kjell1979's Full Review: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Ed...
The first game I purchased for my Playstation 3 was Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. Even though I owned the original Oblivion game for the Xbox 360, I never could bring myself to ordering any of the official expansion sets like Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles because of the generally atrocious load times. It just seemed as if I was wasting my entire existence waiting for that bar to fill up. When I head the PS3 version was noticeably better, I took the plunge. Except for the wait times and occasional freezing, I had a blast.
Story
Your character starts out in the Imperial City prison begin taunted by a fellow prisoner in the cell across from you. Your adventure starts when King Tiber Septim (voiced by Patrick Stewart) enters your cell in search of a hidden passageway out of the city. It seems as if the royal family is being assassinated one by one and he is the last survivor. While the King foretells his own bleak fate, yours is a little more cloudy, but important nonetheless. The story revolves around finding out who is behind the plot to kill off the royal family.
Finishing the main story takes anywhere between 10 and 20 hours depending on how skilled you are and what kind of character you created. It takes a few twists and turns. Most of the juiciest portions of the story do not lie in the main quest line but rather in side quests and guild quest missions. While the story doesn't have a focus or timeline, storytelling does play a significant role in the game. The way the world comes together through the storytelling is definitely one of the game's strengths.
Gameplay
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an action roleplaying game told from a first person perspective. While you do have the option of switching to a third person perspective, most of the targeting and actions are accomplished in the first person mode. Part of Oblivion's uniqueness comes in its lack of focus. Unlike many Japanese RPGs where you are led from one location to another, Oblivion doesn't force you to go a particular direction. Most quests are available from the beginning. The main quest and guild quests do run in a particular order, but you can choose to complete them at your own leisure. In fact you can work on multiple quests at once.
Your actions do have consequence in the world of Oblivion. There is a concept of fame versus infamy points. Since many quests have multiple ways of achieving the goal, some quest conclusions lead to infamy points whereas other conclusions can lead to fame points. Attitudes towards you change depending on your fame and infamy scores.
Oblivion has an interesting concept of character makeup and leveling. In the game there are 8 different attributes, 24 different skills, 13 birthsigns, and 10 different races that generate the makeup of your character. Attributes are the most basic of stat. Ranging from strength to endurance to willpower, these attributes govern your ability to run, fight, jump, and cast magic. Skills determine how easy it is to perform a task. For instance a higher skill level in sneak will make it easier to be undetected. You can wear any kind of boots or sneak at any speed at the highest sneak skill levels. Birthsigns add a slight tweak of uniqueness. It can control the amount of magic you have or give you a special spell that you can use once per day. Races augment your attributes and skills slightly depending on their strengths and weaknesses. In addition they can provide special skills like water breathing, immunity to cold spells, or access to spells at the outset of the game.
Leveling your character involves creating a character class. There are 21 preset classes, but you may create your own. Class creation involves picking 7 base skills associated with that class. Leveling up involves raising those skills 10 levels total. Once you do that the next time you rest you can raise your level. The more non-base skills you raise the more attributes you can raise when leveling up. Raising skills is as simple as doing an act associated with that skill. For instance the more locks you pick, the more your security skill rises. Similarly the more you walk or swim the more your athletics skill increases. At higher levels the more actions you have to perform to raise your skill level. Raising your level also has other implications. Since the game is wide open, you can go anywhere and encounter any enemy at any level. So as you level up, the more powerful your enemies become. Also the more you level up the more powerful weapons and equipment become available.
Since there are so many various aspects that makeup a character, the more diverse the gameplay is regarding the mechanics of a situation. For instance, if you come across an enemy in a dungeon who doesn't know you're there, there are several ways of dealing with the situation. If your character is based on strength and hand to hand combat you can simply walk up to them and swing your sword or blunt weapon. Making sure to block counter attacks will allow you to last longer in battle. If you are a mage, you can cast a wide array of spells. Some spells will attack the enemy at a distance. While others might allow you to become stronger in hand to hand combat, summon creatures to fight for you, or allow you to pass by undetected. Classes that specialize in stealth can either sneak by the enemy or attack them from the shadows with a bow and arrow. Finally, there are other classes like alchemists who can create potions that can aid them in similar fashion as a mage.
The missions themselves straddle the line between monotonous and interesting. There are plenty of missions that are interesting from a story perspective and from a gameplay perspective. However there are also many missions that simply involve talking to a NPC, receiving a request, going to a dungeon to recover an item or kill off a creature, and returning for a moderate reward. Still given the sheer diversity of the missions there are plenty that are more than worthwhile.
There are gameplay balancing issues similar to that of Diablo II, but unlike Diablo, Oblivion has a difficulty slider that helps mitigate these issues. The issue lies in the way you level up. People who do not level up efficiently (that is raise other non-base skills enough to raise their attributes the maximum amount without leveling over the cap of 5 points) will find their characters underpowered against the ever increasing levels of the creatures in the game. Lowering the skill level slider helps with this, though really fast power leveling without regard to raising attributes will create a situation where even the difficulty slider cannot help. Similarly efficient levelers will find that their characters will become jack of all trades who can do just about everything despite being in a class specializing in one thing.
The Game of the Year Edition also comes with two expansion packs, Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. The Knights of the Nine expansion is simply a quest line similar to that of a set of guild missions. The purpose behind this expansion is to thwart an old ancestor of Cyrodyll from reclaiming the region for his own rule. You must summon the noble deities to help with this problem. The biggest benefit of Knights of the Nine is a replayable quest that removes all your infamy points. This can be useful when trying to access new quests. Shivering Isles is a little more of a true expansion. You have the option to enter the Oblivion realm of Sheogorath to help him thwart his enemies. Sheogorath's realm has its own set of towns, dungeons, NPCs, side quests, and its own main quest. In addition it adds new alchemical ingredients, weapons, and armor to the game.
