Arrrr. Feast thy eyes and despair!
Night in a Small Town
I admit, I cheated. There's a bunch of installed mods in there that are just upping the amazingness of Oblivion's graphics. The illuminated windows are a mod. The night sky is a mod also, I think, but Oblivion's vanilla stars seemed perfectly nifty to me too. The cloud/weather effects is probably a bit of a mod because Oblivion's standard stuff is pretty, but not very variant.
There's this GREAT mod called Natural Wildlife/Vegetation, and it absolutely rocks my socks off. It creates a teensy better foliage than standard Oblivion, ever-so-slightly less pixelated, but bushier. And it makes these little random wildlife flit across your screen now and then, like butterflies or a moth very reminscent of the one that visited Gandalf up in Saruman's tower in the movie.
I also put in a mod for something I -really- felt should have been in normal Oblivion. Harvest Mod, they call it. You see, when you harvest herbs normally, the plants still look the same post-harvest. This one alters them slightly, so that they are missing leaves or flowers - a clear signal they've been harvested.
Oh, and I dumped in a Mod for improving the interface from Xbox-friendly to PC-friendly so that I can see more stuff in my inventory at once, and I put in a pretty colored world map.
Same Town, Different Angle
This one shows off the sky mod, and the two planets you can see with it.
I don't know. I notice some people (especially the Morrowind fanatics) complaining and bitching about Oblivion. That it's not all they thought it would be.
But personally, I think part of the POWER that was achieved by The Elder Scrolls, first with Morrowind and now with Oblivion, is the possibility of all this flexible modding that users can utilize without breaking the game.
To me, it makes sense that you want an easy-to-play game to start out with. Especially on the X-box, which I don't think you can mod easily. So that your random kid who picks up the game is NOT frustrated, and is very easily guided as to where he wants to go and do stuff. Hand-holding, if you'd like. Otherwise, you'd lose sales, right?
Your hardcore crowd, on the other hand, being so hardcore or into roleplaying with "realism" ought to be hardcore enough to know how to jack mods in to tweak things to how they'd like to play, however difficult they may like it to be.
(Realism. Ooh, I hate this word. It's usally an excuse for adding slow-downs and frustration factors into a game. I endure reality on a daily basis, thank you, why dump more of it into a game? I don't need to spend 20 hours daily on a game with realism. 3 hours is about my max on a regular weekday.)
Now what Bethesda should really have done is made a proper mod attacher (and not left it for users to develop) and a place to host mod files. (But I suppose they were saving money, they knew a hardcore bunch of players would do it anyhow for them.) A gesture like that, imo, would mean that they support the usage of mods to customize your game how you'd like. (But I also suppose some idiots would mod without knowing how to and then go after their Tech Support for content that isn't supported by them.)
Anyhow, I think this modding of a single-player game is the greatest thing since sliced cheese. Because it's YOUR custom-made game after that. Lots of people like harder difficulty. Well, I don't. I actually have my slider set at 25%, rather than at 50% because I like to feel powerful, even as a lowbie. I'm a hero. I shouldn't have to spend 30 mins hacking away at a rat. One swipe of my weapon and yes, they better die.
Lots of people wanted to have eating and sleeping a necessity for "realism." Oooh, that evil word again. You know, I intitially felt the lack too. It was like, hang on, it feels funny not needing to eat or sleep. So I actually went and looked at the mods available. Then the cold chill set in.
This sleep mod makes you REQUIRE 8 hours of sleep a day, or penalties set in. That hunger mod makes you 'hungry' at set hours of the day, 8am, 12 noon, 8pm, and asks you to eat, OR ELSE. Meh. Perhaps these aren't well-done mods, but suddenly I realized something. I actually LIKE the freedom of not being reminded or forced into anything. I actually still do sleep about 5-6 hours every night in Oblivion. Who's to stop me? Why 8 hours exactly? Some people do perfectly fine with 4-5. Why MUST I eat at 8am, 12 noon and 8pm? Or any other random hours? Or a set interval between hours? Why can't I have a meal a day? Why can't I skip a meal now and then? Surely an Argonian (lizardman) has different sleep and meal requirements than a Khajit (catman) or a human?
So yea, in the end, it comes down to how you like to roleplay. If you like the structure and stricture, go install a sleep/eat mod and be reminded that you GOTTA sleep and eat. If you don't, well, I can still choose to sit down and have a meal, or I can pull some grapes off a vine and have a snack, and I can still catch winks when I like to.
I like the freeform freedom.
Others like structure. Their call. Their game. Please mod whatever you like in.
I know I will too.
And the beauty of Oblivion and Morrowind is that you CAN have your cake and eat it too.
(Having freaking beautiful graphics doesn't hurt either...)
Closeup of 2 NPCs talking
Something else I find cool is how the AI has improved. The NPCs all have schedules now. Making sneaking in and thieving much more exciting, you have to choose your time. NPCs will bump into each other and have conversations. (This one shown is a set piece / quest convo, but others are just random ones.) And they gossip to each other, and you can sometimes get new quests from overhearing gossip. (Mage Guild NPCs chatter like hens to each other for some reason.)
Nice foggy twilight/dawn
I think the fog is from a weather mod. I noticed less weather variants for Oblivion than I saw with Morrowind - felt like it anyhow. It tended to rain or not rain. After dumping in the weather mod, it feels much better. This was really atmospheric, having fog and following a ghost to the place where he was trapped.
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