"Oblivion" arrived on Friday afternoon. I have no idea what happened to Saturday. All of a sudden, it's Sunday morning and I'm surfacing briefly to write about this game. All I can say is "Wow!" The Tamriel game world is amazing, the graphics are beautiful and the game itself is totally absorbing. The game's physics and lighting effects are fantastic. "Morrowind" was good. "Oblivion" is much, much better.
There are a few minor bugs that have cropped up occasionally, although those might be because I haven't yet downloaded the latest driver for my graphics card. I was afraid that I would have problems running the game, but it runs smoothly on my machine. I'm going to add a few links for screenshots that I've taken within the game so you can see what it looks like. There are four pictures of my character Bjarki Darknoon, a Nord (Tamriel's equivalent of Vikings) warrior, and one of Cyranis, a Breton mage. Note that all of the trees and grasses move with the wind; also look at the water effects on the fourth picture! Amazing!
Bjarki01 - Under a Bad Moon
Bjarki 02 - Imperial City in the Background
Bjarki03 - Scenery Shot in 3rd Person
Bjarki04 - Water Effects in 1st Person
Cyranis01 - Wildflowers in the Grass
The FaceGen technology allows players to create just about any look for their character. With Bjarki, I set all of the sliders for the various parts of the face to as close to the center as I could. It's possible to easily spend an hour or more getting your character's face just right. After all, you're going to be spending a lot of time with him (or her) so you'd better get it right!
