#no oblivion

[whatsurdesign]

NO OBLIVION LYRICS IN MORSE FOR ALL MORSE CODE ENJOYERS OUT THERE

[autumnrevisited]

Today No Devotion’s sophomore album No Oblivion turns two! I wrote about the album and its impact in those two years and had a conversation with guitarist Lee Gaze about the record, the band, and the future.

[oblivionloading]

Grandpa didn't get his beans today.

[scp-4999]

this made me laugh out loud in the theater BUT THE RATIO???? 😭😭😭

[teathattast]

[molags-balls]

[lobo-inu]

my cats so fuckin ugly she looks like the oblivion khajiit

[canisalbus]

✦ Stealing from the trees of Eden ✦

[astrallar]

This man holds my heart just like he holds these ducks

[lowpolyanimals]

Moth from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[hugintheraven]

How Bethesda fixed Vampires without realizing it

So there's a LOT of takes on vampires across media, and most of them are radically different from each other. The Elder Scrolls series has an interesting version that I haven't seen anywhere else, that incidentally fixes a bunch of lore issues with vampires, and yet Bethesda hasn't ever really leaned into any of that.

So, the issue with vampires in large RPGs like Elder Scrolls games, D&D, etc, is that a world where various elements of character building are supposed to be balanced, vampires are heavy on the upside and light on meaningful drawbacks. So in Oblivion, Bethesda completely reworked their vampires, coming at it with a blank slate:

Vampirism is a 4-stage affliction, with each stage increasing the numerous benefits of being a vampire as well as the middling drawbacks. Stage 4 brings with it all humanoid NPCs recognizing you as a ravenous monster and attacking you, basically wrecking the game. And, this is the unique part, you reduce stages by drinking blood. Being a vampire is LESSENED by doing the most vampiric thing out there, it actively makes you weaker.

And this is great. From a gameplay perspective, you vanish below ground to kill zombies/robots/whatever, and you grow stronger as the dungeon goes on. But if you don't rush through it, or if it's large, you surface having ignored your hunger for several days and have to do a whole second quest to sneak into town at night and drink blood, where the only reward is to engage with the game again. It's a drawback in the gameplay sense rather than the stats sense. And it lets game designers throw the player against weak vampires in town early on, and face dungeons full of max-bloodlust monsters later once the player knows how things work.

Meanwhile, from a lore perspective this is also great. Suddenly, it's not that vampires have to be evil, it's that they have a choice. A good person who flees their family to hide in a cave is going to starve, turning into a ravenous, uncontrolled, extremely strong monster. Someone who's comfortable sneaking around town drinking blood, meanwhile? They never lose control. They walk in the sun. They're perfectly human. Or as human as anyone can be while the blood of their neighbors flows in their veins.

And Bethesda doesn't DO ANYTHING with this. People you talk to in-game just treat it as "all vampires are evil, why would you expect anything else", when they've created a world where vampire morality is so much more interesting. The few vampires who exist in civilization that you're not supposed to kill don't really discuss their condition at all. And there's plenty of evil vampires choosing to live in caves running societies of vampires, when that makes no sense compared to basically any other way of life they could set up.

Bethesda games are a masterful disaster, in this as in everything else.

[autumnrevisited]

No Devotion at St. Vitus Bar, July 11, 2022 photos: Annalie Bouchard

do not repost without credit to the photographer

[oblivionloading]

You aren't cool enough to summon a sexy demon

[window-to-oblivion]

"Pets and cuddles"

I know that morph is basically just a camoe machine in 97, but a thing I really wanna see at some point in season 2 is Morph's animal forms.

Anyways here's a small soft morpherine doodle

[dunmer]