The Elder Scrolls series has made a name for itself as being a huge, free form RPG that manages to weave a decent story into its unstructured gameplay style. The Elder Scrolls series brought the name home to mass audiences with its critically acclaimed Morrowind, the third game in the series. Now, after much anticipation, Bethesda has crafted Oblivion, the fourth game in the Elder Scrolls series.
Oblivion starts out much like the previous titles, Daggerfall and Morrowind, with your character sitting in a prison with a shady past. Through providence, you are given the opportunity to get out and start life anew. This time around, the Emperor himself, Uriel Septim, needs to escape through your cell via a secret passageway. Using his divine blood, he sees that you have a major part to play in the future of Cyrodiil and eventually entrusts you with a major secret, and major task to save the entire of Tamriel.
Once the back story is out of the way, Oblivion starts you off by giving you a small taste of what is to come in a well done tutorial. Like any prisoner, when a way out is left open, you tend to make a run for it. In this path, you are given pop-up windows on how to play the game, but if you are an experienced Elder Scrolls gamer, you can pretty much ignore these. For those who are new to the series, then the tutorial is incredibly helpful, much more so than the pitiful one in Morrowind. Basically, you aren't just dumped into the world and told to figure out the basics of playing the game. Unfortunately, you cannot skip this without downloading a thankfully already available player made modification, which is a must have for any successive plays through the game.
The first thing that pops into mind is the movement. Oblivion has two modes, first person and third person, but due to gameplay mechanics, you end up spending the lion's share of time in the first person mode and use third person only to admire your character. Movement is much like a first person shooter. The WASD keys move your character and strafe while the mouse points your face around the world. Control goes into sneak mode, shift toggles run/walk, and Caps Lock makes the toggle stick. That is where the similarities stop. If you're inclined to leaving the controls at default, the game places the jump key at E, the spacebar manipulates the world, F sheathes your weapon, and C casts spells. A new feature, moving objects around without having to stick them in your inventory, has been added as well by holding Z over an item. This allows you to move decorations around your various homes or even do stupid things like making dead enemies punch themselves while you yell, "Why you hitting yourself?!" at him. Based on how this game is played, the setup is actually optimal when compared to your classic shooter, where the jump and manipulation would be switched. Since you will spend a lot more time manipulating your environment than bouncing around like a child with ADHD, the manipulate button is given the more easy to reach location.
The next aspect that comes up is the inventory and character screen system. Oblivion was clearly designed for a console in this aspect. First, you hit the Tab key to open up the inventory. Each character aspect is tabbed at the bottom, from character attributes and ranks, inventory, spells, and map/quests. Within each main tab is a secondary one. They range from organizing your inventory into types, like weapons and armor, to checking out quests, the local map, or world map. The inventory issue has essentially been reversed. Morrowind shoehorned a PC interface onto the Xbox while Oblivion takes a clearly console-centric interface and puts it onto the PC. While it is not as apparent going from console to PC as it is the other way around, I still would have preferred to keep everything on the same screen instead of having to bounce around through the different tabs.
That being said, the actual organization within the tabs is much better. Oblivion uses a list format for items, which is easier to organize than the backpack system Morrowind uses. You can easily sort items by weight, value, name, damage, and even how soon it will break. Spells also work in the same manner and the game even does a good job of isolating what negative effects are on your character into its own separate area.
Next, the spell casting system has been revamped. In Morrowind, you had to actually ready yourself to cast the spell by pressing the G key. Oblivion simplified the procedure by just sticking a spell into your active icon and pressing C. You can now go back and forth between martial combat and spell casting without having to go through the extra step. On top of that, it still makes sense in terms of gameplay mechanics. There is a delay between casting and when you can swing your weapon, which simulates having to sheath your weapon or put your shield away before casting a spell, so the logic that you would have to free up your hands to cast is accounted for. Obtaining new spells is done in the same manner, either by buying them off of mages or crafting your own in the Arcane University.
Another aspect of the interface I enjoy is the new hotkey system. Opening up your inventory or spell book and holding a number from 1-8 will lock a spell or item into a hotkey wheel. You can then jump around between commonly used weapons and spells without having to go through the tedium of opening up the inventory panels each time. This allows you to keep weapons and spells in easy reach so you're prepared for numerous situations.
