The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

To put it bluntly--and as reductively as possible--Oblivion is very, very unpolished and demonstrates little in the way of virtuous game development. Animations are stiff and often lack transitions, there are no animations for diagonal movement, HDR and bloom are blurry and blinding, water looks horrid even by the standards of the time, every character looks like a potato, the outfits are gaudy, the voice acting is C-list at best, the dialogue is very cheesy, and the main story is easily the most terrible of any game I have ever played.

It remains, however, one of the best games I have ever played. See, nothing really quite manages to draw me in like Oblivion did so many years ago, and even to this day, I can endlessly replay it without boredom. There is always something new to discover, some hidden quest I passed by in my previous playthroughs, items to collect, characters to meet, and curious locations to explore. And of course, it has most likely the best side quests of any game I have played next to The Witcher 3.

Truly, if Oblivion is to be applauded for anything, it must be the absolute ingenuity of its quest design and writing. Ranging from hilarious and off-the-cuff comedies to dark and macabre tragedies, each one acts as a little self-contained narrative filled with drama and just the right amount of irony. The vibe I get from this game's dialogue in general is similar to, perhaps, a Shakespeare play or an opera. It's whimsical and aloof, but grounded when necessary. All the while, juxtaposition is carried out gracefully--even the most evil and secretive of societies like to have fun, after all.

The game has aged terribly--but that only adds to the experience. Oblivion's implementation of Havok physics is rudimentary and results in objects either slowly falling to the ground--as if Nirn had the gravitational pull of the moon--or flying across the room at dangerous velocities like they were launched from the Hadron Collider. Ragdolls will shake uncontrollably when they get caught in a closing door, objects can be used to phase through walls, paintbrushes inexplicably float in the air when dropped, allowing the player to make impromptu staircases to exit the bounds of accessible areas (this is an integral part of a speedrun strategy that can take you right to the end of the game!)

On top of the physics-based jank, there are the trappings of an AI simulation that is a bit too big for Oblivion's breeches. This can result in hilarious and unexpected outcomes, like a certain beggar in Bravil being slaughtered by guards for stealing a loaf of bread, or NPCs mentioning how much they hate an NPC right to that NPC's face, which results in absolutely no backlash. The best part of this system is that it gives NPCs routines and needs, which can be abused by an unscrupulous player in many ways. For example, at some point in the Dark Brotherhood questline the player receives poisoned apples that can be used to furtively assasinate NPCs. To use them, the player needs to remove all the food in an area, then drop the poisoned apples. NPCs will eat the apples when they are scheduled to eat, which causes them to humorously groan as they eat, until their body pops up into the air and floats gently back down. It's actually ridiculously funny and I could do it for hours.

Another great/cruel trick revolves around enchanted rings. If you create a custom enchantment on a ring that deals constant damage to the wearer, you can pickpocket it into NPCs' pockets, and they will wear it, causing them to burn/electrocute/freeze to death. Although this AI system is nowhere near as advanced as it was in its initial implementation, it's still very fun to mess around with.

Similarly, this game has bugs. Lots of them. While some are gamebreaking and prevent the player from completing quests, others are simply funny or exploitable. Players can use scrolls to infinitely duplicate items, or use quicksaves to travel around the game quickly while retaining their quest progress and inventory. In that sense, the bugs don't actually detract from the experience--they ARE the experience.

It may perhaps sound like Oblivion is great for the same reason Tommy Wisseau's The Room was a "great" movie; but I assure you that isn't the case, at least not entirely. There is some true merit in the game, like the aforementioned quests, but also the game's open world itself. The environments are veritable theme parks, ranging from the snowy Skyrim-esque Jerall mountains to the dank and alien swamps near Leyawiin. Each is fun to explore and contains no shortage of dungeons to delve into, unmarked easter eggs to come across, and other little curiosities.

The weakest part of exploration, however, is easily the dungeon design. Apparently only one developer was tasked with making them, because they are all typically quite small and take place in only a single loading zone. Unlike in Skyrim, the dungeons almost never loop back around to the beginning, so once you clear it out, you have to trek back through all the way to the entrance, which can take several minutes in more lengthy dungeons. Assets and prefabs are chronically overused, and you will encounter the same traps, puzzles, and layouts over and over again. Enemies are typically always goblins, bandits, renamed bandits, necromancers, or bandits; but, you might come across certain dungeons that actually have fairly interesting enemies belonging to our common conception of high fantasy, like will 'o the wisps, ogres, trolls, ghosts, undead skeletons, or conjurers. Compared to Skyrim, enemy variety in Oblivion is actually quite high, and each one feels at least somewhat unique to fight against. It's fun to actually encounter something other than Falmer or Draugr, after all.