Aside from the occasional freezes and minor glitches, the biggest annoyance in Oblivion was a glitch which caused my fame and infamy ratings to reset to 0 and 100 respectively. This happened well into my game where I ended up losing upwards of 60 fame points. Having the Knights of the Nine expansion did help with this, but losing all my fame points was unrecoverable. There are many of these sorts of glitches in the game. One famous one is getting stuck in the quest to rid yourself of Vampirism for certain situations.
Overall the gameplay, while wrought with issues is still very solid. Having a wide open atmosphere with solid concept of physics and quests to take part in really makes this game succeed. Some people who are used to being led by hand in Japanese RPGs might be put off by the concept as the question "ok what do I do now?" will frequently come up. Still, for someone who might have little or a lot of time on their hands Oblivion is a great game.
Controls
The controls are pretty standard for a first person perspective game. The left analog stick acts as the look stick. It allows you to look all around without any movement. The right analog stick is for moving all along the horizontal plane. You can use it to strafe as well. Together it's a great combination second only to the mouse and keyboard combo. The trigger buttons control a lot of the action. The R2 button swings your weapon while the L2 button blocks attacks. The R1 button casts a magic spell while the L1 button activates a free form grab of an object. The face buttons do more specialized tasks such as jumping, miscellaneous activations, un/sheathing your weapon, or to activate the submenu journal. Finally you can use the dpad to activate preset actions or assignments such as magic, potions, scrolls or weapons.
The controls were slightly better in the Xbox 360 version. Even though the controls map identically between the two controllers, there are a few nuances between the individual controllers themselves that make up the difference in this game. First, the R2 trigger on the Sixaxis is much more clumsy than the RT on the 360 controller. This is critical when you're swinging your sword over and over. There were a few times when the swing didn't even register as a result. The other issue I have is the dpad presets. I hate the dpad on all the Playstation controllers. It just doesn't handle the diagonal direction cleanly. It shows here when you want to swap out a spell or weapon quickly only to fumble with the dpad.
Graphics
The graphics are simply stunning. Just as the gameplay portrays Tamriel as a living breathing world, the graphics hold up their end of the bargain and more. Backgrounds seem like finely crafted sprites when viewed from a distance. It’s only when you start walking towards a mountain range or large body of water, do you realize that it's a real polygonal object. Some objects do not fare as well such as fort walls or Oblivion gates as they can appear out of the blue. Still, as compared to the Xbox 360 version, the draw distances are noticeably better and add a significant amount of realism to the game.
The frame rate is pretty decent, though at times you can experience hiccups when a large amount of enemies and objects are present. From a first person perspective you can see a lot of detail from the look on your opponent's face as you confront them in battle to the way the wind blows the flowers and tree limbs. I implore you to believe me when I say I'm not a graphics maven, but when done right as it is in Oblivion, you can't help but feel spoiled.
Sound
The audio in Oblivion is almost as impressive as the graphics. The game is fully voice-acted. With a few buggy exceptions, most parts are acted out pretty well. The problem with the voice acting is the cast isn't too big. Most voices are reused with little effort to vary the characters' voices. Part of this is rectified in the Knights of the Nine expansion and more so in the Shivering Isles expansion. But still, it is noticeable and puts a slight damper on the immersion.
The music is also very good. There are various themes assigned to various parts of the game. This is handled well because there are a few themes assigned to the overworld versus a different few assigned to a dungeon or town. This makes certain themes not wear out as quickly if you spend most of your time dungeon crawling, exploring, or interacting with townsfolk. The quality of the music is very good and sets an appropriate tone for the game as a whole.
The sound effects, while mostly unnoticed are also well done. Whether it's the clanging of swords, or the whistle of an arrow, the ambience created by the sound effects seem authentic to a medieval setting as portrayed in Oblivion.
Replay
The high replay value of Oblivion is rooted in the sheer number of missions and side quests that are available. This is coupled with the lack of direction for your character. In Japanese RPGs if you're getting sick of a certain part of a quest or mission, you simply have to endure it to the end and hope that the next chapter is better. In Oblivion if you're getting bored going on treasure hunting missions, you can immediately head to the dungeon exit and start searching the overworld for alchemy ingredients. However once those quests are exhausted, the game begins to dry up when it comes to lasting appeal. The good part is that you can still dungeon crawl looking for decent loot, the only problem is the best loot are uniquely found in one location during a mission. Playing through the game again is an option if you don't mind replaying all the missions again. Most missions have many ways you can accomplish the goal and creating a different character helps in doing that.
There are a few things that can really kill the replay value in Oblivion. First, there glitches can really get to you after a while. Every so often you'll run into a glitch where you have to load a save file that will set you back a few hours in your game. That's really disappointing and frustrating. Some glitches could be avoided by installing add-ons, however they aren't available via download. There isn't a modding scene for the PS3 version of this game as there is in the PC version. While it doesn't kill the replay value, the lack of mods certainly makes this version much less appealing than the PC version.
Overall Oblivion is a tremendous game. The fact that it's ranked number 6 on my Top 100 Most Favorite Games List only shows just how good this game really is. For anyone who has a Playstation 3 and hasn't played this game yet, I highly recommend picking it up.
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