A big change in Oblivion is how you pick locks or utilize your speechcraft skills. Both of these skills have been turned into mini-games. Unfortunately, I don't particularly like this format because it shifts the emphasis too much from the character's abilities to the player's abilities. Both of these mini-games are disgustingly easy. For example, with a lockpick skill of 9, I can easily open up any chest or door in the game, even those classified as "very hard". When you go into a lockpick sequence, you open up a mini-game showing a side view of the lock, your pick, and anywhere from 1 to 5 tumblers. The trick is to move the pick up into the tumbler with the mouse then click when it hits the top. What the game doesn't explain is that the tumblers will move at different speeds each time you hit it. Basically, lockpicking becomes patience as you have the best chance of locking the tumbler in place when it is moving up slowly as opposed to shooting up rapidly. In my ~60 hour gameplay session, I picked 372 locks at the cost of only 6 picks. Basically, I found enough lockpicks in the tutorial segment to last me the entire game, negating the need to buy them, though thankfully I can find them in easy abundance and their 0 weight allows them to be offloaded for quick cash.
Speechcraft is a puzzle. It has a wheel broken into four quadrants: joke, admire, boast, and taunt. There are then four different sized pie slices that rotate around the wheel. Each character has a varying degree of response to each quadrant, shown by the facial expression when you hover the mouse over the section, coupled with the multiplier based on how full the current quadrant is. What comes next is simply lining up the big pie slice in the spots favorable and the little one in the spots that are not. A higher skill allows you one free rotation of the wheel to add to the strategy. Again, this is simply way too easy. I can get on the good side of any player in the game without much trouble. The only limiter is my personality and a number of other factors that can keep my favorability from reaching 100. There comes a point where the only way to get your speechcraft up is to use it on random guards around town and other filler characters. Furthermore, it makes no sense that in a single conversation segment, you have no choice but make a joke, taunt the character, admire him, then boast. What is missing is the ability to taunt your target into attacking you, something that I used a lot in Morrowind to get good stuff.
Now, on to the most important part: combat. Combat has been made a bit more realistic this time around. In Morrowind, when you swung your weapon, there was a chance you would miss and simply whiff through the enemy. Oblivion makes it more arcade-like. The only way you can miss is if you aren't facing the enemy when you swing, or are out of range, but you can also fail to do damage if the enemy blocks. Your skill in block and the various weapons determine how much damage you absorb and dish out instead of how accurate you are, among other abilities based on how good you are, such as a disarming block or power attack. This method makes the game a bit more exciting, but again also takes away some of the RPG element from it. In this portion, however, I am actually in favor of a shifting the focus onto the player's skills as it makes the game more exciting to play. The Morrowind system where the game blocked for you and the enemy could miss based on their skill relative to yours made running too easy as you could just book it and they would simply miss. Now you need to actively decide to block, at the cost of slowing your attack ability, and if you run, you had better hope your armor and health is good enough or you will not make it because they will hit you every time.
Another huge aspect of Oblivion is travel and exploration. Unfortunately, Bethesda did something unforgivable. They included two features that kill the size of the world and the exploration aspect. First, Oblivion includes a fast travel feature. All you have to do is open the world map and click on your destination and you are shot there instantly. It made sense to buy a ticket on a Silt Strider in Morrowind and were limited to doing this from specific, fixed locations to other fixed ones as well as having a complement of teleportation spells. Now you can just avoid the whole trip entirely, regardless of where you go. True, some gamers may like this idea, but it kills the journey for me by removing the element of discovery when travelling between the destinations. It is not as bad as other features as you can simply choose to not use it.
The other unforgivable misstep, and worst crime to plaque this installment of the Elder Scrolls, is the compass marker. When wandering the world, your compass comes up with icons that say there is something off in a particular direction. No longer are you able to run around and hit something and say, "Wow, cool, look at this place," like you did in Morrowind. No, you run around and your magical compass says, "Object over there." This kills the exploration aspect that enhanced Morrowind's appeal. No longer are you able to wander around and run into a surprise, instead, it is all told to you. Furthermore, the inclusion of the objective arrow is also lumped into the same brand of irritant. Why is it that when I enter an uncharted cave I know the guy I am seeking is in the region behind a specific door? I've never been there, I have no map, yet I know that the target is off in a very specific direction.
Again, I have to thank the modding community for fixing this heinous problem. There exists a mod you can install that not only turns off fast travel, but also gets rid of those obnoxious compass markers and turns it into an every day compass, not a hyper magic one.
