The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion preview by Stephen Hrncir Jr.

This preview has been done by Stephen Hrncir Jr. for GameSpot and is being posted here with friendly permission by the author.

I also post at the Elder Scrolls forums, and those guys had a thousand questions for me, so I'd like to report that I got through about 1% of everything they requested, but this preview will probably be more thorough than the others. Let me start by saying this is the first game I tried to play after the initiation with the console. However, they only had two stations set up with this game, and I was too slow. But I eventually came back to it, and I got to spend about two hours with this game. I'm an Elder Scrolls virgin. This is my first ES game, but luckily there was a dev there (like a retard, I've forgotten his name), but he was really helpful and guided me along and answered many of my questions. Be warned, you're about to read a few things that might upset you, but know that this is going to be THE best RPG to own for the 360. You can tell it's shaping up nicely.

I asked the dev what version of the game this was. According to him, this was the same build from X05. In this version, the self-shadowing and such was turned off. However, he assured me that it was currently being worked on. Also, he's 99% sure that Oblivion would be a Day One launch title, but of course, there's still that 1%, and you never know. Graphically, as most of you have seen, the game looks very nice.

*Deep breath* Okay, here it comes. There are no spears in this game. There. Happy now? Does that mean you won't buy it now? If that's the case, you're retarded. Here's why. Firstly, you should have gotten your pals to use and like spears more to begin with. The dev said that from internal polls, they discovered that spears were one of the least utilized and liked weapons. Secondly, and more importantly, this game was a blast to play, and from the short time I was with it, I could tell that it's going to be a deep, fulfilling experience. So if the lack of spears is going to prevent you from getting this, you probably weren't seriously going to buy it anyway.

It all starts with the character creation. As most of you know, there are ten playable races (you can choose both male or female of any one). And before you ask, there's no nudity. Both genders have little brown loin cloths, and the females have cloth covering the breasts as well. I didn't play Morrowind, but I heard people thought the bodies were ugly. The Oblivion bodies looked fine to me. The characters weren't perhaps the most detailed ever, but that's understandable considering there's so much going on in the game. It's not like a sports game where there are only a couple characters, so they can be extremely detailed. Honestly, out of my approximate two hours with this game, at least an hour of it was just playing around with the character creation.

I already dropped the no-spears bomb on you, so before I get to all the good things, here's another thing some might see as a negative. There are no modeled beards or facial hair in the game. Before you riot, yes, there is facial hair, but it comes in the form of facial hair shaders. In other words, your beard will appear as a darker spot on your face, that gives the appearance of hair. I was talking with my brother afterwards (he works for another game company), because I didn't ask the dev specifically, and he imagines that fully modeling the beards most likely caused problems with their lip synching and mouth animations, so they probably chose to have the game serve a practical purpose instead of a cosmetic one. In my tests with this, the effect was sufficient on some of the fairer skinned folk, like an imperial. It created a light beard or 5 o' clock shadow look. However, on the races where the skin was already colored or dark, like the orcs, the effect was less noticeable.

Enough negatives. One cool thing was the age slider. While the age slider doesn't affect the gameplay mechanic (as in an older player won't be able to swing a weapon as effectively as a younger one), it is a cool cosmetic effect. The two extremes are as follows: you can create someone that looks about as old as the Emperor, or as young as someone that I'd say was about 17-18 years old. It was hard to judge. Also, I played with age with the Argonian (snake-like, lizard man). At the oldest setting, the Argonian was almost completely red. However, as he got younger, there were more green highlights in the face. Contrary to popular rumor, age is the only factor that plays into Argonian color. In other words, your mood won't change your skin color. Complexion can be adjusted just as much. With the imperial, I was able to adjust the skin color to where he was ghostly white. The other extreme left him indistinguishable from a Redguard. So if you liked the look of the Redguard, but liked the race perks of the Imperial, it's cool to know it's possible to come up with a happy medium.

While most of the character creation is sliders, you have to be careful. There are so many sliders (I'm not sure, but I'd guess at least 100, perhaps more) that messing up one can lead to drastic effects on the face that are really hard to fix without starting over, so be careful. Also, one part that isn't controlled by sliders is the hair. There are about 10 or so set hairstyles to choose from (honestly, I didn't check all the female hairstyles, but I'm sure they had their own set to choose from as well). Perhaps there are more as the game goes along, but I doubt this, although I can't deny it. However, since you can't change any other parts of your appearance throughout the game, I think that stands a good chance of being true. In the end, if you suck at all this slider stuff, once you choose one of the ten races, you can select "random" over and over, and within that race, it will keep changing it up until you see something you like. Quickly, while mentioning adjusting sliders, I'll say that it seemed you could adjust the length of the Argonian snout by about 3-4 inches. The dev told me that they had to keep it at a certain length so the lip synch would still work. While playing with it I gave my Argonian a pretty prominent overbite, and it looked like someone whacked him in the nose with a shovel. Like I said, you really have to be patient with this game.

And that's one reason why my preview of this game isn't better. This is a game that takes your total concentration, and full attention. However, this is challenged when there's music blaring, there's people all around, and you can't really pick up clues involved with sounds or vocal hints. The gameplay was good. It wasn't boring. I was trying to check out a lot of the technical details. The Havok physics stuff seems like it plays a pretty big role in the game. I moved the chains and bones around, and shot the bucket with arrows, and like I'm sure everyone's seen, when you remove the arrows, the bucket reacts to the change in physics. There's also some cool physics related boobie traps and such. The dev said that while not every dungeon has a trap, the majority do. I was creeping around one dungeon, and I had the opportunity ( I missed it) to shoot a trip wire with an arrow, thereby setting off the trap, and killing the goblin so I didn't have to deal with him.

