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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion |
Xbox 360 - Bethesda Softworks - RPG - M |
| When comparing Oblivion to past Elder Scrolls titles, you get mixed results. In a nutshell, fifty percent of the game is a step forward for the series, while the other fifty percent is a step back. |
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| Oblivion’s adventure takes place solely in Cyrodiil. In contrast to past Elder Scrolls environments, it’s not exactly an ideal fantasy sandbox environment; it’s less creative and far less varied. Your overworld consists of green graze lands dotted with forests and a section of snow covered hills. That’s it. Not nearly as interesting as, say, Morrowind’s combination of plains, swamps, mountains, dust bowls, and vast seas. |
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| Regardless of this lack of environmental creativity, Oblivion’s artistic direction in general is a major step back. Despite its predecessors’ foundations, Oblivion is engulfed in a cheesy, high-fantasy design; the kind of stuff you’d find in a Boris Vallejo painting, only somehow even more generic and uninspired. The armor you find in this game is just embarrassingly ugly and the weaponry is as medieval fantasy standard as you can get. There is no originality in any aspect of any visual instance in Oblivion. It has all been ripped from various fantasy clichés and formulas, which wouldn’t necessarily be so bad if the source material was actually good in the first place. Oblivion is aesthetically soulless. |
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| Herein lies both the beauty and the importance of the Elder Scrolls’ Construction Set; don’t like Oblivion’s artistic direction? Change it. Now, the game’s aesthetic is limited to the fanbase's imagination. Unfortunately, the Construction Set is limited only to the PC version of Oblivion. 360 players (despite their stunning graphics, streamlined controls, and intended interface) are stuck with Oblivion’s third-rate art direction. |
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| Despite my complaints regarding the game's creativity, Oblivion is polished all to hell. You can’t deny that. The game screams high budget, streamlined presentation. From the fantastic voice acting, to the dramatic introduction, to the epic story arc and the series’ own background lore, Oblivion is presented to you on a silver platter. It’s done very well, and this is key because the aesthetics are an easily fixable blemish, but the foundation for all your own work to be placed in the game is pretty damn spotless. |
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| Another great improvement to the series is combat. Gone are the under-the-hood “dice rolls” to determine if you strike an opponent in combat. Here, if you hit somebody in the face with an axe, then you hit somebody in the face with an axe, no “to hit” roll or five minutes of swinging repeatedly at a rat only to find your blade connecting once. This is a drastic, drastic (I can’t emphasize this enough), drastic improvement to the game’s combat system that, honestly, would have been improvement enough to keep me satisfied. Luckily for the rest of you, there are more tweaks. Added in is the ability to manually block, not only with shields, but with swords, axes, and maces as well. In fact, virtually any weapon, be it a bow or even your fists if necessary, can be used to deflect an incoming melee attack. |
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| Combat as well as non-combative skills are both further supplemented by Perks; talents instantly added to your repertoire when a prerequisite level in a specific skill or ability has been reached. Most abilities give you three to five perks, depending on how far you develop a skill. For example, a novice rank (level five) in the Armorer ability grants you the ability to repair your own equipment. An apprentice in Armorer (level 25) has access to repair hammers that last twice as long before breaking. A journeyman Armorer (level 50) can repair magical items. An expert (level 75) can actually make items better by "repairing" them to 125% of their base statistics. Finally, a master (level 100) never breaks repair hammers (far more invaluable that it sounds). Each of the game’s 21 skills have their own set of unique perks, with the exception of the six available magic disciplines. Instead of perks, experienced spellcasters gain access to more successively powerful spells. For instance, a journeyman Conjurer can summon fodder like skeletons, zombies and imps to fight by his side, but an expert can call forth a truly mighty companion like a Lich or even a Dremora Lord. |
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| For those not familiar with The Elder Scrolls’ leveling system, here’s a crash course; there is no traditional RPG experience system in play here. You don’t kill an enemy and get rewarded with experience upon the bout’s conclusion. Instead, your abilities simply improve, on the fly, as you use them. The first time you pick up a sword, you’re not going to be as proficient as the thousandth time you’ve run a goblin through with one, right? Well, despite being a master swordsman, you can still pick up an axe, club, or a bow and completely suck at using it, despite being a legendary level 40 character. Each ability is governed individually, which makes each character build unique...In theory. |
