{"id":3015,"date":"2010-10-27T01:14:20","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T09:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/?p=3015"},"modified":"2026-06-15T17:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T01:07:22","slug":"the-cyrodiil-look-cahmels-new-travels-lets-play-oblivion-part-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/?p=3015","title":{"rendered":"The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel\u2019s New Travels (Let\u2019s Play Oblivion, Part 11)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edit: Fixed a few typos. Keep in mind that I finished this at such a late hour that I had to shake myself awake three times during the editing phase<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When we last left our dedicated hero, he was wandering around the Imperial City aimlessly. Okay, yeah, I guess I\u2019m supposed to meet up with the Thief\u2019s Guild or whatever, but they didn\u2019t actually specify a day for me to meet them on. Maybe they\u2019ve got nothing better to do than hang around a specific garden every single night of the year, all waiting for some random mug-fondling ex-con who may or may not be showing up. So far, this guild is reminding me less of a shadowy crime network and more of those guilds that spam the chats looking for applicants. You know the ones: \u201c<Knights of Dragon Legion> is looking for members! No experience or equipment needed. Bank alts welcome. Acknowledgment of fellow guild members optional. You can pretend we\u2019re a cool group or something. Make up some raid statistics, we\u2019ll back you up if anyone asks. Garish, tasteless tabard will be provided. Contact GL Cookierandom for more information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Imperial City is a touchy subject for me, because it\u2019s honestly one of the stiffest disappointments Oblivion has to offer. There are many things that Bethesda, for all of its good qualities and areas of expertise, is absolutely incapable of doing. Chief amongst those is making a city that feels more like a metropolis than, say, a smallish medieval-themed outlet mall. Vivec was where they got closest, but that\u2019s cheating\u2014it\u2019s not so much one city as a bunch, it\u2019s full of generic patrolling NPCs, and it only feels big because its architect was M.C. Goddamned Escher. Anyway, every other \u201cbig\u201d city they do ends up feeling like someone abandoned a suburb and didn\u2019t bother to evict the tremendously ugly, broadly humanoid squatters.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Imperial City was advertised as the capital of the Empire, a city vaster than any we had seen before. It was supposed to be a city that felt like a thriving nexus of activity, the beating Brobdingnagian heart of the beast. All of this sounded entirely reasonable before the game came out, but in hindsight, I guess it was probably hoping for too much.<\/p>\n

The first problem is that it\u2019s broken up into sequestered loading areas. Not like \u201cpass under an archway and get a loading screen\u201d loading, either. Like, \u201cwalk up to a door and activate it to teleport into a new area\u201d loading. Each chunk is relatively small, and so the place doesn\u2019t feel that put together.<\/p>\n

Secondly, it\u2019s a ghost town. There\u2019ll be maybe one or two non-guard people wandering aimlessly down any given street. Combined with the fancy alabaster architecture, this gives one the impression of a lavishly-decorated shopping center that\u2019s in exactly the wrong place to attract customers.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, there aren\u2019t a lot of interesting districts. There\u2019s the Market area, also known as Three Quarters of Anything You\u2019d Actually Want to Do Are In This One So Just Fast Travel Here and Be Done With It, the Arena (more later), and then some minor districts that are various flavors of, \u201cPeople in X tax bracket live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fourthly, it\u2019s just not that big. Vivec was larger, and\u2014damnable wreck though it was\u2014it was at least pretty interesting. Less so the uniform-architecture flat playground that is the Imperial City. Vivec did have the same \u201call dressed up and nowere to go\u201d issue, though\u2014once you picked a House, two of the cantons became useless overnight. And the Arena Canton was useful only for when some random guild NPC\u2019d challenge you for the top spot.<\/p>\n

Right, enough griping. I might as well hone my larceny skills.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you, following my golden example, have decided to assume a life of crime. Good on you! Capitalism is a tool of the Man<\/em>, man. You have to, like, free yourself from your capitalist notions of having to pay for things and stuff and shiz. Only then can you reach enlightenment.<\/p>\n

Anyway, to get you started down your own self-destructive path, go ahead\u00a0 and assume that you\u2019ve spotted a valuable item lying under some shopkeeper\u2019s bloated potato nose. Here\u2019s how you\u2019d go about liberating it.<\/p>\n

1.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Act casual. NPCs can smell fear.<\/p>\n

2.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Begin to not-that-casually walk upstairs, then wait. The shopkeeper will be too timid to ask why you\u2019ve just blown past his merch and are now standing outside of his room, but he will try to follow you for some reason. What, doesn\u2019t he trust you unsupervised with his stuff?<\/p>\n

3.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wait until he\u2019s as far from the desk as he\u2019ll wander, then print past the NPC towards the item in question. Now, of course, it\u2019s illegal to touch an item, because that demonstrates misuse of someone else\u2019s property and is viewed as suspicious. So to act casual, what you do is hit the item with your sword. <\/em>Just straight up smack it into the corner, then run in after it.<\/p>\n

4.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this point, you should have your item on the ground and the NPC upstairs\/stuck on a corner\/not in witness range of what you did, so run over and grab it like it\u2019s hot and also your hands are frozen in blocks of ice.<\/p>\n

It sounds goofy, because it totally is, but you can make bank <\/em>doing this. I just lifted a whole steel breastplate from the armorer\u2014that\u2019s going to be worth a dang fortune. Of course, I have to sell it first, which does mean finding someone who will buy my stolen oh yes that\u2019s what I was doing.<\/p>\n

Right, let\u2019s get this over with, then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edit: Fixed a few typos. Keep in mind that I finished this at such a late hour that I had to shake myself awake three times during the editing phase. When we last left...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play-oblivion"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel\u2019s New Travels (Let\u2019s Play Oblivion, Part 11) -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/?p=3015\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Cyrodiil Look: Cahmel\u2019s New Travels (Let\u2019s Play Oblivion, Part 11) -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Edit: Fixed a few typos. 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