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> Results: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
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Let's face it, everyone agrees that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of the biggest and most well-received games of the year. Minds were made up about its relative value long before reviewers like myself got their hands on it. In all likelihood, you're only here reading this to hopefully validate your own stance on the game. You also probably opened an e-mail window before you got here just in case you had to rip me a new one for anything I dislike. Either that or you'll send one saying how awesome it is that I'm speaking honestly about the game's problems.
This game is designed in such a way that absolutely no one can be "right" or "wrong" about it. In fact, your experience with it could be so wildly varied from my own if you just decided to play it in a completely different way. No review could possibly cover everything in this game. Even after the three weeks it's taken me to get here, I've still got a pile of stuff to see and do. At some point you just have to stop playing and put something down in print. That time is now. Turns out this is a very good game depending how you approach it. The Elder Scrolls series has always focused on providing you with as large a canvas as possible, with as many paints and brushes as possible, to create your adventuring masterpiece. Oblivion is no different. Though the world seems smaller based on your ability to run or ride quickly from place to place, open exploration and following your own path is absolutely the root of the experience. You can create your own character type from scratch, snatch up any of the pre-defined types or simply let the game dictate who you become based on how you play the tutorial dungeon area.  This tutorial area is a microcosm of what's right and wrong in Oblivion. Captain Picard as Emperor Uriel Septim traipses through your prison cell while escaping some strange cult. He immediately tags you as some kind of important figure of the future. A short time later, he dies right in front of you. In between, you screw around all you like with the dungeon's few denizens and get the hang of things. Control is nicely suited to the gamepad. Whether engaging in ranged or melee combat, targeting is a snap. Slipping through a dark passage never felt so immersive. You peer around corners, light a torch only if you want to risk a face to face fight, and often jump out of your skin from the creepy crawly feel that every corridor gives you. The lighting is superb and adds authenticity to the scene. Once you get back to ol' Uriel, the jarring banality of the plot and how it always waits for you to happen by reminds you it's just a game. This constant back and forth between a brilliant dungeon crawling simulation and rote computer RPG keeps popping up throughout play. So many times you find yourself in awe of the world around you. The vaunted Radiant AI provides some absolutely fantastic moments that seem "real" for lack of a better word. Other times it drives you insane with its stupidity. More disconcerting is that it often wigs out when you're most immersed in what's going on. You build up this expectation that things will play out just as real people would act or react and then the game sharply pokes you in the eye with something totally off the wall. The closer you get to "reality", the more obvious the unreality becomes. A lot of this is simple logic. If I cut out of a castle siege in the middle, I shouldn't be able to come back in a few days and find that everyone is exactly where I left them. The game part of Oblivion lets me do that whereas the simulation part of Oblivion tells me something entirely different should happen. Your head is in this constant battle of wills with itself as to what kind of virtual experience you're actually getting. Eventually though, you become more familiar with this juxtaposition of believability and simple game mechanics and kind of laugh off the dumb stuff, but it definitely detracts from enjoyment. When it all works though, this is one of the best do-what-you-want games ever made. Your imagination runs wild with potential of what you might find and often you happen upon it. That's the brilliance of the game. It's also why one person might fall in love with it and another could be lukewarm. It's all dependent on what you put into it. If you're just looking for loot, you can find that in the countless dungeons that grow like weeds across Cyrodiil. The monster difficulty scales with you to a certain extent, hoping to provide you constant challenge. This results in certain character types getting overwhelmed when they reach higher levels depending on their specialization. The moral of the story is never specialize too much. Jacks of all trades and masters of few are the player-character kings of the game.  Oblivion is what you make of it. Journey across this land ignoring the tacked on main plot and you may enjoy it far more than someone who focuses on killing Foozle. There's so much to interact with and so many character types to try that you can spend hours just messing around with the game mechanics and character builds. Venture out into the wilderness looking for trouble and you can find so much of it that you might never get bored. The world is beautifulﾗthough the characters' faces aren'tﾗand the music serenades you through towns and valleys, across rivers and into the mountains. Countless moments will stick with you long after you finish playing. Just be prepared to shut off the immersion once in awhile because Oblivion will too often try to remind you it's just a game. 
This game should be rated M-Mature. It features many adult situations and the violence is more graphic than a T rating implies. When you journey into Oblivion, the Hell-like plane of existence that runs red with rivers of lava and hangs with the mutilated corpses of the dead, it becomes plainly obvious that someone missed the mark. Many of the subquests are no less adult. One easily found and accepted one has you tracking down someone providing high quality goods for low prices to a local vendor. He's "digging them up". Nothing especially graphic appears onscreen, but the dialogue and situation are just not Teen friendly.
There's a new question that this game raises with regard to the rating system. If you can do something that would normally score a game a Mature rating, but you leave it up to the player whether to do that or not, should the game be rated M? In this game you can murder pretty much anyone... in cold blood... while they're sleeping. If that type of behavior was part of the story in any other T-rated game, would it be allowed? It's certainly a question for the ESRB. Here you're "rewarded" for murder by getting an offer to join the Dark Brotherhood. These folks are assassins. They kill folks in their sleep as a job title. How many hitman-type games are rated T? Thieving is an acceptable profession in the game. You pay the piper if you get caught, but stealing everyone blind is an option. Smashing someone in the head with an axe or mace is not gory, but it definitely feels like you're snuffing the life out of that person thanks to realistic physics. Afterward, you leave their cold, dead, unfeeling virtual corpse wherever you bashed it. Usually you want to take their stuff along to sell too, leaving them near naked (the female corpses are left in a bra and panties, the men in what looks like a loincloth) wherever they died. Come back in a couple game days and they might still be there. You can even pick up their lifeless frames and move them around. Toss them off a cliff if you like. It just seems way too rough for the rating it received. All the things described above are so far beyond acceptable behavior outside of games and with the game often so intent on making everything seem "real" and trying to provide this "real" world to interact with and live within, it's even more repulsive. Your kids are likely to do much of the above too. It's human nature. You want to mess with things and see what happens, especially when it reacts realistically some of the time. It just doesn't seem right to hand this game to a 13 year-old and let them go to town with some of those concepts. Err on the side of caution and skew this one older than the rating suggests. Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "oblivion" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion |
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