Yesterday I got my monthly PC magazine through the door, and to my great surprise, there was an 8 page preview about Oblivion. The editor of the magazine had got the honor to play a demo version of Oblivion (ONLY available to the press/editors of magazines). So I though I would share what he experienced. I have just picked out the most interesting parts. What I write is directly translated from a danish magazine called >Pcplayer (remember, its the editors own personal opinions and experiences, and he havent played the final game!).
Gameplay/Combat:
The gameplay looks alot like Morrowind, in good and bad. Good, because the game contains great free space, and total freedom, and bad, because combat still is a doubtful affair. Instead of "locking" your opponents in a fight, like for example World of Warcraft, where they can use diffrent attack- and defence maneouvers, have Bethesda chosen to use a rather simple "Attack or defend"- twoclick-system, where you use left mousebutton to swing your sword, and right to defend against attacks.
So you can use fighting in two ways. On the easier enemies, you can just keep swinging your sword brutally, until your enemy gives up or dies, or you can time your attacks and defends against the more challenging enemies. Magic attacks can be used independent of physical attacks. Just just choose what magic attack you wanna use, and press a key when you wanna use it.
Fighting against a single opponent is somewhat easy to do, especially if its against a human or a creature on your own size, but as soon as crawling or flying beasts is involved, is the fights just something you wanna get over with, so you can move along in the story. Fights agains multiple enemies is completely impossible, because of the lack of combination-attacks, and the opponents - especially the city guards - insisting on standing up in your face, makes it hard to fight effectively.
We cant say if there is more to the combat system than just swinging your sword and hope for the best, but we have to conclude, that combat still is the games weak spot.
Radiant AI:
Originally we shouldent have walked into a little private home in the game, where the owner and a city guard started trouble, because we were looking at a shiny silverplate. So we got confronted with the choice of going back to jail for our theivous manners, or a quick fight with the possibility of getting away. We chose the fight, and the guard quickly got beaten after a short and intense fight. But we couldent have that the silver items owner would run for help, so he had to die too.
Heavily loaded with every lootable item from the house, we sneaked out the back door, but sadly a guard had heard the racket and went to attack us. After yet a fight, we had 3 lives on our account, which quickly rose to 7, 8 and soon 10, when the rest of the towns guards came rushing in the name of justice.
All this complicated our further traveling around the town, since civil people spontaneously began to attack us on the streets. It all went wrong when we accidently started a mobfight in an inn, where we tried to rent a room where we could stay safely for the night. We accidently hit the wrong key, which made us deal the inn owner a blow, he didnt get up from again.
In a very short time, we managed to work up a record large bodycount and a bounty, which made our threadlevel equal with the demons that are raging in Tamriel.
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Stealing:
Pete Hines explaned, that one of the important new gameplay-elements is bigger consequence from stealing and breaking into peoples homes. Its now harder to steal objects, because the city guards now can see when you carry around stolen objects and items, and will confront you when they see it. Furthermore, the stolen items cant be sold to normal shopkeepers, but only to special recievers of stolen goods, which is some very secret types, you only can find by sniffing around in Thieves Guild.
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Lockpicking:
Instead of Morrowinds keep-clicking-until-its-open-lockpicking system, it has now been made more interesting in Oblivion. Its a little lockpicking game, where you in a combination of reaction speed and memory have to figure out, in what combination you have to click the small taps inside a lock to open it.
These was the most interesting parts, its not so much, but the game isen't out yet, and the editor also write, that he feels he barely scratched the surface of this giant game. He also write that the graphics is totally stunning. There also are some awesome screenshots in the magasine, which I dont think can be found on the internet. We definately have something to look forward too, both in the graphics and the gameplay department. smile.gif
I hope you got just a little out of reading it, and hopefully it answered just a few of questions you could have. smile.gif