The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Review (Xbox 360) By ebyss

5 / 10
18 Jul 2006 at 14:22

Review by: ebyss

Having been a fan of the preceding Xbox game Morrowind, I had high hopes for the nextgen installment of the Elderscrolls series. I'd come back and played through Morrowind three times, a personal record in today's age of disposable sequels to bankable IP genre efforts.

Initially, Oblivion ticked all the right boxes: the in-depth character creation section, the epic fantasy setting, lush graphics and an impressive, rolling coutryside ripe for adventure.

The gameplay's fairly open-ended. You start off on the tail of the main quest, trying to locate the son of the recently deceased emperor, but at no time are you forced to pursue it.

Playing through, you'll probably find yourself sidetracked by an interesting-looking ruin, an NPC intervention begging for help that triggers a separate quest, or even pursuing an interest in botany as you scour the lands seeking samples for your alchemical potions. There's plenty to do, in a vast realm: you only have to open up the map screen to clock the sheer amount of foot-padding available for avid adventurers with a penchant for hiking.

Fortunately, for those not fond of traipsing around, the inclusion of an instant-travel function between locations is a welcome addition, saving countless to-ing and fro-ing between quest setters and associated locations. Oblivion also sees access to horses, which again speeds up travel.

The quests themselves are fairly generic: help character x locate object y and receive award z for your services. Character classes and levelling up adds considerable depth, and getting the most out of your character takes some working at your myriad major skills.

An annoying aspect of character classes in Oblivion, mirrored in its predecessor, is the relative difficulty in growing a character that scores highly in the magic stakes. For those players wanting to get the most out of the magic system, you'd be well-advised to create a magic-specialising character or one that specialises from the predefined choices available when starting the game. As my character progressed, it soon became all too obvious that I'd never be able to achieve the dizzy heights of grand wizardry with my choices. Because of this, I never did get to employ any of the more powerful spells, which is a real shame.

On first playing Oblivion, I'd have scored it an 8/10, having been suitable bowled over by the step-up in aesthetics, the glorious vistas and the genuine feel that the nextgen of software had arrived for me (I'd not played much on the 360 up to this point).

However, after some 30 hours of play, it was painfully apparent that ultimately Oblivion is a pretty shallow game. Underneath the polished exterior, the glorious good looks, lies little reward for the time and effort I'd put into playing the game, exploring its kingdom.

Despite some truly inventive quests to fulfil (such as 'Brush with Death' and a couple of others), Oblivion soon started to bore the pants off me. The identikit dungeons, caves and quests really start to grate after a while, and you can't help but think that the creative team ran out of ideas midway through development.

Maybe this is something that, in time, will be addressed with the release of more interesting and dynamic quests through Xbox Live, but personally speaking I'm not prepared to hold on and see. There should have been greater diversity in the game out of the box.

There's also quite a few irritating bugs and glitches in the game, some of which prevent you from completing quests.

The game feels too easy, a problem I'd had with Morrowind. Up to a certain level you're kitten-weak, beyond a later point almost invincible. Level-up high enough and pretty soon all the peril evaporates from your gaming experience.

I hope that this is not a staple of Microsoft's nextgen console: compensating for games' failings through Live expansions.

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