[title]ING Preview #1 [Feb 24th, 2006][/title]
Link to the preview
Information about Guild of Fighter's quests.
This is the first of two IGN previews, written by Charles Onyett.
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February 24, 2006 - Stumbling from the elevator of San Francisco's Clift Hotel, I was still rubbing the sleep from my eyes, yet couldn't be more alert. After a short trek down a purple hallway lined with massive circular mirrors, IGNPC's Dan Adams and I were greeted by Bethesda's VP of Public Relations and Marketing, Peter Hines. He led us to a sizable suite where we could sit down at one of around 20 23-inch LCD TVs, all displaying the start screen for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Unlike many gaming events, there wasn't pounding techno music or other pretenses that suggested we weren't all present solely to play videogames. The room was dark and quiet with headphones at every station; the perfect way to experience a four-hour play session of Oblivion.
Dan sat down at one of about 10 PC stations, while I made my way over to the Xbox 360 table. After picking up the controller and hitting the start button to begin my journey, I only moved once over the next four hours to get a coffee (aka nectar of life). In case you didn't already know, Oblivion promises to be a titanic single-player only experience for those willing to put in the time. Just running through the main questline alone will take around 20 to 25 hours. Checking out all the superfluous content such as cavernous dungeons, mountainside cottages and completing the various Guild and NPC quests across Cyrodiil will take well over 200 hours, according to Bethesda.
Since the game is so huge, even a four-hour session only barely scratches the surface. It proved to be enough, however, to fully create a character, escape the first dungeon, explore part of the outside world, do some quests, steal a horse, join a Guild and level up. Once out of the initial dungeon, Dan and I tried to head in different directions and involve ourselves in different communities to present the most comprehensive play summaries possible. After reading through here, be sure to head over to Dan's preview for more detail as well as specifics on how the PC version played. Since this preview is not short, you may just want to load up the new interview and gameplay footage to accompany your reading.
The game starts out with a character creation screen. I chose to play as a male Imperial, a race that closely resembles humans. Oblivion gives you a surprising amount of options for adjusting facial appearance, providing sliders for manipulating cheek angle, forehead slope, eye size and separation as well as hair style and color. By the time I was done, my character looked suspiciously like Alan Rickman's Snape from Harry Potter.
The game started me in a dungeon you've all probably seen by now, with its hanging chains and insult-spewing prisoner across the hall. The emperor Uriel Septim wanted to escape the castle through a hidden alcove in my cell. On his way by, he recognized me as someone with a higher purpose and allowed me to follow him into a network of stone tunnels and grimy warrens called the Imperial Sewers. This area serves as a training ground, as I faced off against easy foes like rats, weakling goblins and slow moving zombies. On my way through I picked up a bow and arrow, mortar and pestle, a two-handed warhammer, upgraded leather armor, a few shields and a ton of rat meat.
The game also gave me a brief tutorial of stealth mode, which is activated by clicking down on L3 (left joystick) and puts up an eye icon in the center of your screen. As long as the icon remained translucent, I was hidden. There's a cavern area in the Imperial Sewers where a few goblins mull around campfires. I snuck up behind one while stealthed, readied my bow and arrow and launched a sharp projectile at the back of his head. Upon impact, a message popped up at the top of the screen indicating I'd just done double damage with the sneak attack. The goblin tried to charge me afterwards, but I was able to kill him by quick-switching to my two-handed warhammer and crushing his nose.
[1ST]t[/1ST]he quick-switch weapon and spell feature is extremely useful for eliminating baddies in Oblivion. When I accessed my menu to equip weapons, armor, items and spells, I was able to press Y over a highlighted item to bring up an eight-slot radial menu. The slots correspond to the eight directions on the D-Pad. Pressing a direction on the D-Pad equips that item to the corresponding slot. This way, I was able to input my most frequently used spells and weapon sets for quick access while fighting.
Since weapon swings and spell casts are initiated with different buttons, Right Trigger (RT) and Right Bumper (RB), respectively, this allowed for highly effective combat techniques. For instance, I could hit RT to swing the warhammer, hit RB right after to launch a fireball, switch over to my iron longsword and shield combo for added defense and faster attack speed, switch to a healing spell to regain health, then back to the hammer for a powerful finishing blow. If I'd bothered, I could have also mapped healing potions and spell scrolls for added help in battle.
