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The
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Score:
9.8 / 10
If
I were asked to create the perfect virtual fantasy world, it would not
involve wandering through vast fields to pick rare wildflowers. Regular
church attendance would not be mandatory, I would not painstakingly
scale imposing mountains to fetch obscure books for snotty jerks, and I
would almost certainly never get involved in an argument between two
crazy women, a bunch of giant pet rats, and a pack of starving mountain
lions. Jogging would be scorned. With the exception of the starving
mountain lions, these are all tasks that intrepid ex-girlfriends have
tried to impose on me. So, it's a testament to the talents of the team
at Bethesda Softworks that, for the past four years, I have eagerly
awaited the most recent installment of their Elder Scrolls series:
Oblivion, a game in which all of the elements listed above are
unavoidable.
Actually, "eagerly awaited" is an understatement of
Rumsfeldian proportions. Maybe "changed my PIN code a couple of
months ago to reflect Oblivion's impending release date" better
reflects my attitude. To summarize, Oblivion is a vast role playing game
in which you initially find yourself imprisoned. The emperor of the
land, voiced by Patrick Stewart, comes into your cell with a bunch of
guards, looking for a way out of town. He says he's seen your face in a
dream. Then, your group is beset by mysterious assassins, and the
emperor is viciously murdered. But before he dies, he gives you a sacred
amulet to deliver and says that you must help save the world from
marauding demons, who are opening portals to hell everywhere, and will
soon destroy civilization as you know it.
And so I set out, with a sense of great urgency, to find something
easier to do.
For me, this involved making random potions using the hundreds of plants
and mushrooms dotting the 16 square miles of lush landscape. In between,
I fought many angry mud crabs. Now that I think of it, maybe this is why
I’ve never been able to get anyone else I know interested in this
game--my first 5 hours could be a Barbie: Horse Adventures quest.
(No, seriously guys! You can run and hop around while you look for
flowers to pick. Check it out, I‘m sneaking past an angry rat! Sneak
stat. Yeah!)
But, this is exactly what makes Oblivion such a great game.
The ability to pick a race, customize your own character class, pick an
astrological birth sign that gives you really cool special abilities and
tailor your physical appearance using a huge array of sliders is only
the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
the freedom you have to play how you want. The game really does embrace
virtually any style of play—if you are so inclined, you can sneak
around in the dead of night, pick pockets and
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If
Oblivion has any faults at all, it’s that the game is not very
welcoming to beginners (although that certainly doesn‘t appear to have
hurt sales). The designers at Bethesda have once again outdone
themselves with the controls--which are very intuitive, even with a
control pad in charge of a dizzying array of spells, potions, weapons,
torches, etc. etc.--but, there are, partly by necessity, many, many,
many menu screens.
Like many RPG fans, I love menu screens. They remind me how loaded I am.
But newbies will likely spend several hours getting accustomed to the
maps, inventory screens, quest logs, spell assignment buttons and so
forth that are an essential part of the game.
So, there’s a serious learning curve for the uninitiated, but despite
that, one of the most impressive aspects of the game is how much it
actually does have going on under the hood. Character development is an
organic process. If you tend to head into every battle swinging, you get
better at using your sword. If you favor spell casting, you get better
at that. In fact, virtually all of your actions in the game--even
mundane tasks like running from place to place or bartering with
shopkeepers--are things that your character will improve upon every time
they are done. Of course, this all sounds like old hat to RPG veterans,
but Bethesda pioneered this type of design, and they still do it very,
very well.
The hundreds of sub-quests in the game are also very well designed.
Whether you are trying to rise up through the ranks of the guilds,
assassinate NPCs through the “Dark Brotherhood,“ do favors for the
locals such as fighting off ghost pirates or breaking up
thief/prostitution rings, or simply plunder caves and dungeons, most
quests can be accomplished within an hour or two, particularly with the
game’s “fast travel” feature, a vast improvement over
Morrowind’s Stilt Striders.
Other quests, such as curing yourself of vampirism (should you contract
it and want to get rid of it) are almost like a game within a game,
requiring you to visit multiple locations and discern clues and
directions through dozens of conversations with NPCs. Still others, such
as a quest to find 10 “nirnroot” plants in exchange for a potion
that had better defy my previous conceptions of whoopass, naturally drop
onto the back burner as you attend to whatever other business is
immediately at hand.
It’s a fantastic design that makes you feel as if you’ve been
dropped into an exquisitely detailed, fully realized world, with great
NPC intelligence, an unexpected sub-plot around every corner, and plenty
of opportunities to just get lost and enjoy the absolutely gorgeous
scenery.
One minor gripe--more like an aspect of an otherwise incredible game
that could use improvement--is that the game’s economy is still a bit
problematic. We’re dealing with a medieval society here, so it makes
sense that even the wealthiest shopkeepers have only a few hundred gold
to trade with at any given time, that the hoarded treasure throughout
the game will be doled out in relatively small portions, and that even
the richest NPCs only carry a few “Septims” on them at any given
time. But, a game where you can purchase fabulous mansions for tens of
thousands of gold, and find ancient weapons much more valuable than you
could possibly sell them for, begs for a better system for dealing in
high level equipment and other premium goods and services, especially
when everything else is leveling up around you as you advance. It’s
tough to believe that all of the nobles you can meet in the game got to
where they are by fighting and betting in the Arena.
Morrowind overcame these problems with a bankrolled imp at the back of a
bar, and a very rich drunken, talking mud crab on a small island in the
middle of nowhere who would buy pretty much anything for top dollar. By
contrast, in Oblivion, you can bludgeon a man named Dorian in his own
home and steal as many millions as you want through a glitch, or when
your bartering stats reach a high enough level, you can “invest” in
shops run by NPCs. This basically involves handing over several grand
for the privilege of being able to earn some of that money back by
selling your higher level loot to those same merchants.
Again,
in a game based primarily on questing and dungeon crawling, many players
are going to overlook this issue. But the economy is one aspect of the
world of Tamriel that, if improved, could really take this franchise to
an entirely different level. Imagine, for example, that a couple of
nobles were real freaks about a couple of specific types of enchanted
weaponry that weren’t tied to a quest. Or, at a more ambitious end of
the spectrum, imagine if, with sufficient incoming funds through
investments in shops and land, you could select and hire your own
retainers, and as a result, have an entirely different set of priorities
involving the politics that are already embedded in this world.
The Elder Scrolls series is really the last of a dying breed. Single
player RPGs with medieval themes were once one of the primary, driving
forces of the gaming industry, but now MMORPGs have overtaken them, and
not really for the better in terms of innovation. I’ve still got a lot
of hope for Molyneaux’s Fable series, but honestly, despite all of the
hype, and the fact that, in the end, it was a very fun game, many of its
supposed innovations had already been accomplished by Bethesda.
I’m very happy that these guys have made tons of dough off of
Oblivion, because I still haven’t handed that Amulet over, and I
already can‘t wait to see what the series has in store next. It’s
become so rare to see a studio with a real hit franchise on their hands
that doesn’t just sit down and milk it as a cash cow. These guys have
a bigger stake though, because in many ways, they’re now bearing the
burden of moving an entire genre forward.
-
M. Enis
(May
26, 2006)
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