Bethesda has posted some new info on the upcoming "Knights of the Nine" content for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. While the info revealed is for the PC version, we can only assume that the 360 offering will be similar in both content and price. "Knights of the Nine" will offer Oblivionites access to a new faction -- the Knights of the Nine, natch -- new enemies, and new items. The content is apparently "epic" in scale, thus demanding the price of $9.99 earth dollars (how many septims is that?). The PC expansion will arrive on November 21. We can only hope that the 360 version won't be long after -- and for the same price (or less).
Now, just to ease the waiting, let's play a game. Give the above picture a funny caption. Roll over the pic for ours.
Some of you may have heard that the PS3 is getting its very own version of Oblivion, the 360's premiere RPG. Having heard this, you may also have heard that the PS3 would be seeing some content that isn't available for the 360 version. Upon hearing this, you may have been somewhat, shall we say, bummed. Fear not, bummed out Oblivionites, for Bethesda has spoken and the news is good. When IGN asked if the PS3 content -- titled Knights of the Nine -- would be available for PC and 360, Bethesda's Todd Howard replied, "We always aim to have all our content available across all platforms, so that is our goal." So there you have it, folks. Expect to see Knights of the Nine available sometime in the not too distant future.
And since we can't resist kicking a little fanboy sand every once in a while, we'd like to point out that Bethesda is still in the dark concerning downloadable content on the PS3. Gotta love that Xbox Live.
The Bringing It Home content train just keeps a' rollin'. Today we are blessed with another demo, Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007. The full list goes a little something like this:
Tony Hawk's Project 8 trailer
Wheelman trailer Frontlines Fuel of War trailer
X06 Game Montage video Crossfire trailer WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007 Fable 2 theme (150 points)
X06 theme (free)
Also new today, Europe can finally download all Oblivion content packs (insert obligatory horse armor joke here). Oh, and we missed it last night, but there is now a Halo Wars theme (150 points) and picture pack (80 points) available.
Reality Pump -- best studio name ever -- released a few shots of its upcoming RPG Two Worlds. For those unfamiliar with the game, Two Worlds is an open ended RPG seemingly in the same vein as, say, Oblivion. Reality Pump is promising unprecedented storytelling and interactivity, "giving gamers a real chance to shape the world around them."
The official Two Worlds website promises plenty of other buzz words features as well, including:
8 person multiplayer
Mountable beasts
Lots of items
Oh so trendy HDR lighting
"Hyper-realistic tree physics"
Thank God for that last one. I've been lobbying for developers to nail down tree physics for years. It's nice to see that Reality Pump is brave enough to lead the charge.
Still don't have an Xbox 360? Do you live in Chile? Then you're in luck my friend! The curvy white box hit store shelves in Chile last week, inspiring these ladies to impersonate protagonists from mediocre launch titles. Just for a moment, recall how disappointed you were when you played Perfect Dark Zero for the first time. Let that sink in for a second. That is what it's like to be a 360 fan in Chile right now. At least they have access to the best launch title, right?
Good lord, can you imagine having to wait 5 months for GRAW and Oblivion again?
In case you haven't noticed, new Oblivion content is available on Marketplace. Here's the description according to Major Nelson:
"The lost Ayleid City Varsa Baalim has been unearthed by a rogue Telvanni arch-mage, in pursuit of a fearsome Daedric Artifact, Mehrunes Razor, which he believes will give him the power he needs to topple the Imperial reign - but what horrors lie in wait beneath the Valus mountains; and can you overcome them to claim Mehrune's Razor as your own?"
You can grab Mehrune's Razor for 250 points. Personally, I'm waiting for the next expansion: Kerrek's Aftershave.
The title says it all folks. Check out this new premium content available on Xbox Live for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Major Nelson gives us the word: Uncover a famous pirate's lost ship and claim it for your own. Designed for stealth-based characters. The "Thieves Den" content will run you for about 150 points, or less than two bucks. But with it, you won't ever have to pay for an inn again! More details are available at the website.
A poster to NeoGaf claims he has a leaked list from Bethesda that shows Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion hitting the PS3 and PSP just in time for Sony's next-gen launch. Hey, they released an Elder Scrolls game on the N-Gage didn't they?
It's just a rumor, but fanboy Jeff, who sent in the tip, says he isn't waiting for official confirmation to start feeling betrayed. Will you be disappointed if Oblivion ends up entering Kutaragi's fourth dimension?
The internet had a collective tantrum following Bethesda's decision to release the horse armor pack and have the audacity to charge 200 Billybucks for it (about $2.50). Pricing the Orrery Map pack at only 150 MS Points seemed like not only a fair price, but a mea culpa on Bethesda's behalf for the horse armor snafu.
The Wizard's Tower download similarly commands 150 MS points (under 2 of your Earth dollars). You get access to the titular wizard's toward, Frostcrag Spire, from where you can teleport to every Mages Guild in Cyrodiil and hone your Alchemy skills in the shiny laboratory. Now we'd like to see the glorified horse blanket take a pricing nose-dive so that the value is more in line with subsequent add-ons.
[Thanks, Paranoised, Tah, and Sjohn]
Update: fixed totally lame error on my part. Thanks, puh_fifer!
The Oblivion Orrery Pack, which includes (according to Gamespot) "a new quest with original dialogue, journals, and rewards, access to the eponymous dwarven machine in the Imperial City's Arcane University, and new character powers based on the phases of the moon" is now available on XBLM for 150 MS points. I was about to complain that the announcement above was annoyingly premature, when the phase of the download moon suddenly turned in our favor.
