Hey, you, hardy looking half-nude dude sneaking around my feet, I've got something fun for you to do!
*Note: This review is much longer than I intended it to be, as such, if you want the gist of it, simply skip down to the final few paragraphs to get an idea of what I'm babbling about. And for those of you who are truly lazy, just read the final line.
Let's start out with the positive... Character creation! I've had quite a bit of fun with the face generator. Who wouldn't? You can make your hero a deformed half-wit with brutish strength, a cool cat who's light on his feet, or a jack of all trades who looks suspiciously like you. Of course, you can really only customize his facial features so extensively. When it comes to hair, it really isn't so great, and the body... Where the hell did this option go?? All-in-all though, I suppose it's good enough for me. Mind you, my expectations of all games is sub-par. I would ike to point out though that I've a save at the point right before you leave your first dungeon, the point at which you can make any changes you wish to your character before actually setting out in to the world.
Staying with the whole customization deal, let's move on to progressive customization. This includes clothing, armor, weapons, spells, and extra character customizations. So, clothing... Nothing too grand really. You've got a decent range of clothing that you can wear, steal, buy, sell, loot, etc. None of it really looks spectacular though. I mean in the setting of the game's world, of course. The nobles look like middle-class townsfolk, the commoners look like they're a bit poor, and the beggars... Well, they've got the choice of rags or birthday suit, so nothing more to be said about them. Basically, I think they could have put a bit more work in to clothing, but then again, who wears clothes when you're fighting off 40-foot demon-gods from a hellish plane of existence come to retake your world? Actually... I kind of did that.
Let's take a look at armor now... So you've got your light armor and you've got your heavy armor. That's pretty much it for armor categories, and that's actually pretty much it for armor too. Your light armor consists of fur, leather, then chainmail, mithril, elven, then... glass. Yeah, that's right, glass is armor! It sounds a bit ridiculous, but I suppose it makes sense in an insane kind of way. Mind you, I do realize that the Elder Scrolls games aren't the first to employ this radical type of armor, but it still bugs me. Anyhow, now for heavy armor. So, heavy armor is pretty much just iron, steel, orcish, dwarven, ebony, and daedric. Again, none of these look really spectacular, but they'll do. And sure, it looks like there's quite a bit of armor, but really there isn't. Aside from the standard armor, there really isn't anything that looks unique, and in a fantasy game like Oblivion, you'd expect to see some more unique looking armor, not just unique in stats. What truly bothered me about the armor though is the fact that it's entirely dependant on your level. You won't see any of the higher gear until you actually reach a preset level and then you'll start finding it, almost as if the world suddenly was swarmed by it. Honestly, it just sounds, looks, and feels riduculous to me.
Okay, now for weapons! Oh goodie... The first thing I want to point out is the fact that, for some reason unknown to me, I can't seem to dual wield anything. You'd think you'd be able to run around with daggers held akimbo, at the very least, but alas, if you want something to be held in your other hand, you'll have to make due with a shield, or your balls. So, anyhow, I'm fairly impressed with the weapons, although there seems to be just as many types of weapons as armor, if you take in to account the different pieces of armor and set it side by side with the different classes of weapons. For bladed weapons you have your daggers, short swords, long swords, and two-handed swords. Oh, you've also got katanas, but they seem to only be produced by some low-income designer company known as the Akiviri. Anyhow, then for blunt weapons you have clubs, maces, war axes, battle axes, and warhammers. Now, I didn't fiddle with blunt weapons so much because they just didn't get the job done for me. So, let's just move on to bows... Which is pretty much the only type of bow there is. You don't have longbows or shortbows or crossbows. All you have is bows. And then for staves, they're all enchanted and are basically magic cannons that splurge spells when you point them. Think "wooden pole-guns". Anyhow, for all of these, save for the katanas, staves, and the cutlass which I forgot to mention, they rank up similar to armor. As a matter of fact, they are so similar they even have the same name. That's right, you'll get daedric shortswords, elven bows, dwarven warhammers, glass daggers, etc. And again, they all appear according to your level. It seems there are a few "unique"--by Oblivion's standards, meaning unique by stats, not by looks--weapons. Honestly though, there is no more than the "unique" armor, so don't expect to find a grand load of truly "Oblivionique" (meaning Oblivion-unique) weapons.
