Fans of Morrowind surely picked up Oblivion on release day, knowing they were getting a truly next-generation entry in the beloved Elder Scrolls series. Those that haven't played an Elder Scrolls game before might be wondering what the big deal is, or if they'll like it. Oblivion, like past Scrolls, is a sandbox game. While it is a roleplaying game, this is about as far from Final Fantasy and other Japanese RPGs as you can get. Rather than being led from dungeon to dungeon and watching cutscenes, western RPGs generally allow the player a great deal of freedom. Oblivion is no exception, giving the player total control over what he does and when. This is a true roleplaying game.

The game opens with a robust character creation system, allowing you to tweak dozens of sliders for various aspects of your character's appearance. This is fun, but because it's a first person game, you'll rarely see your face outside of the inventory game. Once finished with that, you find yourself in prison. The emperor, escorted by a few bodyguards comes down, fleeing from assasins. It turns out there's a hidden passage in your cell. From there you follow the emperor in his escape, which brings the tutorial dungeon. This gives you a brief chance to play around with all of the major skills before actually finishing the character creation process.



Character creation is unique in the Elder Scrolls series. Players pick a race, each of which having unique advantages and disadvantages, and a birth sign, which gives additional advantages. Sometimes these are stat increases or magical powers. Then there's the skills. Every character in Oblivion can do everything. Your mage can pick up a sword, while your hulking warrior can sling some spells. Thus, the class lines are pretty blurry. Characters gain distinction through what skills they excel at. Yes, your wizard can do melee combat, but without the proper skills and strength, he won't be terribly effective. In the character creation process, you'll pick a set of skills to be your major ones. Those start out higher and increase more easily. You can still become quite adept (even masterful) at skills not chosen, though.

This brings about the leveling and experience system. There are no experience points in Oblivion. To level up, the player needs to increase a major skill 10 times. Skills are increased simply through use. Casting a lot of healing spells with raise your Restoration magic skill, for example. Level-ups allow you to choose 3 of your primary stats are raise them. In this way, you have tremendous control over what kind of character you'll play. You can play a standard fighter or mage, sure, but you could also play a thief with magic skills or a mage that knows martial arts.

Once your character is created and you've escaped from the prison, the world is quite literally your playground. Certain events that take place during the emperor's escape give you your first quest, but there's no rush on it. In fact, if you choose not to, you never have to follow the main questline. The main quest takes in the neighborhood of 20 hours to complete, but that is truly a downright tiny part of the game. Here is where some players will be overwhelmed. What do I do? Where do I go? Oblivion doesn't hold your hand and lead you through the game.

There are some 200 dungeons scattered across the gigantic land of Oblivion, a handful of cities and several minor towns, 5 factions you can join (each with a hefty amount of quests attached) and countless random sidequests. You could spend 100 hours playing Oblivion and not see everything there is to see. But, will you want to spend 100 hours in Oblivion?

It's a pretty safe bet, yeah. All the stuff to do would be meaningless if the game wasn't fun, but thankfully Bethesda has taken all the freedom of Morrowind and built a really fun game around it. Combat is tight, relying more on player skill (although if you're really outmatched, no amount of skill will turn the tables for you). It feels a bit like Condemned's, with a block and a few different power moves (that actually have specific functions). Magic and stealth skills are just as enjoyable, so no matter what kind of character you'd like to play, you'll be having a good time.

With so many quests, it could be tricky to manage them all at once, but the game tracks all of your quests very nicely. You can receive a quest and ignore it for 20 or 30 hours of gameplay, then read your neatly organized notes and go right back to it. Oblivion also points you right in the direction of your objective, vastly cutting down on the whole, "Find gro-Bash's house among a dozen that look the same" problem. It felt like a cheat at first, as did the option to instantly travel to any landmark you've already visited, but they make the game so much more accessible.



Part of Oblivion's charm is the world itself. Aside from being massive, it absolutely feels like a living, breathing fantasy world. All of the characters keep schedules, rather than standing in place waiting for you. They talk to one another, and although the conversations are simple (and sometimes out of synch), it adds a great deal to the experience. Outside of towns, you'll find forests, plains, mountains and swamps. There is wildlife, as well as monsters, and plenty of plants to make things look real. Most plants can even be harvested and used in alchemic formulas, should you choose that.

There are a couple problems in this otherwise perfect game. At first glance, Oblivion is one of the most beautiful games ever made. The textures are sharp and the draw distance is ridiculous. Little details like the water and sunlight hitting your blade are all highly impressive. But, once you start moving you'll see that the draw distance isn't all that great afterall. Yes, you can see the shape of the land and any major trees, but the ground textures at any real distance are downright fugly, and there's a great deal of pop-in as groups of flowers or rocks magically appear. In addition, as you walk over the landscape, you'll hit loading pretty often. It loads as you walk, which I suppose is better than cutting away to a load screen, but it causes some jarring framerate troubles.

Thankfully, all of the above problems only apply to walking across the overworld. In dungeons, there's very little loading and there's obviously no pop-in. The frame rate stays pretty solid, too. In the end, those problems do little to sour the experience; it just mars the beauty of what is otherwise an amazing-looking game.

The audio presentation is nearly perfect. The epic soundtrack comes in at just the right moments, and the ambient sounds add a lot to the experience. This time around, every bit of dialogue is voiced. There really aren't that many different voice actors for the random NPCs, but it still manages to further reinforce the idea that the world of Oblivion is a real one.

For more on Oblivion, check out our March 26th episode of Team Fremont Live.



Article By: Joe