A/V: Oblivion, days 1 & 2
So, I’ve started into Oblivion.
(explication: Oblivion is a single-player RPG for the Xbox 360, in which you take on the role of a fantasy hero and explore a fully-realized three-dimensional faerie world called Cyrodiil. For more info, click the link. I’m going to assume that anyone reading this is probably well-familiar with RPG video games.)
I thought it’d be fun to keep a game log. Writing about it makes the whole thing seem (slightly) less frivolous & self-contained. Anyway:
The story begins with your character locked in a dank dungeon cell. You get to choose everything about your character, including how your character got there in the first place, so I decided that my character would be named Mkuti the Wayfinder. Mkuti is a Khajit (imagine a “lion-man”, essentially). He makes his way in the world as a wilderness guide and herb-gatherer, but ran afoul of the Imperial authorities when a nobleman had a violent allergic reaction to a poultice that Mkuti had concocted.
In the first section of the game, the plot is kind of on rails. Here it is in a nutshell: The Emperor of the realm, Uriel Septim, is attacked by assassins. He attempts to flee the palace via a secret passage which– by happenstance– leads through your cell. The guards allow you to follow to help protect the Emperor, but ultimately the assassins catch up with you in the sewers and murder the liege. Before he dies, he gives you his necklace– the Amulet of Kings– and tells you to deliver it to his heir, via an ex-guard named Jauffre (now an abbot in a monastery called Weynon Priory).
On the first day, I escaped the sewers and arrived blinking in the bright light of day just beyond the walls of the city. (From this point onward, the game is open-ended. The world is spread before you and you can go & do essentially anything you want… but I decide to follow the storyline and head toward Weynon Priory, which my map says is on the outskirts of a far-away town called Chorral.)
It’s near sunset, so I decide to camp for the night in some nearby ruins… but the ruins are already inhabited by a pair of brigands, who ambush me! I fight them to the death and scavenge through their gear & loot for weapons and armor. At the end of the day, I’m rudely equipped with a serviceable steel sword, a bow, iron-tipped arrows, a wooden shield, and some raggedy fur-lined leather armor.
On day 2, I make it to the Priory and meet Jauffre. He tells me that I must seek out a man named Martin, a bastard son of Uriel Septim who is now– unbeknownst to him– the rightful heir to the throne. He gives me some supplies and his old paint horse and tells to ride toward another distant town called Kvatchl, and locate Martin… before the mysterious assassins find him first.
Comments
Leave a Reply
