Still set on my long and enjoyable journey to delve into every single PC Elder Scrolls game, I have finally arrived at chapter IV: Oblivion. This one, I did play a lot as a kid, but having finished the others before it, I have a completely new outlook on it, so I daresay my newfound love for the series has long overshadowed any nostalgic bias I had towards it. In short: while not as deep as Daggerfall or as unique and engaging as Morrowind, Oblivion is still a worthy entry into the Elder Scrolls saga.

Visually, Oblivion was pretty incredible at the time, and vanilla, it's still not half-bad. Like Morrowind, making Oblivion look fantastic with just a few mods is not hard.

Touching on the actual artstyle and setting, Oblivion leans more into being grounded and familiar than being unique, but that doesn't make it any less breathtaking. There's a LOT of European-style castled towns, villages, forests, lakes, frozen mountains and so on. The demographics and architecture of towns and landscape still does vary depending on which region you're in and the new physics implementation and much improved AI also does wonders to make the world feel alive. However, the memes regarding NPC designs and weird, uncanny-valley potato faces are not undeserved – the fidelity of Oblivion’s environments accentuates just how horrendous some of the character designs are.

I have no complaints about the sound design, though. Everything sounds great and the music is incredible. We have full voice acting again, and for the most part, it is good as well, with Hollywood-level actors like Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart lending voices to some of the main characters. That said, most other characters are voiced by two or three people and despite Oblivion's best efforts to differentiate them, you do feel like you're talking to the same few people from time to time.

Let’s delve into strong points first – Oblivion has some of the best, most entertaining and most memorable quests in any RPG ever, let alone the Elder Scrolls. It excels in writing, scripted sequences and quest interactions. The Dark Brotherhood questline, the Daedric quests, Umbacano's quests, the Arena and its Champion, the Thieves Guild, many, many of the Shivering Isles quests, just to name a few, are just top-notch stuff and it really leans into the "ignore the main story" playstyle that so many players (including myself) love and indulge in.
On the other hand, I really feel that Oblivion relies too much on quest markers and fast travel to keep the quests moving along, foregoing some immersion in the process. This turns many of the interesting "investigation" or "find the person/thing" parts of a quest into "follow the compass to the marker". The town designs are good with visible landmarks and sensible planning, why not lean into that? Why give me a marker that shows me where "the chapel" is when someone says "meet me behind the chapel at midnight" when the chapel is smartly placed in town? Why immediately mark a dungeon on my map when finding it can be just as engaging and interesting as the dungeon itself? The journal also acts less as a journal and more of a "notification center" for making sure the player is following along. Why tell me what I read in a book an NPC asked me to read, instead of actually making reading the book part of the quest and the NPC checks my reading with a simple multiple-choice question? So many missed opportunities to go from stellar to legendary. Handholding aside, the quests in Oblivion are definitely a stand-out and I would say mostly superior even to Morrowind's in all aspects except navigation.

As far as combat goes, the most obvious change is the removal of any RNG in combat and a further removal of combat skills. I expected this to bother me greatly coming from Morrowind, but honestly… it’s not that big a deal. It does remove a lot of roleplay from the character creation, in that it feels odd that any character can be good at any sharp weapon if they just level “Blade”, for instance. I miss the crazy movement options, and the spellbook organization is atrocious (there is none, really), but to me, the bigger issue is the level scaling, which feeds into the whole “simplify it and make it more accessible” mentality. Enemies level up as you level up, simple. It is a very double-edged sword. It does alleviate the need to min-max and it's a lot easier to "just play the game" and not worry about leveling much. But it also means putting much thought into your character feels unrewarding because any build kind of... kills anything at a mediocre rate if you’re determined to hack away long enough.

Speaking of doing the same thing over and over again – if you delved into every single fort, mine or Ayleid ruin that pops up on your map when walking around the overworld, you'd probably burn out pretty fast. Unless it’s part of a quest, most dungeons are sadly fairly bland and not worth visiting and the same goes for the Oblivion gates, which are easily the most boring slog of the game that can take an hour if you fight through them, or a few minutes if you just speedrun to the end of the dungeon. I never enjoyed them and luckily, you're only required to shut a few down during the main story, but since they do offer the strongest enchanted items in the game, you're missing out on some much-needed muscle if you choose to ignore them completely.

