Adventures in Oblivion - The Hero Cyrodil Deserves, But Clearly Not The One It Needs

[...Posted by Ted H]

Just a heads up, I'm gonna continue with my Oblivion playthrough until the endgame before I move on to other things. OurTown2 should be finished by then. Late March/Early April is when it'll go up. From there Safe Haven should be the updates of choice unless any other author wishes to actually post...

----------------------------------

[Adventures in Oblivion - The Hero Cyrodil Deserves, But Clearly Not The One It Needs]

A pumpkin.

I honestly don’t remember what town I was in, maybe Skingrad but I do know I walked into someone’s home and proceeded to break the law without even realizing it. Now, Bethesta game Fallout 3 and similarly New Vegas had similar set ups where people didn’t like it when you stole their items, but wouldn’t even bat an eyelash when you grabbed their stuff and flung it across the room. As long as you didn’t “steal” anything you were fine…“steal” meaning putting the item in question into your inventory.

It was a fucking pumpkin. I wanted to see how far I could toss some lady’s pumpkin off the shelf and across the room, part of me also wanted to see if it would break like a true November pumpkin might. It didn’t but I did notice the lady was throwing a fit over the whole ordeal. I noticed the game prompted me earlier that if I were to take the item it would be considered stealing but I didn’t care since I wasn’t gonna take it, just fling it across the room.

I left without stealing anything. I was still trying to roleplay a character who wasn’t an unprovoked dick to everything he met. I left and hit up a local inn, following up on a quest that I can’t even remember anymore. The person I wanted to meet with was locked in their room for the night behind a locked door that ranked as “average” to pick. Now, like I hinted at before, I graduated from the Fallout 3 school of RPGing and in that game, if you don’t have enough points in lock picking, then the game wont even let you try…besides, this isn’t even worth wasting a dozen or so lock picks when I could simply wait this person out. So I opt to utilize my time machine power and fast-forward myself several hours into the future.

Something went wrong though. I entered into my time machine that I wanted to be at a reasonable, daytime hour and yet when the fast-forward ended, it was still dark out. Not only that, but I noticed a town guard was now in my face, bitching that I was a criminal and I should pay a fine or go to jail.

…The fuck?

Call it stupidity or call it just not being too familiar with the game yet, but I fail to notice that my bounty was chump change…either way, I had no idea flinging someone else’s stuff around their house without asking was a crime and instead wanted my lawyer…oh wait, this isn’t America…I guess I’ll just resist arrest then.

The guard draws his sword and attempts to kill me. In what I will go to the grave claiming as self defense, I fight back and kill the motherfucker. I step outside to find another guard getting all up in my grill saying the same shit word for wor-wait, his last sentence was new. Something about how I don’t have enough to pay the bounty. Add that to the fact that my bounty has now gone up a considerable amount for me to actually notice it on my screen now…yeah, I think a couple apologies are in order.

I’m a dirt poor ex-con adventurer who just murdered local authority. If they wanted me in jail for attempted robbery, they sure as shit want me dead for my recent exhibition of self defense. And I’m sure to bring up the fact that it was self defense too as I scream it while running out the main gates. Fuck-Your-Mountains may be slow by horse standards, but he can easily outrun a town guard running after with his sword out, thank god(s) for that.

The game got interesting, that’s for sure, but it also hit a major roadblock when I attempted to enter the neighboring city and the guards went after me. How the hell did they even know? I don’t see no phones let alone smoke signals or carrier pigeons so can someone please tell me how word got around so fucking fast? I literally just got done running away from the last bunch of guards, how the hell did these guys now only know, but also know the specifics of my bounty? I can see the logic behind me not being able to enter Skingrad for the foreseeable future, but for me to not enter any major city? Fuck!

So now I have to roll up my sleeves and knock out some honest to God adventuring until I can scratch enough gold together to pay my fine because there is no way in hell I’m going back to jail. The adventuring, not gonna lie, honestly saved the game for me. I had been so unimpressed by the main plot to this point I was just using the game to pad my time out until I got enough real world dollars together to maybe pick up Gears 3 or (God forbid) go do something non video game related with my life.

But now here I was, as far away as possible for the stale as hell plotline and letting the game show me what it’s got. Each fort/ruin/mine had about 100 gold at most, and my bounty was about 1000, so this was gonna take a while. Not that I was complaining, cuz it allowed the game to play out without the plot, I got to see the good side of Oblivion, and it made me want to play on, even when the plot started back up…Oh, and speaking of Oblivion…

I happened across a few open Oblivion gates on my way around, and very much like at Kvatch, I ran head first in without as much as a second thought. Running around those got me a nice bit of gold as well, but it did bring up a bit of a quandary. Here I am, the “Hero or Kvatch” as well as the man who has been single-handedly running around and closing every Oblivion gate, saving lives and prolonging the countdown to the end of the world…and no one cares because of one pumpkin incident and one guard I killed in self defense. Ya know, Link never had to deal with shit like this when he barged into homes and broke pots, kicked chickens, and stole everyones rupees…you know why? Cuz he was saving motherfucking Hyrule! I’m saving the motherfucking world and if I want to toss someone else’s pumpkin across a room, then I should be allowed to! I don’t see anyone else queuing up to shut any Oblivion gates, so get off my back for the pumpkin!

But no, I don’t get any hero exemption to local pumpkin smashing laws, so I have to pay the fine…and the self defense one as well…fucking hell…eventually I scrape enough cash money together and I pay my fine, allowing my freedom to enter cities without enduring harassment. Time to continue the plot……

………nah, fuck that. Let’s join a guild instead.

Next time: There are worse things than the plot...