The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

by Andrew Kao on December 23rd, 2008 at 2:06 am EDT - 209 views

Oblivion having been named game of the year for PC, must be some type of perfect game with no absolute flaws, right? Before I would begin I would have to say that whoever named Oblivion as a top PC game must have been absolutely correct, since all the other games that game out that same year, were either trash, handicapped, or brought memories of political fanaticism. Oblivion is by my terms relatively subpar. That’s right I said it. Oblivion is subpar.

The game starts out with you in jail, for some crime that is not named. Eventually the emperor during some escape and after a brief tutorial dungeon of some sorts, you are thrown out into a beautiful painting. Soon you embark on a storyline which at times doesn’t make any logical sense, like for example, the heir of the throne telling me to get some strange stone, that is of utter importance, while the rest of the guards just sit at home waiting for some enemy that never comes. This is probably due to my pickiness.

The game scenery is stunning, and the trees flow realistically. However I noticed that after walking for a few hours across the map, the scenery almost doesn’t change. It’s like the game developers decided to hire Kincaid to paint a beautiful scenery of trees and meadows and use that same plot for every square mile from here to Kansas. I started thinking at times that I was experiencing De Ja Vu every time I walked past a stone tower, that looked oddly like the stone tower I passed five minutes ago.

The NPC character although look pleasing to the eye, you start to notice that all of them look like they are in their mid forties, and most of them have to be related, since they all seem alike to one another. Its like someone made some wonderful characters and decided to clone them several hundred times, giving them each a slightly different macabre grimace. Although Bethesda was on the right track trying to make the NPCs realistic by giving them their own conversations, eventually however it gets repetitive, and many times the conversations sound just as awkward as Andy Rooney being caught by the cops for stealing a bunch of dinner rolls. Although it did make for some unusually funny moments when murdering someone right in front of the local law enforcement got me praises for my swordsmanship. The radiant AI which Bethesda claimed made their game so unique, in the end made all the NPC’s act like complete morons, like the way I was in elementary school when I disagreed with a fellow classmate. Another thing I found absolutely annoying was when I killed a guard perfectly without witnesses or him knowing, it seemed all of a sudden I became known all across the world as Cyrodil’s most wanted and soon I had the entire army on a manhunt out to get me. I also witnessed that many times either myself or an NPC pickpocketing food, the penalty would always equal out to death. It’s either the radiant AI failing or Bethesda deciding to find some way to educate the masses on the values of a totalitarian government.

You people are probably saying (shouting), “You obviously are too picky, it’s the gameplay that counts, and not how you interact with NPC’s and the environment.” Yes that is true probably with most games, however I thought this was an RPG, not some shooter games which I thoroughly enjoy. An RPG is supposed to immerse yourself, feeling as though you are your character. However every time I was feeling I was about to get sucked in, a bandit getting stuck between two rocks and saying the same insult every minute breaks my sense of virtual reality and snaps be back to reality.

If you are so picky about gameplay, here I go. Although compared to many RPG’s Oblivion makes switching between magic and combat relatively easy. However the animation feels somewhat awkward. When I aimed my arrows to the ground (Yes I know I’m a psychopath) and zoomed out to third person, my character was staring straight ahead like there was some strange way that defied physics that he could be looking at too places at once. Although the sword and bow combat feels relatively realistic, the movement with the character feels somewhat strange, depending on the direction where you move, you look like you are moon walking, or pretending to be Jackie Chan. When you get the higher lvls and are knocking people 30 feet into the air, the sense of combat realism falls apart. It’s like the game trying to decide whether its trying to be real or some scene from God of War.

Eventually in the game you muster enough money to buy a house, but after doing so I asked myself, why? Basically all it became used for was dropping my spoils of war. It soon became apparent to me, that my house was a big expensive toy chest. I guess however that is part of the RPG element.

Overall TES IV: Oblivion has many unique aspects as an RPG, however falls short. The immersion element of the game is destroyed by what the developers claimed made it more immersive in the first place. The combat system although above average, fails to make up for many other aspects of the game. However if it was me, I’d probably by the game, just to finish it.