Weapon swings come in two varieties, weak and strong. Tap RT for a quick, weak attack. Hold RT for a stronger but more drawn out attack. Holding RT also charged my character forward a few steps, so it's ideal for kicking off a fight. While swinging my weapon I had to take into account my fatigue level, which ticked away with every swing, and regenerated when standing still or walking slowly. The difference between cutting through the air with a one-handed longsword versus the warhammer was extremely noticeable, with the warhammer taking a painful amount of time to wind up. When not swinging your weapon, I had to actually tap Left Trigger (LT) to put up my shield or weapon to block. It didn't happen automatically.
Moving on from the downed goblin, I set my sights on a magic caster standing by a larger fire in the cavern. Before doing anything, I opened my inventory and poisoned my sword with a potion I was carrying. I snuck an arrow into the back of the caster's head only to realize that a goblin archer had been standing next to him the whole time. The ensuing battle was frantic, especially since the caster seemed to be having a great time launching lightning bolts at me.
Switching to my shield and longsword, I pursued the archer first. I took a few arrows, but managed to cut him down after he fled from my charge. Circling around to the caster, I closed the distance between us while launching fireballs to lessen his health. Coincidentally, enemy health can be seen during combat as an arc curved around the targeting reticule at the center of the screen. As my fireballs landed, his arc shortened enough until I was able to render his ugly face dead with a few swings.
Plundering the corpses for loot turned up a number of valuables including the caster's staff, called a goblin shaman staff. It was a magic item, denoted by a blue circle next to its inventory icon, and still had some charge left. In fact, it had a charge of 78 out of 150, with eight uses left. I'd also picked up something called a soul gem which could be used to recharge magic items. Using the gem brought up a menu of all my magic items. Having only one, the staff was the sole item listed. The gem didn't recharge the staff all the way, but did allow me to get a few more uses out of it. Eventually, more powerful stones can be found that recharge your items all the way, even a few that recharge every magic item in your inventory. Repair hammers, which I found a few of, work in much the same way, allowing you to mend weapons and armor that have been beaten up in combat.
[1st]W[/1st]hen equipped, the staff appeared as a long wooden stick with a goblin's bloody head on the end of it. While checking out my character model holding the staff on the menu screen, I happened to notice that a few of the archer's arrows were still sticking out of me. These went away after a time, but it was interesting to note that when I got hit by arrows, some of them were actually added to my inventory. Not all of them, however, since, according to Bethesda, some are assumed to be broken. Still, for a character with a heavy emphasis on archery, that's a useful yet counterintuitive feature if you ever run out of arrows in a tough spot.
Though the battle was over, one more problem cropped up as I went to move further into the sewers: I was encumbered. Basically, this means I'm carrying too much equipment to move. The only solution is to toss the most useless, heaviest items in my inventory. Trust me, throughout the course of Oblivion you're going to be picking up a lot of junk. For instance, I tossed away a human ribcage, a skull, a shield and some armor that were duplicates of what I was already using so I could move again. I also had a multitude of potions and alchemy reagents like flowers and plants, which, if I wanted to, could mix together to form more powerful items.
Soon after I met up with Uriel again, who had taken another path through the catacombs. He kept getting attacked by would-be assassins, and he instructed me to follow him and his guard as they attempted to flee the city. I eventually wound up in a stone walled room with Uriel as his guards battled enemies outside. He gave me his Amulet of Kings and instructed me to pass it along to Jauffre, who could be found at Weynon Priory outside the city of Chorrol. Apparently it was Jauffre who would know more about the location of the emperor's son; the one destined to sit on the throne. It was at this point I was able to pick a birth sign. Though there were many options, I chose the Warrior, which gave me 10 bonus points to my strength and endurance statistics.
Eventually the guards came back in, and I was then asked to pick my class. There were even more choices here, ranging from Warrior and Bard to Witch Hunter and Battlemage. I was also able to completely custom build my own class. When I chose that option, the game asked three questions. First, I had to choose between concentrating on combat, magic or stealth. Second, I could pick two primary attributes, either speed, personality, luck, willpower, agility, endurance, intelligence or strength, which would give me another bonus. Next, I had to pick seven major skills, be it destruction magic, heavy armor, blades or numerous others which would give me even more bonuses. Lastly, I got to enter a custom name for my class, for which I put Groindestroyer. It wasn't a very good name. In the end, I just went with the Barbarian class for simplicity's sake. A Barbarian, as you might expect, is focused on combat. My favored attributes were strength and speed, and my major skills were armorer, athletics, blade, block, blunt, hand to hand and light armor. All in all, it just means I can totally destroy stuff.
