Marble Madness!

I tend to prefer the three-quarters camera angle as it gives me the widest possible field of view. I rotate the camera (adjust rotate speed accordingly) quickly with my mouse to check corners, nooks and crannies for stuff.

Also.. another great tip: Hit your TAB key to make functional/interactive items "glow". That will let you know at a glance if you've got a chest/amoire or bag blocked by your camera view.

Rude-man.. you don't HAVE to re-play the initial scene, no. But, you might find yourself slightly low on XP and gold if you do not. I believe you can start off with the 1st Chapter and perhaps use the DM console to gift yourself some XP/gold as equivalency.

What character types are you fellas playing, anyway? (just out of curiosity)

I tend to think that the cleric class is my El Guapo. I just can't seem to get a character going under that class that is good enough to consistently do well in combat and otherwise. About the only class (of the basic, original-box options) I think I've never really played is the Bard class. I've still yet to play many of the expansion classes for any meaninful length, but I really did enjoy the Arcane Archer class, Weapon Master and BlackGuard (yay for bad guys!)

=]