Spent a while playing some more Oblivion today, and I've found myself doing something I always thought I should go back and do — just wander around the world and get into misadventures rather than trying to "tick things off a list".
When I first played Oblivion, Achievements were new and exciting, so naturally I wanted to pursue them. So I ended up fast travelling from place to place, romping through the various Guild questlines for the Achievements, and leaving it at that.
Doing that killed not only my enthusiasm for Oblivion, but enthusiasm for Achievements too. So I don't recommend it. Instead, doing what I've been doing this time around is a lot more fun.
Specifically, I've been eschewing fast travel altogether and walking manually from place to place, deciding whether or not I want to take detours for dungeon delving along the way. (I usually do.) This also means that I stumble across the small settlements you probably otherwise wouldn't see, and many of these have their own little questlines going on.
A particular highlight today was one where I found a village with what appeared to be an invisible person tilling his field. I thought the game had bugged out for a moment — it is a Bethesda game, after all — but no, there was a whole entertaining little questline about restoring this village back to visibility.
I've also found that impromptu dungeon delving tends to provide a good means of raising skills without needing to "grind". As a mage, dungeons provide plenty of opportunity to cast a variety of spells for both exploration and combat.
I'm wondering if developing some weapon skills might be worthwhile in the long term though. Combat spells have been plenty up until now, but the last dungeon I delved into had some goblins who seemed a fair bit tougher.
Anyway. That's a decision to make another day. I am enjoying my renewed enthusiasm for exploring this game — I feel like it's yet another case of returning to something well after its original release being a good approach. Maybe one day in 20 years I'll like Skyrim…
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