So yesterday I was sitting at a bar, just passing the time. Not much going on, so thought I might as well take a load off before continuing the day. Two people parked themselves behind me and I couldn’t help but listen in on the conversation they were having.
Seems one of them had a friend who had gotten into some trouble. Seems her friend’s husband had gotten thrown in jail for murder. And to make matters worse he had taken all the money they had and squirreled it away somewhere. I don’t know about you, but that’s a crazy story to hear at a bar.
So this woman was destitute now because her husband was in jail and wouldn’t tell her what he had done with the money. Now common sense says he spent it on bad things, but I guess she thought it was out there somewhere…
So I decided to help. I roamed around town until I met this girl and I got the sitch from her. Turns out they’re both criminals and he had killed someone during a heist. They ran away but the law eventually caught up with them, but not before her husband had hid the prize they had stolen.
She asked if I could talk to her husband in jail and find out where he hid the money. Now honestly – I’m not really into talking to guys in jail. That’s just a recipe for disaster. In general, guys in jail cannot be trusted especially if they are murderers.
But I guess I had too much to drink at the bar earlier, because I trekked down the local jail. I arranged a visitation and sure enough there he was before me. He said he didn’t kill the guard – that his wife did and she betrayed him to the law. He got the last laugh though, because he had hid the spoils before he got thrown in the slammer.
Wo. Now that’s a twisted story. So here’s where it gets weird. He tells me that if I kill his wife, he’ll tell me where the money is and I can have all of it. He just hates the wench and wants her dead. So I say ok, go back to his wife and tell her what he said. Turns out she doesn’t want me to kill her and offers to just give me her prized amulet as proof of her death and then I can take the money.
So I do all that, only to find out that the prison guard had overheard the whole conversation and went to get the money himself. So I had to kill him. I tried so hard not to kill anyone, and then he’s just there with the money. What a bummer.
And that’s Oblivion. What a great game. There are no yellow exclamation marks telling you what to do. You just exist. You just be a person in the world. Quests come to you in the way of real problems that these automatons have in their lives. Sometimes they’re silly little things, sometimes they’re huge. Sometimes they’re black, and sometimes they’re white.
If you break into someone’s house at night, they’re there in bed. If you break in during the day, they’re at work. It’s like a little microcosm of the world that becomes your playground. If you play games at all, Oblivion shouldn’t be missed.