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Or as I like to call it: Dungeons & Dungeons
I originally picked this game up for one reason: I was convinced that it was basically fantasy medieval Fallout 3. That is true in some ways. After all, both games were made by Bethesda, and both run on a similar engine. After playing through it all I can say is, yes it is medieval Fallout...if the only time you left the vault, was to travel to another vault, possibly going through one or two more vaults to get to your goal. Seriously, this game is nothing but dungeons. Good thing most of them are interesting.
Since this is the Game of the Year Edition, it also came with the Knights of the Nine quest, and the Shivering Isles expansion. This is nice, since Knights of the Nine probably helped me finish the game quickly and without much effort. I'll get to that in a moment though. I usually don't like first person RPGs, and after playing this... I'm still not sure that I do.
I really do like games where you get to design your character from the ground up. Oblivion has a rather in-depth character creation tool. After you pick your race you can change many different things about your appearance. Your character's class is actually decided during the opening scenes of the game, where you escape from prison and help escort emperor Patrick Stewart through some ancient catacombs. Bethesda does hire some fairly big names to do voices in their games, but also seems to kill them off fairly quickly. As you will see here, and also with Liam Neeson's character in Fallout.
So I picked knight as my class when I was given the option, and apparently that was the right choice. Almost right off the bat I started the Knights of the Nine quest, where the reward if you do the entire quest line is a suit of heavy armor and sword that is pretty much better than anything else you will find for most of the game. So right from the start, I was on easy street.
The main quest of Oblivion is rather short, taking I would say less than 10 hours. However, there are dozens upon dozens of side quests to do. Unfortunately, for the most part they all involve the same thing: Go to X cave and either kill Y monster or retrieve Z item. The same could be said for the main quest, as it too is a series of caves and dungeons. For awhile this was rather enjoyable, but around the 20 hour mark it started to get tedious, and around the 40 hour mark I was praying for death. Ok, so maybe its not that bad, but still I wanted it to end, or at least something else to happen. Shivering Isles is pretty much more of the same, just in a different location.
Also one other complaint I had was that it really didn't feel like you were playing “a legendary hero” more so I felt like I was playing “the only competent person on the planet”. Think of those low level quests you get in RPGs usually; “Go to the ancient cave where no one who has gone there has ever returned alive, and slay the goblin leader”, or something hokey like that. It sounds scary but you get in there and wreck the place single-handedly at level 1. Yeah, the entire game sorta felt like that.
At level 2 I killed an ancient evil god...with two swings of my sword. I turned around to the NPCs that were following me and thought “Wow...that was hard, you guys seriously couldn't have done that?” Only to notice that they weren't behind me, because two were stuck on a wall, and another was flailing wildly at a giant rat. Then I realized that yes..that was my true power...competency.
The game does look really pretty, though, at least the environments anyway. Bethesda does know how to make an absolutely gorgeous world, however they just aren't good with character models, especially when it comes to lighting. I don't usually notice this kind of thing, but in this game its pretty obvious. There are times when they just look hideous.
Even with the complaints I have, this is still a pretty solid game. Even though it is rather repetitive at times, I still can't say that its a bad game. Even though there are a lot of them, most of the dungeons are at least interesting. The game is worth a look, it is fun..but it might not be for everybody. It's definitely worth a rental, sure you won't be able to do everything in that time, but you should be able to decide if you like it or not.
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System: |
Xbox 360
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| Genre: |
First-Person RPG
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| Experience: |
Finished the game and Shivering Isles Expansion. 50+ hours |
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