Oblivion

game

Entry posted by MagitekAngel August 21, 2009

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I have found myself without my significant other for roughly a week and a half, so outside work, I've had little to do. By some divine prank, I have also recently purchased the biggest time-sink of a video game this side of World of Warcraft, being The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I've had the game less than a week and I've already lost more than thirty hours to it, and I think that alone serves as faithful testament to the game's dangerously addictive nature.

Here is my experience with it thus far: certainly the game is vast, this was in fact one of its main selling points at release. There are, however, larger offline games out there, including Oblivion's own predecessor Daggerfall, and in truth, after my 30 hours with the game, I have had plenty of time to get used to the size of the world map and the scope of the quest. Once the size contest is over, however, I still find myself coming back to it, when even greats like Final Fantasy remain things that, while immensely enjoyable, I can only play for relatively short stints before I lose focus and move on to something else.

I'm trying to narrow down what keeps Oblivion fresh and prevents it from becoming stale or frustrating, and I think I'd have to say that it's the sheer immersion of the experience. Everything you do serves a purpose; everything is meaningful in the greater scope of the game. There are no frivolous minigames or pointless sidequests. At the same time, the attention to detail is breathtaking. Every room of every town is unique, and everything in each room can be picked up, interacted with, or read. Every NPC has an entire backstory all their own, and most vitally, all of this detail is available to you at your leisure, to either savor or ignore.

Granted, the game has some hilarious shortcomings. I am pretty sure there are no more than four individual voice actors, including Patrick Stewart, and let's be honest with ourselves: it is difficult to take him seriously when he is playing a character with a full head of hair. Then there are the disjointed, often unintentionally hilarious conversations the NPCs have with one another, which proves to me that there is still no artificial intelligence that can pass the Turing Test.

But all in all, as late as I am getting into this game (its been out for several years), I am very much impressed by Oblivion.