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Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Impression Update

Arogan's mid game update (20 hrs).

- My character is basically the Lifetaker (mage,combat,stealth) from the strategy guide with a bit more focus on strength and blade. I wanted to carry more stuff so I thought strength but maybe I should have focused more on alteration to use some of the anti encumbrance spells. Level 4.
- I've just closed the second oblivion gate. joined all the guilds (fighters,mage,thief,dark brotherhood).
- finished the arena battles (became grand champion). You get some pretty nice armor. You can also bet and watch arena matches instead of participate in them. One time I slept in the gladiator prep room and in the morning I came out and there in front of the arena bookie was a dead girl stripped of all her things that wasn't there the night before. About 20ft further out was another dead guy. Looks like some npc's went crazy during the night :-)
- In the beginning, if you just follow the main mission to the priory and make sure you talk to everybody. You get a free horse.
- The quests are of excellent quality so far. They are really well designed with a good variety. Even the few fedex quests are dressed up nicely. I'm trying to not take too many side quests right now (and there are a LOT of them). I'm focusing on the main story quests first, then I'll probably do the guild ones next if I have time.
- I'm enjoying the story and the characters more now.
- Most of the female character faces (at least the commoners. The royalty are a bit better) are all kinds of ugly. I'm not sure if they are trying to make it a more realistic medieval feel or what but I'd rather be looking at super models like in guild wars! Does anybody else think Martin looks a bit like Fabio? Makes it kind of hard for me to want to protect him.
- great journal system and markers so you always know where to go next. You can even place your own marker that shows up on the map and the compass. I kind of wish for a little pip map option.
- Combat has been pretty fun so far. I usually like to start with a sneak arrow attack (the stealth element in this game works pretty well. It's not quite thief but close), then maybe a bit of fire magic, and finally sword if they are still alive. I keep difficulty just a few notches toward easy from the default. Since npc's that are critical to a quest can't die (only go unconscious for a short time then get back up) you can pretty much use them like tanks. They do a pretty good job at combat and tend to get all Leeroy on you.
- creatures and loot level along with you and so far it's been working ok for me. I hear there is a bit of a penalty if you level too quickly though I haven't really noticed. Then again I'm only level 4.
- make sure you go back and repair all your equipment after each major battle/quest. Some of the higher end magical loot can't be repaired in the field with a repair hammer.
- Accidental Friendly Fire (doesn't apply to main quest npc's, just the occasional red shirts that tag along). I really hate this. On quests when you have npc's that help you, they tend to jump right into your line of fire. If that npc is low on health and you kill them, boom instant murder with 1000 bounty on your head. The next time you head in to town guards will chase you down on sight. The problem is during the heat of battle sometimes you don't even know you are the one who killed the npc and not the monster. I had to redo an entire oblivion gate quest because after I finished it I had 1000 bounty on my head. Now I just let the NPC's do most of the fighting at the start and hopefully the monsters will kill them off. Then I get to loot their bodies and everybody is happy.
- Really nice physics and ragdoll. You can "grab" almost anything and move/drag it around. You can grab individual body parts and watch the ragdoll physics work.
- load times. At first they don't seem that bad. But later in the game when you fast travel a lot and have to jump from town to town a lot those load times really start to add up and really start to annoy you. Also, there isn't a single button quick save/load (out of X360 buttons) like there is on the pc. So every time you want to save you have to hit start, save, pick a save slot. The PC has this beat hands down.
- a found a repeatable freeze/lock bug. If I go to this shrine (near azura's shrine), activate it to get a magical set of weapons for a period of time, mount my horse (it says something about not being able to unequip the weapon), ride off into the next load it will lock hard. I was able to duplicate this. It was easy to work around but still a pretty bad bug. That was about the only issue I had over 12 hrs of straight play.
- framerate issues. It does dip down into what looks like the 20's. It doesn't affect the gameplay much but it is noticeable.
- does AA and HDR (pc can't).
- I hear there is a memory leak or something in the pc version and after several hours you will see some performance degradation.

Overall I'm still loving this game.

As far as pc vs x360 I would say they are very similar:
360:
+ achievements
+ nothing to install
+ get to play on an big hdtv and sit on a couch
+ future content over live
+ hdr with 2xaa
+ inventory system built with control pad in mind
- longer and eventually annoying load times
- some framerate issues
- no mods
- harder to aim ranged attacks with control pad (it hasn't been too bad though)

pc:
+ fast save/load (this is a big advantage IMO)
+ superior (IMO) keyboard mouse controls for combat
+ can run at crazy resolutions if you have the machine
+ lots of tweaking through the ini
+ easy to cheat/experiment with console commands
+ future mods
- no hdr with AA (and no hdr support at all with ati unless you have an 1X00 card. Sheesh and I got my x800xl just last year and it's "out of date")
- inventory system a bit clunky with mouse
- no achievments!
? stability issues
? will future live content be available for the pc for free

Angryintern can probably tell you more about the pc version.

If you have a really powerful pc then go with pc otherwise go with x360. for me it was the combination of achievements and getting to play on a hdtv sitting on the couch that sold me on the x360 version. [Discuss]