This is my first post here! And I am talking about video games! Imagine that! OK, I will stop that now.
As you may know, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released this past Tuesday. I got it of course — it is the #1 reason I bought my Xbox 360. I have since played more than 24 hours. In fact, I am a tad bit over 30 hrs. at this point. This amounts to about one month if in-game time.
I am very impressed, as I knew I would be. The bad news first: The frame rate dips a lot. There is some serious draw in problems. When you are on horseback you see frame rate and draw in problems all at the same time too. But the game is so beautiful and the story is so good, who cares!
I have joined every guild in the game, including the Dark Brotherhood, otherwise known as the assassins guild. I am also pretty far in the main quest-line . I have 17 open quests right now though, so I have been working my way around different quests as I go.
I contracted the disease that, if not treated, turns you into a vampire. I had no clue I had the disease until it was too late. As such, I am now a vampire. At first I was right pissed off at this because I thought it was going to make everything in the game that much more time consuming. I had done so much questing at that point, there was no way I was reverting over seven hrs. of game play just to get rid of this curse. There is a very long process to get rid of it. And that is hardly worth it. So I am going to play as a vampire for the rest of the game.
Oddly, it took trying very hard to become a vampire in Morrowind. Oh well. I get enough stat boosts and other magical powers as a vampire that going back would seem like a step in the wrong direction. It just means I have to “feed” on people to stay youthful. Thankfully there are a lot of NPCs in Oblivion and they all have succulent necks.