Oblivion: The Unoblivionated Version

RPGWatch provides an editorial from VoxClamant, who initially found The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to be disappointing, but covers an extensive list of mods that will significantly change the gaming experience.

Lost Spires has earned the right to be the patriarch of all Oblivion mods. On TESNexus, alone, it has been downloaded more than 50,000 times before downloads were largely moved to its own website. Add the TESNexus activity to downloads from Lostspires.com and other sites, and I would not be surprised to find this mod is approaching 200,000 downloads. Even at half that number, and using the retail cost of Knights of the Nine as a baseline, Lost Spires has given away more than $1,000,000 in “DLC” to users around the world.

Compare Lost Spires to almost all recent commercial DLC and the difference is stunning. This totally free product that clearly took many man-months (or even man-years) of development would easily command a price tag comparable to a full game expansion if it was released commercially. One of the most disappointing trends in the past couple years has been the quality and price of commercial DLC. With all too few exceptions DLC has been grossly overpriced (compared to the original game) for a shallow, short addition.

Lost Spires in an excellent RPG/Adventure mod for Oblivion. The author has added a new guild to Cyrodiil – the Archeologist Guild. Like the Fighter’s and Mage’s guilds, there is a long series of quests involved once you become a member. The quests are well varied – ranging from investigating murders, to clearing out dungeons, to finding artifacts. There are many hours of gameplay involved. To put content into perspective, Lost Spires adds roughly the same level of content as the original fighter or mage guild quest lines.

But the best part is that Lost Spires does not lead you by the nose. Clues and prompts are often vague. You have to suss it out on your own. As one example (slight spoiler follows) a quest has you go to meet someone and you find that person dead in a burned-out house. So – what do you do now? There is no “take-your-hand” guidance. A guard is blocking entry to the area. Your quest log does not change and give you a hint. There is no cheat guide available. I really like that. It forced me to go in RPG mode and figure out what I would do if I were actually there.