With my character totally customized and my first quest handed to me, I hacked through the remaining rats and zombies in the murky sewers. As I approached the exit grate to the outside world, the game prompted me with a list of all the decisions I'd made so far. I agreed with them, so I continued on. However, you're able to change any of your decisions regarding character customization up to this point if you wish.
[1st]F[/1st]inally free of the darkness, I found myself on a grassy slope looking out over a rippling body of water flanked by misty mountains. For escaping the sewers, I earned my first Oblivion Achievement, of which there are many. The draw distance was truly impressive. However, the extremely low resolution textures that blanketed the far-off mountains caused me to wince. It can be understood that for the sake of framerate, high resolution textures can't be loaded everywhere. Still, the far off tracts of land and hill didn't look very good. That being said, the textures surrounding my character, the various sizes of trees closer to the water and the small bushes and vegetation around me were great. The sky, too, was packed with detail. I'd apparently emerged right before dusk, as stars were starting to come out all over the orange-blue sky and a huge, red moon loomed on the horizon behind banks of wispy cloud.
It was at this point I started playing around with Oblivion's third-person perspective. Clicking down on the right stick (R3) pulls the camera back behind your character letting you see all the armor and weapons you've equipped. Unfortunately, the controls felt slippery while in this mode and overly sensitive, causing my character to often head in directions I hadn't intended. Hopefully this is an issue that gets worked out before the title releases.
Just over the river were a few bandits who attacked me on sight. After forcefully plowing my sword into them, I managed to net a two-handed claymore from their camp. It was at this point I remembered my time with the game was limited, so I brought up my map, found Weynon Priory and fast-traveled there. The fast-traveling system is an extremely welcome convenience after the ridiculous amount of plodding around characters had to do in Morrowind. Some locations in Oblivion, mostly major towns, are immediately accessible by fast-travel. Other, more remote locations, like cottages or farms, required that I actually walk up to them in the game world before a fast-traveling option would be available.
Within seconds, I was standing before the Priory, a stately stone building, and found Jauffre not far inside. After handing over the Amulet, he told me I needed to go out to Kvetch in search of Martin, the emperor's son. A mere matter of seconds later, I'd fast-traveled over to Kvetch. Of course, finding Martin wasn't as easy as it seemed. My arrival in town followed the appearance of an Oblivion Gate, and Martin was trapped near it. Making my way through the makeshift camp the town's survivors had built, I made my way up a hill towards the actual walled city of Kvetch.
As I climbed, the sky grew dark, thunder rumbled above and eventually a light rain began to fall. I reached the summit to find a massive fiery gate planted in front of Kvetch's main entrance. A nearby guard informed me how the gate had suddenly appeared and Daedra, demons from the Oblivion dimension, had poured out and ravaged the town. Looking at the ruined stone walls and fires behind the gate, it was clear the Daedra weren't the kindest of creatures. The gate itself was a graphical treat, with torrents of fire swirling between two massive stone columns. Emanating from the angry portal were waves of heat distortion as well as more Daedra. Crap! The guards and I managed to take down the few that spilled out, and afterwards I offered my help in defending Kvetch. Doing this involved heading into the Oblivion portal and finding a way to shut it.
[1st]H[/1st]owever, I decided to locate Martin first. Finding myself in a ruined courtyard before a sprawling Gothic cathedral, I was jumped by four more Daedra that were damn difficult to defeat. I managed to do it, though, thanks to my claymore and healing spell combo. The church itself, called the Chapel of Akatosh, featured some great graphical effects, particularly the faint glow behind the massive stained glass windows and the architecture of the vaulted ceilings and stone buttresses. I found Martin inside as well.
My task was to bring him back to Jauffre in order to begin work on thwarting Dagon, the Prince of Destruction. However, Martin didn't want to leave the people he'd rescued and brought to the cathedral. At least, not until the Oblivion Gate was closed. Unfortunately, heading into the portal was forbidden by Bethesda, so my experience with Oblivion's main questline ended here.
