Bethesda Rolls Out Final Oblivion Content Addition

Closing out an era, Bethesda Softworks will be bringing the final piece of downloadable content out for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Rogues and mages both have their lairs, and this newest addition is for the melee-types: The Fighter's Stronghold. Starting this coming Monday it will be available on the 360 and for PC, and for one week only it will be free for the taking. They're also hoping to bring this content to the PS3 version of the game. "Since we're talking about DLC, I thought I'd update you with what's going on with the PS3 version of Oblivion. We are close, very close to working something out to bring Shivering Isles to PS3 owners. That may be in downloadable form via PSN, or as a standalone retail disc, or both. I can't say definitively yet that it will happen, and I definitely can't say when. But it's looking good, and hopefully we'll have good news soon. Don't have anything I can tell you about any other DLC, but Shivering Isles is the one we get asked about all the time, so I at least wanted to update folks on that."

Comments

Ownage

[Sciros]

I'm a combat type rawwwrrrrr and now I will finally not be homeless! For the last couple of years my character has been living in caves, stables, and hollow logs. On occasion I would beat up a bum and take his bedroll for the night, or smack a guard in the face so I could go to jail and at least have a roof over my head for a bit.

Now I can live in style, wootlar!

Oh and the free-for-one-week deal sounds good, I like that.

Re:Ownage

[DirkGently]

Never looked into the concept of home ownership? I thought they made it obvious that you could pretty much buy a house in each town.

Re:Ownage

[clem]

Hey, don't make him go Batman on you.

Re:Ownage

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the funny mods didn't give it away for you. The parent was joking.

Re:Ownage

[Stormcrow309]

Hell, I own my own plane of oblivion among other properties. Eventually, I need to get around to the main quest. I wonder how many of my troops I can bring with me. Hey Mehrunes Dagon, meet Sheogorath , listener of the black hand, archmage, guild master of the fighter's guild, chapter master of the nights of the nine, guild master of the thieves' guild, arena champion, nice guy and overall snappy dresser.

We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[Cutriss]

Horse-armor aside, I think Bethesda has done a fine job of supporting a game that is now around two years old. I hope we'll see similar add-ons (again, horse-armor aside) for Fallout 3.

Then again, it'd be hilarious if they gave away for free some sort of horse-armor-like add-on for Fallout just to mock themselves, like "scorpion mail" for a rideable scorpion named "Buddy" or somesuch.

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[Danse]

Horse-armor aside, I think Bethesda has done a fine job of supporting a game that is now around two years old. I'd say they've done an adequate job of supporting it. The mod community has done an absolutely amazing job of supporting it though. Without them the game would have dropped off the map within a couple of months at best probably. If it hadn't been for some of the early fixes like getting rid of the horribly UI and fixing the leveling system, a lot of people, myself included, would have gone looking for something else to play.

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[sammyF70]

indeed. The mod community is what made/makes Oblivion such a great game. I've been playing for over one year and half, and this would not have been the case without the mods (currently slightly over 60 different mods active when I play, the vast majority of which are making the game HARDER). I always think of Bethesda Games as gigantic canvases. They give you a very good base upon which you can mod (or use mods) to create the game YOU want to play. I'm looking forward to the new official one of course, I just hope it won't interfere with Colovian Highlands :s

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[MBraynard]

Mod community supporting the game?

Can you compare sales on 360/PS3 to PC and tell me that moders made much a difference?

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[Danse]

Can you compare sales on 360/PS3 to PC and tell me that moders made much a difference? I don't have any info about the sales. 360 owners don't exactly have a lot of good RPG games to choose from anyway, and most consolers don't know any better. What I can say is that the game that Bethesda released pretty much sucked after you wandered around it for a few hours. They made some really bad decisions with the gameplay. The game I'm playing now is a VAST improvement over the original. Yeah, I have to load up a dozen mods to get it that way, but I'm playing a completely different game than what 360 owners are playing, and I've only scratched the surface of what's available. As sandbox games go, this one is getting great support and will have MUCH more longevity on the PC than the 360. I don't even know anyone who is still playing it on the 360.

