To enjoy Oblivion, you have to be willing to spend the time in training your character in a multitude of skills.  There are 21.  Seven skills the player will make major skills (It’s how the character levels) and 14 minor skills.  This leads to a multitude of options with two major viewpoints that matter.  Option 1:  Care about the skills and how they propel the character to higher levels.  Option 2: Make 7 skills major skills that you could care less about and will never use.  Option 2 allows you to simply play the game while missing out on certain side quests.  Option 1 brings about “power leveling” and delaying the actual “game play” for hours on end.  But, I really want to discuss stuff that I would hope are fixed in Skyrim — the next title in the Elder Scrolls series.

01. Don’t you wish you could just start the game and get right down to playing without getting caught up in the whole “training”?  I do.  I would love to just “play”.  How complicated is that to achieve?  Character leveling is too complex and time demanding.  Bethesda should look at Demon’s Souls and how characters progress in that game.  It’s simpler and more direct.

02.  If you’re going to include a magic system, it should allow for powerful spells and removal of spells that are no longer needed.  A little house-keeping could have gone a long way in making Oblivion more enjoyable.  Instead, you have to lug around every basic, minor, major, severe, and legendary spell you purchase or create.  Talk about bloat and confusion.

03.  “Major quest areas” (areas that contain essential non-player controlled characters when a quest is active) should be protected until opened up via encounters or events.  This prevents accidental deaths that lock quests from being started / enjoyed.

04. How about some variety in essential and non-essential NPCs?  Everyone in Cyrodill must be related.  They all look alike.

05.  How about an “enemy scaling system” that makes sense?  By the time you reach level 36 in Oblivion, many of the “enemies” are of the boss variety — which is counter-intuitive.  There have to be underlings for their to be bosses.  I know they are trying to keep the game challenging.  But, that is what the difficuly slider is for.

06.  If you are going to introduce an expansion, ensure the expansion world scales with the primary product.  Shivering Isles does not.  It’s open season on all NPCs at level 30 and above.  They are ill-equipped to deal with the scaled monsters.  For example, Jayred Ice-Veins continues to wear basic light armor when glass armor is available.  The player, if they care, has to protect NPCs and not the other way around.

07.  Enemies shouldn’t “change” tactics to take advantage of player character weaknesses.  Example:  During the recommendation phase of the Mage’s Guild quest line, a rogue mage is described as using frost magic and the adventurer is given scolls of frost protection.  However (in my case), the rogue mage uses shock magic.  A little consistency would be nice.

Hmmmmm …. I think I could go on.  But, I won’t.  If I find something else that truly annoys me, I might edit this post.  How about you?  What would you like to see fixed in Skyrim?

The finale to Stargate Universe is so painful to watch.  It’s just one long drawn out goodbye.  The ship is in trouble.  They can’t figure out how to deal with the drones and Eli has a moment of clarity.  “We’ll just use the stasis pods and calculate one long-ass FTL (a Battlestar Galactica term) jump into the next galaxy. It’ll take three years and there is the chance we could fall short of our target and drift for — oh, I don’t know — forever.”   Now comes the long drawn out worthless goodbye.  The show recieves no resolution what so ever.  We’re just left with Eli sacrificing himself for Dr. Rush (Seriously!!!!) and Col. Young (the father Eli never had).  All I can say is this — It started shitty and ended shitty.

If I’m a betting man, I would allow myself to believe the following.  The creators of Stargate Universe left things as they were to have the capability of continuing the story in another format (books, comics, another movie, etc.).  Maybe they think someone will show them sympathy and the show will get another chance.  But as far as I know, this is it.  The Stargate franchise ends on a crappy note.  The movies that were in the works have been put on hold.  There are no television series in the works.

JB

My understand of CERN’s efforts is they are attempting to understand the very early stages of the Big Bang by “creating” a smaller version of the bang.  My understanding of Relativity is that time is relative to the observer.

My Question:  If CERN was ever truly successful at creating a “Big Bang” event and it only lasted for a micro-second in the eyes of the scientist, would sentient life emerge and perish in that instant?  Keep in mind that time is Relative to the observer.  All the scientist would be aware of is the flash of light — a light that has a specific moment of origin, a specific point of origin,  expands outward, and finally ceases to exist.  How does that rattle your brain?

That said — we could reduce that number even further.  Each skill has a total of four books that may be read to increase your score by 3 (or 4 with comprehension) points per book.  That is a total of 12 (16) points.  You take away 12 points from 80 and 68 is your magic number.  You take 16 from 80 and 64 is your magic number.

