Tigranes

Yeah. I'm level 12 or something, done ~20 quests and cleared ~10 dungeons, no fast travel except for a couple of fedex quests (Go to Chorrol. Talk to A. Go to Cheydinhal. Talk to B. Come back to Chorrol. Talk to A. Quest Ding.) and a couple of loot trips... I got about 2-3 magic weapons worth using, and that's just +5 frost damage or something. How the crap am I supposed to kill Will-o-wisps when it takes at least 30 hits of my Dwarven Arrows or Firebolt? And no, I don't want to readjust difficulty level back to normal. EDIT: By the way, is there any way to get Alchemy Recipes off people or whatever? So far the only way I know of making potions is clicking one ingredient, then clicking the next slot to see if I have anything that combines together. And a stolen recipe for... Cure Disease.

Yes, I understand that. Such as when people say "I can only speak to friends concerning this matter". I can understand that for some particular quests you would need 80+ disposition, but you seem to imply that this is commonplace: and seeing as I've visited every major city and have completed over 25 quests, you'd think that I would have noticed if that was the case. I haven't seen a single quest where, for ANY part of the quest - starting, wringing information, persuading them, whatever - that you needed such a high disposition. Certainly not so high that you need to bribe. Hell, in one quest I was given a Charm scroll to use to persuade a person, but I just speechcraft'd to max disposition and it worked fine. I can't remember if it was 80+ in Morrowind, but my point is you usually don't need to bribe. EDIT: Some can be persuaded up to nearly 90, it seems. I never had to go over 75 though. It might be that you have been focusing your enquiries in, say, the Imperial City. And you might have a lower Personality. It also hurts disposition if your weapon is drawn. 8 quests probably aren't a very good sample, but it's a pity you have to bribe so early in the game when gold *is* scarce.

No, you don't. That's my point. I have never bribed anyone, and sometimes didnt even bother persauding up to 70. Over two dozen quests, no problem. Maybe you need to bribe in rare sitautions, but that's ok. Eldar:

You don't need 80+ disposition for most things. In fact, 65+ seems to be fine, I usually do it till maxdisp (70+) for all quest people as Speechcraft is my major (and it takes me 20 secs)... maybe I missed some 'special' bits, but that's what you get if you don't have high speechcraft.

Well, the first I found was underwater, so yah.

Crap, there are 40 nirnroots? It took me 15 hours into the game to find one, then in the next couple i found 5 more. Has anybody bought & tried Make Things Explode spell from Bravil Mage Guild? :D

It's slightly better if you kill all the compass points.

Agreed with mkreku. The persuasion minigame is extremely easy, and will be for anyone with a rudimentary hold on logic. It only takes me 10-20 seconds to get someone's disposition up to max, though, so it's not too tedious yet.

But is there interesting interaction? Not much so far, apart from sparks of good quests. Otherwise, agreed.

Nope, my trees are pretty much Daggerfall quality outside a ten-foot radius. *plays*

Indoors and especially caverns are very dark, my brightness settings is nearly at max. However, I've had to do this for KOTOR and other games. The problem in Oblivion si taht screenshots seem to ignore gamma. At least sometimes. Getting some talk in before the thread is smitten by angrymeta - Radeon9600(256mb) and 512mb RAM, the issue appears to be RAM not the Vidcard. On lower settings (800x600, Bloom, NoAA, Minimum Shadows, Normal View Distance) it works 20-30fps, but the fps doesn't really go dwon that much when i turn up the sliders a lot. However, the one place I do chug (and nearly unplayably) is in dense forests. I'm getting 512 extra RAM in a few days, so we'll see if that makes it better. I've explored Bruma and Imperial City. The population ratio is no better than Morrowind, things still never really feel bustly and busy, except in some Taverns, where all those stupid RAI conversations echo off each other into an incomprehensible babble. Quests seem to be slightly better at least, though. Horses have really bad control, the turning is slow, and in general not very enjoyable. I think both with Oblivion and NWN2, it was always going to be either Mounted Combat or No Horses. Without combat there's no point. Persuasion minigame is quite fun, IMO, whereas the lockpick one is kinda random. Maybe I don't have the hang of it yet. Both are simple and fairly easy. It appears to be a Morrowind, some things improved quite significantly (combat, world environment..) but some things not enough (empty cities, horrible dialogue..)

Combat at least is harder, which helps make it fun. TES's battle system isnt built for tactics anyway, so we can't hope for that. Running decently on Radeon 9600 and 512mb ram, by which I mean doesnt look that much better than morrowind but I personally don't really care. Sneaking appears to live up to the promise, sorta. There are odd moments where guards dont' notice a battle fairly nearby, but that happened in Thief too.

