Bethesda Softworks has done it yet again, immersing the most hard-core of role players in the fourth installment.
Like all of the previous Elder Scrolls installments, your character starts in a prison of some sort. You're released from your captivity at the mercy of the emperor Uriel Septim, who sees you in his dreams as the savior of Cyrodiil, the capital province of Tamriel. Cyrodiil is under siege by Daedra, the demons originating from the realm of Oblivion, or the hell of Tamriel. It’s your job to stop these invasions and find a legitimate heir to the throne so that Cyrodiil can be peaceful one again. Throughout your journeys, you'll come across sprawling cities of bustling trade and economics, the mysterious dungeon and cavern crawls in the wilderness, and even portals to hell itself. Beware, the wilderness is filled with monsters and bandits of all sorts, so go prepared. Much of Cyrodiil is covered by lush forests, and there is a lot of these randomly generated woods to be explored; roughly 16 square miles. The game is intended to be a vast free-form adventuring game with hundreds of side-quests and over 200 hours of game play. You could spend hours just decorating your own virtual house, or saving up a load of Septims, the games currency, to buy a horse, which you can also ride. As you plunder your way to destiny, you’ll uncover ancient fortresses, powerful artifacts, and become a wealthy adventurer.
Let’s cut to the basics. The musical scores are very impressive and well orchestrated, especially the introductory theme song. The music flows well with the appropriate occurrences in-game, such as battles and exploration. While this is true, there is one minor fault that stands out, although it’s a very excusable flaw. One can be exploring the lush, green forests looking for a random dungeon dive or bandit brawl and the exploration music will stop almost instantaneously when you are in the range or sight of an enemy, and the battle sequence music is then promptly started. With grass enabled, it's often times difficult to see an attacker immediately, thus, the music is a signal that someone is after you. It kills some of the battle immersion and the essence of surprise.
The sound effects are pretty good, and most of them are not too repetitive, although the voice-overs tend to get a little annoying after a while. The game fully supports 3d sound, and the quality is amazing with a 5.1 surround sound system. It truly engrosses the player into the game. Back to the voice-overs… there are literally over a thousand different NPCs to interact with in Cyrodiil, and most of them have the same generic voice talent as one another. Most of the Nord males have the same voice actor and the same lines, all over Cyrodiil. The same holds true for every other voice-over in the game. Orc females have a high pitched, dainty, feminine voice that’s almost the same as the Breton females’ voices, as well as almost all the other human female voices. Even some of the main characters have the same universal voice actors. Bethesda did great work incorporating some celebrity voice talents into the works, such as Patrick Stewart. He plays a great emperor, it’s just a shame his role is so… short-lived.
The Radiant AI system newly implemented by Bethesda is a great new technology. It gives the NPCs in Cryodiil a 24 hour schedule based on their own needs. NPCs all have sleeping schedules, they eat, go to taverns, travel to different cities, hunt, and even have dynamic, randomly generated conversations with one another. None of these events are scripted, and that’s perhaps what makes this new wave of artificial intelligence so unique. These dynamic conversations, however, can sometimes be very repetitive and short. Here’s an example of a randomly generated conversation between two male Nords while wandering through the streets of the Imperial City, capital of Cyrodiil.
NORD1: Hello
NORD2: Hello
NORD1: I ran into some goblins outside the city not long ago.
NORD2: Nasty little creatures, I hate the things.
NORD1: Goodbye.
NORD2: Bye.
This is very, very short. You’ll be hearing little pointless conversations and gossip like this throughout every town you travel to, but it’s better than having the NPCs stand around doing absolutely nothing all day and night (Morrowind). This gets even worse when both people involved in the conversation use the same voice actor, and sound identical to each other.
There are a few instances of this Radiant AI that are truly very impressive and surprising to say the least. Two Imperial Foresters were hunting a deer in the wilderness; one missed the deer and accidentally hit my character instead. The archer proceeded with his deer pursuit and yelled “Sorry!” to me as he ran by. I didn’t expect this at all. Another instance was while I was roaming the countryside for bandits and other evil. I came across a guard and a bandit in a bit of a scuffle. Apparently they were evenly matched – until I got there. I attacked the guard, and he screamed at me, “Not me, you idiot, attack him!” I then proceeded to attack the bandit, and the bandit fled up a hill and into some ruins. Both the guard and I followed the bandit into the ruins and scoped him out. I killed the bandit and the guard was kind enough to let me loot his corpse. It’s a shame though; the guard didn’t last too much longer in those ruins.
The unique physics engine used in the game provides hours of entertainment, just in case you finish everything else the game has to offer. Bodies react to sword swings and so do almost all of the items in Cyrodiil. Items can be picked up and tossed around, reacting with one another in a realistic flow of gravity. The same holds true for corpses and arrows. Swinging a huge sword into an enemy and killing him in one hit will send him flying in the direction you swiped your sword. Is there a wall to break his sail? His body will smack against the wall and tumble to the floor, realistically. Corpses in this game are almost rubber-like. They’ll bounce around for a few seconds until the artificial gravity can keep them in one place. It’s really a very fun and unique feature to play around with, especially in god mode.
Perhaps the most sought after item of interest in Oblivion are the graphics. This game is one of the most graphically enhanced games to date, and looks incredibly realistic with all of the details turned up on a high resolution. The only real flaw that comes to mind when speaking of the graphics is the amount of raw hardware power your computer will need to run it as mentioned above – all the details maxed on a high resolution. The minimum system specs are staggering to the average PC user, who doesn’t spend thousands of dollars on their rig to play a specific game (and many more to come), but to a hardcore elitist gamer, a top-notch rig is a must have for this game.
