In preparation for Skyrim, I have dipped my toes into Oblivion.

I pulled out my discs and dusted off my mods, and jumped in with my old character. I eventually heard a suggestion that if you enchant various articles of clothing/armor that add up to at least 100% chameleon, you are permanently invisible. This makes running around the countryside much easier, as nothing attacks you. And when you attack, they can't see you, so they can't attack you back.

It is vastly different from the gray and brown themed games of late. Although the plane of Oblivion itself is a very dark, red, and stormy place, you're not there most of the time, and the game can in fact be considered very "green".

I remember the first time I played it, over 5 years ago. Instead of coming out of the sewers in the daylight, I managed to screw something up, and came out at night. I had beauty and 10 frames per second. Mind you, I was also playing Far Cry at the time, so I had seen plenty of forests at night, but this was quite a bit more expansive than that.

Like Far Cry, I preceded to binge on this game. By the time it was over, I had played it over 400 some hours, and my main character had been pretty much everywhere and done everything. I ended up with all the DLC by getting the Knights of the Nine DLC disc (with all the DLC up to then), Shivering Isles, and Battlehorn Castle (when it was released initially for free). I played it with plenty of mods, and always wanted to completely play through again with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, but never could sit down with Obivion again; not after spending that much time playing it already.

After going to a college I didn't like for three weeks, I decided to choose other things, and got Half Life 2 and Morrowind. Everyone was fawning over how much better Morrowind is than Obivion. At first it was horrible: an Orc with a sword (not ideal, but workable) at level 2 would have a 50% chance to survive a rat attack. I used the Orc berserk power once, only to find out that it drains agility (which somehow affects swimming ability and how long you can breath underwater), and stepped into water a bit too deep and drowned. Some time later, I returned and completed it. Morrowind's story is much better than Oblivion's, but nothing else.

I also enjoyed the music with Oblivion. As with Morrowind, it was composed by Jeremy Soule. I also picked up the soundtrack for Supreme Commender, which he also did. I recently became aware of a 4 CD preorder for the Skyrim soundtrack, which I will likely be suckered into.

I chose 'release day shipping', so Skyrim should be here on Friday, but you know my luck, it probably won't get here until Monday. So here's to Skyrim, and the hundreds more hours to be well wasted.