Noobskarn: <\/strong>Like\u2026I mean, that\u2019s cool and all. Belgium is cool, but\u2026what am I going to do there, exactly?<\/p>\n Morrowind: <\/strong>(shrugs) My\u2019unno.<\/p>\n Noobskarn: <\/strong>Well, okay, this is a big place, I\u2019m sure I can figure something out. Any ideas to get me started?<\/p>\n Morrowind: <\/strong>Fine. There\u2019s a nice art gallery you could visit.<\/p>\n Noobskarn: <\/strong>Oh, awesome! Where is it?<\/p>\n Morrowind: <\/strong>Northish.<\/p>\n Noobskarn: <\/strong>Could you be a little more\u2026<\/p>\n Morrowind: <\/strong>Oh, and did you keep that slip of paper I gave you ten minutes ago?<\/p>\n Noobskarn: <\/strong>That? Oh, I thought you wanted me to throw that away. What was that?<\/p>\n Morrowind: <\/strong>Yeah, police are legally allowed to shoot you if you don\u2019t have one of those.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was a little stern, but you got used to it, and once you got your bearings\u2014which took longer for some than others\u2014you began to appreciate the freedom to get lost, screw yourself over, and generally succeed based on your own wits. Didn\u2019t want to do the main quest? Drop the package into the ocean and get it out of your inventory. All of the fun of sticking it to the man without pissing off any actual human beings.<\/p>\n Then came Oblivion, which is more like this:<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Welcome to Belgium! Have a brochure. It\u2019s full of information on all the best art galleries!<\/p>\n Rutskarn: <\/strong>Yeah, actually, the last one turned out to just be a building full of raiders and mutant rats, so I\u2019m thinking of taking in some theater instead. Thanks anyway.<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Well, take the brochure anyway. You might change your mind.<\/p>\n Rutskarn: <\/strong>No, seriously, I\u2019m good.<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Please, take the brochure. It\u2019s for your own good, you know.<\/p>\n Rutskarn: <\/strong>I don\u2019t\u2026<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Oh, see, I think I know what the problem is. Well, rest assured, this brochure is super light<\/em>. You won\u2019t even feel it in your backpack.<\/p>\n Rutskarn:<\/strong> I guess I just don\u2019t want to clutter up my backpack with something I have no intention of ever using. Do you see what I just did there? Because that\u2019s the situation with the Amulet, the one that sparked this whole analogy.<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Take the brochure or you\u2019re not leaving this train station.<\/p>\n Rutskarn: <\/strong>Fine. If I visit one, do I get to throw away the brochure?<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Possibly.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Rutskarn: <\/strong>Then let\u2019s just get it over with.<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Awesome! And I can tell you exactly <\/em>where they are.<\/p>\n Rutskarn: <\/strong>Where\u2019s the closest one?<\/p>\n Oblivion: <\/strong>Northish.<\/p>\n While I\u2019m sure this approach is more friendly to newer players\u2014and certainly one could stand to find a happy medium between this and Morrowind\u2014the little restrictions started to chafe pretty quickly. You can\u2019t discard or sell quest items, you can\u2019t kill about a quarter of the NPCs in the game, and whenever you engage in a quest, the compass kicks in telling you exactly <\/em>where everything you need to complete it is. It\u2019s a little ironic that this massive shift towards newbie-friendliness came in the franchise\u2019s fourth entry, after I\u2014and a good percentage of Oblivion\u2019s player base, if not all of them\u2014were already familiar with the underlying mechanics and sandbox mentality.<\/p>\n Right, enough of that, I\u2019ve got some responsibility-shirking to get underway. Let\u2019s bring up the map and have a look\u2026<\/p>\n Oh, hello, DISGRACE. How are the wife and kids?<\/p><\/div>\n What the hell kind of excuse for a map is that? Sorry, I\u2019m sorry, roll the set pieces back out, because apparently were doing back-to-back episodes of Why Morrowind Is Better Theater<\/em>. There\u2019s just no excuse for how badly Bethesda mucked this up. When it came to the map, the designers dropped a ball that was a gun onto their foot, and then it went off, shooting their foot. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Where to begin?<\/p>\n 1.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s tiny. It\u2019s an absurdly overzoomed in\u2014there\u2019s no way of having two cities on-screen at the same time. In Morrowind, you could see every city in the game at once. This is handy when you\u2019re using the map to plan routes between locations, which is, come to think of it, what you use a god damned map for.<\/em><\/p>\n 2.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can\u2019t rescale it. I really wanted to hold off on the usual teh-consoles-ruined-everything speech, but the focus on console interfaces really did bork PC users. In Morrowind, you could have your spells, character sheet, inventory, and map all up on screen at once\u2014you could resize those elements, move them around like windows, and even minimize them\/toggle them so that they remain visible when you return to the game. If you wanted to, you could easily scroll the map up so big you could see everything or so small that it barely allowed you to see anything\u2014much like this map, actually. Now, everything gets moved to a different tab, you can\u2019t view two of them at once, and you can\u2019t scale the map up so it\u2019s actually useful. <\/em><\/p>\n 3.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s static. When you find new locations in Oblivion, the game places a little marker that you can fast-travel to. However, it does not fulfill the second-most important function of the Morrowind map, which was to show you where you\u2019ve already been. The Morrowind map filled up with color as you explored it, which had the practical effect of showing you exactly where to search for new areas and the visceral effect of showing you just how much ground you\u2019ve covered. Why did they get rid of that? You can\u2019t tell me that\u2019d be a hard feature to implement. It\u2019s baffling. Were they just so committed to their brown-and-light-brown map aesthetic that they were afraid to sully it with something so garish as\u2026color<\/em>? <\/em><\/p>\n Map sucks. Moving on.*<\/p>\n My quest marker points to the West, which is handy because it gives me an excellent sense of the direction not to go in. I settle on a town called Cheydinhal up to the Northeast. It\u2019s a bit of a jog\u2014I could fast travel, but I won\u2019t, because I\u2019m not a cheap bastard.<\/p>\n After a scant ten seconds, I came across two people camping out by some abandoned ruins.<\/p>\n This looks suspicious, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely. I better sheath my sword so they don't get the wrong impression.<\/p><\/div>\n For a second I was wary, but then I remembered that I wasn\u2019t in the lawless backwater of Morrowind anymore\u2014this was the heart of the Empire. What were the odds a couple of bandits were going to set up shop literally an arrow-shot away from the capital city\u2019s crenelations?<\/p>\n Better than I thought, I guess.<\/p>\n I dispatched them pretty quickly. Their armor had an AC equal to my own, and the added benefit of not having been used as a rat lavatory for a few decades. I switch.<\/p>\n Nothing like wearing an unfitted suit made of thick furs on a rainy night.<\/p><\/div>\n My trek resumed. I must say, after Morrowind, this place is a tremendous breath of fresh air. Out there, the wastelands were full of all sorts of freakish and hostile animals that\u2019d launch suicidal, single-handed assaults on you from out of nowhere. I guess it\u2019s just a factor of their burned-out savannah ecosystem or something. Out here in Cyrodiil, you get normal, perfectly mundane animals that launch suicidal single-handed assaults on you from out of nowhere.<\/p>\n Well, I guess he\u2019s a wolf-pack\u2026of one.<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Oblivion-2010-07-15-13-28-23-98-600x450.jpg\" "\\"Oblivion")
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