Let's Play: Oblivion - Shiverwinter Islepeaks

[Occasionally Fatal]

MOAR

 

[WalterKinde]

Yes more please, i'd really like to see whats in the only official original expansion for Oblivion.

 

[The Vanished One]

The scenery actually looks a lot better than Oblivion's.

And it's a lot more like Morrowind. Which is good.

edit: and by the way, great job admiral!

 

[bat_boro]

By the way, I really liked the artistic design of Shivering Isles more than Oblivion's and thought the game was better than the original.

Maybe because the world is smaller and you don't see so much copy&paste as in the original. There were also some C&C, although not that much, because Beth saved the rest for Fallout 3, apperantly.
And the character design was way better - I actually remember two characters from this game (the Prince and his servant) as opposed to Oblivion's shallow characters (except for that crazy elf in the Imperial City lol)
I also found the dungeons better designed and more fun to play in the Isles

 

[Desmodus Rotundus]

It might look better, but they still got the same 4 voice actors, the stupid fucks didn't learn anything from criticism, so after few hours of being back in inbreedville I had enough and I quit.

They might have actually worked a little more on npc faces, locactions and such, but the core concept is the same oblivion which irritated the shit out of me.

 

[Wyrmlord]

One thing I liked was that Shivering Isles didn't spell things out for the player. To some extent. I remember that in a certain dungeon, a chest was hidden away deep inside it. You had to do some puzzles and jump over some platforms to reach it. The chest required a key to open. I thoroughly searched the area and found no such key.

After adventuring around, I returned to the place much later, and decided to try again. It turned out that the heart of a certain creature I killed could be used as a key to it, and I opened it up to find a whole bunch of powerful magic items.

That's the kind of stuff I like. I like games that let you explore around and discover things. This sort of object/clue finding is one of the great funs of playing RPGs.

One very very good quest was the Fortress Of Vitharn. Exploring around the world, I found a fortress where ghosts of soldiers were perpetually fighting each other. You can't enter through the gates, but move around, and you can spot a hidden entrance. There are some ghostly items kept around in certain places, and what you do with them causes the endlessly going on battle to finally end. It's a very well done quest.

There are no generic areas in Shivering Isles. Every dungeon or barrow has its own bizzare and unique design. And they could be in the middle of nowhere, and that's what I love. I once remember that deep inside a barrow was a sinking ruins. The whole underground area kept tilting back and forth like a ship in a storm, struggling to hold itself in the loose mud.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

There are no generic areas in Shivering Isles. Every dungeon or barrow has its own bizzare and unique design.

The dungeon just before Passwall was pretty fucking generic, to be honest, but I'm holding out hope yet

 

[racofer]

Well it seems Admiral jimbob couldn't stand oblivion for more than a few gameplay hours (or was it minutes?).

 

[The Vanished One]

Luckily for him he's got better things to do.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Luckily for him he's got better things to do.

Yup. Was my birthday a few days ago, so I have other things to keep me occupied, but I'll get back to it at the weekend at latest i prmis

 

[The Vanished One]

Well, happy birthday!

 

[DraQ]

Eh, SI is quite worthwhile, despite retaining most of the game design related dumbfuckery of Oblibians. At least this time Beth came up with something far more interesting and original than ZOMGDemoninvashuninmiddleearth!!!1.

 

[Wyrmlord]

The main quest, though, is AWFUL. Alot of it involves doing passive things that involve neither fighting, nor any investigation or clue-finding. Just passive things involving no challenge.

There is one bit where you simply just sit and decide how to torture a party of adventurers. And another where you just have to go around torturing people in city for information on a conspiracy. The ending fight is simply ridiculous. The boss comes, you kill him, and he then delivers a monologue.

Sidequests were fairly cool, though.

It's all akin to that level in Call Of Duty 4 called All Ghillied Up, where you do almost nothing but follow a guy's orders on where to move and what to do.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

It's all akin to that level in Call Of Duty 4 called All Ghillied Up, where you do almost nothing but follow a guy's orders on where to move and what to do.

I rather liked that part of the game. was a nice change from the hero-syndrome perpetuating the rest of the game/games where you're forever on point while having to do just about every special task that presents itself. what was really annoying was when you had a great opportunity to stealth a level, but your sqaud mates blow it because of scripting.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

By coincidence I am playing CoD4 right now
All Ghillied Up was fun in a handholdy way but the following level where you defend Captain McHaggis and wait for the helicopter can fuck right off

 

[Lord Chambers]

List of mods please.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

FCOM, described in the first post, and the Halo + Final Fantasy VII items and armour mod that I'm sure everyone here has already. Will add UI tweaks and so on as I muster the will to do so, but nothing major.

 

[Country_Gravy]

The screenshots are all showing up as red X's.

 

[Lord Chambers]

FCOM

Did you have any problem with this? I unzipped and installed all the mods, then tried to sort the load order as per the directions on the FCOM website, but certain files are "missing one or more masters." I've installed everything correctly. How can they be missing their masters?

