Hey guys,

The gate at Kvatch was the first gate I went through as I have been playing a pretty straightforward game doing mostly the Main questline while doing side quests on my way. When I go through the portal the guard on the other side tells me his buddies are locked in that evil-looking black tower. So I gather my courage and charge forward, he follows but not for long as he gets wasted pretty quickly. When I break into the tower and kill a bunch of deadra (Oblivion planes are hostile places, next time I'll make sure to pack more potions!) I find his buddy who tells me to to grab the stone keeping the portal open. I try saving him but his cage won't open. I go grab the stone and close the gate, but once back on the other side I am all alone. Have I forsaken that poor soul to be trapped in another dimension void of life and still trapped in his cage???

On a side note, I am a Fallout really devoted fan. The only reason I bought Oblivion is because I saw it was made by Bethesda. IN Fallout there is an option to heal your partner when you have one following you around. I haven't been able to do that here yet. Is it possible?

cheers

There is no way to explicitly save him. If it makes you feel better, you can role play that by closing that gate you release him and transport him back to Cyrodiil, although in game he never appears. But it is impossible to save him in the gate.

By the way, this is the same question as in this active thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1147848-how-do-i-save-menien/

As far as companions go. Except for a few temporary quest related companions you don't get any. It's not like Fallout 3 where you can recruit someone. You can on the PC with mods, but not in the unmodded game.

That said if you do have a companion for a quest, you can heal the companion with Convalescence spells, which are restore health on other spells. You can buy them in Chapels or make them yourself. If you're good enough at magic you can also use an alteration spell to provide more shields to a companion.

However, while I really love this game (even more than Fallout 3) companions and allies are very, very poorly implemented. You can easily hit them. They have awful combat AI - they just rush the enemy no matter the odds or how many enemies. And they are often way underpowered compared with the enemies. The best thing to do with companions in this game is to avoid them, in my opinion.

You CAN save that first guy you met when you first entered the Gate. But I can only save him at level 2 or less. Anything higher and I just can't keep him alive. I'm talking about if you tell him to help you and follow along.

And you can heal your followers here too, need to buy a heal spell (chapel) or create one if you have access to a spell making alter.

I'm not sure, but doesn't the guy in the cage end up back at the Kvatch chapel once the gate is closed?

Yes, Fallout 3 did not have heal on touch spells so you needed a dialogue to use stimpacks.
Some characters are able to heal themselves.

And yes followers in Oblivion make the ones in Fallout 3 extremely smart. They made loads of progress here. A development thing, followers in Morrowind was even worse; as in extremely dangerous for you.

You can mods on pc with followers who are better than the ones originally in Fallout 3.

No. But you can role play that he does. That way you can feel that your character saved him. I think it would have been better if the developers did that. It would add to the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Since he is not a thing of Oblivion (like your character) it would seem to make sense for him to be returned to Cyrodiil/Mundus just as you are. And there are other cases too, like Burd, or Farwil etc where people are returned to Cyrodiil after closing a gate.

Good call with Morrowind followers being worse. I have had so many nightmares about waiting for people that got lost and killed!!

I have nightmares because they killed me,
I still remember that high elf mage you should escort as one mage guild quest for balmora. He was terrible, used area effect magic if went into melee with the animals, if you used ranged he went into melee and got killed. Only way to do it was to reload, travel the road and kill the spawned animals then go back and escort the slow mage.

However they managed to get killed to, remember I found an escaped slave in the desert some way from my televani stronghold. Because of the weather I mistook him as an monster and shot him with an arrow, I calmed him, healed him and listened to his story and felt sorry for him, thought I could at least take him to the stronghold.
However after walking a fraction of the way he spotted a far away high level monster and run towards it unarmed and unarmoured. Naturally he blocked for me so I could not shoot at the monster, he reached monster how killed him in seconds, to stupid to live was my thought.