, X3 Reunion, and have, say, 20 hours of fun, with another 80 or so of sheer and utter frustration and madness, at $40, so let's say that $2 / hr. fun. The former is like going to the movies (2 hours at $20 (with the lass) = $10 / hr. fun), the latter isn't exactly a bargain, but it's better than nothing :-) Oblivion, which I got for a steal even with the shipping ($40), I would expect to give me about 40-80 hours worth of fun, mods inclusive, going to about $.50 / hr. fun. I know I put in my hours in Morrowind. Games like Civilization and Galactic Civilizations only up that price / fun ratio with their endless replayability and their "one more turn" addiction :-)

Then again, with the wide availability of MAME and other roms, along with abandonware on the computer, there are hours and hours of "free" entertainment just waiting to be had :-) If only we had the time :-)

So much for that menu stuff in Access

Holding down the shift key when opening up the file gets rid of all of that menu lockdown stuff -- quite interesting :-)