For obvious reasons, there are only a few skills worth having 90 or above points in:  Barter (more caps equals more purchasing power;  don’t forget about the Roving Trader outfit when considering this score as well),  Guns or Energy Weapons, Repair (90 points needed for Jury Rigging perk), and Speech.  Honestly, you can stop at 80 with speech.  I’ve never encountered a speech chanllenge tougher than 80.

You should also keep an eye on how your SPECIAL and equipment effect your skill scores.  This can alter your magic number by a few points.  Someone somewhere is going to work this all out.  I don’t have the time or inclination to do it.  But, I can at least give you some basic things to think about.  And no matter how hard you try, there is no way to have an all-around uber character like in Fallout 3.  Some skills are going to have to take a back seat (like explosives, sneak, medicine, unarmed, etc.)  The choice is yours.  I hope this helped.

JB

Power Armor isn’t widespread until you reach a certain point in the Brotherhood of Steel sidequest.  All of a sudden NCR soldiers will be seen wearing Power Armor.  No training is required to wear their armor and their armor provides no benefits.  It’s kind of pointless.

These two short paragraphs are to help you realize one thing.  Armor scales to the world around you.  If you put off the main quest until you are level 20-something,  the cool looking NCR Ranger Combat Armor won’t appear.  If you never deal with the Brotherhood, Power Armor won’t be seen.

The other annoying issue with armor involves faction reputation.  Putting on the uniform of a faction negates your standing.  Everyone will be neutral towards you except for named NPCs that can see through your disguise.  That alone makes wearing some armor (like the cool NCR Ranger Combat Armor) pointless.  Your reputation drives how the world reacts to you.  You worked hard for it.  You should reap the rewards.  If NCR loves you, they should still love you when in their uniforms.  It just doesn’t happen that way.

JB

The whole campaign is run-and-gun.  There is no requirement to clear an area.  The only objective is to reach the next “waypoint”.  In that sense, everything happens fast and you barely get to enjoy the game.  It would be nice to have one mission where the enemies didn’t respawn and you could actually judge your progress.  This was missing.

The zombie arcade game is fun for about ten minutes.  You get to laugh at the whacky lines and enjoy some mindless “killing”.  Then you start to notice the limitations on weapons and ammo.  I’ve made it through 7 rounds max.  Most of the time I wind up being over-run.  Maybe you have better luck 0r skill.  It doesn’t matter.  It just gets old quick.

I’m so glad I rented this game.

JB

Malcolm Holmes will approach you in the wasteland and explain he’s been following you.  His sole function is to explain the caps with blue stars.  That’s it.  This is good news.  It means you can “sneak kill” him for his Roving Trader outfit and not suffer any bad karma.  The Roving Trader outfit and hat boosts barter for a total 10 points.  Enjoy.

Hunt the Bighorner Bull.  Each kill will reward you with 50 experience points.  That is the same reward for Deathclaws and a whole lot safer.  Find the herds near the following locations:  Grub ‘n Gulp Rest Stop, Snyder Prospector Camp, Southwest of Wolfhorn Ranch, North of Nipton, and Spring Mountain Ranch State Park.  You can also hunt the fire ants at the Ant Mound and El Dorado Dry Lake, the ants at Ivanpah Dry Lake, and the radscorpions south of the Nipton Road Pit Stop.  The herds and ants will respawn after waiting 72 hours.

Alternatively, you could just go after Fiends and Viper gang members.  The point reward is 20 for each kill.  The bonus is looting the dead.

There are two types  of “items” you may repair — armor and weapons.  In Fallout 3, repairs were based on your Repair skill.  If you had 20 for your repair skill, you could only complete a 20 percent repair.  In New Vegas, repair works differently.  If you have 20 points in repair, you can repair an item adding 20 percent to its current condition.  I’ll provide an example to help you understand.  These are not exact figures — just an example.

Repair: 30 — takes 13 of same item to get a full repair.
Repair: 60 — takes 6 of same item to get a full repair.
Repair: 90 — takes 3 of same item to get a full repair.

Get the idea.  You can make a full repair no matter what your Repair skill is.  It only determines how good your repair efforts  are or how many items it will take to make a full repair.

If you have 50 points in your repair skill, you can craft weapon repair kits at a work bench.  There are plenty of supplies around to make enough kits to last until you get the Jury Riggin perk.

Recipe for Weapon Repair Kit:
– 1 Duct Tape
– 1 Scrap Electronics
– 1 Wonder Glue
– 1 Wrenches
– 2 Scrap Metal

Make sure you are holding the weapon that needs to be repaired before using a repair kit.

You can also vist several vendors that can make repairs:
Mojave Outpost Admin Bldg: Officer behind counter — 100 percent repairs
Gibson Scrap Yard — Old Lady Gibson — 70 percent repairs