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[brkello]

As much as people complained, I was really worried about the leveling system. After playing a large portion of the game, I can say the leveling system they have works very well and isn't as nearly as broken as people try to make it out to be.

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[Danse]

After playing a large portion of the game, I can say the leveling system they have works very well and isn't as nearly as broken as people try to make it out to be. Depends on what you think a game like that should be like. Does it really make sense for a bandit attacking your level 30 character to be such a tough fight? You've been fighting Daedra and other powerful opponents, yet the bandits roaming the roads are now wandering around with high-level armor and equipment and are a match for you still. That's just dumb. Then there's the fact that you can start clearing out oblivion gates when you're like level 2. Again, that's just dumb. Daedra should be destroying such a low-level player. Otherwise, what threat are they? A farmer with a pitchfork could clear a gate!

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[MBraynard]

You are mostly talking about level listing, right?

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[Danse]

You are mostly talking about level listing, right? Among other things. I have mods that add hundreds of new creatures, npcs, weapons, armor, etc. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul and Martigen's Monster Mod are enormous changes, which not only add all those new things, but they make changes to the AI to make them act more intelligently too. I also use Supreme Magicka, which completely revamps the lame magic system in Oblivion, making many of the useless spells useful again, as well as making most spells more expensive, but adding some extra tweaks to them, such as a chance for a fire spell to knock an opponent down, or an ice spell to freeze someone for a couple of seconds. It also makes enchanting more useful, as it was largely worthless before since you couldn't enchant things to anywhere near the level of the items you could find in the wild. It tones down the chameleon effects as well, as those could make you nearly invincible if you got to 100%. Now, it's closer to sneaking, where you become visible for a few seconds if you take an action.

Then there are the many new quests that can be added, many of them quite large and elaborate, taking anywhere from 2 to 20 or so hours to complete. I use a user-interface mod to make the interface look a lot better and not be so huge and distracting as the default one. There are many visual mods as well that add much better looking weather effects along with better looking vegetation, buildings and other things. The Unique Landscapes project is entirely redoing many parts of the world, making them look simply gorgeous. It's a lot better than having all those areas that look basically the same.

So yeah, the released version of Oblivion was nothing too great, but the modders have turned it into something amazing. I can see myself continuing to play it for at least a couple of years. I doubt that anything will eclipse it before then.

Re:We hardly knew ye...for two years.

[MBraynard]

Er, wow. If only the release had many of these features...

I mean, you can't have expanded the missions so much (though DLC allowed for this) because programmer time is limited, but I hope Bethesda is looking at all the improvements the outside made. Thanks for sharing.

Elder Scrolls V

[jollyreaper]

They working on that yet?

Free for a week?

[azuredrake]

It should be free always, as part of a patch, on PC. I've got no problem with charging for it on Live or PSN, as they don't really have the precedent of free content updates... but microtransactions paying for getting your game *finished* on PC are inexcusable.

Sad times. =/

Re:Free for a week?

[Blakey Rat]

This isn't to "finish" the game. The game was shipped finished. This is more of an "encore!"

Re:Free for a week?

[mxs]

And you are only realizing this now ? They've been doing it since the start. I wonder what people who paid for their shiny horse armors felt like after the first shiny 3 minutes of new horse-armor smell.

Re:Free for a week?

[brkello]

Why should it be free? These aren't things that needed to be in the game. The original game with no addons is huge and enjoyable. They still work on the game after the fact so I don't see why they shouldn't be paid for their work. Yes, patches to fix bug fixes should be free (which they are), but I see nothing wrong with what they are doing. If you don't want to pay for it, no one is forcing you to buy it. This isn't an MMO where they get a monthly fee to keep adding content.

Slashdot Rolls Out Final Post on Final Obilvion Co

[Anonymous Coward]

lolwut

Cool! A Minnie Driver/Anne Hathaway love scene.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Bethesda Rolls Out Final Oblivion Content Addition

In the new content, one cutscent flashback has Captain Picard relating how he "really, really hates them velveteen robe thingies".