My mod for Oblivion called The Dread Knights Return. This post will discuss the mod plus it will add my negative views about the Oblivion engine- well, not so much the engine but the game design decisions that were made. More on this below.
This mod is a sequel to Dread Knights for Morrowind, discussed in a different part of this blog. The plot: With the death of the Emperor, the mainland is in chaos, and the dread knights prepare to strike. There is too much of an Imperial presence in the land to maintain a base of operations- but they have discovered how to maintain an Oblivion gate and use it to build an army on another plane. If you join them, you will plot to occupy various towns and villages and eventually kill the commander of a major fortress, using it for your own. In the meantime, you must advance their cause, collect weapons and keep the native Oblivion creatures at bay.
This mod is much, much larger in scope than the Morrowind mod. Because of this I decided to completely minimize the Imperial choice; you can refuse to join the Dread Knights and hunt them, but there are no additional quests down that line (you may run into them as they run from town to town, etc. One neat thing about Oblivion was the option for realtime travel for NPC's.) All of the meat of the mod is in the "evil" quest line.
Don't read any further if you don't want spoilers.
A strange orc is seen scouting out the Imperial Palace, and if you choose to follow him he runs back across the continent to a gate hidden deep in the forest. If you follow him in, he jumps you with two associates. Defeat them and find your way to their hideout in the plane. The guard may inquire why you are there... Once in, speak to the leader and you'll get the history and purpose of the order. You must then prove your worth by eliminating and razing an entire village, along with killing the Imperial guard who told you to follow the original orc (to make sure you don't still work for him). You may then work your way up the ranks of the order by doing tasks for their alchemist, fletcher, weaponsmith and high priest. You may also do random quests for their cook, and you must also prove your worth to their weapon trainer (no magic allowed!).
Once those are all completed to satisfaction, you then start working on the major tasks, such as crippling and defeating Imperial forces. There is one thing the Dread Lord did not predict however... there is another who desires his position.
This mod is probably the largest I've done yet. It contains six new dungeons/locations, new items, and more tasks than I can count for every type that I can think of. I don't have any objects that are nearly as script heavy as the sentient weapon, but I do have some new features (such as the razing of buildings, see below).
But now the negative comments about game design decisions.
There were a few things that bothered me about Oblivion, and I pray that these issues are changed in the next Elder Scrolls game. The first is the auto-levelling of EVERYTHING.
As your character levels, so do your enemies, and the items they carry, and the items you find. What this means is, you will never find that dragon sitting out in the wilderness. You will never find that chest which contains a rare artifact. It's all... so very generic. There are a few unique things but they're pretty uncommon. It also makes exploration feel very very pointless. This is not helped by the fact that the landscape remains the same throughout the continent. Morrowind had several very-different feeling regions. That in itself is not a crime; but add some unique locations and critters in the meantime. I use autolevel for maybe 20% of my critters. The rest are hand placed by me to levels and abilities I choose. My mods are not for beginners and have have challenges. This is by design, and keeps the game fresh, IMHO.
I also have a problem with the magic and skill systems. They are so VERY generic and make it real difficult to not only have a character that feels unique, but items as well. It hit me when I was making this mod that the system almost cripples any sort of creativity you can have as opposed to say, a DnD-based game or even any of the current MMRPG's. Now, it is also true that you can script a lot of unique effects in, as I know from making Sentient Weapon. It's hard to give the PC any unique skills when there are so few in the game. So this weapon does more damage then that weapon... so? Sure, I could script in a Gravity Flux spell, but guaranteed there will be a lot of unforseen problems with it. It just makes it difficult when you have to fight the game mechanics to come up with something interesting.
The game could be so much more interesting than it is. They have a beautiful engine and it just CRAVES something more. As I write this, Fallout3 is not out yet, and I'm optimistic. I'll be all over that like a cheap suit. The SPECIAL system for skills is (was?) much more interesting than the ElderScrolls skill system. I hope they don't change it and allow for some complexity (and if they allow custom skills/perks to be scripted in, all the better!)
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