Okay, now that we've run through clothing, armor, and weapons, let's get to the customizing of such. In Oblivion you can customize, or enchant rather, anything and everything you can wear or wield, that isn't already customized, of course. You can pretty much enchant anything you want on to your gear, so long as you can provide the proper materials and know the right spells. Oh, and for some reason, you have to pay money to enchant, even though it seems that all enchanting pedestals are free-to-use. What really gets me going though is the fact that you have to pass a long series of trials by obtaining recommendations from every mage's guild in order to access these pedestals. It wouldn't be so bad if the enchanting was more worth the trouble, but as it is, unless you plan to create some "cheat" items, like the chameleon set (100% chameleon), basically turning you in to Mr. Invisible, or a some sort of super-feather set to boost the amount of weight you can carry, rather than making the item lighter which would make a lot more sense, it's really quite pointless. Of course, you also get access to spellmaking, which can be a bit more useful, but still not worth the trouble as most spells can be bought. They may not be as precise or as effective as a custom made spell, but they got the job done, and don't cost you as much time acquiring them.
Moving on to the extra character customizations. There really is only one thing you can do to customize your character beyond initial customization and, of course, clothing/armor/weapons/etc. What is it? Why, you can become a vampire! Awesome, right? Wrong. You get a lot of bonuses, but you end up taking damage from the sun if you don't feed, and when you take damage from the sun you can't fast-travel, or rest, or wait. That isn't the part that made me not want to be a nightwalker. I didn't have a problem dealing with my new weaknesses, it was my new facial appearance instead. That's right, as a vampire, you have the appearance of an old man! Even being fully fed, you still look like you wear depends diapers and your pants should sit higher than they do. When you don't feed you start looking older and worse for wear, but oddly enough, you eventually get once-a-day spells that are very nice, or would be if they weren't once-a-day. The real kicker is the charm spell you get, but looking like you do, you can't help but wonder how a spell would help an old man like yourself woo the women. I wouldn't mind if I could look younger, yet more vicious, the longer I went without feeding, or something like that, but the wrinkles just bothered me to the point where I just had to get myself cured. But as with many great sounding offers, it's easier to turn vampire than it is to go back. So, getting cured will take another hour or two, real time mind you. All in all, going vampire isn't worth it, and being the only "extra", you can't help but wonder "what the hell happened".
Let's take a look at quests now. Starting from the moment you step out of the sewers--after being sprung, by the king, from your cell, which has a secret passage leading out, that you somehow didn't find yourself--you're on your own... Sort of. You're pretty much told then that you can go anywhere and do anything, or you can go and do the main quest, it's up to you. For some reason though I felt like Bethesda was there holding my hand for the entirety of the game. At first I felt a bit free, and overwhelmed, so I decided to set out and get accustomed to the world. The first thing I came across was a guard on horse back, so I thought to myself "oooh, a horsie, and a guard, and no one else is around", and thus began my life of crime, or so I thought. Little did I know that, even though I wasn't being watched by anyone but the man I was murdering, I would still be accused of the murder and theft of his horse. Unfortunately, I didn't find this out until I stumbled across another guard as I was strolling along on horseback along a lonely road on a lonely night, who promptly accused me and charged me with my freshly committed crimes. So, naturally, I beat his face in, stole his gear, and teabagged his corpse. I guess word travels really fast, because a day's ride away, at a town on the brink of this country, two more guards accused and accosted me with murder and theft. So now I knew I would not be able to step foot near a city or travel the roads without having a finger pointed in my face and being called a murderer, or scum. So I did my time, got my goods back, including the stuff I looted off of the corpses of those guards. Err, okay, back to the quests... Now that I know that I can't do whatever I want, whenever I want, without being called a