Since I mentioned the main story – it’s… okay, but not superlative. Despite Todd and the gang really wanting to sell you this epic tale of saving the plane of reality, when condensed, it’s boils down to "fetch a few things for the new Emperor". I do, however, like that in many games, you have the "chosen one" cliché, but in Oblivion, someone else is the chosen one and you kind of help and support them in reaching their destiny.

Since this is the "all DLCs included" Game of the Year edition, let me briefly touch on the DLCs. Most of them are just plugins and one is a pretty standard side-quest, but two are actual expansions: Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles.

Knights of the Nine is more or less a glorified faction side-quest set in Cyrodiil, and a very classic chivalrous tale of "find the holy relics and defeat the evil magic being". It's pretty nice and the gear is cool, but I found it nothing special.

Shivering Isles, however, is the absolute bomb. Set in a whole separate realm with a separate map, the environments are way more artsy and unique than base Cyrodiil, the quests and NPCs are flavorful and bonkers in the best way possible, the main story is intriguing and original, top marks in every single category. It still suffers some of the same drawbacks as the main game (like samey dungeon design), but a lot more care was put into giving most places and dungeons an identity and purpose, so it doesn't feel nearly as bland (the smaller scope helps too).

Lastly, the mods for this game are numerous, too numerous to cover. Just know there's mods for near everything I knocked here, and revel in that knowledge.

Ultimately, Oblivion definitely shines in many areas. The world looks good and despite its instanced and downscaled towns, feels alive and lived-in. The quests are the bulk of the fun - they are truly stellar and is what I spent most of my time doing. There are other aspects in which I feel Oblivion has been given the axe too harshly - the reliance on the compass and quest markers, the general railroading and "ooh look at this" theme-park syndrome, the meh main story, the slow phasing out of many roleplaying mechanics. Despite its darndest attempts to nudge you into the way they wanted you to play the game, and despite the many, many questionable changes for a role-playing game, you still can, and definitely should, make your own fun in Oblivion, and there is, indeed, plenty of fun to be had.

