Oblivion: One of the Most Memorable Games I've Ever Played

Although Morrowind (the game that came before Oblivion in the Elder Scrolls series) has been around for quite a while, Oblivion is really the canon game that the Elder Scrolls Series has needed to do it and its series stature a true justice.

Personally, I'm not the biggest person on RPGs. Especially the free-form dungeon crawling type. I'm personally more for the action and the plot-driven games. I'm not sure what initially drew me to this game, considering that it isn't something necessarily that would fall under something that I would normally want to go out and just play with. However, perhaps it's all the openness that Oblivion has in its game system and game play that drew me to it. I could play it like I would play another game.

Regardless though, I eventually decided to take that DVD disc, place it in the tray and install the game on my hard drive. Since then I lost many days that could've been used for productive things to this game. I'm not sure whether or not it was a smart pay-off, but I do know that I enjoyed every single second of not being productive.

Anyway, I'm sure that most of you are aware of the whole nature of Oblivion, and the rest of series. If you haven't though, here is the skinny.

Oblivion offers you perhaps the most innovative and open-ended game play that you have ever experienced. Not only is there a huge landscape for you to explore (an entire country actually), there are many different towns and cities, and detailed land markers in the entire place in between for you to interact with. You can become whatever sort of character you want, based off your decisions and choices of interaction with other characters as well. Essentially, you immerse yourself into the world of Cyrodiil.

Oblivion essentially makes "free-form" games like Fable look like y = mx + b (linear). If you haven't experienced the nature of Oblivion, you should do so.

Game Mechanics
At the start of the game, you are given the option to create your own character. You have the choice between many different races (each with their own advantages and disadvantages depending on what sort of character you want to play as), faces, hair, eyes, etc. Although the characters mainly stay within the same area of selection (unless you create your own using the modification system which I will talk about later), you are given a lot of options for what your character looks like.

The game is played mostly in the first person view, although for the first time, you are allowed to view your character in third person (which is useful, especially if you prefer the third-person view point). The combat system has more in common with an FPS than a normal RPG. Although there are algorithms and such that the game uses to determine what misses and what damages, you are not confined to dice rolls or pure luck. You control how you attack, and what strategies you want to use to devour your enemies into the abyss.

You are also given freeform elements about how you want to do battle. You can choose to be a straight up fighter, or a background archer. Perhaps you want to be a stealthy but powerful mage. One of the ways that you can lead your character into becoming the sort of battler that you want them to become is through the game's class system. Near the beginning of the game (but not right away), you are given a choice of what class you want your character to become (and you can make your own as well.) These classes determine your major skills. When you improve these major skills (which are based on an experience point system. Eg: You get points in "Sneak" when you sneak around a lot), you level up to the next level, and get to determine new attributes.

One of the most important things to understand with the mechanics of the game is that almost everything you do is counting for something. Simply running all over the town or the world outside will give you points in your athletics ability. When these skills improve (both major and minor) you will find yourself able to do the things in the skill areas much better. If you want to be able to run faster, upgrade your athletics skill. If you want to be able to pick any lock in the country, upgrade your security skills. You can choose accordingly to what you want as your major skills (which are more prominent into what sort of character you have) so that they fit your preferences.

Finally, character interaction is another important aspect of the mechanics of the game. You can persuade people and gain favor with them, or perhaps you can make them despise you. Character interaction is also an important part in completing and finding various quests (and there are a lot of quests in this world). Along with this, you can also join various guilds, such as the Fighter's guild (it helps if your character is a fighting oriented character) and find quests within the specific type that fits your character's combat style.

Graphics
I can't be sure that I am a good authority on the graphics of this game. I am running currently a rather old computer, and am greatly held back by my video card (which is pretty old) and my processor. However, I was able to boost my resolution and frame rate using mods (which I will mention later in this review) and got the game looking pretty good.

Although this game isn't quite on par with some of the other current games that are coming out (and considering that the world is so huge, it's hard to get all the little details down), the graphics are still pretty great. If you have the hardware to bump up the resolution and the filters, then go for it. There are also new textures that you can download from various Oblivion mod sites that will also improve the graphics, or mods that will lower the graphical detail and make your Oblivion run more efficiently (which is what I needed to do to get the game to run on something above 800 x 600). If you want to get a good gauge of the graphics, do a Google search to find some higher end pictures of the game.

The landscapes are quite detailed, and look brilliant (especially with the settings boosted.) The character designs are pretty good, although there does come a problem with the characters kind of looking the same after a while (as many of the textures, models and such are very similar or are exactly the same on some characters), but it's not something that would bother you unless it's something that really concerned you.

Game play
The game play, as with any video game really, is the major selling point of Oblivion. I have already talked about how open-ended and free form that this game is. It's one thing to hear about it, and another thing to experience it for you. When you're playing as the character, it doesn't feel like your controlling somebody else. Rather, it's almost as if you are placing yourself in that person's shoes.

Plot
As with the previous Elder Scrolls Games, there is a major story line that the game follows. However, you can choose whether or not you want to actually follow that plot line. You could play the whole game without even touching the major story quests, or you could play only the story quests, and then return for other quests later. It's up to you really.

The story of the game isn't the most original story that has ever appeared in an RPG (it's the usual, save the world kind of thing, but if it isn't broken, don't fix it right?), but it's interesting enough to give you an incentive to continue with the plot quests. The main story quests aren't very long overall, but with plenty of side quests for your character to embark on (if you even want to do the story quests), there is plenty of things to do with or without.

Audio
The sound aspect of the game is one of the most important factors to Oblivion as well.

Music serves two main functions. One is as a background piece of the game play. It's nice to have something quiet in the background playing as you are exploring the world around you. Its other function is to distinguish when your character has entered combat mode (your stealth meter can also tell you that if you are in stealth mode). If you gauge the music that is playing in the background, you can see things in your surroundings that you would've otherwise missed.

The sound effects are nothing spectacular, but suit the game well. You have the usual animal and people noises, as well as the general taking damage noises that you've heard millions of times before in any RPG or FPS that you've played in the past. Once again, a system that if it isn't broke, there is no need to fix it.

The dialogue is well done in Oblivion. The game starts out with a narration by Patrick Stewart (who also plays the Emperor Uriel in the beginning of the game), which is a major highlight. Although many of the NPCs that you come across have similar voices, the main characters of the game are quite distinguished, and you can see that they choose pretty good people to act the parts of the voices of the characters throughout the game.

Modding
Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of the game is the mod system. Even though you can spend weeks upon weeks doing all the things that are built into the game originally when you first install it, you can download mods to change the environment of the game, add quests, create new races, and generally change everything about the game in almost every way imaginable.

Perhaps you aren't satisfied with some of the races that you are given in the beginning, or maybe you want to change the appearance of your character or the NPCs throughout the game. All this can be done with a few Google searches and downloading of a modification file. You can also download a mod editor from Bethesda as well to create your own files and do as you please with the game.

The modding system isn't something that affects the main game play directly, but is one of the most important parts of the game's system. When you start getting into the mods of the game, you can really open up the potential of gameplay and mechanics.

Overall
Oblivion is one of the most innovative and memorable games that I have played within the last five years. I think that this game will still be hailed as one of the best for many years to come. It is simply breath taking with all the things that have gone into the development and the game play of this game.

Whether or not you are fan of the RPG style of gameplay, this game is one that you should consider. If you want to have a great time with one of the most memorable games that you will ever play, then you should consider picking up Oblivion at a nearby video game store.