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| Unfortunately, this time around, the traditional Elder Scrolls set up has been absolutely butchered. Most likely in an attempt to entice new gamers to the Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda has opted to combine various skills into simpler, compact categories. Gone are short and long blade skills, in their place is the singular “blade” weapon skill, and worse yet; staffs, maces, and even axes (yes, axes) are now all governed under the blunt weapon skill. And upsetting the skill balance even further, some skills have been outright removed; unarmored, throwing weapons and enchanting are but a few unfortunate skills lost. Oblivion simplifies more that just its skill set, armor has been abridged as well. Prior to Oblivion, you were able to equip individual pauldrons and gauntlets. Now, pauldrons are an inseparable part of your cuirass and gloves are a “wear one, wear the other” affair. No more mixing and matching. This doesn’t sound like that big of a problem, but coupled with the over simplification of the game’s skills, less quests that past Elder Scrolls titles, far less joinable factions, fewer weapons and armor, and NPCs that wear "non-playable" equipment (a huge Elder Scrolls no-no), it’s easy to see that a good portion of the game was simply condensed. This drastically hurts the game overall, especially considering the epic, open-ended foundation the previous games in the series have laid before it. |
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| If that wasn’t enough, they’ve decided to take the shred of the traditional system that still remains and run it through a meat grinder by implementing a near game-breaking level scaling system that is truly the game’s most glaring flaw. Essentially ninety percent of the game world scales to your level. What this means is that you will only find equipment and fight enemies that mirror your own character’s level. While on paper this sounds great, it is actually very poorly implemented. Since you only level up when you choose to by finding a bed and sleeping, the entire game can be completed at level 1 due to your ability to neglect becoming more powerful, thus keeping the game world at a static level 1. This essentially negates any motivation to level up. And if there was, you really aren’t becoming any more powerful because everything else is leveling up along with you. Even worse is that since only a fraction of Oblivion’s skills are combat-based, every time you level a non-combat oriented skill, you are actually becoming weaker because all your foes are simultaneously leveling in combat-only oriented skills. You’ll find “leveled”, homeless bandits stronger than demons threatening the world, begging for money but wearing end-game armor that is supposedly extremely rare and super expensive. Vanquishing the Champion of the Empire at level 1 and subsequently realizing that each and every guy outside the city is stronger than him is not "open-ended", it's ridiculous. What you’re left with is essentially a role playing game that prevents role playing. |
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| Worse yet is that since everything mirrors your character, by the time you hit the end of the game’s own behind the scenes leveled loot lists (around level 25), you’ve essentially seen everything Oblivion has to offer. All the caves are the same. All the mines are the same. All the forts are the same. You walk in, they spawn some enemies geared to your level, you kill them, you grab predictable loot geared to your level, you leave. There's no exploration, no mystery, no sense of a living, breathing world. By being so dynamic, the game world actually becomes static. Another blow against the game’s immersion is, unlike previous Elder Scrolls installments, guilds and large quests don’t overlap properly. For example, rise to the top of the Mage’s guild, become the Archmage, and join the Thieves guild; you’ll eventually have to take on a quest that requires you steal an item from the Archmage. Most of the guilds conflict with each other in this way, and the fact that the head of the Dark Brotherhood can join the Fighter’s guild, which requires a clean rap sheet, is completely against the Elder Scrolls grain. |
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| The good news is the majority of these flaws can be (and already have been) fixed by the game’s own fan base; the bad news is the 360 version is alienated from these fixes. 360 owners are simply going to be stuck with a fantastic, but heavily flawed adventure. The PC version is definitely the best way to go here, if you have a choice. But if you don’t, you’ll have to ask yourself if you can overlook these excessively disrupting imperfections to experience what is essentially a watered down, but much prettier version of past Elder Scrolls games. Then again, if you haven’t played any of the earlier Elder Scrolls titles, you won’t even know what you’re missing, and by all means, dive right in. |
Rating |
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9.5 |
 ++ Absolutely stunning. |
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8.9 |
 ++ Another fantastic soundtrack from genre veteran Jeremy Soule. + Excellent sound effects, and generally very well done voice acting, especially from Martin Septim, voiced by Sean Bean. |
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7.0 |
 ++ Combat has been given a major overhaul and is extremely visceral, exiting, and enjoyable. - Passively oriented situations such as bartering and speechcraft can become very tedious. You’ll spend a lot of time doing things that are simply not fun. -- A broken leveled system nearly ruins the game. - The game was definitely suited for the 360, the controls and menus both fit it better than the PC. |
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5.0 |
 -- Aesthetically repulsive to the point that it’s almost impressive how ugly all the NPCs, armor, and creatures are. ++ Oblivion’s artistic saving grace is the game’s amount of polish and its slick presentation, both of which are outstanding. |
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7.0 |
 - Exceptional, until you hit the brick wall that comes anywhere between level 20 and 30. Either your non-combat skills are too evolved and you will simply be unable to advance in the game due to its superiorly leveled enemies, or you will have seen everything the game has to offer and have no reason to continue. |
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7.5 |
 + Despite numerous poorly implemented features, there’s a decent amount of gaming here to enjoy, but only if you’re willing to overlook a handful of glaring flaws. |
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