Platform: PC
Released: 20 March 2006
Game Type: RPG
Developer: Bethesda
Homepage: http://www.elderscrolls.com/

‘The key to each Elder Scrolls title is reinvention.’

So said Todd Howard from Bethesda Softworks, the Executive Producer of their recently-released fantasy RPG smash-hit Oblivion.  While the settings and storylines are built upon a rich history and tradition from predecessors in the Elder Scrolls series (eg. Morrowind), the gameplay in Oblivion feels fresh and new.  Bethesda take adventure and ‘open-ended’ gameplay to the next level; you’ll find that exploring the world, meeting the fully animated, voice over lip-synched NPCs and engaging in combat in 200 hand-crafted dungeons is enough to keep you playing for nearly unlimited hours. 

And then you’ve got the main storyline to follow, if you want to.  Emperor Uriel Septim of Tamriel (pictured right) is slain before your eyes during the opening scenes of the game. Voiced by Patrick Stewart of Star Trek TNG fame, the emperor is a suitably regal character who says you are the one he has seen in his dreams, dreams that also foretell his death. This sequence throws you straight into the action, but is also simple enough to serve as a training ground.  It is your destiny to restore the emperor’s hidden and last-remaining heir to the throne and ‘close shut the jaws of Oblivion!’.

A combination of strategy and good judgement will get you through most fights in the game.  Sometimes if you aren’t experienced enough or don’t have the abilities to beat something you simply have to run for your life.  You can always come back later when you’re big and bad and thrash the living daylights out of it.  There are some situations that seem impossible when your character is at a certain level, but with a combination of clever environmental interaction (springing traps etc.), magic attacks and defences and using the right weapons for a physical attack, you can take on all kinds of enemies from the very first moment you start playing.

For this title, Bethesda developed an all-new combat system encompassing melee, defence and magic.  There is one button for magic attacks, one for physical attack and one for block.  You equip whichever magic attack and weapon you want to use in the ‘journal’ screen or you can switch between them with hotkeys (1–8). 

My character, Evazia, is a female Breton spell-sword who looks a little bit like a younger version of myself (you can tweak hair colour and facial features with great detail).  She has a racial aptitude for magic and being a spell-sword means that she is skilled in heavy armour, swords and a variety of magic.   This makes for a dynamic range of combat options, but there’s nothing that beats a close-range elemental magic attack.  Some enemies are best fought with magic, others with physical attacks. 

^{Click to view larger.}

As with most games, there is always a limitation on how strong you are and how much you can carry.  The strength required for a heavy-armour wearer is a constant struggle at first.  This is because the heavy armour is so heavy you can barely carry anything else, especially the most valuable weapons and armour from slain enemies (loot).  One way to get around this is to drop your own gear, carry the armour and weapons to town, sell them and then return to the dungeon to do it all over again. 

Oblivion map. Click to view larger.

It wasn’t until about level 20 that Evazia became strong enough to carry loot on top of her own weapons and armour.  And there are spells like ‘Ease burden’, which makes carrying loot much less troublesome.  Combined with the handy ‘instant-travel’ map in Oblivion, selling loot is not too much of a hardship. 

The travel system in Oblivion is an extremely beneficial feature that saves much of the player’s time and reduces frustration.  In Morrowind if you couldn’t carry back the loot, you would have to drop your own gear, drink potions (eg. Skooma or Flin) and then walk to the nearest town or invoke a spell such as ‘divine intervention’ for instant transportation to a temple or safe-spot.  Most vendors would then not have enough money to buy all your preciously-won loot. 

There was a patch for the richest character in Morrowind (the scamp in Caldera, which had 5000 gold and would quite happily purchase contraband items) called ‘Rich Scamp’, giving it a million gold.  Needless to say, if you were using this patch and you had levelled up enough to kill golden saints and other Daedra, you ended up with far more money than you could spend in Morrowind.    

In Oblivion, you can click on major towns or doorways to places you’ve been to anywhere on the map to be instantly transported there.  Vendors have a certain amount of money at their disposal (which surreptitiously increases for masters of the mercantile skill) and you can sell way over this amount to them, but they will never be able to pay any more than this amount for any one item. Selling loot has never been easier!

Riding tigers in World of Warcraft. Click to view larger.

Another thing I longed for in Morrowind was the ability to ride horses around.  This would make travelling a lot less tedious and would satisfy the ex-Ponyclubber in me, allowing me to see my avatar racing around the countryside on a suitably-medieval-looking equine.  This is something I enjoy a lot in World of Warcraft (WoW—my character is pictured right on her ‘Frostsabre’ riding tiger).  The horses in Oblivion are a step ahead of any horses I’ve seen in games before (yes, even WoW).  

