Well, a recent geek out session with a few of my mates about how much we’re all looking forward to Skyrim reminded me that I’ve been meaning to review Oblivion for some time now. So here it is. I must warn you to bear with me if I lose my impeccable eloquence at times, this is a difficult review for me and I don’t want it turned into some whitewashed, edited wishy-washy missive.
Story
Ok, I’m going to start with the easiest part to review. The story. So, basically, your character starts off locked in a prison cell with no memory for some reason that’s never explained. This prison cell just so happens to house a secret escape passage out of the castle that the Emperor, who’s being chased by assassins, and his guard must go through. So, as fate has it, you are the Chosen One of destiny, or something and so begins your epic journey to save the world from evil. Or something.
Basically, the story is rubbish. I’m sorry, it is. When there actually is any attempt at story, it is weak and clichéd, but most of the time the weak story takes a sideline, which is good, because it allows the game to do what it’s best at, but we’ll touch on that later. The dialogue is the usual High Fantasy cliché but for the most part its well voice acted, but again we’ll touch on that later. What I do want to say is that I hated how irrelevant the story lines are. For all the work you do, whether it be in the main story or the side quests, it leaves very little impact on the world. Finishing the main story just results in you being proclaimed Grand Champion or some such shit and you get a statue and some armour. Whatever. Oh and some NPC’s will like you more. Until you do something bad, then they won’t. My favourite thing I ever did was in my second playthrough where I finished the expansion Knights of the Nine first, which makes you into this holy knight and crusader for good, then I became Arch-Mage of the Mages Guild, and basically everyone loved me. Then I murdered someone and rose to Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood. And now, whenever I talk to an NPC, they are so heartbroken. “I used to think you were some sort of Holy Knight!” It amuses me, what can I say? But back on track, story: weak, clichéd, boring, unimportant. Tsk tsk. Bad Bethesda.
Gameplay
Quick warning, there’s going to be a lot of text here. So if you fear reading or your eyes fall out of your head if they have to work too much, you might just want to skip to the summing up at the bottom. Anyway, allons-y!
At the start of the game, you are greeted by a deep character customisation screen. You can customise down to a mathematical value every aspect of your characters face. There are a heap of races to choose from, each one with a unique playing style which makes every playthrough remarkably different. Then throughout the tutorial you choose your class and birthsign, both of which affect your starting stats and skills. Oblivion relies on a two-tier level up system. The first tier is Skills. Skills, like blade, acrobatics, sneak etc. increase the more you use them. So hitting a guy with your sword a lot increases blade, being hit a lot increases the relative armour skill, casting heal a lot increases your restoration skill, you get the idea. Skills are divided into two categories, major and minor skills. You get 7 major skills, which all start at apprentice level, whilst the rest of your skills are minor. Your major skills are defined by your class. Advancing your major skills will cause you to level up, advancing your minor skills does nothing so if you want to level up quickly, it’s smart to choose major skills that you use the most. The other tier is Attributes. Once you’ve advanced your major skills enough to level up, sleeping in a bed brings up the attribute screen. You then choose three attributes to increase. Attributes increase by factors of 1, unless you have been using one particular skill more than any others. So if you mainly used blade, your Strength skill, which governs Blade, may increase by 2 or even 3 upon level up. In theory it’s a pretty clever system, but it makes levelling up a very uneven affair, especially if you’ve chosen a broad spectrum of major skills. If you only advance one major skill at a time (which is a pain to do but possible) you can basically fly all the way through to the high twenties with no problem. But if you play more evenly, you may level up to about 15 really fast, and then levelling up from there can take forever. I would prefer a system that used XP for levelling up, personally. But enough on that.
