The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel’s New Travels (Let’s Play Oblivion, Part 2)
When we last left our intrepid hero, I was aimlessly kicking an unshatterable pottery bowl around a filthy five-by-ten stone cell—this, for lack of a better source of amusement in this vast award-winning fantasy realm. It’s a rare storyteller that manages to capture the inscrutable madness that sets in while doing mind-numbing hard time in a penal institution, and an even rarer storyteller that’s actually trying to. Thankfully, it was at this point in the proceedings that my release was secured by a writ of Deus Ex Machina.
The Emperor came down the staircase with a couple of guards. I immediately noticed that—despite both the Empire and the bodyguard armor taking their inspiration from the Roman Empire—the bodyguard types are wielding Japanese katanas, which take their inspiration from awesome ninja ^_^ desu. Besides, didn’t the Imperials in the last game wield broadswords? They most certainly did! We’re ten seconds in, and hash has been made of the once-proud Elder Scrolls canon! And by once-proud, I mean a homebrew D&D campaign setting that was loosely adapted a long time ago and then put through a half-dozen sweeping changes over the course of more than a decade. So, about as far from “proud” as a failed reality show contestant making the talk-show circuit to discuss his inability to attract the opposite sex.
Also, notice that when I say, “I immediately noticed,” I mean, “I noticed thirty hours into the last playthrough and proceeded to think about it way too goddamned much.”
Anyway, the guards stopped outside my cell door and kindly asked me to get the hell over by the window. Not wanting to cause a scene, I did so, at which point—in true Bethesda fashion—my feet and the floor entered into a smothering relationship and I found myself unable to budge. The bodyguards brushed past me, then opened up a secret tunnel in the wall by pressing a stone. From their none-too-discreet dialogue, I inferred that somebody was trying to kill the Emperor and that the escape tunnel is in my cell, for some reason. On the surface that makes no goddamned sense, because it’s a prison cell—typical facilities will include a bed, a toilet, and a place to sit, while typical facilities will not include—for example—a Thompson submachine gun, a jackhammer, or an easily-opened secret tunnel to freedom. This is made slightly less absurd by the bodyguard captain’s insistence that there shouldn’t be a prisoner inside, and that the cell is supposed to be “off limits” to preserve the integrity of their jail-based escape tunnel. Yeah, that’s real discreet. “No matter how crowded we get, nobody put anybody in that prison cell, okay? Why? Cos it’s, see, the window is placed right above the foul bucket-toilet. That’s real bad feng shui, and I won’t have a prisoner’s low chi on my hands. What? Hell, if we get too crowded, just ship them to some crappy island or something.”
But before the Emperor can get into the secret tunnel, he turned to me and says, “You! I’ve seen you!”
Before I can trot out my usual excuse about how I was robbed by a witch that day and didn’t even realize what the Imperial Laws regarding public exposure were, he said, “Let me see your face,” and the first proper conversation of this game begins.
Conversations in Bethesda’s recent games (Oblivion and Fallout 3) take a little getting used to. Let’s say you, John-Boy McRadish, want to ask Poin’tles Apos’t’rophe if he has the time. You begin by getting within talking range of him, at which point he’ll turn to you and ask something like, “Is there something you need?”
At this point, as soon as you hit the Use key to initiate a conversation, your vision is yanked forward until you’re staring him dead in the eyes. All considerations of setting, relationship, or context are pushed aside as the two of you lock gazes like old lovers, peering into one another’s souls from an apparent distance of eight inches away.
He will then say something like, “Is there something you need?” He’s terrified you didn’t hear him the first time, and that you’d otherwise just stand there all day waiting for him to invite you to share the reason why you just initiated a conversation with him. NPCs are neuotic like that.
At this point, unlike the WikiConversation system of the last game in which you’d click on terms to get the NPC to explain them, you have numbered conversation options. Some of these are simple terms, like in Morrowind, but others are full sentences. These are similar to the dialogue options in Bioware games, save for two important distinctions:
1.) They’re intentionally more generic, serving less as a way to define your character and more as a way to move the conversation along certain broad trajectories (i.e, “I’d like to know more about that,” “That’s all for now,” “I’m ready to go,” “As soon as you turn around I’m going to rob you blind and sell all of your things to the tinkers.”
2.) They’re all way more stupid.
(I’ll get into the Speechcraft system later. That practically deserves its own chapter.)
The conversation with the Emperor, for example, gives you about three conversation options in total, and you’re forced to use all of them—you just get to pick which order you ask your plot-driving questions in. I think Escape from Monkey Island did this as a joke; again, though, you can’t complain too much since dialogue in Elder Scrolls games has never been a big deal. I’m guessing that once Bethesda had the wherewithal to hire a ton of voice actors (well, okay, hire two voice actors and get them to record a novel’s worth of dialogue apiece), they felt obliged to stick in a conversation system that used real voices and was (the tiniest fraction) more immersive than opening up a big Talking Window. Once they had that system, and the obligation to include honest to goodness dialogue options, they didn’t really seem to know what to do with it. That may or may not explain the restrictive, draconian mess that is Fallout 3’s railroading conversation system.
