Ok, after doing a lot of other crap today I finally got around to playing Oblivion, and good god it's been sweet so far.

Starting off with the CE: they were selling it at my games stores, right next to the 'regular' Oblivion. A boxed and nicely worked out DVD thingie with a map, a 120-page lore guide, a septim coin and a making of DVD. For just 5 bucks/euros extra. You'd have to be insane to go for the regular edition if you see them lying next to each other...those extras are sure worth 5€.

Anyway, after 20 minutes of tweaking my character appearance Takkelier the Crack Junk(ie) was born. It's a Khajit, though, so making him look more sinister and hollow-faced was the best I could do in terms of appearance. I'll go over his stats tomorrow...too tired atm.

Anyway, already in the dungeon you could see how great everything looked, the detail on the armors of the blades etc..very cool. I fought my way around in the dungeons and the sewers, but I seem to have a rather different fighting style than most movies I've seen from you guys so far. I go mano-a-mano but I'm not very strong (but I am very fast) so I just move in for the kill quickly and starting throwing punches like a monkey on crack. Cat, if you will.

As soon as I reached the outside world, I started wandering...nowhere to tbh. I just stumbled on two nearby daedric ruins and investigated them, then I just kept on marching North (in the mountains) until I found a walled town called Bruhas or something like that. I looked around for a bit, rented a room, checked for some gossip and quests...then, in the off-limits part of the local fighter's guild, I found a paper note with directions to some place...it looked very mysterious in any case. I decided to investigate, but somewhere along the line I must have gotten off-track cos the instructions didn't match anymore.

Instead I ran into a silver mine filled with goblins which I ransacked, and I decided to take a nice dive in a little lake nearby to cool down. That's about where my first run ended. No guild allegiances yet, no skooma yet (!), not set a foot in the imperial city or anything. Just cruisin'.

I'll post pics and movies later of my brawling Khajit...needless to say I'm running around in the Mythic Dawn robes I stole off some assassin in the prisons. Never know when that might come in handy.

Man, this game is sweet. The interplay of the graphics, the all-spoken dialogue, believable characters etc....wow, just wow.

I've been messing around in the civilized world a bit more today, and did a few murders here and there. It started off with a prisoner in Brumas who wanted someone dead; then a paranoid nutcase who asked me to eliminate the ppl who were following him. Or rather, who I made him believe were following him. But he paid sums that my char had never seen before (200-300 gold, wooo) so I decided to let go of morality for a while...and whack some upstanding citizens. Turns out it was harder than it seemed, because it's not an option killing them in the streets -I had to operate in the town for a little while longer- so I needed to crack some skulls at night...but I suck at security and had no lockpicks. Sooo...I had to follow them around during the day and pickpocket their keys from them, wait for the night to fall and kill them in their beds. In fact, I still haven't managed to kill the last target, he's a tough cookie.

Regardless, after a few of my exploits I was contacted by the Dark Brotherhood. I got a taste for assassinating by now so I took their offer and performed the "initiation rite". From there on I have been mostly busy carrying out contracts for the Brotherhood, and I just love it.

There's this one quest where you need to sneak past a whole lotta guards and areas to go kill a prisoner in his cell. With a bonus if you don't kill any guards. Now, the sneaking to the prisoner part was already totally intense and fun, and waiting for the chance to pop up to move out of the darkness and put two arrows in his face (he can't run, he's in a cell! muhahah) was even cooler....but what was completely awesome was the escape: after killing the prisoner I decided not to sneak back out but run past everything and everyone, being very fast and agile anyway.

The way the AI reacted was great...I come speeding by some patrolling guard with a torch from behind his back (where the holding cells were) and he actually looked like he was startled: he went "what?" and "huh" before pulling his sword and coming after me. At that point I already was 10 meters ahead, tho. But then I run into a narrow hallway and a guard with sword drawn runs towards me blocking my way, with others chasing me. I jump and...I jump over the guard, continuing my way. Acrobatics ftw!! Then some more avoiding surprised guards and jumping over another one, before jumping into a pool of water. I think: "aight, they won't follow me here" (morrowind style), but sure enough, the guards jump in after me...I start panicking but manage to crawl out of the pool and get to safety after a quick few jumps...I run a little bit further, not hearing the guards anymore, and reach the outside. I'm out! The contract has been fulfilled, and no dead guards!


Anyway, that's just one DB quest, other are really cool and original too. They didn't all get my heart pumping as much as the prison one tho. And the DB is just totally cool..I feel at home there. I might become a member of the thieves' guild too -I received an invitation- but I'm guessing it'll be more out of usefulness than anything else. (fences and lockpicks)

Joining the DB also landed me my first decent armor, heh. I 'd even say more than decent. I also realized the usefulness of magic a little more, especially the more practical schools such as alteration, mysticism and illusion. I'm sure I'm joining the Mages Guild soon if they allow me..I could use their facilities to come up with some spells more suitable for my character.

Erh...what else to say. Hand to hand is fun and -obviously- cheap, but it has its drawbacks. Well, it's both a good and a bad thing really: instead of taking a lot of health, it takes a little health and a little fatigue...good for enemies with low fatigue, bad for enemies with high health. I also carry a dagger/bow in case I need to poison or something.

I have a pic or two three...but nothing spectacular. Don't wanna spoil, hehe.

Great stuff man! I posted a little speachcraft guide for you in my thread.

I ratted on the insane guy when he told me to kill people

Good to see youve got Oblivion on your system Ox.