That doesn't mean the overall experience ended. After Kvetch, I fast traveled west to a town called Anvil. Just outside the town was a stable, and in the stable were a few white horses. Though there are several types available in Oblivion, horses are generally very expensive. This particular white horse cost 4,000 gold, which I definitely didn't have. Instead of paying, I just stole it.
After riding it around for a while, I can definitely say horses give you a significant speed boost and are much more fun to use than your feet. They are susceptible to fall damage and enemy weapons, however. Should they die, you have to buy a new one. Also, if you actually own one, they will go along with you when you fast travel. If they're stolen, they'll simply walk back to the stable when you get off.
I dismounted and was greeted with a dialogue screen suggesting I take a nap. After a solid eight hours of sleep, I discovered I'd leveled up. Leveling in Oblivion isn't something based on experience points, but rather on skill improvement through use. The more you jump and run, the more your acrobatic and athletic skills increase. The more you swing swords, the better your blades, the more you sneak, the more stealthy you become. Once a certain amount of skills are increased by a specific number of points, you level up. Leveling enables you to increase some of your attributes, making you more powerful, able to carry more, able to cast more spells, or myriad other improvements depending on where you allocate your points. I was able to choose three attributes: speed (+4), endurance (+2) and strength (+2). The numbers in parentheses represent bonuses based on my previous character customization decisions.
I then headed into Anvil, a city of decent size with stone buildings that seemed to mix stark Grecian columnar designs with more ornate bits of architecture. I found the Fighters Guild not too far inside the walls, and signed up immediately. Some guy named Azzan declared me an Associate, and I took on my first quest assignment. It seemed simple enough: find Arvena Thelas in Anvil and take care of her rat problem. Pretty standard rat kill quest, I thought.
Back on Anvil's cobblestone streets, I checked the compass in the bottom center of my screen to figure out what direction Arvena's house was. In Oblivion, the location of whatever quest you've selected as active in the journal is marked on your map. It's also marked on your compass, and even color coded. A red arrow on your compass means the objective is indoors. In order to reach them, you'll need to first enter a building. If it's green, however, you'll know the target is outside. This should prove immensely helpful in larger cities and crowded forests.
[1st]A[/1st]rvena's house wasn't far from the Guild. I found her upstairs, crying about her rats. Specifically, she was crying about how her beloved rats were being mauled by some creature in the basement. In the basement, I found Arvena's rats were being carved up by a gigantic mountain lion, who I promptly dispatched with my still-useful claymore. Arvena then tasked me with eliminating the source of the lions. I had to track down a hunter named Pinarus Inventius, who led me a little way outside the city. There, we battled against a pack of mountain lions, and were decidedly victorious. But the questline wasn't over.
Upon returning to Arvena's house to tell her the threat was eliminated, I found yet another mountain lion in her basement. After slaughtering it, Arvena told me she'd seen a neighbor, Quill-Weave, snooping around her house at night. I headed back to the streets and found the intrepid lurker. I tailed her until dark, and in the process witnessed Quill-Weave engage in several random NPC conversations, evidence of Oblivion's Radiant AI system at work. In the course of a couple hours of Oblivion game time (a few minutes in the real world), she managed to hit on a town guard and I overheard another conversation trashing Arvena for having rats in her basement. Eventually Quill-Weave snuck behind Arvena's house, placing a piece of meat near an entrance to the basement.
When I approached her, Quill-Weave explained she had no intention of luring mountain lions in, but rather thought the meat would lure the rats out. However, she offered me a bonus to my acrobatics skill if I kept it quiet. When I returned to tell Arvena I'd solved the problem, I neglected to mention Quill-Weave and got a cash reward anyway. Upon returning to the Fighters Guild, I was promoted to Apprentice, and also told by Bethesda I needed to leave.
To try and sum up this mess of a hands-on, the Xbox 360 version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is looking very good. Its framerate did tend to slow down a little when characters crowded onscreen, but that didn't make it any less playable. The game enters a loading screen when moving through doors, and in open areas will take brief pauses to load new textures when traveling across the countryside. Across all instances of loading, they were consistently swift. The only disappointing features I saw were the wonky third-person controls and ultra low-resolution textures that blanketed distant objects. Other than that, shadows, character detail, weapon models, water effects and animations all looked excellent. The PC version looked slightly sharper and ran at a better clip than the Xbox 360, but Dan and I agreed both looked strikingly similar. Clearly, there's a ridiculous amount of options available to players, way too many to fully describe in this preview. While I was only able to get four hours of play, I definitely got hooked. Writing this preview made the urge to play even worse.
