[geek]
I am now taking a short break to give you some preliminary (after 30 or 40 hours of playing) thoughts on Oblivion. Eventually, I’d like to do a nice, extensive review with some of my personal favorite screenshots and whatnot, but for now, I just want to jot down some interesting things.
The first being, the graphics, and my computer’s rendering capability. I am ever so close to being able to max out the settings in every category. My main limitation lies in the speed and capacity of RAM. PC3200 is standard, but contains no capacity for overclocking, and combined with the mere 512MB (hopefully being rectified tomorrow), my computer is unhappy with Oblivion’s extensive use of textures.
I’ve been running the game at 1024×768, with HDR enabled, and all other settings set to maximum. Because Oblivion uses floating-point HDR (Half Life 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory use an “interlaced” version that is much closer to Bloom than true HDR), anti-aliasing is off by default. I have not yet tried forcing AA on, but judging from the performance I got with Bloom and 4xAA, I do not expect a strong display of computing prowess.
For those of you that do not know, HDR is a lighting system that attempts to simulate the intricacies of the eye – moving from dark areas to light areas results in greater brightness for a period of time, which is inversely true for the reverse situation (that is, moving from light to dark results in a very dark environment). However, the lack of native AA almost makes Bloom (what is generally referred to as the “cheap knockoff” of HDR) more preferable. I took some comparison shots which you can see here.
Anti-aliasing becomes a serious issue when I’m faced with large patches of grass. Much of Oblivion is covered with truly spectacular fields of grass that will make your computer commit seppuku if you are not properly prepared. I have not sufficiently played with the settings to rectify this situation, but that will come soon. Playing with the settings can be rather frustrating when you have to restard Oblivion for any kind of major settings changes.
As for the game, I can safely say this is the best game I’ve played in years. Is it the best game I’ve ever played? I don’t know, but it just might be. More to come later.
[/geek]