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

It worked for me with relative ease, but I was missing a couple of masters for Francesco's - when you install that one, make sure that you tell it to install all the optional files you chose as seperate .esps.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Kingchief Sephiroth decides that his uber Master Chief armour makes him so powerful it removes any semblance of challenge the game may offer, and disposes of it. He is Kingcomrade once more, and dons the steel armour of one of the dead adventurers.

Yeah, that's my discarded Master Chief and Sephiroth clothing. No, I don't know either.

I have two options for dealing with the Gatekeeper situation - so, being a lazy bastard, I go for the option that involves little more than sleeping where I stand for twelve hours.

You get some pretty skies in this place. Anyway, I follow her up the stairs.

This scene is... uh... really bad. She talks to it like it's a baby, then starts crying because Sheogorath doesn't love her or something, all in a drab monotone with about as much emotion as Keanu Reeves. Look it up on Youtube or something.

lol dat's crazee

He actually knocks me up in the air and across the area. Kind of interesting, but since it barely does any actual damage, kind of pointless.

And... two strikes later and he's down. Good old Oblivion. Seriously, I have my difficulty bar thing on the upper end of the scale, what's the deal with this shit? Oh well.

Haskill appears!

Funny thing. Reading these lines, what popped into my mind was obviously "CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES LOL". And then we get...

damn Haskul u so crazee y u say these crazee thingras

I was going to ask the Codex which one I should go for, but I decided to be a rebel and go my own path. So I flipped a coin. Dementia it is.

Wait! That Jayred guy, who wanted me to go to the garden of blood and bone or whatever with him, has followed me, and cheers my victory over the Gatekeeper. He doesn't really make it clear whether he's going to follow me or not, but he does.

And we enter... uh... the Bitter Coast.

Okay, this guy seemed a little too fixated on his quest back when it was somewhat reasonable to be so, but now he's just frightening me. He immediately turns around and runs back the way he came, coming to a complete halt halfway up the path. I don't know. I don't care. I'm leaving. Goodbye, Jayred. It just isn't going to work out between us.

So, looks like I'm not too far from New Sheoth, the rooflemeister's city. It kinda makes me wonder what happened to Old Sheoth. Though, thinking about it, I really couldn't give a fuck. Anyway, I'm struggling to see where any of the settlements Haskill mentioned were in Dementia are, and it's hard to tell if Mania is part of the landmass or an alternate version of it I'll never be able to enter. Which is unfortunate, because Dementia's just really fucking boring so far.

I think this might be the only creature I fought this session that wasn't a Grummite Whelp.

I don't care. Leave me alone. Somebody tell him to leave me alone. I'm not returning his calls.

A cave! Hopefully more interesting than that goddamn ruin.

All fairly eh so far. Some decent loot, way too many Grummites, decent layout and design, nothing really worth noting.

what the hell is that
I let it free, out of curiosity.

It shuffles away down the corridor, at speed. Then waits for me to open the door for it. Lazy fucker.

Oh, it kills things for me. How nice. They posed such a threat to me.

I free another one. They run into each other, then just stop and sit like this. Forever. Maybe they're talking or bonding or something, or this is part of a quest I've yet to get, or their follow AI fucked up. You decide.

lolwat

Oh, good grief, there are too many of these things. Maybe I should leave one. I think letting them all go is likely to be part of a quest, and freeing them all before getting it might break it. But then I realise that I don't care if it does or not and let them go anyway.

Out I go. I have to wonder what happened to the draw distance. Oblivion's was huge, and the one in the Morrowinter Isles is... uh... roughly the same as Morrowind's. Foggy weather? I don't know.

lol it's one of these things
It is not appreciative of my efforts in ending the slave trade. It dies in one non-powered blow.

This is the New Sheoth graveyard. All the tombstones have inscriptions like this. All of the jokes are just as bad.

New Sheoth's walls. I expected either something vaguely imaginative or something stupidly wackee. I did not expect the Imperial City.

I approach. Next episode, kingcomrade enters the city, and finally meets the Rooflemeister himself. However, before I go, I leave you with this, to provide your own captions and comments.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, that's what Bethesda thinks...

 

[Aegeri]

That thing couldn't seduce anyone, well perhaps Pete Hines...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

That thing couldn't seduce anyone, well perhaps Pete Hines...

THING is the keyword indeed...

 

[Wyrmlord]

I believe that if you pickpocket Relmyna, you can get a key to one of the dungeons in the game.

It has two entrances, one shortcut entrance which requires a key, and another with a longer way in. When I went inside there, there were all sorts of bizzare experiments. Through some journals, you find out that it is Relmyna's place. An inner sanctum still required a key. You later go to that place for the main quest anyway, but I say better to do things in advance.

And I once remember that I went inside a certain dungeon with hostile Dark Seducers. As I went deeper and deeper into it, I found myself eventually inside....the Duchess' chambers! My cousin, who was doing the Dementia stuff, while I was doing the Mania stuff, told me that you have to go there for a Dementia mission. Interesting stuff!