Contrary to rumors flying around, Bethesda has not made an announcement about the official release date. However, they are promising the date soon, as Peter Hines states in our new Oblivion interview you'll find in the media section below. Be sure to check out the new gameplay footage and screens as well. Of course, we'll have the release date as soon as it's available.
[title]ING Preview #2 [Feb 25th, 2006][/title]
Link to the preview
This is IGN's
second preview, this time written by Dan Adams.
Sorry for the double-post, it wouldn't fit in the previous one.
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February 25, 2006 - It seems like I've been waiting to play a PC version of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for a long damn time. I've always been interested mind you, but the demo at E3 2005 put the desire into my belly big time. So was I happy when Bethesda dropped a note to say they'd be in town to let us play the game for 4-5 hours? Yes. Yes I was. The better news was that I would be able to play the PC version while my compatriot Charles "I'm a Nerd and Take Lots of Notes" Onyett over on the Xbox 360 site would get to play his own version. Thusly, we have two previews from different perspectives. You can see his preview right here should you desire it.
I guess the dumb thing about this is that the two versions of Oblivion are nearly identical. Aside from the controls and a very small difference in visual quality in favor of the PC (running on what was surely an awesome rig, mind you) the two versions the same. Yet we both had pretty different experiences playing. He was an underhanded thief fond of attacking hugely powerful members of the fighter guild while I was a humble orc interested in helping people, picking flowers, and on the total annihilation of the goblin race.
This was a great event for the simple fact that we were sat in front of a computer and told to go to town without someone looking over our shoulders. In fact, we were given only one rule for our session: Don't enter the Oblivion gate. Sure, it sounds like that might be a bummer, but considering I played the game for a good five hours straight and never lacked for things to do, I didn't really care.
Starting out my game took a while. Not because of anything tedious, but simply because the character creation is a lot of fun. Anyone that's played an Elder Scrolls game in the past will be familiar with the wide range of races available from the get-go so it's probably not too hard to understand that deciding who to be and what to look like on such a basic level can be hard.
For some reason I often end up playing human characters in RPGs so this time I decided to go burly and picked an orc. Orcs are ugly and brutish, but have some decent advantages to outweigh their lack of social niceties. Basically, I can smash a lot of things to bits and wear cool armor. I was pleased to find that playing as an orc didn't seem to make a huge difference to the way people reacted to me in the early game (I didn't run out of town chased by a gang with torches and pitchforks anyway) but there were certainly quite a few town folk were resistant to my conversation offerings. I actually found several orcs living in towns already so blending in wasn't much of a challenge.
Every race has the option to customize the face. This includes everything from facial deformation like the slant of the brow and lift of the cheeks to texture details like the color and complexion of the skin. It's an awesome tool that allows for terrific customization of character type. Those looking to create gigantic monsters may be a little disappointed as body type is unalterable through the character customization screen, but taking all things into consideration, this was a great way to start an adventure.
And that was it. Once the character had been created visually, it was off into the game. If you've been following past coverage of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you've probably seen a lot about the beginning levels of the game already, but I'm going to repeat a bit of it anyway for those that haven't.
The game kicks off in prison on the wrong side of the bars. Whether it was a false imprisonment or not is unclear. The important thing was that fate had conspired to place me in this particular dungeon... which just happened to be the entrance to the secret getaway route out of the castle.
Before long, two heavily armored guards busted into my cozy cell with the emperor in tow hoping to escape assassination through the secret passageway. Both of the emperor's sons had already been killed so the emperor was apparently the realm's last hope. Thankfully, the emperor let me live believing he'd seen me in a vision of some sort. He also allowed me to skidaddle right out of jail through the escape hatch. Of course, the guards wouldn't allow me to follow after a short while, but that's fine, it provided the opportunity for a bit of solo-adventuring which is really what the game is all about.
