If most of us were to be given a team of 100 people and were told to make the fourth Elder
Scrolls game, what would we have come up with?
Would we stick to Morrowind's formula, or to change the game completely?
What Bethesda did was braver still.
They took a good hard look at every aspect of Morrowind and boldly revamped it in some
way, whilst retaining what makes an Elder Scrolls game...
well, an Elder Scrolls game.
And that's a difficult task.
Oblivion had to appeal to fans of the series whilst drawing in a new crowd of younger console
gamers while addressing the hopelessly outdated elements of Morrowind, whilst getting to grips
with the new technology at their disposal, all the while trying to make an open-ended,
sprawling game that people would enjoy playing.
Because of this ambition, we got a game like never before, and will likely never get one
like it again.
It's a forgotten relic.
You may bash the character models, guffaw at the graphics and laugh at the levelling,
but it's all too easy to overlook what a great game it is.
Morrowind is where it all began and Skyrim is the result of years of refinement, but
Oblivion is the ambitious middle brother in the modern Elder Scrolls games and its impact
on the games industry can still be felt today.
It's easy to take for granted the distant scenery, physics on every item, radiant AI
and the graphical overhauls but those things are still impressive feats today- let alone
in 2006 when many of us first stepped into this magical, mysterious land.
Making every sword blow hit was a stroke of genius.
Gone were the quests to fetch somebody's pants from mount doom.
Each mission was lovingly hand-crafted and I genuinely felt excited to undertake a new
quest, all narrated by ACTUAL VOICES with lip-sync!
You'd know that things weren't as they seemed and even the old 'fight the rats in my basement'
quest had unexpected twists and turns.
A controversial feature was the quick travel.
A feature that everybody would moan about, yet all would conveniently use when stood
outside of a tomb with a ton of treasure that they needed to lug back to the towns.
The world of Oblivion was beautiful enough to make me want to explore it on foot but
I didn't want to be limited to that when I could be off plundering other tombs instead
of following the same path for the hundredth time.
Skyrim by comparison didn't add much, but simply refined the bold steps that Oblivion
had made.
Skyrim's like the person who kills a dragon, even though it was the person before him who
severely wounded it and made its weaknesses known.
Oblivion is the true hero.
The assassin's guild was without a doubt a highlight.
I don't know anybody who preferred Skyrim's take on this guild.
I could blabber on about the murder mystery in the locked house, the shocking end missions
or the time that I was almost caught by a wondering guard, only for him to leave the
room just as my invisibility potion wore off.
That mocking prisoner at the beginning of the game didn't know what hit him.
And who didn't love exploring the world?
Morrowind's world was cruel and harsh, but Oblivion's was open for adventure.
You could go where you liked, whenever you wanted.
The quests would be tailor-made for your character and level, ensuring a decent fight for longer
than Morrowind could manage.
Even the expansion packs were ambitious.
It was one of the first games to offer DLC.
You may screw up your nose in disgust, but the idea itself was novel and interesting
back then.
It's not as if you were forced to get it and it was additional content, rather than today's
sly attempts at crippling the original game.
The Shivering Isles expansion pack is regarded as one of the best ever, introducing an excitingly
new and strange world that surpassed the original game in every area.
Jeremy Soule's music in Oblivion remains my favourite of his work.
I never enjoyed the majority of tracks in Morrowind as they sounded samey and amateurish,
whilst Skyrim's songs were more the sort of things you'd hear in the background.
Oblivion's were true classics in their own right and could stand on their own two legs.
Any song that both myself and my grandparents love deserves the highest level of praise.
And of the three most recent games, Oblivion is the only one that has remained mysterious.
Most games become transparent once you see through their game-play mechanics.
With Morrowind I became an unstoppable God.
With Skyrim, I explored every single place.
But Oblivion is still a harsh, awe-inspiring world to me.
I know that there are tombs that I haven't explored and the Hellish portals stopped me
from completing the main campaign.
I could be quick to criticise these elements, but instead I thank them.
Thanks to them the world remains uncharted.
I've heard rumours of the Dragon at the end and the terrible traps that lurk below the
surface but I haven't explored them.
I guess that in a way I'm scared to.
It's not my fault!
I rested in an Oblivion portal once, only for the corrupt watchman that I had previously
put behind bars to find me and to try and murder me.
It came as such a surprise that I rolled through the whole level screaming, escaping with just
a couple of hitpoints left and closing the portal behind me.
I still giggle about it to this day.
But I refuse to return to that world.
It's creepy, man!
The rest, however, I'd jump at the chance of visiting again.
I've played the game for years and various locations in-game bring back strong nostalgic
memories of what I was doing at that point in my life.
I enjoy training my archery in a sun-dappled corner of Chorrol, or exploring the rivers
to the East of Bravil.
I spent a game-day following the waters upstream.
The weather remained beautiful and I found many an exciting place to explore.
As much as I loved Morrowind, I can't bring myself to play it again properly and doubt
I ever will.
The gameplay's too dated and I'd have to gain a fair few levels before I could enjoy the
majority of the game's locations.
Oblivion and Skyrim don't have that problem but with Oblivion in particular I feel I could
accidentally bump into a high-level creature occasionally.
It's nice to be put in your place once in a while when other games make the world revolve
around you.
So thank you, Oblivion.
I still haven't broken your combat system.
Your lockpicking still puts me on edge and Sean Bean remains trapped in a room upstairs,
hoping that one day I'll help him.
And in the game.
I've discovered that beggars aren't all they seem and was heart-broken at the twist at
the end of my arena career.
Oblivion, you're the black sheep of the Elder Scrolls family and I still love you with all
my heart.
The youth of today and the old codgers before me will never understand.