Oblivion's essentials reminded

Let me get one thing clear. This post has absolutely nothing to do with Wraith: The Oblivion. [Then again, this disclaimer wasn't probably necessary, as I don't really think many remember this dark OOP RPG of yore. Except -of course- for the 12 regular readers of Gnome's lair, that is... They do tend to remember stuff.]

Anyway. On to contemporary Oblivion of the Bethesda flavor. Quite an impressive feat of advanced ludology one must admit, both visually and as a game per se, but extremely power hungry. This can of course be fought on a variety of levels:

a) buy and play on an Xbox 360
b) go berserk and spend billions (or at least a few hundred euros) on a new graphics card along with memory and processor upgrades
c) Follow some general PC game performance enhancing techniques
d) wisely tweak Oblivion's graphic settings
e) if you're really desperate and an owner of a vintage and non-DirectX9 compatible card, try using OLDblivion.

With the performance issues more or less settled then, it's high time a gnome (what/who else?) showed you how to actually enhance the game. Without (apparently) paying more to Bethesda, or to anyone else. Of course.

The Oblivion UI, generally speaking a good one even if a tad console oriented, can be considerably improved and helped satiate the average PC gamer's (dirty) wants, through the wisely-crafted BTmod. For a simpler tweak, namely for a swift crosshair-size reduction, you'd be fine by trying this.

The next, not-so-essential, but unobtrusive, very handy and quite beautiful mod everyone and his dog (for Oblivion pets have a look here) should install is Harvest, a useful alteration of the game's 3d world, that visually and realistically marks looted objects. For example:

More impressive (and discovered over at Mr. Elderly's) is the multiplayer mod MultiTES4, still though in Alpha mode. Or perhaps the eye-candy lovers favorite Color Map Mod.

And, please, don't maltreat your cyber-gaming-persona. Do make your life easier by curing your accursed vampirism (without having to endure one of Oblivion's most tedious quests) and by 'fixing' your maximum carrying capacity. More fixes (and not 'fixes') can be found here. FAQs and guides, on the other hand, here and there.

(cue classic musical theme)

That's all folks!!! The rest, I am sure, you can find for yourselves.

Further Oblivion resources:

Planet Elder Scrolls
Oblivion Mod Wiki
The Elder Scrolls Source
The Oblivion Portal
Bethesda's official game site

Related @ Gnome's Lair: More Oblivion mods, some Morrowind mods, 60+ nice free games, a humble DOOM rant


Related Tags: Oblivion, TES, TES4, Morrowind, mod, mods, Game, games, free, freeware, moding, modding, tweak, Bethesda