The highlight of Oblivion, apart from the quests, is easily the spellcrafting and enchanting systems. With enough gold and magicka, it's possible to create completely overpowered spells that make the game trivial, like fireballs that span the width of rooms, instantly obliterating enemies and sending them flying. Swords can be enchanted to paralyze foes, meaning that they get stuck in whatever animation they held when you struck them and amusingly fall to the floor like statues, allowing you to wail on them forever until they die. Armor can be enchanted to allow movement speeds faster than even the speediest horses, and on top of that, you can enhance your jumping ability too, allowing you to shoot up about three or four stories into the air.

While I'm at it, I might as well mention Skooma, a magical drug and hallucinogen that greatly enhances the user's speed and strength at the cost of cognitive ability. In Oblivion, unlike Skyrim, Skooma actually does something--and it's glorious. The speed-enhancing effect stacks infinitely, and if the player consumes enough, he can run faster than the game's zone loading can keep up. It's a testament to how great this game's relaxation of balance really is.

I would be amiss if I didn't say that Oblivion is deeply flawed. Level scaling is done very poorly and axes any feeling of progression (provided you aren't using exploits to turn yourself into a god) by constantly beefing up enemy health and damage as you level up. The level scaling keeps even lowly bandits a constant threat, and considering that it will eventually cause them to equip the best armor in the game once you reach a certain level, suspends a certain amount of logic and immersion. Daedric armor is supposed to be extremely rare, given that it's made from an elusive material that has been modified by a literal demonic pact, and yet bandits will eventually wear it en masse.

Additionally, if you make poor decisions while building your class and playing the game, you can find your own power level outpaced by the progression of enemies. For example, if you choose Alchemy and Athletics as major skills, you will gain progress toward leveling up each time those skills are leveled, even if your other combat skills don't increase. As a result, if you make a ton of potions and run around the map, your player's level will be high, but your combat skills too low to put up much of a fight against level-scaled enemies. This game design oversight has, I'm sure, frustrated many players.

In the end, Oblivion occupies a very special place in my heart. It was my first introduction to open world RPGs as a genre, and easily the most accessible one at the time. Despite its flaws and the obvious inexperience of the Bethesda crew, it remains one of the best RPGs of all time simply because it got so much right in the first place. In fact, the flaws themselves have a bit of charm about them that hasn't diminished with time. If you haven't played Oblivion, I urge you to pick up a copy right now and give it a go--you won't regret it.

I've played well over 100 hours of various Bethesda games but I've never beaten one proper until this one, but now that I've seen what it all led up to I'm comfortable with not needing to ever complete the main quest in any of these games again, lol.

"Oblivion is a Bethesda game" is about all you need to know--this was the clear beginning of the formula they've run with mostly unmodified for the better part of two decades, and once you get into it, it plays nearly identical to any of the others. Much ink has been spilled about the "loot loop" and from what I've seen so far, this was really the first Bethesda game that cared more about the loot loop than the role-playing. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is a deeply thought out world with tons of moving parts and stuff to get invested in, Oblivion is a video game (emphasis on "game") where you grind caves or gates or dungeons for gear/money with a mostly standard high fantasy skin with some demons from a Doom game thrown in sometimes.

That isn't to say Oblivion is a bad game--far from it--but man, does it wash over you. I feel like I played 35 hours of Subway Surfers. The story is not even a draw in the slightest--go get this item, ok now go get this item, ok now go seal these oblivion gates, remember this is to Preserve The Royal Bloodline!! It's not offensive or bad (except that (apparently optional, whoops) part where you have to close like 8 incredibly repetitive Oblivion gates in a row), but, like, it's giving Nothing. Generic at every step. There's never a point where you actually care about what you're doing past it being something to do.