You can thank the Dwarven Gods because this add-on looks like a much better value than the over-priced horse armor that pissed off half of Tamriel. Is this pack worth the points?
Despite the notoriously ugly women and quirky glitches, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will go down in history as the fastest selling Xbox 360 game to date. Peddling to the tune of 1.7 million units since launch, the title has acquired an incredible market share and even spoke up for 13% of the total PC games sold that week. Just like the allure David Hasselhoff, Oblivion has even managed to become an international hit, having traveled over seas and broken records in the UK, Germany and France.
The game has also been received with open arms, as almost all of the reviews can testify. Metacritic reports a solid score describing "Universal Acclaim" for Oblivion and we haven't heard many other bad reports either. Next-gen RPG makers definitely have a yardstick to try and measure up to now. If you haven't had the opportunity to play this game yet, then what are you waiting for?
While the rest of us are discussing Olgatha the Argonian's cup size, "Gamers with Jobs" are earnestly exploring the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion gender bias issues currently riling the feminist gamer blogosphere. The controversy seems to stem from two perceived slights that indicate the developers are (in the words of one critic) "blinded by male privilige":
Oblivion’s character creation system assigns certain bonuses based on gender, which vary from one race to the next. The Prima Strategy Guide notes: “Sadly, only three races offer females with power design advantages…In all other cases, to maximize a given race choice for its best-suited character role, pick the male. Where the stats differ between these sexes, the male gets the better benefit from the difference.”
All the illustrations for classes and races in the manual are male.
Bethesda's Pete Hines tries to explain it away as offering choice to the gamer, but the ladies aren't buying it. Unsatisfied wiith the mere omission of inflated breasts and dead prostitutes, they want a game where the lizard women can bench press as much as the men:
Though Hines is correct, the majority of the variations, when present, still tend to occur along lines that could be interpreted as following gender stereotypes: a review of the stats reveals that in races where there is a difference, male characters are always stronger and almost always have greater endurance, whereas female characters are always more intelligent, and almost always have greater willpower and personality.
Ah, stereotypes—those useful mental short cuts we all use to make sense of our wacky world. Stereotypes explain why, while none of the girls in my office can beat me at arm wrestling, most can spell Oprah's first name. A few years ago, "Math is hard" Barbie was blasted by critics for turning young girls off to calculus. Will Oblivion teach those same girls that men are dull-witted sword jocks who would rather whack you with a battle axe than engage in stimulating conversation? Furthermore, is the Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgendered community too busy counting theirs successes with World of Warcraft to notice that cross-dressing Orcs have been completely left out of this game?
When it comes to political correctness, the PC version of Oblivion is, naturally, a little more PC. There's already an affirmative action mod that equalizes racial attributes for a single gender, accomplishing with a few lines of code what do-gooding social engineers and and burning bras have failed to do in the real world. How long before every aggrieved victim group has it's own special mod? And does Microsoft, as the beacon of progressive corporatism, have a duty to make this stuff available (for 200 MS points of course) on XBLM?
Of course, just when you thought old-fashioned male privilige was on the defensive, Chuck Norris returns to save the day.
Since I've already been tagged as 360Fanboy's resident horndog by some of our less priapatic readers, I'm going to refrain from going into too much detail about this topless mod for the PC version of Oblivion. Besides, according to the mod author, it's a serious boobie skin:
"Please note, this is a realistic nudity mod, not a pornographic one. The file included removes the bra welded to the skin of females of all races, showing things as most people know they are in the real world after removing upper body clothing. It will not show every female in the game as topless. I do this because I hate government/society/whatever forcing companies to 'protect our innocent population from seeing those evil dirty things 50% of them posess personally anyways' not because I'm trying to turn it into a porn game."
Sure, realistic nudity—like the sagging natives in National Geographic. Not bad if youre looking for realism and topless sword fighting on a late Friday night. Ironically, we finally have a download that might actually be worth $2.50, not that you'll ever find it on Xbox Live Marketplace. Sometimes PC gamers have all the fun.
Cataloguing the glitches in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is getting to be like counting Tribbles. This trick allows you duplicate hundreds of items easily:
All you have to do to duplicate an item hundreds of times is to draw your bow and pull the trigger button, but before you release the trigger button, hit B to enter your items list, change the types of arrows you are using, and then select the item you want to duplicate and drop it. exit out of your item list and let the trigger button go to shoot the arrow, and your items fall out of the sky.
Video proof here. Each time you duplicate an item, it costs you 200 MS points. Just kidding.
Still don't have an Xbox 360? Do you live in Chile? Then you're in luck my friend! The curvy white box hit store shelves in Chile last week, inspiring these ladies to impersonate protagonists from mediocre launch titles. Just for a moment, recall how disappointed you were when you played Perfect Dark Zero for the first time. Let that sink in for a second. That is what it's like to be a 360 fan in Chile right now. At least they have access to the best launch title, right?
Wednesday sees the release of a new Oblivion patch that fixes over 40 bugs, including a couple old favorites:
A poster to NeoGaf claims he has a leaked list from Bethesda that shows Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion hitting the PS3 and PSP just in time for Sony's next-gen launch. Hey, they released an Elder Scrolls game on the N-Gage didn't they?