Also, shooting arrows is heavily affected by gravity (physics). I remember shooting at a goblin, and my shot pretty much missed the mark. A better marksmen may have gotten a hit. However, all you marksmen (like me) can rejoice. The dev told me that in the build that they are working on, testing revealed that shooting arrows needed to be improved and balanced a little more, so they are currently making the marksmen skill a little more powerful and useful.

I played with the stealth mechanic a bit. Technically, there are no "instant stealth kills" in the game, a la Splinter Cell. However, (and I hope I explain this right), by using the stealth, you may raise your skill level high enough to where striking while in stealth would give you a bonus, so perhaps eventually you could get something like a stealth kill, if that makes sense. In stealth mode, and eye appears on the cross hairs. If it's full, the enemy can see you. And moving slower helps you to be more stealthy. Also, lighter armor is better than heavier armor (or boots, specifically) for stealth. In one instance, I snuck up on a goblin, and was able to stand behind him and watch his idle animations for about 2-3 minutes (I was talking to the dev in this time) before he then suddenly turned and attacked me. And please put away your torch if you're trying to be stealthy.

Ah, that reminds me. The game has pleasantly be streamlined a bit, and it more user friendly. So instead of having to go back and forth from equip/unequip screens constantly (although there is quite a bit of that. It is an RPG, after all), if you had your torch equipped, and you equipped you sword as your weapon, as long as you didn't equip your shield, even when you armed your weapon, he would hold out the torch. Equipping the shield would, of course, remove the torch. Pressing and holding Y at the equip screen allows you to map things to directions on the D-pad, and that certainly comes in handy. And please, remember, if you equip your bow, it's not much good if you forget to equip your arrows.

Birth signs are here again, and they offer specific bonuses, and for the life of me, I can't really remember them. I think one was like, 60% more athletic for a certain time, or the ability to get better deals from people on a certain day or something. I remember thinking that they were a little more specific than I expected. I was thinking they'd be a little more general. However, it may have been like this on the last game as well.

Random thoughts: - Punching the Emperor seemed to upset the guards. However, I couldn't really tell the extent of their anger, because a scripted fight broke out in which one was killed (and you get your first weapons). - The rats that were bounding up the slope in the video were doing it for a reason. They weren't just running around like crazy like that for nothing. And it wasn't "dumb AI," as some have claimed. There was a zombie around the corner that just ate one of their friends, and they were fleeing. They didn't even stop to attack me, and I just stood there to see if they would. Although upon playing through again, I was attacking the zombie, and one of the rats was confused who to attack; the zombie or I. - The word tree (or whatever you call that thing you choose your dialog from) had more than just one phrase every time, like in the video. However, it had only one or two choices a few times.

Combat: Seems fun to me. I guess it's a personal preference, but I thought it was more than just a hack and slash or button mashing affair. In fact, I often waited for the enemy to attack so I could block the attack first (there's a slight recoil there, so if gives you a little time to attack). I actually like blocking with the weapon instead of the shield, because the shield sort of blocked my view a bit. However, the shield blocking was more effective. Those damn giant rats were annoying though, because it was hard to gauge their attacks. Pushing a direction + the attack seems to do a different attack move, at least with the power attack move.

Now, as you can see I wrote a lot, but I honestly never got out of the first dungeon. I died the first time, and maybe even the second. I finally got the hang of it, and got towards the end, and was fighting an orc mage or something, and a stupid rat/goblin combo got me from the back. Then, I made it to the same point again, and I was better prepared, and the damn game froze (don't be alarmed, this happened a few times on every game present except for Call of Duty 2. Remember, these games still have some bugs). However, I didn't really get to see any of the Speedtree in action (what I was really looking forward to). However, I asked the dev for something specific about the Radiant AI that I could bring back for you all. Here's the story.

It was written in the code that every day at 3 pm, Man 1 would rake leaves and Man 2 would sweep. This all seemed fine and dandy until the devs gave Man 1 the broom and Man 2 the rake. Man 1 ended up killing Man 2 so he could get his rake so he could do what he wanted. That's pretty cool if you ask me.

If it seems like I avoided talking about magic, that's partly right. I suck at using it, so I don't really remember much about it. I wasn't very good, so I did the things that I was more accustomed to doing. However, in the first dungeon, I did have a fire ball spell that I used on the orc mage (to little effect). And I have a healing spell too, that came in handy a bit. Like the weapons, spells can be mapped to the D-pad for easy access. And a side note for those that are so sure there won't be a levitation/telekinesis spell in the game. Well, if it's not in the game, the dev sure was singing its praises when it came to the Havok engine.

Anything I didn't like? The frame rate still seemed to be an issue, but I'm confident that they'll have that taken care of. Besides, I doubt Microsoft would allow them to release it otherwise. Also, there were a couple of transition animations that seemed missing, and the characters stuttered a bit, but that's a minor thing.

I'm sure there are lots of other things people want to know, and there are things that I'm leaving off, so if I didn't answer your question, feel free to ask. Just know that this is one of my "must have" Xbox 360 titles. It seems like it has the re-playability (all the different races/ joinable factions/ side quests) seem to make this a long game that you can enjoy for a long time. And for all those crying that this is no longer an RPG, rest assured, it's very much a role-playing game that is heavily stat based. It just has an awesome action component now as well.