But all the fighting in this game is probably one of the best parts. That's not to say you can play Oblivion like a pacifist, since the main quest and many others are combat-intensive. Every character can use every skill it's just a question of how well. Basically, you're choosing your character's talents. You choose an underlying specialisation - combat, magic, or stealth - then you choose a couple of primary attributes, seven major skills, and even a birth sign. The choices are numerous but clearly presented, and while you could go out of your way to create a fairly useless character, your intuition will easily guide you through what's a complex process. But the game's numerous premade character classes aren't nearly as interesting as the ability to create your own custom class. For example, if you've gone toe to toe with every goblin you've seen, hacking them up with an axe, you might make a good barbarian.
Toward the end of this sequence, the game does a clever job of recommending a character class to you based on how you've been playing. As you make your way through this basic dungeon crawl, you happen upon ill-fated adventurers, their stuff, and some ornery goblins, so you immediately get to play around with close combat, ranged attacks, magic, sneaking, lock picking, equipment repairing, and more. But first, you'll need to escape from the Imperial City's sewers. The emperor, voiced unmistakably by Patrick Stewart ((i class=a2)Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-Men), recognises you from a portentous dream and entrusts you with the search for his illegitimate heir.
Somehow, though, you get swept up in a desperate escape attempt by the emperor and his loyal retinue of protectors. Initially you just pick a name, race, and gender for your character, and the game opens with you stuck in a dungeon cell, being taunted by a fellow inmate. You see the world through your character's eyes, but a behind-the-back perspective is also available. Oblivion does a great job of quickly introducing you to all these different aspects of play, successfully engaging you rather than overwhelming you. This may be a role-playing game, but you could play it like a pure action game, or like a stealth game, or like an adventure game, and it'd still be at least as good, if not better, than games that are specialised in these regards. That's the main difference between this game and Morrowind. Tried reloading (last save was at the inn, go figure), tried killing some new enemies, tried dying, tried restarting the game, tried entering a dungeon.but there's ALWAYS an enemy nearby.So the breadth of content is as remarkable as ever, but the most important thing is this: The many types of gameplay in Oblivion are well-designed and deeply satisfying, even when taken on their own. Went back outside down to the water's edge and checked and found the two wolves that were near the water dead, but the third one was nowhere to be found. Was confused, so I figured it might be bounty-related. I got a note that I could not rest while enemies were nearby. I cut around some rocks and headed back up onto land and went to the city and found an inn to rest. Eventually I reached water and two of them stopped at the water, but the third one jumped in. I ran for a long period of time because I didn't really feel like turning around to shoot them down (bowman) and it was actually kinda fun seeing if they could keep up. I decided to take the scenic route across the country back to the Imperial Castle and had some wolves chasing me. I think I may have inadvertently caused a problem in my game.