Monday, October 8, 2012

Oblivion Mod Review - Golden Crest


The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Mod Review - The Golden Crest - A Major Pirate Quest (ver 1.20a)
Score: +2/-5

Summary: Supposedly you play as a pirate. Supposedly.

Why Get This: Wasting time. Might be better later, but I didn't want to waste more time.

This mod initially starts out with some promise with some interesting quests, but quickly becomes awful. For a "pirate quest", you spend an inordinate amount of time on land doing quests that could have shown up in any other mod. There is even a quest where the questgiver clearly states that they wouldn't normally do that sort of task. Further, a couple of early quests involve so much wasted time that you are clearly taking a risk with the modder's design philosophy if you want to persist with this mod.
+ Some interesting quests and situations.
+ Good use of dialogue overall.
-- For a "pirate quest", you spend a lot of time on land. You do a lot of utterly un-pirate things, like set up a mining operation, hanging out in an inland pub, and looking for a bounty hunter deep in caves. Where the heck is the pirate stuff?
- When you first join the pirate crew, you are given a shirt and pants which looks like a lower-class labourer outfit. Except it's for sailors. And it's heavily ENCHANTED. WTF? And none of the other crew are using it. Hmm... "Inexplicable" and "implausible" are words that come to mind.
- Incredible time-wasting linear quest that is not optional and not very pirate-like at all -- "A Sister's Love". There is a journal entry that reads:
  • "I found a list of people who have bounties on their heads. It seems that Mal gro-Shick [the person you need to find] is a bounty hunter, a good one judging by the names and locations on this list. If I want to track down Mal I will have to follow the list and go from cave to cave. When I find somebody from this list that still draws breath I should wait at that location for Mal to arrive. The first location on this list is..."

Naturally, you go through a couple of duds -- already-dead persons -- but not until you've gone through several monster-infested dungeons. All to come to a dead end. WTF? If I wanted to do aimless monster-killing in vanilla Oblivion dungeons, I don't have to download a mod to do that.
- More incredible time-wasting with another non-optional quest: Quest, "The Straight Arrow". The quest update pop-up reads:

  • "I've tried speaking to a few of the regulars but they refused to talk to me. Vitisha was right, they dislike talking to passing travelers. I need to make them realize that I want to become one of them, a regular. I have a plan that just might work. I should come round every day for the next few days and spend a few hours here, without leaving through the door until those few hours are up. Hopefully, after a few days they might notice me and start talking with me. [Pressing T and waiting or sleeping doesn't count]."

So basically, the modder wants you to walk your character into the inn, then leave Oblivion running and idle for god knows how long while you, the player (not, not your character) go do something *other* than watch the screen while your character does absolutely nothing interesting. WTF?
When this quest showed up, I uninstalled the mod. I can't trust a modder who gives you such ludicrous quests. Who knows what other rubbish you'll need to do later even if you waste your time jumping through this hoop.

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