Much Ado About Everything

Last week I finally got around to playing Outcast.  I got it back in 1999, and started playing it back then, but the learning curve was too intimidating and I gave it up.  I guess the sole reason for replaying it was the symphonic soundtract – I’m a sucker for those.  It was sitting on my shelf since then but this time I decided to try to play it.  Using walkthrough, of course – I didn’t want to waste too much time trying to figure out what the hell is going on in that game on my own.  The world is just too big and there are just too many enemies to simply go and play without some kind of a plan.  Luckily, with the walkthrough and with some methodical questing, it wasn’t a difficult game, though it did take a fair bit of time to finish.

And a few days later, to congratulate myself on getting a new job, I bought a new video card – GeForce 7600GT, and a new monitor Viewsonic VP930b (though I already have a 20″ LCD; I want to dual screen it).  And of course, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.  I loved Morrowind so I figured I’ll want to play this one with a lot of eye candy.  And sure enough, the game is as addictive as they come.  I won’t say too much right now as I’m sure plenty is being said about it already.  But I do have to say that it is becoming less fun to play as time passes, because the enemies tend to get more and more difficult, without any clear means of getting a leg up on them.  That is because supposedly the level of the enemies you face is dynamically determined based on your own level.  There are several major problems with this, the first one is philosophical, namely lack of feeling of accomplishment.  What is the purpose of levelling up, if the enemies are no easier to defeat (same enemies,
at the very least)?  More importantly, just how does the game determine what is the appropriate level for an enemy?  From what I saw, it definitely erred on the tough side.  The jump in enemy difficulty in many quests was simly staggering, especially since the enemies were essentially the same as the ones you faced before without too much trouble.  So if you can’t level up, can you at least buy a new equipment?  Well, not really.  The best equipment is not bought but found, it seems, and that doesn’t happen very often.  I probably played for 20 hours and found only one weapon and armor upgrade!  The money is very hard to come by, and is ridiculously easy to spend.  For example, the training system is next to useless because the amount of money required is so high that you’d spend hundreds of hard earned gold to raise a skill just one level – and we’re talking only skills in the apprentice range, which aren’t all that strong anyway.  To put it into perspective, you’ll be playing for many hours to earn those few hundreds, and not only that, but your skills will rise several times during those hours, much more than just a single point increase you’ll have to pay for!  Then what the hell is it for?  And besides, what are the ways to get money anyway?  Doing quests for fighter’s guild does pay, but 200 gold which you typically get is but a drop in the bucket.  I also never found any useful armor or weapon in shops (and even if I did, it is priced in multithousand range meaning it’s – again – useless).  So what the hell am I supposed to do?  Unfortunately, from being fun the game is turning into a tedious exercise in save and load.  Probably because I’m not playing it exactly the way that the designers envisioned it to be played.  Which makes no sense at all in a game like Oblivion, where the whole point is that you can play it any way you want!  If I can’t level up to be able to defeat the enemies, then they better provide some kind of a friggin’ guide in the game itself on how to proceed (and of course they won’t, because you’re supposed to play it any way you want).  I just hope I’ll be able to find some more items around, because the game will become unplayable pretty soon.

So unfortunately, yet another issue of having to discover the secrets of game designers or read walkthroughs.  I haven’t used walkthroughs yet, and I hope I won’t really have to.  But I probably will.