ES4 Oblivion Lost Spires-
The Lost Spires - Home
VERY well done mod actually. This mod provided more entertainment in it's 250 MB size than all five to eight gigs of oblivion. It introduces a new faction you can join, an Archeology guild. You're job becomes to explore and clear out monsters of many of the various spires, and bring back some relics and artifacts of these ancient (and custom designed) ruins.
Pro's about the mod-
-The cave systems of each spire or ruin is an actual maze. None of that one to two line straightforward crap oblivion has, you actually have to explore a little. The artifacts you need to look out for are relatively easy to find, they do tend to stand out a slight bit more than most things.
-The guild itself is rather extensive, beyond just the standard guild hall. The guild hall itself is a full blown museum of reliquaries and artifacts. But there are also several excavation sites, and I don't mean small area's that are also the guild, I do mean excavation. The first one I encountered they were digging up the bones of a fossilized Dreugh.
-The quest rewards are more than awesome. It's no longer just gold and maybe a cool spell or magic item that you could get one of ten times better just for selling whatever you got in the imperial prison at the beginning of the game. One of my latest prizes was a giant bear trap, that you can actually set down and it'll lay out a full blown trap. I've also received a coin that permanently boosted my luck, always a nice addition. The coin I didn't even have to wear, it was just a permanent blessing.
-Normally I don't care about scenery, but good god almighty, some of the stuff they added. THIS is what fantasy scenery should be. A forest with a bunch of wolves and bears, no. But a plane of existence where the sky itself looks like the planet Courescant from Star Wars and an Olympian like plateau with a specter warlock holding a rather devious looking spire found stave, now THIS is the stuff that I was actually expecting in oblivion.
-The dialog, while a little limited, is rather well thought out. Not really just that cookie cut'n'paste that happened all throughout oblivion. No voices, but still, that's not even a necessity to a good story.
The Cons-
-As said, the dialog can be a bit limited in choices. Though your character has a bit of emotion when saying something (Like instead of "Teav's death" you'll have "Oh dear, how did he die?"), it doesn't give a lot of room for evil versus good.
-You are an explorer clearing out monsters, this can get a little dull occasionally. Most of the cave systems that don't actually need to be a maze are a bit too extensive as well.
-Demands high graphics. In one of the cave spires, my system started lagging tremendously just from standing there doing nothing. This was using small textures and very limited graphics mind you.
-Still in beta form. Many things are good in this, but there can be a few glitches here and there, such as monsters killing themselves before you can even touch them. When a speckled daedroth goes up against a few speckled scamps, and the daedroth wins but severely hurt, kind of boring to only need one arrow strike in it without even sneaking.
-Area's are added in game when the quests become available, so if you find say an excavation site that isn't supposed to exist yet based on your journal, it can look a little glitched up. It doesn't affect anything once you actually get the quest, but still...
Here are a few screenies for those that want a little graphical taste (But DO remember, graphics are the least important part of a game).
http://pnmedia.gamespy.com/planeteld...42_fullres.jpg http://pnmedia.gamespy.com/planeteld...94_fullres.jpg http://pnmedia.gamespy.com/planeteld...66_fullres.jpg