This prison escape serves as a great tutorial by providing instant action and several opportunities to try out melee, ranged, and magical combat along with attempting to pick a few locks (one of Oblivion's mini-games). At this point in the game, I didn't have much of an identity aside from a name and some scraps of clothes. But before long I had picked up weapons from dead goblins, treasures from crates and boxes, and a good understanding of the particulars of how to operate in the world.
After a bit, my path through the dungeons accidentally crossed with that of the emperor and his Blade guardsmen. After helping them dispatch a group of enemies, the emperor invited me into his cadre. During the conversation, the emperor even provided me with the next bit of my identity: my birth sign. Each possible sign grants different bonuses whether that be added strength, increased magical power, or resistance to some kinds of magic. Some even balance out particularly good traits with negatives like decreased resistance to fire attacks.
Though the guards were wary of letting me come along, one talked to me for a second, which provided for my last bit of identity: my class. The class structure in Oblivion is wide open. Not only are there a lot of pre-made classes to choose from but there's also an option to create a custom class. To create a custom class, it's a matter of picking to focus on combat, magic, or stealth, choosing two favored attributes (strength, wisdom, agility, etc...), and seven major skills which will all begin at much higher levels than other skills. The custom class is good when you just don't quite get the combo you're looking for. For instance, I really like the Battlemage, but I wanted a focus on combat instead of magic, so I simply went in and switched some things around to my liking. Once done, you can name your class for future use as I did with my Whackamol (minus the e thanks to word length restrictions) class.
Skills themselves are built up through use. Bury swords in enemy skulls and the blade skill will increase. Play the human torch and throw fireballs all over the place and destructive magic will increase. Run around the world and athletics will increase. Once enough skills have increased by 10 points, it's a matter of taking a nap at the inn to level up to get better stats.
Now, in all my talks with the emperor, the guy just wouldn't quit about how he knew he was about to die. Yes it seemed a bit fatalistic, but he was right. Before I had even come close to tasting my first breath of freedom, the guy gets bushwhacked and killed. Thankfully, our last talk provided him the opportunity to hand off a special amulet, the Amulet of Kings, into my care to deliver to Jauffre, the leader of the Blades in a place called Weynon Priory. Naturally I accepted being the kind-hearted orc that I was.
From there it was a matter of traversing the sewer areas underneath the castle and out into the wide world. Though many a goblin tried to kill me, I killed them first. Though many a rat tried to nibble off my toes, I nibbled on theirs innards instead. It was pretty much a cakewalk getting out of the sewers, but it sure was fun throwing fireballs and slinging my sword around.
Once out into the open air, I had a look around my new surroundings. Off across the water in front of me was a small ruin. Behind me were the tall walls surrounding the outer edge of the Imperial City. Everywhere else was hills and trees. After checking out the surroundings for a bit (level of detail is pretty heavy so stuff up close looked a lot better than surrounding hills), I looked at the map to check out my immediate surroundings as well as take a look at the location of Weynon Priory.
One of the best things about this map (and biggest improvements from Morrowind) is the quick travel feature. While you never have to use it to get places, those of us that are extremely impatient with traveling can simply open the map, find a known location (most major cities are already known at the beginning of the game), double click on that location, and travel there instantaneously. This makes some of the lesser missions that simply involve delivering a message (or something similar) much more enjoyable.
While pondering the feature, keep in mind that places of note will not appear on the map until they are discovered. For instance, when I passed on the fast travel option when heading to Weynon Priory so I could do a little exploring, I came upon a ruined keep. After a message popped onto my screen noting the discovery, it was added to my map as a selectable fast travel location. Not only is this great if I do receive a quest to go there, but I can also loot the hell out of the place, fast travel to town to sell off some stuff, and then fast travel back to continue the looting fun. Hooray for greed!
But as I mentioned, exploring nothing will reveal nothing, so I went a wanderin' for a bit. For the most part I stayed near the roads as I preferred not to get lost in such a short play session. Halfway up the road to the priory, I ran across that abandoned keep I was talking about. At first, it didn't seem as if much was there, but upon closer inspection, I found a door. Inside this door were fresh goblins to kill and plenty of loot. These types of dungeons can be found all over the landscapes in Oblivion. Some of them will have quests associated with them while others will simply be open for exploration.
