Overdue Reviews is an occasional series in which I pretend to be a videogame journalist. This week: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on PC.
I hadn't played any of the Elder Scrolls games before Oblivion. My friend Steve had raved about Morrowind's complex narrative, but I'd never been particularly attracted to the fantasy genre.
Eventually, Steve lent me his copy of Oblivion, so I felt at least obliged to try it. I was hooked immediately - a believable world full of interesting characters and adventures, with almost total freedom to approach the game as I liked. But as I played more I found that the most interesting aspect was the stories I could create myself.
One of them was how I accidentally became a vampire.
I still don't know exactly how it started. Presumably vampirism is contagious, and I must have encountered one of the creatures at some point and caught it from them.
I first realised something was amiss when I was standing outside in the sunshine and suddenly noticed my character was taking damage. It took me a few reloads of the last save to figure out what was happening, but soon I was travelling by night and lurking in buildings and caves during the daytime, looking for a cure.
It took hours. Hours and hours. Eventually, after following many subtle clues and suggestions, I was pointed in the direction of a mysterious woman living alone in a cabin in the wilderness. She claimed she could cure my condition, if I could obtain for her a list of ingredients. Quite a long list, in fact. Of things that were very hard to find.
After much searching I returned to the cabin, my inventory stuffed with various obscure plants and objects. I wasn't done yet though; there was some final task I had to accomplish first.
It was at this point that things took a turn for the unexpected. I exited the cabin to find myself in broad daylight. I couldn't fast travel while taking damage and the nearest shelter was too far away, so I went back inside to wait it out until nightfall. But for some reason the woman in the cabin decided I was an enemy, and attacked me.
I'd been relying heavily on the auto save feature, which had saved at the point I'd re-entered the cabin. My last proper save was from before looking for a cure, which meant I was stuck in a small room being attacked by the one person who could help me. I tried fighting her. I tried running away. Neither option worked.
Eventually I realised I could hide from her. I had to stay there, crouched and inert, for at least twenty minutes of real time while the game's day ended, while this freaky woman crept around her own one-room home, inexplicably unable to see the large armoured man lurking behind a small piece of furniture in the corner.
As the sun set I hot-footed it out of there, finished my task and returned nervously, only to find the woman in the cabin back to her old self and quite willing to help me again. The whole adventure had taken at least ten hours to play out, but I was finally not a vampire again and free to continue my travels unhindered.
And that was just one of my many adventures in Oblivion. It really was very good.