Oh, crap, am I seriously still only thirty seconds into this game? I really gotta stop going into James Burke hyper-explanatory mode every time I encounter a new concept, or this series will be over around the time I hit the lockpicking tutorial.
The Emperor started talking about the fact that assassins are coming after him, and he saw me in a dream, blah blah blah okay the bodyguard dudes are escorting him through the tunnel. One of them said something like, “Guess it’s your lucky day,” which I took to mean as long as I remain real patriotic for the next twelve minutes, I get to escape as well. To be on the safe side, I waited until they’re a little ahead before I follow down the tunnel.
Of course, I didn’t count on the fact that—being NPCs—they’re slower than a legless grandma swimming through pizza dough. I end up catching up with them anyway, just in time for a bunch of guys in armor to come out of nowhere and ambush us.
Can I just go ahead and give you Imperial guys a round of applause? Seriously, this is the best secret royal escape tunnel I think I’ve ever seen. Am I to understand that there are no spells that can prevent people from teleporting into unwanted areas of the palace, like, for example, the top-secret tunnel you use for securing your most important officials, which just happens to be connected to the wing where you keep your most loathsome and powerful criminals locked up? Because if there aren’t, how do you guys not get an assassination attempt and prison break every lazy Sunday? And it’s well-known enough that these assassin dues knew it was here? Or did they just randomly teleport under the city and gamble on getting splinched?
Either way, the assassins took out the captain lady in one hit, then began engaging in more reasonably-prolonged swordplay with the other two. Not being armed, I contribute by providing color commentary.
And that’s a goal for the Generic Saboteurs, Peter—Captain Renault is down for the count! It looks like their offense is switching targets, heading for my poor unprotected unarmed prisoner face! Say, weren’t these guys supposed to be killing the emperor or something? As long as they’re enthusiastic!
Once that’s over with, the remaining guards get the emperor and piss off through a locked door. That’s another new thing—NPCs can move from one zone to another now, a process that consists of walking up to the door and slowly fading in the aether. Consequentially, they can all head through the locked door without actually opening it, meaning I’m forced to wait behind. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were snubbing me.
And…no other way out of the room, I guess.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this Let’s Play. Personally, I’m not sure I got my 50 dollars worth out of it, and would like to take this opportunity to invite Bethesda to…
But, soft! What rodent through yonder corner breaks?
Oh, wait, never mind, a rat’s breaking through a section of stone wall over there. Like they do. And now it’s charging me with murderous intent.
Well, that’s a stroke of luck.
The Imperial Guards wield broadswords. These are the Blades, which are basically a cross between the Secret Service and the CIA, and they wield whatever they damn well please.
I liked the new speechcraft system far better than Morrowind’s. It suffered from being infinitely repeatable(at some point anyone runs out of jokes) and from the elimination of the bastard tax, but at least it wasn’t utterly useless like in Morrowind.
I usually gave them the benefit of the doubt on the cell having the secret passage. It wouldn’t be hard to invent some flaw in the cell, such as a weak lock, that would keep it from being used until you filled the rest of the prison. There are myriad other flaws in the plot, why worry about that one? Flaws such as the teleporting assassins that you can beat to death with your fists at level 1 but CAN’T LOOT!
Ah, overthinking. If only I’d get paid doing that.
Interesting how the “secret passage” is incredibly roomy. I could understand broken walls into caverns due to lack of use, but why so many alcoves?
The katanas come from the Akaviri (the snake people I’m praying will be in TES:5), so it’s just a bit of culture cross-polination. It bugged me up until I found that out (which wasn;t long) then I never thought about it again.
Tell me you’ll do Shivering Isles! That is by far the best part of the game. It’s so insane, I almost want to look at it as Bethesda parodying themselves and their usual main-questlines.
Please?
I hated the new speechcraft system. I never ever got to the point of actually being able to increase someone;s opinion of me, no matter how long I tried. Fortunately, you can get through the game quite well while ignoring every part of the system but the Bribe button. Charm spells will do for the times when Bribe wouldn’t be enough.
Yeah, the katanas were officially the result of the Empire fighting a war with a foreign nation and some of the surviving troops saying how incredibly cool those swords were, why can’t we get some of those?
So, a lot in common with the Western attitude to katanas, I guess.
One time, I read about playing on max difficulty from the beginning on the wiki. The tactics were amusing, and so was the fact that the upcoming battle would be one of the hardest in the game, due to it being two rats and in close quarters, with no armor and a poor weapon.
And I like references to the last LP. I had almost forgotten about Cahmel’s streaking adventures by now. Good thing he hasn’t.
A secret escape tunnel connected to a prison cell may be a bit of a stretch, but if the assassins teleport in, as you say, why have an escape tunnel at all? A mage could just teleport the emperor out…
The unlootable assassins weren’t really a plot flaw – I actually thought it was a little nice to see an evil mystic cabal making use of the fact you can summon magical arms and armour from nowhere whenever you please. It’s consistent with their theme, their methods, and their abilities, which is naturally why I can’t remember them ever using summoned gear again.
