Marketway (oblivion mod)…

Marketway (oblivion mod) after the break…

Marketway (oblivion mod)…

If you’ve ever played plain old Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, you’ll find that a lot of stores that have all the neat stuff that you’ll eventually want are fairly dispersed throughout the land. Even using fast travel, you’ll find that a pesky thing called “night” tends to hamper your plans even further by forbidding you from buying that special potion, spell or sword because the store is closed.

If only all of that neat stuff was in one central area… That never really closed… It would be like a highway of markets… It would be… A Marketway!

OK, that was lame introduction but you get the drift – “Marketway” is a mod where you go to an area that has all sorts of goodies & services for sale that never really closes. In this particular case, you enter a circular grate that’s in the middle of one of the street in the Market District in the Imperial City. Upon entering the grate, you arrive in the sewers which, thanks to capitalism, has been somewhat converted into a booming underground (literally) industry of goods & services.

One problem I tend to have with mod authors is that they tend to “overfill” an area with props, people & objects. Such is the case in “Marketway,” where my machine instantly felt the strain of a lot of objects in a fairly large area. There’s a reason why the Oblivion designers decided to segment the cities from the rest of the world; Because all of those objects in a small enough area bogs a lot of machines down, my own included. No, my machine didn’t turn into a slideshow but I could definitely see the choppiness & it instantly hampered my enjoyment of this mod. A few less props would probably go a long way – That, or splitting up the mod into two or more zones.

You can speak with the people & they provide various services (one showed me where a lot of Ayleid ruins were) as well as weapons, armor, spells & the whatnot. One archer decided to practice their skills & I was the recipient of more then a dozen Elven arrows (the old “grab the arrows while they’re practicing” trick which, for some stupid reason, works in this world). So, in that narrow regard, this mod could net you some tidy cash if you don’t mind sitting around for a while.

Something that really took me out of the mod was the tunnel leading to the circular sewers door “exit.” Here, the modding skills failed & one section of roof (where a curving corner & the sewer tunnel meet) was completely absent, allowing me to see “out” of the mod. There was just no reason for this; The sewer exit door doesn’t work so why is it there &, therefore, why is the curving corner tunnel there as well? If it had to be there, why not just make it an inaccessible room or just a dead end room?

Marketway was a neat little mod for those who want their shopping mall small & open all night long. I don’t know if it’s a “cheat and/or god items” as it’s labeled at TESNexus but I suppose in a very dry & academic sense it is considering that it allows you to shop whenever without having to go the ends of the game world to seek out that rare spell or become a mage to use the spellmaking or enchantment altars.

If I was the mod author, I’d probably try to optimize the framerate by splitting up the marketway or dumping a lot of the unnecessary objects there. I’d definitely fix that “no roof” section because that was an immersion killer &, being biased, I really don’t like mods that kill the immersion. If I was really talented, maybe you’d have the city guards occasionally raid the market (I’m presuming the place is less-then-legal) & it wouldn’t be available for a while.

Does it stay on my hard drive? Probably not. I don’t hate the mod but it doesn’t really give me any reason to keep it. The goods & services would be nice if not for the framerate drop whenever I go into there. The immersion factor is also hurt by the “no roof” section so there really isn’t a lot of re-exploration potential there. Still, for those who want everything in one place & want to buy it (as opposed to opening the console & going to the testing hall), here it is. Enjoy.

Tags: Marketway (oblivion mod)