I mention classes and birthsigns before. You have a large selection of Birthsigns to choose from, each suited to a specific playing style. They are not customisable. Then there are the classes. There are a tonne of classes, most are well balanced, but the best path to go is the class creation option. You choose three main attributes and seven major skills, so you can basically play to your strengths. It’s a lot of fun. The first playthrough, I played as Dark Elf called Braedum Extor. He was born under the sign of The Thief. I chose skills focused on archery and sneaking, playing to my race strengths, as well as some minor magic skills. Unfortunately, it turned out my character wasn’t all that well created and towards the end of his journey became almost completely useless. You either need to focus on magic or alchemy if you need to be a fighter as there are a lot of tough enemies out there and I specialised in neither so by the end I was basically defenceless against the big enemies. So I let him die and created my new character, a female Breton Mage Elayne Whiisp. She was born under the sign of The Mage and class Soothsayer, focusing on magic, alchemy and sword fighting. This proved a much better option as being skilled in magic helps you take on some of the nasties early in the game, allows you to cast spells to quickly heal easily, and basically rain hell on higher level enemies with all sorts of destructive might. And once you learn the Invisibility spell you are all but unstoppable. In conclusion, character customisation great and varied, but can require trial and error.
As you step out of the tutorial level you are greeted with a massive, and I mean massive, world. I still remember my first time. I’d just never seen anything like it. I was lost and terrified, I had no idea at all what to do. Thankfully, a concise map and journal system with clear mission goals eases your transition and fast travel to all major towns saves you from dying helplessly alone in the wilderness. As you become more and more familiar with the world you begin to stray of the trails, explore the ruins and caves and just admire nature. It’s just such a shame that this incredible game world is let down by two things. Combat, and repetition.
The combat system is not broken, in fact it’s a great idea. To a fault. The game is played from first person (there’s a third person option but I’ll touch on that later). Left click attacks with the equipped weapon, right click blocks, C casts spells. There’s an 8 button hotkey system, but it can be really limited. I really wished for either more hot key slots, or the ability to cycle through hot keys. One for spells, one for weapons, one for potions. Or one for exploration and one for combat. As it is, you’ll be jumping in to your inventory, a lot. Back to the combat. The combat works well against a single foe, out in the open. Sure, the AI is dumb as shit, the animations are robotic and clunky, but it works. Unfortunately, a lot of the combat is in cramped dungeons against multiple combatants. So you basically end up standing there just clicking away hoping to god you’re hitting something and trying to block when you can. Wonky hit detection doesn’t help. It’s even worse with an ally. Seriously, they just somehow always end up in front of spells arrows and swords. A few hits on them, and suddenly they want to kill you, too. I just found it really disappointing overall. I hope they develop the idea though, because it has potential. Better AI, better animations, smoother hit detection and potentially the implementation of a combo system to shake things up, is that too much to ask? Word is that Skyrim will have autonomous hands (ie dual weapons, dual spells, spell and weapon, spell and shield, like Bioshock 2’s weapon/plasmid system) so hopefully that will make things smoother.
And now we come to the part I’ve been avoiding. Repetition. The world of Oblivion is massive and littered with dungeons, caves, ruins and old forts filled with treasure just waiting to be explored. So why, oh why, oh why, must every cave look the same? That’s not déjà vu you’re feeling, you really have walked through this room a hundred times before, only last time there was a skeleton of a trap here. They all look the same, they all function the same, they are all littered with pointless, easy to avoid traps and a bunch of random enemies. If the random loot wasn’t so interesting and useful, we wouldn’t bother. The exterior is an improvement, but not by much. There are three areas: forest, swamp, snowy mountain. That is all. The cities are uninspired, and whilst they are brimming with life, they still feel empty. The radiant AI system is clever, but still has some kinks that need ironing out. I won’t go into them, I’ll let you discover them for yourselves.
So here’s the wrap up:
Character customisation – deep, but trial and error
Combat – clever idea but badly implemented
Exploration – huge world, but filled with cookie cutter boring dungeons
So a mixed bag on the gameplay front.
Graphics
The graphics engine is nice, but surprisingly system intensive for its age. My top of the line system struggles to get it above 30FPS at during exploration and combat. Granted I’m running at 1920x1080 HDR all settings Ultra, but still, the character models are bland and sometimes downright awful. The environment is gorgeous however, but has a lot of pop-in, if that sort of thing bothers you. Also, the HDR isn’t very well implemented. I ended up putting the Natural Weather and Environments mod on, which utilizes the HDR a lot more and makes the gorgeous. Seriously, watch out for some screenshots of sunsets. Unbelievable. My biggest two complaints about the graphics either aren’t the usual ones.