criminal (so much for being the bad guy), I figured I may as well do some quests. The moment I began the quest dialogue I felt as if I were playing one of those tradmill MMORPGs, and I then felt Bethesda squeeze my hand a little tighter and begin to pull me along. I didn't know at the time that the quest I was doing, and every quest I would do in this world, would include crawling through some bloody dungeon, killing it's inhabitants, and looting everything I saw. At this point I felt like an MMORPG would have actually been a better investment, as atleast then I'd have the comfort of social interraction to keep me company through the long, dark, and dank caves. The few quests which took place outside of a cavern was a nice breath of fresh air, but they were so far and few between that they really don't even feel that great at all, and seem far too short. I'd like to point out that I found myself turning back to my life of crime whenever I had the chance, usually in between quests. Unfortunately, I found that stealing anything from containers or tables or even the floor in an owned building would label that item as stolen. Why? How? Who's tagging everyone's goods!? Apparently waving to guards will give them the opportunity to sift through your pack, or wherever you keep everything, and find those stolen goods, at which point they'll charge you with theft, give you three options, and either confiscate your stuff, or get their face pounded in. It was at this point that I felt Bethesda reach for my balls... And I'd never felt so confined, even being in a "sandbox" like Oblivion.
So often I found myself wishing I could be on the other side of the conflict. Like when I was sent to kill necromancers... I was so willing to give up everything and be bad. But no, that wasn't going to happen. Why? Because I'm the hero of this story, and God forbid that I be my bad little self in a fantasy world where I'm told I can do anything I want. That's the little tid-bit Bethesda forgets to tell you; you can do anything you want, so long as it is what we have planned for you to do and has been pre-approved by us, and has a quest to go along with it! In sane-speak it means "Shut up, sit down, and let us hold your hand while we read you a story and show you some pictures that you can touch, poke, and feel, but can't have." What more is there to do at this point than to continue on with the main story's quest? Why bother with any more of these side quests? So, I went and did the main story. Guess what I found? A very short, very lacking, and very uninteresting series of quests that took me to a world I wish I could actually live in, explore, and become a part of. But being Oblivion, which is actually what this other plane of existence is called, I found that the only purpose of these areas was to provide for me more dungeons in which I could do my questing. In effect, the planes of Oblivion became a dungeon with a red sky as a roof.
The last subject I want to touch on before I get on with my life is the fact that whatever I do, unless I was meant to do it--which, sometimes, would still mean nothing to the world around me--would have very little effect on the world. Even if I were to go on a killing spree, murdering guards, townsfolk, and livestock--and by livestock I mean the countless horses and occassional sheep--you would not see my actions reflected in the newsletters and you wouldn't see the townspeople cower in my presence. Not only that, when confronted by guards, I still had the option to pay my fines! And if I were to go to prison? I'd simply do some time, lose some stats, and come out as if nothing had happened. What the hell kind of sandbox am I playing in? Bethesda has given me my Tonka Trucks and Army Men, but the sand I move and sift aside simply resets itself as if it hadn't moved at all.
After spending some 40+ hours in this game, and completing countless quests, and enduring the tiresome storyline, I've finally called it quits. I've no reason to go back and replay the game. I've no reason to pull it back off my shelf. Actually, the only thing left for me to do is mess with that game save, the one right before I exit the first dungeon, where I get to make any final changes I want to my race, class, or facial features. Oblivion does not have the right to boast it's countless hours of game play, because it isn't "play", it's grinding. I estimate that there is atleast another good 40+ hours of grinding in that game left for me to do, of which, I'll do none of because it's so unbelievably pointless and mind-numbingly boring.
Let go of my hand Bethesda, and stop trying to fondle my balls. You can tell me what you'd like, but I still won't love you.