Still set on my long and enjoyable journey to delve into every single PC Elder Scrolls game, I have finally arrived at chapter IV: Oblivion. This one, I [i]did[/i] play a lot as a kid, but having finished the others before it, I have a completely new outlook on it, so I daresay my newfound love for the series has long overshadowed any nostalgic bias I had towards it. In short: while not as deep as Daggerfall or as unique and engaging as Morrowind, Oblivion is still a worthy entry into the Elder Scrolls saga. Visually, Oblivion was pretty incredible at the time, and vanilla, it's still not half-bad. Like Morrowind, making Oblivion look fantastic with just a few mods is not hard. Touching on the actual artstyle and setting, Oblivion leans more into being grounded and familiar than being unique, but that doesn't make it any less breathtaking. There's a LOT of European-style castled towns, villages, forests, lakes, frozen mountains and so on. The demographics and architecture of towns and landscape still does vary depending on which region you're in and the new physics implementation and much improved AI also does wonders to make the world feel alive. However, the memes regarding NPC designs and weird, uncanny-valley potato faces are not undeserved – the fidelity of Oblivion’s environments accentuates just how horrendous some of the character designs are. I have no complaints about the sound design, though. Everything sounds great and the music is incredible. We have full voice acting again, and for the most part, it is good as well, with Hollywood-level actors like Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart lending voices to some of the main characters. That said, most other characters are voiced by two or three people and despite Oblivion's best efforts to differentiate them, you do feel like you're talking to the same few people from time to time. Let’s delve into strong points first – Oblivion has some of the best, most entertaining and most memorable quests in any RPG ever, let alone the Elder Scrolls. It excels in writing, scripted sequences and quest interactions. The Dark Brotherhood questline, the Daedric quests, Umbacano's quests, the Arena and its Champion, the Thieves Guild, many, many of the Shivering Isles quests, just to name a few, are just top-notch stuff and it really leans into the "ignore the main story" playstyle that so many players (including myself) love and indulge in. On the other hand, I really feel that Oblivion relies too much on quest markers and fast travel to keep the quests moving along, foregoing some immersion in the process. This turns many of the interesting "investigation" or "find the person/thing" parts of a quest into "follow the compass to the marker". The town designs are good with visible landmarks and sensible planning, why not lean into that? Why give me a marker that shows me where "the chapel" is when someone says "meet me behind the chapel at midnight" when the chapel is smartly placed in town? Why immediately mark a dungeon on my map when finding it can be just as engaging and interesting as the dungeon itself? The journal also acts less as a journal and more of a "notification center" for making sure the player is following along. Why tell me what I read in a book an NPC asked me to read, instead of actually making reading the book part of the quest and the NPC checks my reading with a simple multiple-choice question? So many missed opportunities to go from stellar to legendary. Handholding aside, the quests in Oblivion are definitely a stand-out and I would say mostly superior even to Morrowind's in all aspects except navigation. As far as combat goes, the most obvious change is the removal of any RNG in combat and a further removal of combat skills. I expected this to bother me greatly coming from Morrowind, but honestly… it’s not that big a deal. It does remove a lot of roleplay from the character creation, in that it feels odd that any character can be good at any sharp weapon if they just level “Blade”, for instance. I miss the crazy movement options, and the spellbook organization is atrocious (there is none, really), but to me, the bigger issue is the level scaling, which feeds into the whole “simplify it and make it more accessible” mentality. Enemies level up as you level up, simple. It is a very double-edged sword. It does alleviate the need to min-max and it's a lot easier to "just play the game" and not worry about leveling much. But it also means putting much thought into your character feels unrewarding because any build kind of... kills anything at a mediocre rate if you’re determined to hack away long enough. Speaking of doing the same thing over and over again – if you delved into every single fort, mine or Ayleid ruin that pops up on your map when walking around the overworld, you'd probably burn out pretty fast. Unless it’s part of a quest, most dungeons are sadly fairly bland and not worth visiting and the same goes for the Oblivion gates, which are easily the most boring slog of the game that can take an hour if you fight through them, or a few minutes if you just speedrun to the end of the dungeon. I never enjoyed them and luckily, you're only required to shut a few down during the main story, but since they do offer the strongest enchanted items in the game, you're missing out on some much-needed muscle if you choose to ignore them completely. Since I mentioned the main story – it’s… okay, but not superlative. Despite Todd and the gang really wanting to sell you this epic tale of saving the plane of reality, when condensed, it’s boils down to "fetch a few things for the new Emperor". I do, however, like that in many games, you have the "chosen one" cliché, but in Oblivion, someone else is the chosen one and you kind of help and support them in reaching their destiny. Since this is the "all DLCs included" Game of the Year edition, let me briefly touch on the DLCs. Most of them are just plugins and one is a pretty standard side-quest, but two are actual expansions: Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. Knights of the Nine is more or less a glorified faction side-quest set in Cyrodiil, and a very classic chivalrous tale of "find the holy relics and defeat the evil magic being". It's pretty nice and the gear is cool, but I found it nothing special. Shivering Isles, however, is the absolute bomb. Set in a whole separate realm with a separate map, the environments are way more artsy and unique than base Cyrodiil, the quests and NPCs are flavorful and bonkers in the best way possible, the main story is intriguing and original, top marks in every single category. It still suffers some of the same drawbacks as the main game (like samey dungeon design), but a lot more care was put into giving most places and dungeons an identity and purpose, so it doesn't feel nearly as bland (the smaller scope helps too). Lastly, the mods for this game are numerous, too numerous to cover. Just know there's mods for near everything I knocked here, and revel in that knowledge. Ultimately, Oblivion definitely shines in many areas. The world looks good and despite its instanced and downscaled towns, feels alive and lived-in. The quests are the bulk of the fun - they are truly stellar and is what I spent most of my time doing. There are other aspects in which I feel Oblivion has been given the axe too harshly - the reliance on the compass and quest markers, the general railroading and "ooh look at this" theme-park syndrome, the meh main story, the slow phasing out of many roleplaying mechanics. Despite its darndest attempts to nudge you into the way they wanted you to play the game, and despite the many, many questionable changes for a role-playing game, you still can, and definitely should, make your own fun in Oblivion, and there is, indeed, plenty of fun to be had.