Escape From Prison

JUNE 1, 2007

LOCATION: IMPERIAL CITY (PRISON)
QUEST LINE: MAIN

Much like Morrowind, Oblivion begins with you in a dark little room, talking to a jerk. This time, you’re in prison. After 30 seconds of debate whether or not to sell the bowl on the floor for a whopping 1 gold, the king will come into your cell, along with some guards. As luck would have it, the secret entrance to some sort of escape route is in your cell. And they leave it open. Geniuses.

Anyway this begins the first of what will likely be many (almost 199 in fact) dungeon crawl based quests. But since Escape From Prison is also the tutorial, it’s not too difficult. There’s a few rats and a zombie or two. You are given some entry level daggers and armor, plus a bow. But what’s cool about this tutorial is that, unlike Morrowind, you get to do a whole bunch of stuff right off the bat, and kind of figure out what you like to do before cementing your race, attributes, etc. I liked this touch rather much. I also like that you are given a quest right from the start that is possible. I remember in Morrowind, I got off the boat and was in some boring town without any clue as to what to do. After about 3 hours, I managed to kill a crab, find a store with stuff I couldn’t even begin to afford, and saw a guy fall out of a tree. Which is why I never made it very far in that game.

The plotting in this quest is pretty ridiculous though. You’re a fucking PRISONER (though for what, we aren’t told yet. Let’s assume accidentally hitting X and swinging at some city folk without a recent save to go back to), and yet the guards leave you alone with the King of Cyrodiil. Then, almost instantly, the King is killed by an assassin, after giving you his most valued possession. Any ordinary person coming into the room would assume you killed him and took his stuff. But no! The guard comes back and totally believes you! Thanks for the instant (and absurd) benefit of the doubt, buddy!

Anyway you are then set free (I really should start killing kings and pointing fingers, it’s apparently the quickest way to a free ride), and before you exit the sewer, you are given the opportunity to change your attributes and such. They also calculate the way you’ve played and give you the most likely choice for a birth sign. Which I then changed, just to pretend I am a role player.

I exited the sewer, and once it loaded and I got my 50 achievement points (I like how completing the tutorial is worth as much as essentially beating the game), took my first look at the massive land of Cyrodiil, a land in which my adventures would likely leave me divorced and/or with massive carpal tunnel.

Shut down console.