Firstly, why let us spend so much time crafting our character’s features if the only time we ever get to see them is on the inventory screen? Seriously, the camera in TP mode stays behind the character at all times. I want to admire my character, not stare at their arse the whole time. Their square blocky arse. Shudder.
Secondly, third person mode. Why? One or the other. Don’t include it if it doesn’t work. Sure it’s nice to check out the armour, but we can do that in inventory if we want to. It doesn’t work in combat, or at all really. It gets stuck all the time indoors, it’s clunky and unresponsive and only serves to further show off the god awful animations. No Bethesda. Fix it, or ditch it. Games like Hitman have successfully implemented the TP/FP system by creating the game as a TPS, then adding FPS options. And that’s how you have to do it. You can’t make a first person game and then just stick the camera behind the character, it doesn’t work. Ok, rant over.
Grahpics:
Environment – god, but use Natural Environments mod. Seriously, do it.
Characters – yuck. Just…no. Bad animations, bland features, just no.
Third person camera – fix or ditch. Do it.
And just quickly, let’s see some more flashy magic in Skyrim, please? I want my fireballs to blow shit up, not just be a pissy little ball of red. I want to shatter frozen enemies. After playing games like Dragon Age and Final Fantasy XIII, I have high expectations of magic in RPGs.
Sound
Oh thank you. The sound is brilliant. The soundtrack is gorgeous and soaring and even at its most repetitive, I didn’t mind. The soaring orchestral soundtrack provided me comfort as I road through the endless open fields on my horse. It’s like the companion you never get. The sound effects are the usual fantasy affair, but are done well. Spell sounds are again a little weak though.
Voice acting is very good, but inconsistent. There is only a small cast, one voice actor for the male and female of each race. Oh and Patrick Stewart, who lasts about five minutes. And Sean Bean. The problem with the voice acting is difficult to explain, so I’ll give you an example. In your journeys you will meet many beggars. They all speak like weak old people. However, if you choose the Rumor dialogue option, they will deliver a stock rumour, in the usual character voice, before returning to their weak beggar voice. It is, jarring, to say the least. Also a guard might call out a random friendly greeting, but upon talking to him, he will arrest you for a crime you did forever ago and forgot about. It’s just, inconsistent. And the random character chatter is really forced and awful. And due to the random nature, often complete nonsense. Whilst it does often reveal side quests, it has little value and can sometimes result in about ten characters all talking to each other at once.
In conclusion, the soundtrack is awesome, sound effects are ok, but the voice acting needs consistency and variation. Bigger cast. Don’t waste your money on big stars we don’t need, just give us a hundred randoms.
The Verdict
Well you did it, you made it to the end. I’m sorry it’s so big, but Oblivion is huge. I’ve poured over a hundred hours in to it already and I’ve maybe done a third of the quests and discovered and tenth of the world. However, my time with Oblivion has reached its conclusion, I grew bored. I am now playing the total conversion mod Nehrim, which I will review soon. Look, all I can say is if you’ve never played this sort of game before, this is a great place to start. I was caught up in the awesomeness of it all for at least 60 of those 100 hours I did not notice a single flaw. If you are a fan of Elder Scrolls, then you’ll love this. I think. However, if you’re an RPG veteran, you might want to miss this one. Go for Risen, or the Gothic Series. But you guys already know where to look.
Summing Up:
Story – 2/10
Not really one to speak off, but it does allow a lot of freedom.
Gameplay – 7/10
So many great ideas, but sloppy execution, repetition and bugs drive the mark down. Lots of replayability and customisation options.
Graphics – 5/10
Great environments, but they lack variety. Third person camera completely broken. Horrible character models and animations.
Sound – 8/10
Gorgeous soundtrack, ok sound effects and great, if limited and unreliable, voice acting.
Overall – 5.5/10
A flawed game, filled with so many incredible ideas but let down by sloppy presentation and bad design choices. Still worth checking out though, there is a lot of fun to be had here. Maybe a rent first, see if it’s your thing. I played the Game of the Year version which includes a tonne of DLC, a lot of which are great additions. It’s worth checking out.
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