"Hey, is Oblivion coming in?" "Yes, it's released already." "No. I mean the PC version. I know that for some unfathomable reason the 360 version was released earlier." "That's cause we dont have the PC version yet." "But the release is tomrrow." "Hopefully."

God loves NZ he gave us boiling mud AND that's why we have Australia!

Same. I'd download to see if it did work, but NZ broadband gives you 30kbps on a 4gb d/l. Good thing NZ is slack about refund policies.

Reports indicate that a horse with an arrow stuck in its butt and angrily stomping at enemies is a definite possibility.

Right, there we go. Not untextured, then, I'll admit that. However, there is an issue: I am saying that not only do fan screenies show these, the OFFICIAL BETHESDA TRAILER shows this, where you are clearly going to get the best LOD possible. Are you saying that in their last PR drive Bethesda would release a trailer exclusively built to show off the beautiful terrain a hardware glitch? I don't really buy that. THat's the part I am concerned about - I wouldn't mind as much if it was a bug.

Finger... twitching...CURIOUS

No. They are clearly visible on Oblivion's official trailer (with a huge draw distance) as well as in other screenshots. See the "1 Week To Go" trailer, 20 seconds, the hill on the left. Somebody more knowledgeable might argue that it's not exactly "untextured", but it sure looks like a green, flat glob of crapness. The game still looks amazing, and I have preordered it, but yeah, no texture, or whatever, it is visible. The game actually has a great set of options letting you set draw distances independently for buidlings, trees, actors, etc: but if you have a trailer from Bethesda itself where you can look very very far out, yet you can see the grass drawn in front of your feet and have globby hills far out, I would definitely say it is noticeable. It has also been commented on by IGN Impressions and many others, including German screenshots and fan reviews.

I can't access them at home but I could access at my uni. Dunno. I'm sure they're around.

It's not released in NZ yet, but I've read 20-30 "impressions" from 3-10 hours of play so far, and it amalgamates into the following: -> The untextured hills and low draw distances DO exist. (if you dont know what I'm talking about, ground that is a bit away, but still clearly visible, often has no grass/rocks on it OR a recognisable texture, making it look like a greenish blob from 1999.) -> Some complain that the bloom is overdone. If you felt that way looking at screenies, then that is probably true for you, and vice versa. -> The faces are still as bad (art style wise), but again, screenies show this. Other than this, graphics are up to scratch. -> Runs nice with little loading time on most 360's and high end comps, low end comps are still able to run it. No game-killing bugs so far. -> Dhruin's comments on UI are spot on. There also seems to be some sort of crazy mini-radial menu when this guy in a video is using a potion in the middle of a battle. -> Physics are fairly good, killing a wolf on a hill makes him slide down, arrows stick out of things like legs, etc. -> The world is apparently more 'epic' and 'lifelike', as in mountains are really that, mountains (huge / tall), etc. -> Radiant AI: nobody is saying it's the best thing in the world. Most people think it's a good / great addition, apart fromsome ****ups that provide humour (hoeing concrete), but apparently it's not going to be as groundbreaking as some people thought / suggested. I'm not surprised. -> Combat looks and plays similarly to Morrowind, the "special attacks" and elimination of hit roll being the biggest factor. Also, the combat is more 'kinetic', but that looks REALLY retarded on 3rd person (everybody hopping around and turning sideways like little mannequins), in first person better but more disorienting. -> Wiki Dialogue still exists. There are many instances where when you choose what your character says, it is definitely wiki. Sometimes it's not though, I guess for important conversations. -> Persuasion minigame seems to involve a circle divided into 4 sides, and usually 2 are blank while the other 2 are coloured: I'm not sure exactly how it works, but you have to apparently find the most coloured section and select it...? It doesn't look any good at all, but I haven't actually played it myself. EDIT: metadigital: IGN comments that there are not tooltips in first impressions.

Theoretically, yes. It should also be against the EULA to install without telling you in the first place.... woah. O.o

But his profile is still "Lead Designer", which leads me to believe rather that Obsidian has just been late in updating his profile (it's probably not the highest of priorities, and they've been late with that before). Sawyer's word is the authority atm. I wonder if this means nwn2's release is further off than we had anticipated, and Ferret no longer can commit himself to the project for such a long time.

WTF.

True, but the precedents do not inspire confidence. (and neither do the extremely short draw distances, at least for people without super-rigs.)