Here at XC, we strive to bring you reviews of the best games on the market. If we can't bring you reviews of the best games, we bring you reviews of the worst abominations known to man-kind. That being said, we've had a major lack of reviews...maybe like five in our entire time. Therefore, I intend to bring you a review of one of the better games out there...Oblivion.

Same old review format here, I'll be grading on several different categories and giving a total at the end.


Okay, some of you may be asking "What IS the Elder Scrolls?" Well, that's a tough question. The best comparison I can give you is that it's kinda like Lord of the Rings: it takes place in a medieval setting where ogres, orcs, elves, etc. and magic run rampant. However, it doesn't follow the 'standard' fantasy feel. Well, not so much anyways.

Story - 7/10: The story of Oblivion is a bit of a mixed bag. It's by no means bad - the main story was actually fairly interesting, and the main characters were fairly likeable. However, the story was nothing special - it only made up a small chunk of the game, and nothing notable from the main story has any effect on the 'free play' afterwards. It did have some great voice acting (Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean), although not enough for my tastes (Patrick Stewart's character is killed off right at the beginning, so his lines are rather...limited. Sucks too, he's one of my favorite actors/voice actors). The main 'quests' help to raise your fame throughout the land, although, once more, this didn't seem to have any notable effect, other than people recognizing me and letting me buy expensive property.

Overview? Good story, a bit short, a bit dull.

Gameplay - 7/10: This follows with the story: it's good, but a bit dull. Animations are relatively...simple, making for some awkward fighting. They aren't bad, so to say, and often work quite nicely...but they seem kinda robotic. The game offers both 1st person and 3rd person views, although it's VERY obvious that 1st person is the preferred choice. Aiming with a bow in 3rd person is nearly impossible, and throwing magic at people is a real chore. The 1st person view generally works well, but can get rather frustrating in up-close-and-personal combat...especially with tons of special flashy effects everywhere from the over-abundance of magic throwing mages.

Relationship building is also a mute point, being that you can bribe anyone to 100 percent with just a bit of gold. I never got attached to any of the NPC's in the game (apart from some of the main, well voiced characters), mostly because they don't do crap.

Overview: The combat is solid enough, and the quests and relationships between people are good enough to keep you going. However, the combat feels a bit robotic, and people tend to be as boring as stumps.

Graphics - 10/10: One word: Dayum. When I exited the training tutorial at the beginning and got my first glimpse at the world, I literally said "Damn, that's amazing!" in an above-room-voice. The landscape is INCREDIBLY detailed - quite amazing, considering the map in Oblivion is 16 square miles large. Grass sways gently with the wind, trees offer shade from the scorching sun (which also looks amazing with the High Definition Range Lighting effects), and ruins shine brightly in the forest atmosphere. Towns also have a very strict attention to detail, with high resolution textures everywhere (as well as house interiors, they look incredible). Weapons and armor are equally amazing, retaining high-res textures even on close inspection.

The two failing points of the graphics are as follows: 1) Character models/faces and 2) 'Soup'. Allow me to explain these in more detail...

1) Character generation - Oblivion makes use of a highly complex 'slider' system in the creation of faces. This slider system allows for the game to randomly generate a face, or for a more complex 'manual' adjustment system. The problems, you ask? It seems as if the good people at Bestheda wanted their characters to look like those in medieval times: Damned ugly. Everyone looks as if they have been beaten with a shovel, and there is obviously too much food in the nation of Tamriel.


Sorry guys, this is about as attractive as the in-game NPC's ever get.

However, the face generation system isn't bad. It's merely complex - a LOT of people don't feel like fooling with it too much, and often end up with horrible looking characters. I put some time and effort into mine, and came up with the following:

Male -

Female -

The male character is my main character. I actually went back and turned him female to see if I could create an 'attractive' female character with the face generator (something deemed impossible by others). I think I did a pretty good job.

2) 'Soup' - Okay, the nation in Oblivion is 16 miles around. That's pretty freaking big for a video game. What's more is that it's 3/4 forest and mountains - you have to be able to see far into the distance. However, seeing great distances consumes resources...that's where soup comes in. 'Soup' is basically an extremely low-resolution texture rendered on distant ground. It's basically a big green blob that says "Hey, this is grass." It's a real eye-sore, and it's sadly everywhere.

But fear not! There are several ways to deal with soup, the best being a LOD and normal map replacement mod. In simple terms, it replaces the low resolution textures with higher-res, more detailed textures. Good stuff.

With 'Soup' -

With replaced textures -

A lot better, eh?

Sound - 9/10: The boys and girls at Bethesda did a great job in the sound department. Every line of dialogue in this game is voiced (as opposed to Morrowind, the game before this, which featured voices when walking by someone and text boxes for the deeper conversations). However, the entire voice crew is voiced by about 6 people (who are great, in my opinion, since they can effectively change their voices enough to suit several characters). Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean give awesome performances and really help to set the mood.

Music is good, maybe great, but there's simply not enough of it. The overworld theme pretty much consists of three tracks that rotate over and over...and over, and over...But hey, it's good sounding music, so we can let that slide.

Weapons sound great. Swords hitting metal, arrows making a dull 'thump' on impact with a characters head...what more can you ask for from medieval times?

Replayability - 10/10: Oblivion is EXTREMELY open-ended. It's so open-ended that you NEVER have to do the main quest if you don't feel like it. There's plenty to do (I'm 120 hours in and I still haven't finished everything). It can sometimes feel like a chore though...the world is huge, and reaching the place you need to be can often be a tedious run across the landscape (this game offers a fast travel feature, however, which makes getting to objectives a LOT faster). If nothing else, it's always interesting to see just what kind of character you can craft: A warrior, mage, archer, assassin, thief, or a mix of everything.

Overall - 9/10: Oblivion definately gets my recommendation. There's a TON to do, even if it does get quite tedious at times. The graphics are amazing, and the gameplay is solid enough to keep you interested.

Side Note - The armor in this game looks pretty awesome too. I also like the fact that you can 'enchant' normal weapons with magic, and you get to rename them. Notice my longbow in the picture below:



And just for good measure, a better shot of the female character (without the glowy lighting):



-- Edited by Snake at 02:57, 2006-04-16