Preparing for Skyrim: Modding Oblivion

It is almost a month until the release of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and in anticipation of its release, I’ve decided to have another play through of Oblivion on the PC, and this time I’m doing it right – with a fucking shitload of mods.

To put things in perspective, below is a screenshot comparison of what my game looked like before and what it looks like now with the mods I have installed. You can clearly see the difference between the un-modded and the modded versions of the game, although I suspect its appeal is subjective. I think that the game looks absolutely gorgeous with the mods.

I have used quite a variety of mods in my game, everything from gameplay changes to nude body replacers (yes, I have nude mods installed – deal with it). In this post, I will share these mods with you and how you can go about getting your hands on them for use in your game.

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Qarl’s Texture Pack III

This mod enhances the environment textures quite a bit, giving every inch of Tamriel an enormous amount of detail. Before modding, my game used to look blurry and the textures looked like they are taken from the console versions, but now, I find myself stopping quite often along my journey to inspect something that I did not notice before, and I am left in awe of how beautiful it is.

Eyecandy Variants Expansion for HGEC (NSFW)

EVE for HGEC is the aforementioned nude body replacer, that gives all female characters in the game a much more appealing body to look at, removing the saggy and horrible body meshes. This mod also comes with customized armour that is shaped around body, so you can actually see curves where they are meant to be, instead of a flat-man chest as seen in the vanilla game.

Ren’s Beauty Pack

Another cosmetic mod, that adds a large variety of hairstyles with three versions of each. Unlike the body replacer, this adds the hairs to the game whilst preserving the original selection, and unlike other hair mods, the shaders for Ren’s Beauty Pack are done quite nicely, and the hair shine doesn’t seem out-of-place when compared to the vanilla hairstyles. Had I not told you that it was a mod, I’m certain these hairs could be mistook for official styles packaged with the game.

F-INevOblivion skinset for EC and HGEC (NSFW)

This is an optional texture pack for the HGEC and Exnem body replacers, giving them a higher resolution texture to go with the carefully crafted mesh. This mod also comes with facial textures to match, although there are a few noticable seams on the neck where the head and body meshes connect, but this is only for a few skin shades.

Unique Landscapes

This mod completely reshapes the world of Oblivion whilst keeping the essentials intact, giving each area its own unique environment. Areas in which you would have merely passed through before, is reshaped to make you stop and explore everything. Unique Landscapes adds more locations, improves existing ones, and gives life to the world.

Natural Environments

This mod changes the way the world acts with the wildlife, vegetation and weather. Working alongside of Unique Landscapes and Qarl’s Texture Pack, this mod adds to the immersive experience. One minute, you could be walking along in a clear and sunny day, and the next you could be in the middle of hurricane winds and storms that prevents you from seeing what lies before you.

Oblivion Graphics Extender

I guess you could say that this mod adds a new platform for visual plugins and development, opening the doors for you experience a better looking Oblivion. OBGE is just the base mod, and there are several other effects plugins that add things like depth of field, motion blur, realistic pain effects, godrays (or sunshafts) and more. OBGE makes some significant improvements to the game’s default shaders also.

Plate Armour Plus

If you like the look of female characters in plate armour, then you need to install this mod along with the HGEC body. This mod adds a set of plate armour crafted specifically for females, with curves in all the right places. This mod changes meshes for steel, Blackwood Company and Champions armour sets.

Eisen Platte Armour

I quite liked the look of this armour when I saw it, and my only gripe with it is that it isn’t a heavy armour set, and doesn’t prevent as much damage to my character. This was apparently modelled after an armour set in Final Fantasy XI, and has two versions – White on Steel, and White on Black. I use the White on Black version, because it suits a Dark Paladin character more. Below is a screenshot of what my character looks like with the above mods, plus this armour set.

Darnified UI

You might have noticed that in all of the screenshots I have included in this post, that the interface looks severely different. Well, once again, it’s a mod. Darnified UI is a minimal interface that removes the unnecessarily large text and graphics from the oblivion interface. It might work having some big arsed golden bar at the bottom of your screen on a console, but for PC, that shit just doesn’t fly.

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So now we come to the end of the post. There are plenty of mods that I have installed and uninstalled, and many more that I want to see created and want to try. But for now, these are the ones worth mentioning, because these are the ones I am using in my game now.

Be sure to subscribe to my blog by email to stay updated for any new postings and such, because I’ll be making an active effort to post more Oblivion content as I continue my journey in the land of Tamriel, and when Skyrim releases on November 11.

Oh, and I have one more thing to say before I sign off here. Long live the PC master race.