Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2006
Admittedly, I never completed either of the Elder Scrolls titles Oblivion and Skyrim back on my Xbox 360. My earlier encounters with these titles were testing Oblivion on my, self-built, gaming PC during my student years and later watching a roommate play Skyrim on his PlayStation 3.
So yes, I’m familiar with their massive presence and influence on the gaming world, but never sat down to play them properly.
Some months back, I decided to purchase Skyrim and delve into this incredibly popular title. Although a lot of the Bethesda Game Studios logic from their other titles like Fallout and Starfield helped me, I felt Skyrim was a bit of a steep learning curve, considering my unfamiliarity with the genre.
A few hours into Skyrim, I decided to go back in time and play through Oblivion to get a better understanding of it all. After all, it was available on Game Pass, so why not? I enjoyed it tremendously, completed it and then went back to Skyrim and ended up enjoying, and understanding, it more.
Leaving Skyrim for another day, let’s take a look at Oblivion.
From the humble beginning of your character being freed from prison. Pulled through dungeons only to be left with the vital task of delivering the dying Emperor Uriel Septim’s "Amulet of Kings" to a man named Jaufre, a seemingly anonymous man. To the part where you reach the surface and become stunned by the vast open world in front of you still is an impressive sensation.
Admittedly, I never completed either of the Elder Scrolls titles Oblivion and Skyrim back on my Xbox 360. My earlier encounters with these titles were testing Oblivion on my, self-built, gaming PC during my student years and later watching a roommate play Skyrim on his PlayStation 3.
So yes, I’m familiar with their massive presence and influence on the gaming world, but never sat down to play them properly.
Some months back, I decided to purchase Skyrim and delve into this incredibly popular title. Although a lot of the Bethesda Game Studios logic from their other titles like Fallout and Starfield helped me, I felt Skyrim was a bit of a steep learning curve, considering my unfamiliarity with the genre.
A few hours into Skyrim, I decided to go back in time and play through Oblivion to get a better understanding of it all. After all, it was available on Game Pass, so why not? I enjoyed it tremendously, completed it and then went back to Skyrim and ended up enjoying, and understanding, it more.
Leaving Skyrim for another day, let’s take a look at Oblivion.
From the humble beginning of your character being freed from prison. Pulled through dungeons only to be left with the vital task of delivering the dying Emperor Uriel Septim’s "Amulet of Kings" to a man named Jaufre, a seemingly anonymous man. To the part where you reach the surface and become stunned by the vast open world in front of you still is an impressive sensation.
It’s a fantastic, yet modest beginning to such a massive RPG title. It allows the player to become acquainted to the task at hand gradually through combat and usage of magic, while at the same time opening you up to increasingly large quests and side-missions. At first you feel small and humble in Oblivion's large world, but when you grow strong and skilled the map becomes your oyster and you dig in to explore everything!
There’s something charmingly minimalist and clean to the visuals these days, yet it pioneered the lushness and detail of open world titles back when it released. There’s a vast world, both below and above the surface, spiced up with forests, vegetation, fog and flickering torch lights.
This clean look is heightened by the increase in resolution, framerate and anisotropic filtering, all automatic updates done by the Xbox Series X/S. Oblivion often depicts open, plain areas, and square design to its buildings, but the look suits it in such high resolution. The textures hold up surprisingly well, even with such upgrades to the picture.
It’s a more colourful and brighter affair than Skyrim, varying between green forests, blue rivers and waters, contrasting into uniquely atmospheric and creepy dungeons, full of fog and interesting castle architecture beneath the ground. The teleport gates to Oblivion provide a vast change in tone and environment design, delving into a hell-like, orange and red, world full of fire, traps, metallic structures and evil presence. This contrast between the world surface, the dungeons and Oblivion makes it diverse and exciting to explore.
Gameplay holds up too, and in the same vein as Skyrim, Oblivion allows you to level up when utilising abilities. Enjoy stealth? Just play stealthy and your abilities within that class will level up. Enjoy arching? Just use your bow a lot. Same goes for heavy, two-handed, weapons or using a sword and shield combo. Every combat type, including the numerous magic spells, or using potions cleverly, will further level up your skills within their class.
It’s a fantastic way of rewarding the player for their choices. It feels fair and less tedious than having to progress through skills you’ll never utilise just to reach another creation skill. Every level-up grants you a boost to health, stamina or magic too. It’s a diverse, open system, that makes the game shine and feels so rewarding.
