Introduction

Hype can be a negative in the video game industry, many games have become major sellers even if they are terrible, all thanks to their marketing campaigns. Enter the Matrix is a very good example and the same can be said about Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness which was complete garbage but still, thanks to the hype, was a respectable seller.

This brings me to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a new sequel to the very successful Morrowind series from Bethesda Softworks on PC and lately, this new Elder Scrolls has been getting monumental amounts of hype.

Midnight prep talks

Ancient

The Elder Scrolls saga is a very long one, starting over ten years ago with the first game in the series, Arena. Even though now it seems absolutely “normal”, back then, RPG games weren’t very “open” and didn’t give you the freedom to explore or interact with the environment. However, with the release of Arena, everything changed; for the first time ever, you were really playing a full-blown RPG in first person perspective, which was revolutionary. And with each new game in the famous saga, that freedom has been taken further than anyone could have anticipated, giving the player virtually total immersion. Of course, many of you won’t remember the first two games in the series but I think most of you (especially the younger generation) will know the previous Elder Scrolls called Morrowind, along with the expansions.

This game was as revolutionary as Arena since it brought a whole new dimension of scale and immersion to the franchise. The levels were enormous, the freedom absolute and the game had an amazingly deep gameplay which kept you addicted till the end. All this leads you to the important question; what does Oblivion bring that Morrowind hadn’t already introduced?

The realm of Oblivion isn’t a friendly one

Demanding

Morrowind was well remembered for being poorly optimized and even today, with my current computer, the outdoor scenes are always below 30 frames per second which is really horrendous. Luckily for us, Bethesda Softworks understood their mistakes and vowed to make Oblivion much better to run and play. However, I have my doubts whether they succeeded since the minimum requirements are already quite hefty.

• Windows XP
• 512 MB System RAM
• 2 GHZ Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
• 8x DVD-Rom Drive
• 4.6 BD free HD space
• 128 MB Direct3D Compatible Video Card and DirectX 9.0c compatible
• DirectX 8.1 Compatible Sound Card

And the recommended requirements are even scarier…

• 3.0 GHZ Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
• 1 GB System RAM
• ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

The worst part of all this is that even if you do equal the recommended settings, you’ll not be running the game very fluidly. I reviewed this game with my current computer which just makes the cut in the recommended department since I have a 3.0 GHZ Intel Pentium 4, 2 GB System RAM and an ATI X850XT PE and even though I run the game on maximum graphical settings and a high resolution (1280x960), it isn’t rare for my frames to drop into the 10s. It is possible to turn down the graphical settings of the game to gain a few frames, but personally, I find you loose too much of the immersion factor by doing so and reduce the game’s appeal entirely. Pictures speak louder than words so here are a few comparison shots to show what I mean.

High Settings

Medium Settings

Low Settings

Unfortunately, even by reducing the graphical quality, all of the framerate issues don’t disappear. This is especially true for the outdoor environments which need to be constantly loaded and result in a great deal of unwelcome stuttering (particularly on the console version of the game for Xbox360), or when many characters are on screen attacking you, it isn’t rare to see your frames plummet to the floor. Of course, maybe it’s just my system which is starting to show its age…

However everything is not bleak since Oblivion is much better coded than Morrowind in many ways and I really do enjoy the game, even with these few problems which can easily be solved with a few patches. Apart from these minor annoyances, this game has almost no faults but more on that a bit later in the review.

Majestic

The graphics are reason enough to try this game out because they are on an entirely new level which has never been seen before in any RPG, let alone any game ! I’ll put it in a simple sentence: there is nothing out there on PC or Xbox360 which looks better than Oblivion (at the time of this review Tomb Raider Legends was just released and it does compete with oblivion in “next generation” mode).

Dark and ghostly dungeons

The first thing you will notice when you start the game is just how well modeled and textured everything is, whether it’s a chair or another character. The amount of detail visible in every frame is just astounding and this really helps you dive into the world of Tamriel.

What Oblivion does that is so unique is make the virtual world in which you play feel real and animated. The indoor scenes have every graphical effect you can imagine (ranging from normal maps to soft shadows) and even more spectacular are the outdoor scenes which have a real day-night cycle and an enormous amount of swaying vegetation with ecosystems living within.

In addition, the game is blessed with a great physics engine and everything not only looks as you’d expect but “reacts” just as well. You can even take the graphics further if you have a very powerful graphics card which is PixelShader 3.0 complaint, allowing you to enable High Dynamic Range which makes the visuals infinitely more gorgeous. Without a doubt, this game is perfect in this domain and helps you plunge into this rich, living and divine world of Tamriel. The only slight problems would be a few graphical anomalies (especially in the shadows) and that you need a very powerful computer to obtain the level of eye-candy required to enjoy the visuals but trust me, it’s worth it. If you ever needed any reason to upgrade your computer, this is it!

