The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel’s New Travels (Let’s Play Oblivion, Part 7)

Expect a new Cahmel in this space later today (Pacific time). Remember that whole academic integration thing? Got some of that to take care of, and then we’ll get back to the larceny and grand theft you have been accustomed to.
Random note: I’ve started work on a mini-series. If all goes as I plan, it’ll be a snap to produce and entertaining for all involved. More details later, methinks.

EDIT: Here ya go.

When we last left our noble hero, he’d finally figured out what he wanted to be when he grew up: a felon. That’s right: I’m going to make a living stealing things instead of doing honest work, like murdering things and then stealing them, or murdering things at the instruction of people wearing nicer gear and then stealing whatever happens to be around them. Actually, now that I think of it, this pretty much exactly like most of the work I’ve had in the past. All I’ve actually done is cut out the middleman and the middlemurder.

Right, I’m resolved. Time to break out the black handlebar ‘stache and old-timey white-striped tabard, because I’m here to steal crap and kill cliff racers—and I’m all out of cliff racers.

What should my first target be? I should start small, methinks—maybe hit an aristocrat’s place? Everyone around here seems pretty rich, and while I’m new to the whole robbery scene, I’ve got a pretty good idea that rich people have more expensive stuff. Sure, that inn was full of valueless knickknacks and random doodads, but that’s because they’ve learned long ago that when you rent out private rooms to wandering ex-cons at absurdly marked up prices, you expect there to be theft the same way park rangers expect there to be weather.

This caper was going to be tricky. Going in, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was overreaching somehow—that attempting to rob a very well-to-do city full of guards, locks, and concerned citizens was a dangerous proposition for a starting thief with his stealth skills in the crapper and no magic items. One thing was for sure: this wasn’t going to be easy.

Twenty minutes later, I’d cleaned the town out.

That wasn’t actually easy, no. It was embarrassingly easy. I’d walk up to a door, loiter outside until the guards wandered away, then blast through the lock and start looting everything inside. At first I was afraid of waking the owner up, but after I accidentally threw a tray of weights, coins, and novelty noisemakers across a room, I came to the conclusion that this wasn’t gonna happen.

So, the good news is, stealing crap is super easy. The bad news is, there’s practically nothing in private residences worth stealing.

I’m serious. Nothing beats shadowing a target, figuring out when they sleep, cracking open their door, sneaking past their room, and infiltrating their basement only to carefully remove the lock from a chest and uncover…some yarn. And one fork. Both of which are a.) useless to them and b.) entirely valueless to shopkeepers. So, basically, I broke into an aristocrat’s house in the dead of night so that I could clean their basement. If I’d done this during the daytime, they’d feel obligated to provide me with lunch and pay me for my troubles. The thing is, this isn’t just a couple containers in a couple houses, this is practically every house in the game. Burglary used to be so fun and profitable—what happened, Bethesda? You stick in a brand spankin’ new system that adds a ton of depth and intrigue to urban robbery, and then you offer such insulting rewards? That’s like revamping the rules of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, working up a media frenzy about how new and amazing it’s going to be, and then offering twenty dollars as your grand prize.

On the other hand, stores have some decent inventory lying around, and while the good stuff seems to exist in whatever pocket dimension some NPCs have shoved up their keisters, you can still pilfer the odd cuirass and whatnot. By the end of the night, I’ve got a haul worth calling my own. It consists of enough gewgaws, trinkets, artifices, brews, vests, and assorted rubbish to choke a whale to death, which—by sheer coincidence—is exactly enough to break my prison-weakened back from the strain of it. You know those cartoon robbers that carry massive, bulging sacks over their shoulders? I’m that guy. Only instead of money, I’m carrying the medieval equivalent of a passable rummage sale. The question is…what do I do with it?

Well, no, the question is, “Where do I sell it?” It’s not like I’m going to donate this stuff to the Salvation Legion or use it to create modern art or something. I’m in this for the money, dig?

I head back to my room, make sure there are no ornaments I missed on the first pass—they’d be worthless, but if I’m spending 20 gold a night there’s principle to consider—and wait for the shops to open up again. Then I head to the pawnbroker.