I enjoyed mixing up my attack pattern with sword melee and magic, with the latter serving both healing and attack. Managing them both during combat becomes second nature, there's an ease of play here which is welcome in such a immersive RPG.
Gameplay holds up too, and in the same vein as Skyrim, Oblivion allows you to level up when utilising abilities. Enjoy stealth? Just play stealthy and your abilities within that class will level up. Enjoy arching? Just use your bow a lot. Same goes for heavy, two-handed, weapons or using a sword and shield combo. Every combat type, including the numerous magic spells, or using potions cleverly, will further level up your skills within their class.
It’s a fantastic way of rewarding the player for their choices. It feels fair and less tedious than having to progress through skills you’ll never utilise just to reach another creation skill. Every level-up grants you a boost to health, stamina or magic too. It’s a diverse, open system, that makes the game shine and feels so rewarding.
I enjoyed mixing up my attack pattern with sword melee and magic, with the latter serving both healing and attack. Managing them both during combat becomes second nature, there's an ease of play here which is welcome in such a immersive RPG.
I used the bow a lot as my main method of attack; I'd sneak into places, take down a few enemies undetected, then attack full-on with sword and magic when enemies became aware of my presence. There are many approaches to how you can customise your characters to the combat type you prefer.
There's some puzzle solving in dungeons too, figuring out switch combinations to solve them, and lockpicking to bypass the requirement for keys. With extra gold, weapons and items as rewards for going out of the way to unlock hidden treasure, it's often well worth your time.
There's something natural and rather subtle about the storytelling, there’s no specific, massive and epic cutscenes, it just runs alongside what you're doing in a fairly subdued manner. Events occur as you play through the quests, be it main ones or side missions, all blending together without one feeling less important than the other.
The main campaign is, like a lot of Bethesda Game Studios titles, cleverly not exaggeratedly long. The main quest clocks in at a healthy 25-30 hour mark, yet only doing the campaign and never digging into side missions is missing a lot of the developer's magic.
Equally important, and interesting in depth, some side quests are huge, completely standalone, stories that you’d miss if you skipped them. The way the game weighs up the normal length campaign, with some truly memorable side quest is quite genius. Something we see in the developers later titles like Fallout 3 and Skyrim from the same generation.
In comparison to Skyrim, and don't get me wrong here Oblivion is very much an open world RPG, but somehow I feel Oblivion better keeps the story and progression cohesive. There's a tighter design to the main quest, which pays off for beginners to the series. Skyrim is more vague in what it wants you to do, it takes for granted that the player levels up between main quests. Often sending you to the opposite side of the map, with no explanation as to how the player easily manages to do so.
Personally, I just felt the story in Oblivion was more interesting, with the Oblivion portals and their evil presence. Feeling like a more dangerous and ominous threat than Skyrims dragons. A cult, called Mythic Dawn, which brings the portals to life are creepy and the whole story culminates in a weird, yet stunning dimension called Paradise. I was very much kept on my toes throughout, longing to reach the end!
There are signs of its age though. The menus for choosing inventory, maps, quests and so forth are crowded with an overly large font, intended for lower resolutions, that feature confusing icons and clumsy navigation. It doesn't even utilise the full screen.
The stiffness to character movement stands out like a sore thumb, especially face detail and expressions look simplistic these days. Impressive stuff in such a vast and large world back in 2006, not so much now.
There are signs of its age though. The menus for choosing inventory, maps, quests and so forth are crowded with an overly large font, intended for lower resolutions, that feature confusing icons and clumsy navigation. It doesn't even utilise the full screen.
The stiffness to character movement stands out like a sore thumb, especially face detail and expressions look simplistic these days. Impressive stuff in such a vast and large world back in 2006, not so much now.
It’s also clearly intended for a first-person view, and although you can play in third person, it’s stiffly animated. A trait that would haunt most of Bethesda Game Studios' titles, all the way up to Starfield where they fixed it. My tip would be to stick to first person for precision of picking up items and aiming, and use the third person to get your bearings if you're surrounded in close combat.
After my playthrough I fully understand how Oblivion became so massively popular, paving the way for the the insanely popular Skyrim. I missed out on an incredible RPG experience back in my Xbox 360 days, yet I can go back to an enhanced version of it and really enjoy myself in current times.
Truly an excellent, landmark of a RPG with a tight and interesting story, combined with a feeling of vast freedom in stunning world. Allowing you to take on the adventure the way you prefer to play and be rewarded through leveling up the combat and actions you prefer.