Yet another huge aspect of Oblivion are the quests. The sheer volume of quests in Oblivion are eye-popping. You first have your main quest, which takes around 30 hours to complete (10-15 if you use fast travel). Then you have your main faction quests, the Fighter's Guild, the Mage's Guild, the Thieves' Guild, and the Black Hand. Each one of them takes up roughly another 30 hours each (again, 10-15 using fast travel). Then you have a massive chunk of other quests, like the Arena, stuff from the various counts and townsfolk that persist in the world. There are even quests you can stumble on that never get put into the quest book, like one I ran into at a place called Lost Boy Caverns (no, no vampires here, despite the similarities with the movie) had journal entries strewn about telling a story and a treat at the end. All told, to do every quest, it may run you anywhere from 150-200 hours (again, much shorter if fast travel is utilized, like the 60 hours I logged in so I could review this thing in a reasonable timeframe).
Not only are the quests huge, they also each tell a story. Many would think that the sheer size of Oblivion would create a problem with story telling, or that the only way to tell a decent story is to distil the game down into a more Japanese style RPG with a single plot line and minimal side-quests. That is thankfully not true of Oblivion. Through the tons of quests you can easily find thousands of pages of story, enough to lay a chokehold on the most identifiable of RPGs, like Final Fantasy.
Through the stories and other nice touches like character schedules, Bethesda managed to create a living, breathing world out of the province of Cyrodiil. Most characters have problems, most of them have their story, and rumors persist, many of them just little touches that have no broad meaning, about characters and places. NPCs talk amongst each other and the volumes of books abound tell an even greater story of the province of Cyrodiil, Tamriel as a whole, and a full range of historical texts. Oblivion's massive physical size is only surpassed by its depth.
To tie this living, breathing world with some quality gameplay mechanics is the visuals. To put it bluntly, Oblivion is absolutely impressive. The world and character details are insane, the lip-synching on each character is well done, and the draw distance will give you chills the first time you look out on the outside world (and hits you real well after the tutorial in a cramped catacomb and sewer). The physics engine is also well done. Most objects you see can be moved or otherwise manipulated. For example, I got a bit irritated that a shop-keep was refusing my generous offer (mostly due to my poor mercantile skill), so I tossed a few fireballs around and sent all his wares tumbling around the store. I made one huge mess of the place (though, unfortunately, I didn't get yelled at, nor did he clean it up the next time I went through). The characters also have a more advanced rag-doll physics. Early rag-doll has a problem where characters can flop in unnatural positions. While Oblivion hasn't fully fixed this, Bethesda did put into their models the concept of range of motion, so no longer will an enemy's leg wind up parallel to their back or in a number of other strange positions.
The performance is also solid. My PC, specs at the end of the review, runs the game very well with most of the features turned up and on high. I personally don't believe in a frames per second test and judge purely by eye, and I can say that with my over a year old system the game still runs well at my standard 1024x768 resolution. The only part of the graphics engine that is, well, done badly is the self-shadowing. It simply looks bad and has a lot of weird shading that reminds me of cross-hatch shading you would learn in elementary school art class. I turned it off obviously, but other effects like HDR were impressive, though apparently the engine won't allow HDR and anti-aliasing to go together, and I am not quite sure why, because HDR and FSAA work well together in Half-Life 2 on my system.
To top things off, Bethesda went all-out in the sound department. Heading up the quality voice acting is Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard from ST:TNG and Professor X in X-Men), Sean Bean (Boromir from the LoTR trilogy plus a number of other, mostly bad guy, roles), Terence Stamp (General Zod from Superman 2 and other scary old guy roles), and Lynda Carter (as any convention attendee would recognize as the star of the 1970's TV series Wonder Woman). They are backed up by a host of quality voice actors. What is impressive is that every spoken line in the game is voiced over. They are done so well that you can turn off the subtitles and have no trouble following any dialogue in the entire game.
Other sounds are present as well, such as armor clinks, footsteps, water splashes, things hitting the ground, and scenery noise. There is a strange sound that follows me around all over, and I have yet to discover it. It was present in Morrowind as well, it sounds somewhat like a gurgling sound, almost if my avatar was hungry, though I am aware of no such hunger issue (and even stuffed my face with around 100 food items as a test). The sound never went away and would pop up now and again independent of location or situation. This may be an underlying bug with the ambient sound track as the problem persisted with different sound cards, computer systems, and through updated drivers.
Ultimately, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an incredibly solid RPG. The sheer variety of gameplay elements available, paths you can take, and quests in the game make it well worth a purchase. There is no reason why any RPG aficionado should not own this title.
Relevant PC Specs:
Processor – 2.2GHz AMD64 3500+
Video – 256MB GeForce 6800 GT
RAM – 1 GB
Sound – Sound Blaster Audigy 2