It’s a well-known rule of economics that people will give you better deals if they like you. This is why, whenever I go to a Wal-Mart, I spend a good twenty minutes seducing the cashier. Half the time, security doesn’t even bother to confiscate my bags before throwing me out! Anyway, point is, I plan to move a lot of product here, so I need this guy to like me. Time to bust out my charm AND moxie, which means using…the Speechcraft minigame.

Come to think of it, maybe I will go the donation route.

The Speechcraft minigame is the other skill minigame Bethesda added. It’s slightly less beloved than the Lockpicking one, which means that it actually has fewer fans than hepatitis. It has the strategic depth of a Tiger electronics game, the entertainment value of a Speak-and-Spell, and has slightly less to do with the actual ebb and flow of human social interaction than, say, a ten-minute video of a cow being flogged. Here’s how it works:

You’re given a circle divided into four quarters. Each quarter is marked with some vague, generalized aspect of social interaction: Admire, Joke, Coerce, or Boast. Every NPC will really like having one of these things directed at them, kind of like another, hate a third, and really hate a fourth. So, the trick is figuring out what they like and doing that, right? That makes a lot of sense, so Bethesda took one look at it and decided they didn’t want any.

In fact, you will have to do all four of these things, every time you try to improve someone’s disposition. All that matters is what order you do them in. Basically, you try to click on the ones they like when they’re full and the ones they don’t when they’re empty, with how full the quarters are being determined by a rotating set of values. It’s hard to explain, but the important thing is that every time you try to smooth talk someone, no matter what their inclination, you have to coerce them, admire them, boast to them, and tell them jokes. The NPCs react to your social cues appropriately—either expressing appreciation or contempt, as is appropriate–and when you finish a session, they’ll give you their opinion on how you did. It’s a little strange, actually—it sounds a lot like they’re a teacher giving you a grade, which just helps to make this whole stilted exercise sound even more terrifying and inhuman, like it was designed by someone who’d learned about human interactions from a documentary they’d fallen asleep halfway into. If you do well at it, a common NPC response is, “You’re pretty good!” It kinda gives me the willies just thinking about it.

But of course, it behooves me to make this shopkeeper like me before offloading my crap on him, so it’s time to lay on the old Charm-el. Looks like he likes admiration, dislikes boasting, hates jokes, and really likes…coercion? He’s a fan of being threatened? Okay, now I really don’t like where this is going. Whatever, might as well get this over with…

Cahmel: Hello, good sir! I wish to patronize your shop.

Shopkeeper: Certainly.

Cahmel: Alright, I…huh. Pardon the interruption, but I just happened to notice that you’re a beautiful jewel of a man.

Shopkeeper: Oh, my, you flatter—

Cahmel: Of course, I’m prettier. And just generally more awesome.

Shopkeeper: I beg your pardon? That seems a trifle arrogant.

Cahmel: More like…awesome-gant. Did you get that? It’s a play on words.

Shopkeer: My hands suddenly want to kill you. My brain’s offering a show resistance.

Cahmel: Well how about you shut the hell up before I murder you and throw you into an alleyway, you ugly freak.

Shopkeeper: Oh—oh god, please don’t do that! I’m sorry, I’ll be good!

Cahmel: I’m going to drag you outside and beat you with a rusty metal pipe. People will find your skull the next street over and think it’s a Wiffle ball.

Shopkeeper: Oh, no, don’t! Anything but that!

Cahmel: That’s a nice shirt. Borba’s?

Shopkeeper: Yeah.

Cahmel: Mine’s better.

Shopkeeper: Listen, you rude little urchin, if you’re going to snipe at my fashion choices, I suggest you vacate the premises!

Cahmel: Did you hear the one about…

Shopkeeper: Yes, and I hated it then too! I hate your insipid jokes with every cell in my body, and if you don’t get out of my shop at this very moment I’m going to tear out your lungs with my bare hands!

Cahmel: I’m done.

Shopkeeper: You’re pretty good.

Next episode: A little snag.