Lead character animator, Christiane Meister spent time riding real horses and using her knowledge of them to inspire the in-game horses.  ‘People aren’t my thing,’ she said.  ‘I find them [animals] much more interesting.’
As a result of this adherence to real-life, the horses in Oblivion are the most believable ones I’ve seen.  There are four varieties: paint, chestnut, white and black.  The black is the fastest, the white is the strongest (horses will defend themselves when attacked), the chestnut is an intermediate option and the paint is the slowest and cheapest.  The horses flick their tails, toss their heads and move with some of the elegance and character of real horses.  If you try to make your horse jump at the wrong moment in its stride, for example, it will give a rebellious pigroot (that’s a small buck), which is quite amusing.  From what I can tell so far, the horses cannot be patted, spoken to or fed, but as with Morrowind, there is plenty of scope for patching and addons in Oblivion to improve gameplay and increase the already-staggering amount of content.

A three-year project, Oblivion was perceived as a sword and sorcery epic role-playing game right from its inception.  The designers had a long list of artwork they wanted to include and over 9,000 objects were modelled for the game.  The weapons Evazia has seen thus far are quite ordinary, which is a disappointing, yet believable, omission.  How believable are the many weird and wonderful glowsticks in WoW?  It seems that Bethesda decided to reserve much of the computing power the game would have available, to environmental details.  The gritty realism of the world is in stark contrast to other more fabulous fantasy worlds.  In certain moods, I enjoy both.

Unlike Morrowind, this game features an astonishing variety of settings.  Even the large forested areas between towns look different at every turn.  The countryside is lush with tall green grass, waving plants, colourful flowers and immense trees.  Rocks and ponds are dotted throughout the wilderness, providing drinking places for the wildlife (deer, mountain lions, wolves, warthogs, bears etc.).  The terrain is also variable, going from flat plains to craggy hillsides and even snowy mountains in a seamlessly detailed landscape.  As you explore the world of Oblivion, more and more gates to Oblivion are revealed and the sky and land around these become clouded, dark and volcanic.

To construct realistic-looking cities, the artists absorbed details and textures from all kinds of real locations, including buildings and cobbled streets.  As one 3D modeller said, ‘We’ve been able to create this living, breathing city which is like it’s actually there.  It’s like I live here!’  And that’s almost how you feel when playing the game as well.  When you walk through a town, most of the citizens give you a friendly hello or ask about your business (there are over 50 hours of lip-synched voice-overs in the game). 

Non-player characters react to each other. Click to view larger.

NPCs will watch each other when they pass by, even stopping to have conversations about the latest news and gossip.  Most of the 1,000+ NPCs have an ongoing repertoire of banter for you and some will even open up more after you use your speechcraft skills on them or do certain quests.  The term coined by Bethesda for the way the NPCs interact with the player and each other is ‘Radiant AI’.  Essentially, each character has their own individual schedule, job, goals and ways of reacting to the world and the player.

The world of Oblivion is a haven for imaginative players as you can soak up the existing characters and apply your own storylines or ideas to their situation and background.  And then, of course, you are in complete control of developing your own character, which is the most fun of all.  You have a range of options to choose from when selecting their appearance and attributes at the outset.  Then, throughout the game, you can play dress-up to your heart’s content, making a sneaky, darkly-clad assassin; a slinky, enrobed mage or an impressively armoured warrior.  You can even buy houses and invest in shops once your reputation and mercantile skill is high enough.

Morrowind was one of the best-selling RPGs on the Xbox and Oblivion more than makes it to the next level (achieving record sales of over 1.7 million units for the PC and Xbox 360 since its launch in March 2006).  It features one of the largest worlds ever created for a video game and it will keep both the soft and hard-core gamers entertained and inspired for hundreds of hours.

What kind of computer am I running Oblivion on?

OS: Windows XP
Processor: Pentium IV
Processor Speed: 3.0 Ghz
RAM: 1024
Video Manufacturer: Nvidia
Video Model: 7900/256
Audio Manufacturer: Creative labs
Audio Model: SB0570

For more information on the requirements for the game, visit the official website here.

Did I experience any technical difficulties with Oblivion?

Yes.  Despite a computer upgrade to cope with Oblivion that surpassed the requirements stated on the box, the game caused stop errors in Windows and sometimes a system restart.  I could not install patch 1.1 for Oblivion because an error came up saying: 'Old file not found.  However, a file of the same name was found.  No update done since file contents do not match.' Click here for a screen capture.   Reinstalling all my video and sound card drivers (getting the latest off the web, of course) did not help.  I continued to see strange lines and 3D objects crossing the screen in all directions (the health status and current weapon icons were unaffected).  These graphical errors would usually be followed closely by a system hang.  I eventually resolved the issue by reinstalling Oblivion and not even attempting to install the update patch.