Friday, September 21, 2012

Oblivion Mod Review - Heart of the Dead


The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Mod Review - The Heart of the Dead (ver 6.5)
Score: +8/-1

Summary: Excellent quest and encounters. Possible companion afterwards.

Why Get This: Good quest, interesting puzzles and environments.

This is a long adventure that is DLC-quality in story and scripting.
++ Very good voiceovers, with the exception of the Kat character, which had to use pieced-together voiceovers and therefore sounds kind of odd.
+- Companions that actually do things in the story instead of just following you around. Dialog and romance is very token, however (although the romance itself can play a part in the story if you choose to pursue it; and helps decide which companion you end up with after the story).
+ Some very interesting locations, especially at the start of the story. More dungeon-crawl later on, however.
+ Some very interesting scripted events and animations that enhance the experience instead of just being vanity/show-off scripting exercises.
+ A really decent story with good plot points. No huge text dump of information -- good mix of story progress combined with dialogues, clues and other getting-background-information events gives this quest good pacing alongside giving you backstory to better realize the scope of your involement.
+ A really good escalating ending that takes you step by step to a more dramatic ending each time you think you're at "the end".
+ Some quests have various alternative solutions and you aren't always following a very narrowly defined sequence of events to advance the story. This avoids a common frustration with some mods, especially those that combine do-my-specific-sequence-of-events with no-quest-markers.

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