But this is the formula. Unlike Morrowind or Fallout: New Vegas, you can be all things to all people. You can join every faction and do basically every quest, but in removing these barriers, Oblivion disincentivizes roleplay and instead incentivizes dispassionate interaction with the world, incentivizes clicking through text boxes so they give you a waypoint that you can go to and kill some things and get an item and come back, just to do it again. This is the eternal problem of basically every post-Morrowind Bethesda game, but playing Oblivion to completion is where it finally clicked what puts me off about these games. Like many big-budget AAA games, they are made to be toys to play with and little else--the world is only there for set dressing. Even the ending reflects this--after Saving The World (and being shown a short cinematic), you are immediately dumped back in so you can continue doing more quests, forever, turning any sense of victory or accomplishment into something much more hollow.

When playing it, it's fine, it's entertaining, it's better than scrolling social media or whatever other means of wasting time. But when I closed it, especially as I grew closer to the end, I was struck by how much it was just A Thing To Do and how little it was a Work that I Engaged With. Which probably is to be expected out of a Bethesda game, but it's still lame.

The trajectory of The Elder Scrolls - from rough freeform complexity to polished, restrictive 'streamlining', attained a magical balance with Morrowind. But the release of Oblivion began their descent towards the latter end, of guided storytelling, less complex RPG mechanics, fully-action combat and lush environments, i.e. towards greater mass appeal. Like its predecessor, much of the intrigue is owed to its playstyles. This time it's the leveling system that influences gameplay, and in particular their major/minor skills, of which only the former awards level EXP. When played normally (as in: selecting the right major skills for one's intended build), the experience suffers from oppressive level-scaling and chronically weak combat. When played in reverse (as in: by assigning seldom-used talents as major skills), the player is faced with an oddly accommodating RPG. Morrowind had balanced this by way of dice rolls, which made building low-level misc skills (here known as minor skills) especially difficult without a trainer. Their absence this time around allows one to easily hone skills regardless of the character's class, and even stay at level 1 for hundreds of hours (although exempted from major quests and stuck with lesser treasure). It's yet another exploit-prone system, but the exploit's effect on gameplay is unusual: Players level up with complete agency and ideally when prepared to increase the difficulty & loot. As skills improve, the attribute bonuses of old lead to carefully-sculpted builds reminiscent of Pokemon's EV-training.

Acrobatics (or regular jumping in general) replaced jump spells as the alternative means of world traversal, now equipped with much better air control that - at high levels, turns dungeons into quasi-platformer stages (with potential for sequence breaking). The rest is a mixed bag that's heavier on the negatives: Features such as spellmaking and enchanting are tidied up and locked behind quests. Weapons lack feedback despite removing skill-based hit chance. The icon compass and a return to fast-travel-from-anywhere detract from the sense of discovery. And finally the inclusion of voiced dialogue (more than a line or two) indirectly reduces the quality of writing, but that does little to hurt their scenario-building.

Enemies are bullet sponges.
This isn't polished or fun in anyway, why bother?

Don't believe the fans and critics, this still remains the only Bethesda game that stood the test of time.

I first played Oblivion around the time it launched back in 2006 and I will never forget the experience. I’d just escaped the Imperial Sewers and was exploring the ruins nearby when the ATI Radeon 9800 in my Dell desktop decided to crap out on me. The computer kept working, somehow, but refused to ever run another game, and so thereafter was relegated to writing college papers and piping tunes into my tiny apartment. A few years later when I replaced the graphics card the entire rig was well past its prime.

Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that when I finally got around to playing Oblivion again this year, the most memorable moments revolved around corpses.

Yes. Corpses.

If we consider my GPU to be the first corpse, than the second would be that of poor Prior Maborel. He died early in my playthrough and forever after lay prone before Wenyon Priory’s front door. I’d converted one of the priory’s many chests into a storage spot for my loot, and every time I visited to organize my gear, Prior Maborel was there to greet me with his lifeless eyes. More alarming still was the way his fellow clergymen walked past him, oblivious to his existence. Perhaps they felt that if they avoided acknowledging his death, he would never truly be gone.

Then there was my encounter with Else God-Hater, an unfortunate lass whose life was ruined by love of the drink. Late in my quest to save Tamriel, as I was seeking room and board in Skingrad, Ms. God-Hater drew her blade and violently lashed out at me. With assistance from the inn’s many patrons I soon subdued her, at which point she fell to her knees beside the bar, one arm splayed across the counter. In that moment, she was the splitting image of a lush who’d imbibed a few pints too many. Was she really a Mythic Dawn agent, or just a raging alcoholic, venting her emotions before the stupor hit?

If only I could’ve checked her pulse.