Once back outside the dungeon, I headed up some stairs to check out the view from the top of the keep. Halfway up, some movement caught my eye back down the stairs. Closer investigation proved violent as a highwayman jumped out to rob me. The bastard actually though I would pay him! I said no, he attacked me with his gigantic two-handed axe, and I killed the hell out of him and his stupid thieving face. Just to teach his corpse a lesson, I robbed him and left him dead and naked on the ground. Bad kitty!
While a little bit miffed that this guy tried to bully me right from the start, the battle re-taught a valuable lesson learned in a million other video games. Blocking is good. Putting that shield up can not only prevent damage, but also stun an attacker for a moment, giving all of the opening needed to press an attack. That brings me to an observation that while combat still is hack and slash, it seems more solid than it did in Morrowind. I suppose the most important thing to note is that I was having a lot of fun fighting, which should be the goal. The combination of fireballs, blocking, and stabbing served me very well indeed.
Following that confrontation, I headed to the priory and met up with my contact there. He was understandably grieved to hear of the emperor's death, but was happy to see I had brought him the precious Amulet of Kings. Apparently the thing is incredibly important for keeping some ancient evil from ransacking the world. Jauffre then bade me bring the last surviving, if illegitimate, son of the emperor back from another city to wear the amulet and be crowned emperor. Now, the emperor's son Martin was off in Kvatch to the south, but seeing as I was right outside of another city named Chorrol, I wasn't in the mood to run off and help out so soon.
So I headed off to Chorrol to wander around the confines of the city, talk to a few folk, pick up some quests, check out the stores, and see if I could really notice the radiant AI. Sure enough, the town had citizens wandering the area, going about their business. When they ran into another NPC, a conversation began which gave clues to other happenings around the realm and even hints about where to find action and which people were important in the town.
My attempts at social overatures were met with mixed results. Some folks just sneered and walked off while others were perfectly civil. For those in between and uncomfortable talking about certain subjects I used a bit of persuasion. Anybody will take bribes in this game, but that has diminishing returns. So playing the persuasion mini-game works wonders. When successful, people grew to like me enough to start telling me secrets I might never have known otherwise.
I found my first two quests through simple conversation to people around Charrol. One was a man who people kept mistaking for someone in a different town and the other was an old farmer too scared to go out and help his son battle monsters that had taken over his farm. One was easy enough and constituted a quick travel over to a different town to find out the man had a twin while the other had me heading out to help kill goblins raiding a farm. The second one seemed easy enough until I realized one of the sons had died in the effort. Whoopsies. My reward was appropriately smaller and the old man was quite sad.
While talking to random people is fun, the easiest way to find quests is probably through the guilds. After joining the fighter's guild and taking on a quest, I headed out to deliver some weapons to a mine and then help the other fighters guild members there rid the mine of goblin troubles. This time, I was given a point on my map that I could walk to (or ride to in this case as I had already secured a horse) in order to reach the mine. Upon arrival, I delivered the goods and the other fighters went raging through the cavern. One, who cloaked himself at the beginning (a very cool effect) went raging a little too hard and got himself killed before I could save him. So much for the best reward again...
On the way out, I started noticing tons of mushrooms and other plants in the mine and remembered that many of plants found around the game world can be harvested to be used in alchemy. It's a simple process that requires a mortar and pestle (along with other optional equipment) and some ingredients. Considering the wealth of plants in the game world, it's easy to see this could be a huge form of income and/or very cheap method to collect powerful potions.
At this point in the day, my time was growing short. Aside from a bit more exploration, including the accidental discovery of the Dark Brotherhood's hideout (big glowy red doors with skulls on them make me walk the other way), it was just a matter of heading out to find the emperor's lost son Martin. Upon arrival in Kvatch, I was greeted by a man who told me that an Oblivion gate was sitting in the town where Martin was supposed to be staying. I sighed the big sigh of troubled times and climbed the windy path on my horse only to find the sky turning red and a big glowing gate sitting in front of the town entrance. The soldier outside wanted me to run on into the gate and see if I could somehow make it go away. I would have loved to oblige this ridiculous request but rules are rules so that part of the story will have to wait for another time.
So yeah. I had fun. In fact, Charles "Stream of Consciousness" Onyett and I have started to go through some slight withdrawals from being given five hours to become attached. Our only consolation is that it's not going to be too long before the game is released to stores. Consumer site estimates put the release date at March 20th right now (as does the Microsoft product page) but Bethesda has yet to announce it officially. Either way, the release is nigh.