The fight for Tamriel has begun !

Euphoric

My feelings are generally the same for the audio in Oblivion which is in a class of its own as well. Everything was done with the utmost attention and it really does show since the cities sound alive, the forests mysterious and the characters believable. Firstly, the game’s ambient sounds are exactly what you’d expect because every bird chirp, every sword clash and every thunderclap sounds amazingly realistic. You are never suddenly reminded by an out-of-place sound effect that Oblivion is only a video game. The same can be said about the music which fits the mood of the game perfectly.

From slow and graceful, to eerie and atmospheric, to brutal and challenging; the music always adapts to your current situation to give you the best experience possible. And of course, voices are important and Oblivion didn’t skimp ion this part of the audio domain either. In fact, they even got a few famous names like Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean to make the characters sound even more passionate than they already are.

A lot of polish has gone into the sound department of the game and you must give Bethesda Softworks credit for their work. Any negatives? Yes, It was clear after extended gameplay that a limited range of voice actors were available as frequently the same voice would be handling multiple characters, also when speaking with a character occasionally a specific question would result in another voice handling the reply. That said, these are minor blemishes to the overall experience.

Real and life like characters

Masterpiece

But beauty is only skin deep and what matters most is how Oblivion plays as a game, not how it looks or sounds (even though that’s still important). Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell immediately whether Oblivion is anything else but an attractive game since it starts abruptly and to be frank, really leaves you wondering what you are doing… it becomes apparent you must be a convicted criminal because you start the game in a jail cell with a secret passage that the Emperor himself must use and instead of killing you he lets you join his little party due to his explanation of interaction with the gods.

Not only does he entrust you with the most important artifact of all (called the Amulet of Kings – and remember, you’ve barely met him for five minutes) but just before he dies, he sends you on a crazy quest to save the world…

Imposing in every way ...

However, once you get past the initial “what the hell?!” factor and plunge a bit deeper into the story, the game really starts to grip. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself exploring distant caves and lush landscapes without even realizing it because Oblivion captures you in a very rare and magical way. Thankfully though, the captivating story is backed up by remarkable gameplay that makes the experience excpetional.

For example, the character creation at the beginning of the game is simply marvelous because, not only is it introduced naturally through the game but it will satisfy everyone from the RPG veterans (since they can create a completely new custom class) to the complete newbies who will just use whatever the game decides fits their playing style. And this is evident throughout the entire game , whether you are picking locks or fighting imps, the gameplay is so smooth because everyone can play this game without ever getting stuck or feeling bored.

An experienced player will make a custom class, explore all the extra caves and fortresses, travel the world himself and do everything independently, such as armor repair and lock picking while a beginner will play with a pre-made class, mostly stick to the main story, use the quick-travel option and mostly pay gold to get repairs. Again this is a level of freedom rarely if ever found in a game such as this. Not only that but you can almost play Oblivion forever thanks to the enormous amount of available extra quests and missions that you find everywhere if you wish to prolong the forty hour main quest.

From seasides ...

to mountains ...

and castles and sunsets

The latest game in the Elder Scrolls series actually does exactly what Arena did for the genre so many years ago: innovate. Sure, there have been many RPGs with huge environments ranging from seas to mountains, complicated and long stories, a large panoply of classes and races and a colossal amount of side quests.

What Oblivion manages to do is completely immerse you into a world so captivating and addictive that you can easily loose whole weekends playing. I can rave all day about this title with the importance of real day-night cycles, the mastering of specific skills and the way the entire game feels real but all this leads me always back to the essence of the game: the immersion. I never thought it was possible to go beyond other RPGs like Final Fantasy or Neverwinter Nights but Bethesda Softworks succeeded. Six years of hard work has really paid off because Oblivion is the new benchmark for every singleplayer RPG in existence.

Unfortunately, the game is exclusively a singleplayer experience and while this is far from a bad thing, it would have been awesome to maybe play coop in the world of Tamriel. Aside this very minor problem (if you can call it that), this game has enormous replay value and will keep making you come back just to try and play differently. There is no end to the number of possibilities offered to you by this game.

Total immersion

Stupor

The immersion in this game is beyond description and only by playing it shall you actually understand how much it excels. This is honestly the biggest surprise for me in 2006 and even though I was expecting a lot from Bethesda Softworks’ game, they were still able to blow my mind. This sensation it gives you of having an immense amount of freedom and the ability to do what you will when you want to is something every gamer deserves to experience. No other RPG gives you the same immersion, depth of gameplay and visual or audio delight like Oblivion, and that is reason enough to go and buy it. It will be a decision you won’t regret.

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