Despite its epic scope, however, Oblivion was not without some significant issues -- such as bugs, interface problems, and the game's auto-leveling system. A lot of gamers overlooked these issues early, but they moved to the forefront as time passed on. Fortunately for Oblivion's growth as a game, there were plenty of mod makers willing to step into the breach to significantly alter and enhance the Oblivion experience. In this initial installment of our new Replay column, we take a look at what's changed in the world of Tamriel in the months since Oblivion's release.
The Oblivion Community
Bethesda itself has continued to work on the basic game, releasing a patch and several enhancements that have significantly improved the stability of the game's code base. The current version of the game is 1.1.5. This has managed to eliminate the worst of the crash bugs, floating monsters, broken quests, and video card-specific problems. They've also worked on cleaning up the Oblivion Construction Set, fixing fundamental NPC bugs that were hampering the efforts of mod makers. While there continue to be issues with things like a missing .dll file and ATI card incompatibility (Bethesda has posted workarounds for these issues on its website), by and large the game is far more stable on both PC and Xbox 360 than it was at launch.
Meanwhile, it's fallen to the Oblivion community to work on clearing up issues with the gameplay. The range of mods that have come out in just a few short months for Oblivion is astounding. One excellent example is the indispensable BTMod, a simple program that does things like increase the viewable area of the maps, change the font sizes of the game's text, and allow players to organize their buttons to have better access to things like spells, their journal, and quest information. There are a host of graphical upgrades that offer more realistic forests, better skies, and more attractive water effects, and there is even a mod that changes the appearance of herbs after they're harvested, something that doesn't seem important until a player calculates the amount of time spent clicking on plants that have already been looted. In all, the Oblivion community has done an amazing job of adding a ton of enhancements that make Oblivion a significantly improved game than it was at launch.
The Adventurer's Project
One example of the Oblivion community helping players enjoy the game to the fullest is a mod called The Adventurer's Project, based on Bethesda's implementation of something called "auto-leveling." As your character gets more powerful, enemies gain new abilities and sport better equipment and better treasure. While the idea was good (it meant the player could go anywhere without arbitrary level restrictions), it also removed one of the greatest joys of an RPG -- gradually improving a character until they're finally strong enough to challenge the uber bad guy. This, in turn, led to one of the arguments among Oblivion fans, between those who liked the current system and those who didn't.
For those who felt (as I did) that the leveling system had issues, they can download The Adventurer's Project, nothing less than a complete rebalance of the game's level and loot systems. While still in beta, playing Oblivion with The Adventurer's Project is a completely different experience. Suddenly big monsters and bigger treasures are found right from the start where you would expect them, hidden in the more inaccessible areas like Ayelid ruins and the Oblivion dimension. Wolves start at level four and slowly rise to level eight. Bandits start at level six and stop at level 13. You'll never see a bandit chief in Daedric armor and no one will ever be able to win the arena at level 2. It makes the leveling portion of the game meaningful again and brings a sensation of progression back to the game.
More Oblivion Adventures
Oblivion fans looking to tweak their RPG experience can, of course, head over to FilePlanet's Oblivion section for all kinds of weird mods and ends. I was initially looking for something to make my Oblivion experience a little easier, which made Overload's Mod Pack a good place to start. The pack bundles together a number of important mods that include bug fixes for some of the Mage's Guild quests, the "No Psychic Guards" that helps thieves by keeping city guards from seeing through walls, and "Perception," a Mysticism spell that let's the player judge the toughness of opponents (a must-have with The Adventurer's Project). Gamers looking for something a bit more avant-garde, however, might be interested in Halfling, which inserts them as a playable race, Reznod's Mannequins which gives the player -- yes -- posable mannequins, and even a personal museum to put them in. And of course, it would hardly be a mod community without the requisite nude mode. If you can think of it, odds are someone's already made a mod for it.