The visuals are absolutely mind-boggling. Consisting of realistic shadows that move with your character according to multiple light sources, tree canopy shadows that sway in accordance with trees, self shadows that further enhance character and NPC visuals, realistic grass and trees that both animate and sway with the weather, Shader Model 3.0 implemented in newer video cards for high-quality, life-like water and reflection effects on metals and windows, and High Dynamic Range lighting effects that truly immerse the player in a realistic world almost identical to that of the middle ages. The visuals don’t end there; there are breathtaking draw distances, making it possible to see across almost the entire province, awesome particle effects that really bring out the sense of danger and adventure when inside ruins and caves, as well as reflective large scale textures on every item in the game. The caves have a wet feel to them, and you can see what looks like moisture on the walls and stalagmites of caves and ruins. All of these elements bring out the realism in the game; however, your computer will require the latest technology to run the game at this level.
Some elements of the game play are intuitive, while some tend to bother a lot of players. The combat has been greatly improved over Morrowind’s combat system. If your sword passes through an enemy, you’ll do damage; you don’t have to worry about having a “chance” to hit the enemy should your sword pass through its torso. The level of your blade skill determines how much damage you’ll do, and applies any kind of special attack depending on your mastery level. The combat has also been tweaked to form with the Havok physics engine used in Oblivion, as mentioned above. You’ll really feel the action in this game as you clash steel with a foe. You can block an attack with the click of a mouse and depending on how hard of a swing the enemy delivers, you’ll get knocked back and sometimes stunned for a few seconds. This works both ways too, meaning enemies can fall prey to your own battle tactics and blocking effects. You can even enchant items with great magical effects such as fire damage on a weapon or resist magic on a piece of armor.
The new scaling system that has been implemented into Oblivion tends to bother some, while others seem to be fine with it, and even like it. This new scaling system created an environment in which bandits and other foes level along with you, to keep the challenging part of the game in-tune. The creatures and encounters aren’t the only thing that level along with you, however. As you level, you’ll notice the quality of the gear being used and thusly dropped by foes increase. Eventually, once you hit a certain level, most of the bandits and enemies in the game use the top-notch weapons and armor, making the supposed Champion or demigod-like player character feel like an ordinary character amongst the rest. It isn’t something special when a full set of Daedric armor drops from some random level 30 bandit in a random cave. For those of you who like this type of scaling system where almost everything levels with you and drops level-appropriate gear, then you can leave the game as is.
But, for the hard-core game editors, there’s the construction set. With this tool, one can change this scaled loot system and the level scaling system. This utility is a free download on the official web site, and it’s a very useful tool for those of you who wish to tweak anything in the game yourself, or add new content, or even create a total conversion of the game into Morrowind (which I’m sure is in the works right now). The Construction Set is the utility that Bethesda Softworks used to create the game, everything from scripting to object and area creation and positioning. Need a particular item? Accidentally sold something important? Look up the item number in the construction set and add the item with the console in-game. The console in the game is used to tweak and edit in-game settings as well as debug and activate cheat codes for diagnostic use. It’s useful if you’re trying to test something you’ve created with the construction set. It’s also fun to turn on god mode once in a while and just destroy everything with an area-effect spell.
The user interface or UI in the game is reminiscent of a console video-game. (The game was primarily designed for the Xbox360). It’s almost like a little booklet, with four separate chapters. The first ‘chapter’, or tab, is the character screen. Here there will be a few different pages displaying all of the information about your character’s current status, including level, health, magicka, fatigue or stamina, current bounty, and a multitude of other things. It’s much easier to navigate through than having 8 different windows open at one time, one representing each page of your character’s stats or inventory. The second ‘chapter’ is the inventory screen. This has four different pages in it to easily view a select portion of your inventory, or your entire inventory at once, making it easier to find a specific item. The inventory screen shows items, gives a brief description of each item, defense amount (should it be a piece of armor), damage (should it be a weapon), market value of the item, and the current durability, as well as the weight. A stolen item will have a little red hand attached to it, indicating the item as stolen. Be careful what you steal though, people don’t like it when you take their goods, and will call the guards. The third tab represents your magic menu. It contains all of your spells and active effects as well as special abilities that you gain from magical stones across Cyrodiil. The fourth tab is the map and quest tab, showing the world map, and a mini-map, showing a zoomed in section of the place that you’re currently in. This menu also has some pages that display current quest(s), Quests at hand, and completed quests, all in fully detailed, chronological paragraphs. This method of user interface is very effective and is a big plus.
The interface with NPCs is unique in that it has a disposition system unlike any other. NPCs all have a disposition toward you, and it can either be good or bad, ranging on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the number, the friendlier they’ll be. You can tell jokes to them, boast about yourself, admire them, or even taunt them, and their disposition will change according to your personality level and fame. Characters react to you differently depending on what race you are, your personality level, fame, infamy, and numerous other small factors. You can also bribe characters so they like you more. Although it’s a great feature, bribing doesn’t usually do the job correctly; bribing a beggar and giving him 500 gold will not change his social status, meaning he’ll still be on the street corner saying that he can afford a pair of shoes if you gave him only one more coin, after you gave him 500.
All in all, this game is a must have for any computer gamer. Yes, it’s a system hog, and, like every game, it’s got its own minor flaws, but it truly holds up to its name as one of the best games to hit the shelves. Despite its release date drama and delay, the game truly emerged quite impressive at its initial release, and was well worth the wait. With the decline of quality RPG production and the ascension of the single player role playing experience into the abyss, this may be one of the best role playing games to be released. Hopefully Bethesda will continue to create massive single player role playing games of vast proportions and continue The Elder Scrolls saga for years to come. And yes, for those compulsive people who feel that there should be a bright red or yellow dragon in every role playing game created, you won’t be let down.