*forces himself to break off and write a blog post*

Oblivion... is amazing! It is everything anyone has ever hoped for, in my opinion, and just... far beyond what I'd expected. It's a huge time sink... you just can't get bored with it (yet). If you get bored doing one set of quests, you just... go do another! ...or even just plain explore! Unlike Morrowind, you can barely walk outside of a city without finding some ancient ruins or cave system that'd been infested with pirates. Not only that, but the compass actually does point out nearby areas of interest... so you're wandering around and 'ooh! ruins icon!' and you change course and investigate. Some may not think it's realistic, but you can't ask NPCs about nearby ruins, so the compass kind of makes up for that.

I've been playing for... about 3 days straight. I got it at 4pm on the 21st. Been playing it ever since. Took a small break a couple days ago to get online and see what's goin' on in the world. In that time, I've progressed to about level 12, I think... advanced to Expert in Sneaking and a Journeyman in Security (breaking into locked doors) and Journeyman in Marksmanship. The really awesome thing I've seen they changed about the character statistics is that Longswords, Shortsword and Dagger proficiency is all governed by a single stat this time: Blades. So say you use a dagger your whole life, then you could wield a Shortsword and "know" how to use it well enough. (Morrowind had all three blade types as a different statistic. Very painful to advance, heheh.)

I've also become Guildmaster of the Thieves' Guild for the first time in my history of playing Elder Scrolls. I was rather disappointed, since there isn't anything uber-spectacular about being Guildmaster... you just get some kick-butt headgear. Although the final mission was AWESOME. Ask me about it if you don't mind spoilers!

I've also joined the Dark Brotherhood, but I haven't progressed very far, and I'm thinking now that I shouldn't have joined at all... killing random people just isn't my thing. I'm really more a Thieves' Guild person at heart (at least my character... not in-real-life), I'll take what I need but I won't kill anyone for it... but I usually just buy what I really, really have to have. Like arrows. Lots of arrows.

I bought a house, too!! In a cool high society town called Anvil. (Sounds dumpy, but it ain't, lemme tell ya'.) It's very centrally located for all the people I see regularly, and I'm very well known in the area now. The house I bought was haunted, but it was extremely cheap, so I had to exorcise the evil necromancer who lived in the basement, but now it's all good! It's the biggest house in the town, too!

I haven't really progressed through the main quest very far... and, to tell ya' the truth, I'm kind of stumped. My next step is to locate an amulet... I know where it is and who has it, but to get to him, I have to join a cult... and I was all for it! ...Until they stripped me of all my inventory to give me some stupid cloth robes! That's where I went "YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING!" So then I tried a flat out assault...................... yeah, sure. One little Khajiit (cat race... pronounced "kuh-jeet" according to the many NPCs who audibly say "hail, khajiit!" whenever I pass) who specialized in Stealthy Assassinations against more enemies than I've found spread out over a single plane of Oblivion. That didn't work. So I'm stuck. I've been thinking about just walked in there in my underwear and saying 'hey! I wanna join!' but I'm wondering if that's kind of cheating... since I went ahead to see what happened, but then I restored, so now I know what's going to happen and how to prepare for it. I don't know... I'm sure I'll just do that eventually.

My poor laptop can't handle a full-graphics setting at all. I even disabled the grass! (Which seemed to be the biggest problem. I disabled that and everything ran sooooo much faster, that I was able to turn some things back on.) High Dynamic Range lighting is a huge tax on my system... always has been. So I had to disable that, too... But it still looks incredible! ...and Radiant AI never ceases to amaze me, though I've already found ways to steal things using the game mechanics to my advantage, heheh. As an example, I assassinated a pirate captain (part of the Dark Brotherhood quests) and then, the next day, I overheard someone talking (not text... voice... audio... sound!) about how a ship's captain at the docks had been killed and nobody knows who did it, how or why. I LOVE THAT.

Anyway... off to play more!
...and do some eBay work. Need to do that first, woo.

Bye!