The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

There is a video game series out there known as The Elder Scrolls, available for computers and now the Xbox and Xbox 360 platforms. I haven’t played the first two games in the series, but I know someone who has played Morrowind, which was the third game. This one is called The Elder Scrolls 4 and is called Oblivion. The name refers to a hell-like realm in the game. You have to close gates to this realm because monsters are coming out. There’s other stuff to do in the game as well, though. This is my review of The Elder Scrolls 4.

You know that story I talked about? That’s almost it. For some reason the emperor is killed, and for some reason that causes portals to Oblivion to open. That makes no sense, though. You have to close these portals while getting some other guy on the throne. For some reason, though, he needs an amulet, which you have to track down at the same time. What do amulets have to do with becoming an emperor anyway? Did Tony Blair need to wear a ring to become Prime Minister of Europe? I know it’s supposed to be a fantasy, but it still makes no sense.

Anyway, your character is an escaped prisoner who for some reason is the only one who can do anything about this stuff. You would think they wouldn’t trust a prisoner to save the world, though. Would you trust Al Capone to run the Department of Homeland Security? Anyway, along the way you can join a bunch of “guilds” that have you do jobs for them, but you don’t really get much for doing them, and the quests are all the same. Every Dark Brotherhood (one guild) quest has you kill someone, for example. It’s pretty unrealistic how little variety there is. I doubt the only thing a mob member would do is drop people in rivers. They would have variety, something the guild quests for some reason don’t have.

Also, what exactly ARE the Elder Scrolls? They’re mentioned every now and then, but are they really important enough to have a series named after them?

A lot of games, movies, etc have distinctive themes that you remember. When I say Pirates of the Carribean, you probably think of that “Du du DUH DUH DUH DUH da da duh duh DUN DUN DUN” theme that it has, for example. This game just doesn’t have a memorable theme. None of the music is memorable, even. It fits the mood, but you don’t remember it at all. Maybe they didn’t put much effort in because the Xbox 360 has custom soundtracks. You’ll want to play your music during the game, but when you play music you can barely hear the characters, so you have to read the subtitles. I don’t play games to read. If I wanted to read, I would pick up a book. They didn’t balance the sound well at all.

Also, the sound effects aren’t great either. When you put away your sword, you’ll hear a metal-against-metal sound. Yet the sheath isn’t metal, and some swords aren’t even sheathed. When you drop a potion on the ground, you hear a sound that sounds like rock-against-rock, even though the potion is glass. When you hit a tree with your sword, it makes a metallic clanking sound instead of a wood-like sound effect. In real life, if you were in a forest, cut down a tree, and heard it fall but the sound was the sound of rock-on-rock, you would be creeped out and think you were in some kind of Truman Show starring Jim Carrey. You would no longer be engaged in the task of cutting down the tree. The poor sound effects take you out of the game and may as well scream out “THIS ISN’T REAL!” Fun.

The graphics definitely look nice, but they aren’t that realistic. There are all kinds of different races, but none of them look like humans. They don’t even seem proportional. When you go to make a character, you can’t get them to look real either. Actually, why do you get to craft your character. When you have a baby, you can’t just choose how he’ll look. You have to get expensive plastic surgery. What happens for most of the game is that the grpaphics look good, but the make no sense. For example, there are nice looking streets, but no cars, carrages, or anything else that would necessitate a street. You can look into the sky and see moons, but they’re IN FRONT OF THE CLOUDS. Also, your character is static. He never changes. Dive under water and his hair stays the same. If the YMCA pool didn’t affect your hair, you would either be wearing a ton of product or you would sue the Y for putting crazy chemicals in the water. Is the water in this area polluted or something? Also, the towns are nice, but almost all of the wilderness is the same. Hills, trees, dirt, and grass. That’s it. And maybe some caves. The point is they didn’t put a ton of effort into the outside areas.

Everyone talks about how open-ended this game is, and it is, but at the same time it’s not. You can only fast travel (an alternative to walking) to a few areas, which really limits exploration. You can play as a lot of characters, like a mage or fighter or thief, but you won’t get very far if you aren’t a fighter. It’s very unfair. It’s like if a bank refused to loan money to anybody who wasn’t an accountant. We would get a ton of accountants, but nobody else and thus our economy would collapse. You see, enemies get stronger as you level up, but if you level up thief-related skills, you can’t beat them very easily. Those Oblivion gates you have to close are much harder if you aren’t a fighter. To close them you have to find and then climb a tower in the realm, and at the top grab a stone-like thing to close it. It isn’t explained what this stone does or how you escape after closing it, but the point is that there are enemies in those towers that will give you a lot of trouble if you aren’t a fighter. In real life you can drive to the store even if you aren’t a racecar driver, so why should it be different in this game?

Let’s talk about weapons, shall we? You can get things like bows and arrows, swords, short swords, long swords, and axes, but nothing better than that. That means no guns, no missles, etc. Wouldn’t the giant, menacing creatures be easier to beat with heat-seeking missles? This game takes place in 4000 something, and they’ve gone that long without inventing those kind of things? I know it’s a fantasy, but civilizations used concrete before the Romans invented it, so why couldn’t guns and missles be invented in this realm?

There’s also the issue of the camera. You can play in first or third person, but in third person the camera gets really weird and you can barely move. For some reason, you can only see the back of your character, though considering how horrible they look that’s probably a good thing.

You really can’t replay this much. After you finish all the quests for the guilds and beat the quest, what else is there to do? They say you can play it gain, but that’s stupid. If a great band came out with one album, and everyone said they should make another, they wouldn’t say “listen to our first one again,” Yet that seems like what Bethesda (the company that made this game) thinks. It took them 5 years to make this game, and all we could do while waiting was replay Morrowind, which had even less replay value to it. Why does it take them so long to make these games anyway? Ratchet and Clank has a new game every year. So does Madden, Burnout, Pokemon, and Mario Party. So why does Bethesda take years and years?

Everyone claims this game is great, but it isn’t. It’s repetitive, unrealistic, and poorly balanced. There’s no replay value to be found, and too many bad things. The Elder Scrolls 5 might fix this stuff, but it probably won’t come out until the Xbox 720 is released. Until then, we’re left with something mediocre and lame. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion gets a 3 out of ten. That score is not an average or anything, but does it need to be? No.