Bartholomuse
Member
Cast your mind back 10 years to the day, the 20th of March 2006.
Nintendo had recently announced the DS lite, Rockstar was in the process of being sued by the Los Angeles attorney’s office over the Hot Coffee mod, the PlayStation 3 had yet to receive a release date and the industry as a whole was beginning the process of graduating from 6th to the 7th generation of game consoles. Being less than four months old, the Xbox 360 ventured out into the marketplace with the promise of games only possible on the next generation. Games like; Gears of War, Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Halo 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. For many, the generation didn’t truly start until they played Oblivion. For many it was not only their first Elder Scrolls game, but the first game they picked up with their 360, or built a new PC for.
Playing Oblivion on release was a technical revelation, but on the 360 it almost seemed like black magic, a game of such environmental scale, and a game with over a hundred fully voice acted quests, a game where every NPC has a schedule who you could follow around and watch them complete, these things were technically impressive by any measure in 2006, but to see such things being accomplished on a fledgling console seemed surreal. Personally, Oblivion was the “full package” game which singularly justified my purchase of an Xbox 360. It was massive, ambitious, and at odds with the idea that a console RPG could not be as ambitious as its PC counterpart.
This worthwhile presentation wouldn’t really amount to much more than a tech demo if Oblivion didn’t provide reasons to explore it’s massive world, and thankfully Oblivion does a great job (better than Skyrim, not as good as Morrowind) of creating a sense of place. Cyrodil as depicted in Oblivion is precisely as I imagined it being. Its pastoral Middle-Earth exterior gives way to devious and deranged characters and factions, who murder, steal from and extort each other. The Dark Brotherhood is typically pointed to as the grimmest questline in the game, but in reality everyone in Cyrodil seems a little odd and eccentric (granted this could be the terrifying face models)
Questing highlights include; helping a paranoid and psychotic Wood Elf carry out his murder spree, getting kidnapped and taken out to sea after sleeping in a boat / converted inn, getting to the bottom of a mystery where the entire population of a village has turned invisible and getting sucked into a living painting.
However, when it comes time to actually sit-down and play it, Oblivion has a strange place in my memories. When compared to the mechanical depth of Morrowind which preceded it, and the gameplay refinements in Skyrim which followed on from it, Oblivion from a purely gameplay standpoint is perhaps the weakest Elder Scrolls game, combat in Skyrim is of the brain dead variety, but it almost seems more honest that way, a sort of admission from Bethesda that they know they can’t do melee combat and have just given up by letting you play whack a mole. Oblivion’s gameplay by contrast is stuck in the middle, between satisfying the hard statistical underpinnings present in Morrowind and the action combat which Skyrim would build itself around. Oblivion is a wonderful game to reminisce about, but playing it involves wading through lumpy, leaden combat with a needlessly simplified version of Morrowind’s crafting and magic system.
Oblivion, warts and all (and it has some nasty Gamebyro looking ones) is perhaps the Elder Scrolls game I am least likely to replay, but it paradoxically holds the warmest memories that I have of any Elder Scrolls. It was massive, it was hyped to high heavens and every time the game gets brought up I’m reminded of the excitement I felt when seeing those first screenshots on Gamespy all those years ago;
All in all I would say my lasting impression of Oblivion has had a fairly profound effect on how I view open world RPG’s and my concept of “a next generation experience” itself.
So Neogaf, what are your memories of Oblivion over the last decade?
Nintendo had recently announced the DS lite, Rockstar was in the process of being sued by the Los Angeles attorney’s office over the Hot Coffee mod, the PlayStation 3 had yet to receive a release date and the industry as a whole was beginning the process of graduating from 6th to the 7th generation of game consoles. Being less than four months old, the Xbox 360 ventured out into the marketplace with the promise of games only possible on the next generation. Games like; Gears of War, Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Halo 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. For many, the generation didn’t truly start until they played Oblivion. For many it was not only their first Elder Scrolls game, but the first game they picked up with their 360, or built a new PC for.
Playing Oblivion on release was a technical revelation, but on the 360 it almost seemed like black magic, a game of such environmental scale, and a game with over a hundred fully voice acted quests, a game where every NPC has a schedule who you could follow around and watch them complete, these things were technically impressive by any measure in 2006, but to see such things being accomplished on a fledgling console seemed surreal. Personally, Oblivion was the “full package” game which singularly justified my purchase of an Xbox 360. It was massive, ambitious, and at odds with the idea that a console RPG could not be as ambitious as its PC counterpart.
This worthwhile presentation wouldn’t really amount to much more than a tech demo if Oblivion didn’t provide reasons to explore it’s massive world, and thankfully Oblivion does a great job (better than Skyrim, not as good as Morrowind) of creating a sense of place. Cyrodil as depicted in Oblivion is precisely as I imagined it being. Its pastoral Middle-Earth exterior gives way to devious and deranged characters and factions, who murder, steal from and extort each other. The Dark Brotherhood is typically pointed to as the grimmest questline in the game, but in reality everyone in Cyrodil seems a little odd and eccentric (granted this could be the terrifying face models)
Questing highlights include; helping a paranoid and psychotic Wood Elf carry out his murder spree, getting kidnapped and taken out to sea after sleeping in a boat / converted inn, getting to the bottom of a mystery where the entire population of a village has turned invisible and getting sucked into a living painting.
However, when it comes time to actually sit-down and play it, Oblivion has a strange place in my memories. When compared to the mechanical depth of Morrowind which preceded it, and the gameplay refinements in Skyrim which followed on from it, Oblivion from a purely gameplay standpoint is perhaps the weakest Elder Scrolls game, combat in Skyrim is of the brain dead variety, but it almost seems more honest that way, a sort of admission from Bethesda that they know they can’t do melee combat and have just given up by letting you play whack a mole. Oblivion’s gameplay by contrast is stuck in the middle, between satisfying the hard statistical underpinnings present in Morrowind and the action combat which Skyrim would build itself around. Oblivion is a wonderful game to reminisce about, but playing it involves wading through lumpy, leaden combat with a needlessly simplified version of Morrowind’s crafting and magic system.
Oblivion, warts and all (and it has some nasty Gamebyro looking ones) is perhaps the Elder Scrolls game I am least likely to replay, but it paradoxically holds the warmest memories that I have of any Elder Scrolls. It was massive, it was hyped to high heavens and every time the game gets brought up I’m reminded of the excitement I felt when seeing those first screenshots on Gamespy all those years ago;
All in all I would say my lasting impression of Oblivion has had a fairly profound effect on how I view open world RPG’s and my concept of “a next generation experience” itself.
So Neogaf, what are your memories of Oblivion over the last decade?
