Oblivion

So, technically, I beat Oblivion this weekend. I say technically because, while I played through the main story arc, the world remains and has god knows how many quests and stories left for me to discover and play through. So I thought I'd do a two part review. This first one will focus entirely on the central campaign of the game and the next one will focus on the sandbox aspect.

Unlike Bioshock, whose developers added the patina of literature by riffing on Ayn Rands Objectivist philosophy, Oblivion has no pretensions about itself or its goals. It's a straightforward high fantasy good vs evil sort of story that even includes such delights as people eternally burning in lava and the last minute surprise twist that the world rightfully belongs to the devil. All in all the main story was a yawn. There's an incredible amount of depth in the elder scrolls world and the main story of Oblivion basically neglected nearly all of it.

Much like Morrowind, you spend a great deal of time earning the respect of the various factions in Tamriel. Unlike in Morrowind, where this need felt strongly grounded in the story and made sense, in Oblivion it is essentially an mmo style time-sink designed to keep you from working through the story too quickly. Bravo.

My last real grievance with the main story is that, in the end, all you do is stand there and watch the climax. You are literally rooted in place unable to do anything. Then, to top it off, there's no denouement at all. The story just sort of ends and the only tangible outcome is that all of the npcs in Tamriel now want to gossip with you about what happened in the climax where you were locked in place watching events transpire passively. Oh, and you get a set of armor that you have to wait two weeks in game time to receive.

That being said there were a number of memorable characters, like Baurus, Jauffre and Martin, who weren't able to completely come to life but were life-like enough for me to develop some attachment to.

So, the main story arc for Oblivion gets a big fat "Meh" from me. There are some interesting ideas in there but they weren't developed as fully as they should have been. Graphics wise the game is great. It's beautiful to look at even nearly 4 years after its initial release. Stability wise the game is below average for games of the "AAA" breed. It's buggy. It crashes randomly. Creatures glitch out, get stuck on things, fall into pits and then climb out and twitch like fast-forwarded meth addicts having epileptic seizures.

And, after all that negativity, let me reiterate that I really enjoyed playing Oblivion and would happily recommend it to anyone that's interested in it because, relative to its peers, it's outstanding.

The second half of my review of Oblivion will be posted in a while, when I've tired of playing in the sand box and am ready to move to a new game.

--Abe

Edit:

And, in totally unrelated news, take a look at this and prepare yourself for taxes to go up, way up.