To hell with speechcraft. I just made a custom Charm spell that maxed out their disposition for two seconds – it’s actually pretty cheap, and it means you don’t have to waste time with the irritating speech minigame every time a quest sticks a minimum disposition requirement on a necessary conversation topic.
Well, I will admit, I did like that there was a way to use magic to circumvent pretty much all other skills in the game. Who needs the Thieves Guild’s infinite lockpick when I’ve got a spell that takes out Very Hard locks when I brush my hand against them?
They teleport in? I always thought they just broke into the place (which is not that difficult. You’ll find out if you join the dark brotherhood)
Also, why didn’t you take captain Renault’s katana?
In addition to Shivering Isles, I hope that some of the more interesting Daedric quests get featured when level-appropriate. Sanguine’s quest may… bring back memories.
I always just treated the Speechcraft section as a rousing round of Simon Says: Like Me. Not that that stopped it from getting boring, like, three iterations in.
Also, Oblivion would have been a múch better game if Emperor Patrick Stewart got more face time.
@Gale
Um, did you actually get through about a quarter of the main quest? The guys who summon magic heavy armor that vanishes when they die totally do show up again.
I was actually aware that the bodyguards were Blades, but didn’t want to get into explaining that. I also knew about the Akaviri connection, but that seems like a pretty cheap excuse to throw in katanas from where I sit.
And Captain Renault doesn’t have a katana for some reason, she has a short sword. I think? Yeah, pretty sure.
Renault also had a katana, though it may have fallen away from her. Best weapon in the tunnels, in the game’s attempt to warn you how screwed blunt users will be.
It might be reasonable for them to be summoning armor, but when you’ve killed a dozen of the guys who wander wearing summoned armor and still only have a shield and a helmet, it gets annoying. Especially since they have to be teleporting, given that they run in from rooms you’ve already searched on occasion.
And speechcraft is easy. You run through once pushing the lowest button 4 times, remembering whether it raises or lowers the disp each time. Then you simply go through a dozen times, hitting large on the ones that raise and small on the ones that lower. The apprentice rank perk is very useful if you’re having trouble.
Yeah, Captain Renault has a katana – it tends to fall down the stairs from where she dies (in my games at least). You can use it up until the point where you enter the sewers; then Baurus takes it away from you.
The minigames in Oblivion are some of the worst ever created.
Things were improved in Fallout 3, but only to a certain extent…
I play RPGs so my character can pick locks, not so that I can.
Thankfully, as someone before me pointed out, magic is the solution to all the problems in this game. Although it’s not as hilariously broken as in Morrowind (potions in MW were rather special in particular).
God damn it. I now desperately want to fire up Oblivion again. Curse you.
Viktor, you don’t have to do the first trial and error run with the speechcraft like you said. You can just hover over the wedge and the NPC’s expression will change to 4 different things depending on which options they like. (Very Angry, Slightly Miffed, Accepting, and Overexcited. As I like to call them.)
You see, the Emperor is a big fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Thus he learned the two explicitly stated morals of “Guards! Guards!”:
“Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t want to spend the night in yourself.”
and
“Never build a dungeon you can’t get out of.”
I mean, just on a statistical sample of all the stories it stands to reason that a leader will be thrown in his own dungeon at some point. Might as well prepare for that.
@Amarsir: Indeed, the reason that prison cell is officially off limits is because it’s officially the Emperor’s cell. Though I guess it hasn’t been used in a while since it’s missing the King sized bed (a slight jab at the imperiled Emperor) and could use a good dusting.
The speechcraft minigame is just a timesink. It takes me about 20 seconds to get any disposition to maximum, which means it is utterly pointless. And even if I mess up, I can just try a few more times. Instead of a bastard money tax we get a bastard minigame tax. I honestly prefer the bribing, at least that does not take time (and the economy of an unmodded Morrowind/Oblivion breaks roughly at the point you meed the first shopkeeper).
I am currently (well, interrupted by the absolutely great Starcraft 2) going at Oblivion again, very heavily modded. Sadly, it did not seem to improve it very much. The combat still consists of backwards running and the writing is still horrible. At least the monsters have a fixed level now.
Personally I always liked the speechcraft minigame, if only because it allowed me to control the NPC’s facial features in a basic way, achieving some sort of petty revenge on the bastards.
The thing I always found funny about that Steel Shortsword you’re wielding is that, if you stick with bladed weapons, that’ll be the best possible weapon you can get for quite a few levels.
What I always found frustrating about blade weapons was the fact that you can only slash and swing. I mean it’s great and all but nothing compares to a good old facestab.
I like James Burke! Give us more explanations, not less!
I know this is an ancient Let’s Play, but I just thought I should point out that the original descriptions of Cyrodiil actually described it as an arid jungle with rice-fields and heavy Akaviri influence, down to architecture.
Technically, the swords are just about the only darn part of the original TES lore for the province that still remain.
I know I’m late to the party, but there is a reason for the katanas.
The original blades were Akaviris who invaded Tamriel and then decided Tiber Septim was cool and they basically bowed to him. Thus to this day the Blades wield Akaviri katanas.