The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the latest game in the series to be developed by Bethesda. And it really is the best in the series in possibly every way. It takes place in the province of Cyrodil in the country of Tamreil. The game starts off with your character sitting in a prison for some unknown reason... Scratch that, the game REALLY starts off with you, spending fifteen minutes creating your character in the character creation screen. And it is one hell of a character creation; you can change appearance, age, height, gender, but most importantly race- which will affect your starting stats. It’s deep and will show itself best if you’re willing to get down and dirty with it.
But anyways, where was I? Oh yes prison. So while being help up in your cell the king, Martin Septim, and some of his guards come in, it seems that he is trying to dodge an assassination attempt and your cell is the one with the trap door. Weird. You exchange a few words and before you know it he’s letting you out of prison (it’s not like anyone knows why your there in the first place-what a horrible justice system). Everything starts to hit the fan though. You fight your way through the sewer for a good forty-five minutes as it will serve you well as tutorial. During this time you will split up and meet Martin once more before the old king meets his end. Forcing you to find his illegitimate son and brining him to his true fate. Before an invasion from the demon plane of Oblivion commences. Suffice to say people definitely....Fear the worst. The main story of the game is incredibly well written. While the main aspect of the plot has been done before, the way it’s approached in Oblivion is refreshing and quite different. You meet many interesting characters, partake in different battles and are brought all over Cyrodil. It is an epic story
But if all you did in Oblivion is the main quest, you’d have wasted your money. One step out of that sewer would tell you that. The world will show growing trees and prancing deer. You’ll meet civilians living their lives in cities and settlements- and you’ll encounter many hostile enemies. So thank the Nine Divine that the combat in Oblivion is excellent. For melee combat you’ll have three basic moves light attacks, heavy attacks and a block. It’s a great experience, blocking an enemy light attack and countering with your own. Or destroying an enemies block with your heavy attack. Or maybe you use a Left Power Attack so you can disarm the enemy of his weapon. It can be an incredibly deep system, or you can fight with your bare-bone abilities. They will serve you well for your adventures.
But if fighting mano-a-mano isn’t your thing don’t be discouraged. For Oblivion will cater to everyone’s play style. Being a thief for instance is incredibly simple to get into. While sneaking a cursor will pop up promptly showing you if anyone or thing can spot you. While sneaked you can pick-pocket someone or sneak attack them for bonus damage. Add in a fun lock picking mini game and some great archery game play and stealth is great way to experience Oblivion.
I know, all you wannabe mages are getting a little worried. Do not worry! Magic is handled really well in Oblivion. The game has got six schools of magic each one having its own spells and uses. If you want to be a battle mage then you want to be using destruction magic. Turn invisible? Illusion magic has you covered. There are all sorts of great spells to go with any given situation. But you journey deep into the mages guild you’ll eventually be able to make you own spell. You can even learn to enchant your own weapons and armour. Finally there is the seventh magical skill Alchemy. It’s that potion making part of magic that requires you to find ingredients and mix them together to create potions and poisons. It’s probably one of the some of the deepest skills you can learn, and anyone willing to spend time with magic will be engaged for awhile.
Combat and magic spells are also incredibly well animated-for the most part at least. Melee combat is lively, enemies retract from heavy hits and you’ll lunge forward for a heavy attack. It all seems real enough. The weapons all have great designs, even if there are only a few unique looking weapons. Most enchanted and special weapons use one of the base weapons model and add a red or green colour highlight. There are a few exceptions but, that is how it works for the most part. Magic suffers this same problem. Although a range fire spell will look different than any range ice spell. You won’t be able to tell a high level fire spell from a low one which is so incredibly disappointing sometimes. Hey I just want my “Enemies Explode” to look a little more badass then my “Flare”!
But one of the greatest strengths of Oblivion is how lenient you can be with all these skills. A warrior is not confined to only melee abilities, he can cast a spell if he wants or sneak for a critical hit before engaging his enemy regularly. So you never have to stay with a certain type of combat unless you truly want to. This is in large part due to how levelling and skills work. When playing through the sewer tutorial you will eventually be forced to make a class. By making a class you choose seven major skills, every time one of these skills is level up your overall experience raises. Once it is raises ten times you can go sleep and level up. It gets fairly more complex than that, but that is the jest of it. But with the levelling system comes one of Oblivions biggest faults. Everything in the world levels up with you. Monster you fight in a dungeon at level two can be just as difficult at level ten. Only difference is that the monster will be different and stronger and you will be better armed. This is problematic because the best weapons and equipment will only be seen at a very high level, even the stuff you get for beating a quest. So if you feel like doing a quest early the rewards will feel childish to what you can get if you did the quest later on. There is also a feeling of not growing or getting stronger. When playing an RPG levelling up will give you a feeling of accomplishment, in Oblivion you continue to fight enemies around you strength, destroying most of that sense of power and accomplishment. Disappointing, yet it’s the only way to see some of the more badass monsters and use the more effective weapons. But if you want to feel like a god, you can always lower the difficulty all the way... Don’t worry I won’t tell.
Cyrodil is a beautiful and expansive world even if it has been three years. The environments look splendid, trees stand tall while wild life prance around and fauna grow underneath it all. Fortunately there is a great diversity of environments to with great hulking mountains with snowy ice-caps. And of course there is the hellish plane of Oblivion. It’s got everything your idea of hell would have, lakes of lava, a red sky, and a shitload of demons. Excuse me, Daedra. But some of the best looking area are not found in the wilderness, but are found in the beauty of the cities. These cities all seem different and lively in their own way with NPC’s who all have their own names and lives. It’s incredibly impressive to see these people live out a day, even if they do, do a lot of stupid things. I once saw someone fighting only to yell “I’ve fought Mudcrabs stronger then you” she was fighting a Mudcrabs. But even with all the weird things the people do it is no short of technical marvel even by today’s standards. The citizens will go to shops, talk to other people, eat or read or maybe look at the landmarks of their towns. Many of them also have their own problems that they want you to help them with. And even though there is not a whole lot of voice actors, they voices are done extremely well and you can sense the emotions in characters.
These people are not the only ones who will give you one of the many quests in the game. There are four main guilds that you can join, they will give you jobs for money and as you do these jobs you will rise through the ranks and become the highest ranked person in the guild. There is also an Arena which basically will make you fight and kill one contestant after another; it’s much more to the point then some of the other guilds excluding the Dark Brotherhood of course. Once you put all of the time you spend doing every quest from every guild, the main quest, side missions given to you by citizens or “other” entities and a bit of dungeon crawling the game can be over a hundred hours. Although I do have to add quite a bit of time will be spent just preparing for some missions, but it’s a bad thing at all.
The game does have a few flaws though. The game has a tendency to freeze randomly which is an incredible bummer. Also NPC’s have been known to disappear randomly never to return sometimes these are quest related NPC’s stopping you from continuing on in the game in some ways. Also there are quite a lot of texture and environment pop inns, and the citizens have some weird animations...Really odd; also add in the fact that they just do some weird things. One personnel event for me was that I was working with a Khajit assassin and I told him to be stealthy, his body was definitely invisible. But his head didn’t exactly get the same treatment. Also there is quite a load, of load times. But they are rarely un-manageable so you never have to worry too much about it. While those are all problems, it is never so bad that you can’t keep playing the game because the game is just so great.
So in all The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an incredibly rich and incredible game. And for the price you can get it now it is so incredibly worth it if you’re looking for a good Role-Playing-Game. For me I did most of the game and clocked in for a hundred-and- seventy five hours. Every hour is a sublime experience like almost no other game. Even with the few flaws that it has, you can look past it for the incredible game that it is.