{"id":216,"date":"2023-09-04T14:48:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T13:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/?p=216"},"modified":"2023-09-07T10:13:46","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T09:13:46","slug":"review-game-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/review-game-oblivion\/","title":{"rendered":"Elder Scrolls: Oblivion first impressions (mini review)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_80 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/review-game-oblivion\/#First_impressions_of_Oblivion\" >First impressions of Oblivion<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/review-game-oblivion\/#Facing_facts\" >Facing facts<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/review-game-oblivion\/#Items_and_Inventory\" >Items and Inventory<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/review-game-oblivion\/#Oblivion_performance\" >Oblivion performance<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/review-game-oblivion\/#Test_computer\" >Test computer<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color:#FFF4E8; border:1px solid #C60; padding:1%; color:#C00\"><i>The  article below was originally published some time ago and now remains online as an informational resource and archive.<\/i><\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<div style=\"background-color: black; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; padding-top: 25px; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%;\"><center><iframe style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5841tvnzCvs?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><\/div>\n<p>I feel like a junky just about to get his fix! There&#8217;s no excitement, no anticipation, no emotions, just &#8216;need&#8217;; I now know how Gollum felt when &#8216;his precious&#8217; was nicked &#8211; damn those Hobbits!. No other game has done that &#8211; except maybe my anticipation of Wolfenstein 360 &#8211; (but that&#8217;s another story). Damnation to those people at Bethesda for making Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (and the previous &#8216;Morrowind&#8217; for that matter!).<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"First_impressions_of_Oblivion\"><\/span>First impressions of Oblivion<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s actually good, better than I expected. I knew I wasn&#8217;t going to be able to run the game on &#8216;high&#8217; settings, so even though it&#8217;s currently on 640&#215;480 (due to my hardware being on the low side &#8211; more on that below) the game world still feels &#8216;solid&#8217; and &#8216;grounded&#8217;, you do feel <em><b>part<\/b> of it<\/em> rather than <em><b>apart<\/b> from it<\/em>, Morrowind didn&#8217;t have that quite so readily because the artwork had a sort of cartoony feel to it, they&#8217;ve gone for a more realistic &#8211; but stylised &#8211; look for Oblivion.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Facing_facts\"><\/span>Facing facts<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Although the bodies of characters are based on a generic male and female template (for a reason), what you <b>can do<\/b> with a characters face and cosmetic toning is pretty comprehensive; there are sliders to control visual features like the distance between eyes, how far forward a chin juts and so on. A lot of scope within each race for individualism.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Items_and_Inventory\"><\/span>Items and Inventory<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Oblivion more or less uses the same setup as Morrowind with a couple of exceptions; the &#8216;inventory&#8217; is all in one place, so accessing your character stats, the journal, quest info and the items you pick up are all in the one menu &#8211; there are various quick keys to access it but the information itself is all in the same place &#8211; a bit like a clipboard in fact &#8211; it, thankfully, saves screen space; having all those open in Morrowind required it&#8217;s own management skill!<\/p>\n<p>The game does feel a bit more intuitive than Morrowind which is a plus and you can still <b>float between first and third person views<\/b> (&#8216;vanity mode&#8217; is still there as well).<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Oblivion_performance\"><\/span>Oblivion performance<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>An interesting thing here, although the shots below are from the very start of the game and there&#8217;s apparently not much on screen, the image quality doesn&#8217;t have much effect on the games FPS &#8211; some initial quick tests found the game run the same when setting textures to &#8216;low&#8217; or &#8216;high&#8217;. This means the performance at a fundamental level is good, drawing raw polygons and textures to screen aren&#8217;t hogging resources, other things in game are doing that. Looking through the *.ini file reveals quite a few graphical items that can be turned on\/off to assist performance.<\/p>\n<div class=\"content_images\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/news\/oblivion\/oblivion_start1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"480\" alt=\"The journey into Oblivion begins!\" src=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/news\/oblivion\/oblivion_start1.jpg\" width=\"640\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The journey into Oblivion begins!<\/p>\n<p>              <a href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/news\/oblivion\/oblivion_low.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"480\" alt=\"Textures set to 'low' which disables bumpmaps, shiney 'specular' surfaces and other related effects.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/news\/oblivion\/oblivion_low.jpg\" width=\"640\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Textures set to &#8216;LOW&#8217; which disables bump maps, shiny &#8216;specular&#8217; surfaces and other related effects; lowering the quality of the textures and their resolution.<\/p>\n<p>              <a href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/news\/oblivion\/oblivion_high.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"480\" alt=\"Textures set to 'HIGH' which enables bumpmaps, shiney 'specular' surfaces and other related effects.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/news\/oblivion\/oblivion_high.jpg\" width=\"640\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Textures set to &#8216;HIGH&#8217; which enables bump maps, shiny &#8216;specular&#8217; surfaces and other related effects; texture quality and resolution is kept high<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Speaking of the oblivion *.ini file &#8211; which is saved to;<\/p>\n<p><code>..\\My Documents\\My Games\\Oblivion\\oblivion.ini<\/code><\/p>\n<p>&#8230; if you want to enable screen shots you need to open <b>oblivion.ini<\/b> and find the following;<\/p>\n<p>          <code>bAllowScreenShot=0<\/code><\/p>\n<p>Set that to;<\/p>\n<p>          <code>bAllowScreenShot=1<\/code><\/p>\n<p>And you should be good to go using the &#8216;Print Screen&#8217; button on your keyboard. Captured images are stored in<\/p>\n<p><code>..\\Bethesda Softworks\\Oblivion\\[screenshot].bmp<\/code><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Test_computer\"><\/span>Test computer<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>As a reference point, Oblivion is currently being run on a computer with the following specs;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ATI 9600XT 256MB.<\/li>\n<li>AMD XP-M 2800+ (1.6Ghz, socket 754).<\/li>\n<li>1 GB DDR PC2700 Ram.<\/li>\n<li>Running from a 40GB Seagate HDD (5200rpm).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you have Doom 3 or Quake 4, or indeed any of the other &#8216;true&#8217; NextGen titles that have been out in the last 12 months or so, then Elder Scrolls : Oblivion&#8217;s overall performance so far compares well; it plays better than Doom 3, which for me puts it in the frame with Quake 4; if you can get those games to play then you should certainly be okay with Oblivion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[42,114,115,117,116],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-articles","tag-elder-scrolls","tag-game-review","tag-morrowind","tag-oblivion"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}