A Day in Oblivion – Unearthing the PS3

The controller’s sticks had turned unhealthily gunky when I removed the controller from its stone sarcophagus. Not sure if the meltiness was because my room is south-facing or a side effect of encasing my old consoles in the cursed sarcophagus of an Egyptian mummy.

But would Oblivion live up to my memories?

I’m a little wiser and a lot balder than I was when I played then back in those heady days before global pestilence had returned. Would time have eroded the delight I recalled, or would the plucky older game hold up well? I heroically decided to spend Sunday finding out.

The several hours I spent in Cyrodiil at the weekend were laced with nostalgia, so it might jut be rose-tinted glasses, but I really rather enjoyed my stay there. I played as a Breton battlemage, going with the suggested class rather than the custom one that I habitually created way back when.

The graphics are still perfectly reasonable (bearing in mind the ag), the major exception being the character faces. One big plus I’d forgotten was that the hotkeying on consoles is miles better than Skyrim. In Oblivion you get 8 (via the D-Pad) whereas there just 2 console hotkeys in Skyrim (up and down, selected from the favourites list accessible by pressing left or right). This came in very handy as someone focusing mostly on magic.

Another nice touch I’d forgotten was the Black Horse Courier, which helped get me back into the world before the empire started falling to pieces. Quests unfolded naturally too, with a couple of people seeking me out in Skingrad (one of whom had walked from the Imperial City), and my nirnroot-harvesting leading to another. There seemed more freedom wandering about this way and that, and I encountered a couple of ruins which I successfully navigated by summoning undead to do the hard work for me.

It was also a little sad to see the Mages Guild in Skingrad appear to have more spells than in the whole of Skyrim.

One diametrically opposing difference was the clear lack of voice-acting variety. That said, the races do stand out a lot more, especially in height terms. In Skyrim, Bretons, Nords, and Imperials look pretty damned similar (although the beast races are orders of magnitude better).

It’s early days, but I really rather enjoyed my Sunday in Cyrodiil. Had to swap the console back for other reasons, but looking forward to joining the Mages Guild and crafting my own spells.

Thaddeus

PS And, for those wondering, a day or two of leaving the controller out plus an hour of playing degunkified my cursed controller.

Oblivion Reminiscing

Occasionally I go back to my old consoles and play games of yesteryear. I was considering doing just that with my PS2 and enjoying classics like God of War, Shadow Hearts, and so on. But lately I’ve been wondering about playing Oblivion.

Made by Bethesda in the good old days when paying for horse armour was laughable and games didn’t take over a decade to be released because studios were too busy dicking about with live service bullshit, Oblivion has a lot of points I remember really fondly. And one I loathed.

Skyrim’s got a more realistic world in terms of paths and mountains, but the infamous sideways mountain-hopping is far easier in Oblivion. What this means is you can go practically anywhere, which means the world’s a bit less realistic but players enjoy a lot more freedom. I’ve gone multiple different ways after leaving the starting dungeon, whereas Skyrim does more heavily lead you by the hand.

Another big plus is that the cities feel larger, and more distinct. The city size in Skyrim is significantly smaller than in Oblivion, and the cities tended to feel like they had their own identities more. Markarth is nice and different, but mostly the architecture and feel of Nordic cities is pretty similar. That’s not the case in Oblivion.

Quests are also better in the Elder Scrolls IV than the next instalment. I won’t spoil it, decade and a half old as it is, but the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion is orders of magnitude better than anything in Skyrim. If you haven’t played it, give it a look. It’s engaging, enjoyable, and compelling.

Creating your own spells is a nifty feature you gain if you join the Mages, but for some reason it was stripped out of Skyrim. Why? It’s cool being able to create your own spells, and the range of spells in Oblivion, even without making your own, is substantially more too. And you can cast them whilst having a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Plus the touch spells make being a battle mage a cool option.

Character creation obviously comes with inferior graphics, but against this you can alter the colour and length of your hair, and even fiddle cleverly to make your orc red (move the relevant slider all the way right, then left, then repeat until he’s red).

These are all things I like. So, what’s the thing I didn’t?

Levelling.

Now, maybe I’ll view things differently if I ever go back, but from memory the levelling system pissed me off. Enemies level as you do. Which can work. But if you don’t get your skills right then you become relatively weaker, making you less powerful as you level up. Which is insane.

I’m currently replaying Divinity Original Sin 2. Undecided if I’ll take a hiatus upon leaving Fort Joy or keep going, but it’s interesting to consider going back to Oblivion.

And the PS3 also has Dragon Age: Origins as well. Ah, happy days…

Thaddeus

Dragon Age Vs Oblivion

This year sees the release of the new Dragon Age (brilliantly entitled Dragon Age 2) and the new Elder Scrolls game (Skyrim), in early March and November respectively.

I loved both previous instalments, and, superficially, they appear very similar. They’re both approximately medieval, with magic and swords and so forth, and both are RPGs. I’m also very likely to buy both new versions as soon as they come out.

However, they’re actually very different games.

Character Creation

This comes in two parts: visual and statistics. In terms of appearance, Dragon Age offered far fewer options (3 races to Oblivion’s 10, fewer hairstyles, discrete rather than continuous colour options for both skin and hair). But, Dragon Age’s characters looked a lot better than Oblivion’s, and that’s what matters really (in visual terms).

Dragon Age’s had a set class system (3 classes, rogue, warrior, mage) whereas Oblivion did not, enabling any character to develop magic or other skills as they wish. It’s hard to say which way is best, given that one game is a solo endeavour and the other involves managing a party of characters.

Verdict: Dragon Age is the better

Levelling System

Dragon Age’s was pretty simple. Collect a set amount of experience points (XP), level up and add a skill every so often and some talents/spells every level.

Oblivion’s was more complicated, innovative and, from my perspective, a bit of a pain in the arse. Every skill (say, blunt weapons) had an underlying stat (strength, in this case). You would get anything from 0 to +5 in a stat (of which you chose 3 each time you levelled) based on the number of skill increases that had that particular stat underlying. However, several skills had to be selected as ‘levelling skills’, and when 10 of these (whether 10 increases for a single skill or 2 for 5 skills etc) had been increased the level rose.

Following?

So, if blunt were a ‘levelling skill’ you could use swords (i.e. sharp weapons), get 10 sword increases and when it came to levelling get +5 for strength despite never using blunt weapons at all. Or, if you increased 5 ‘levelling skills’ twice you’d only get something like +2 for each of the underlying stats.

This, as well as inducing headaches, made it very easy to actually grow progressively weaker as enemies levelled up as well. The Fallout 3 system (similar to Dragon Age’s) was far better, and I hope it’s changed for Skyrim.

Verdict: Dragon Age is nice and simple here

Free-roaming versus Discrete Locations

One of the most striking differences between the two games is the general approach to the world. Oblivion is free-roaming, allowing the player to wander about to various cities, join guilds, commit crimes and visit just about every corner of the map. It’s pretty enjoyable to just plunge into the wilderness and go looking for trouble.

Dragon Age opts for a more discrete approach. There are a set number of major locations (some of which, like Lothering, cannot be returned to after a certain point) and the action occurs. After the introductory period (which is a bit lengthy, I think) there’s plenty of scope for visiting the locations multiple times in whatever order the player wishes, but it clearly lacks the essential freedom of Oblivion.

Verdict: I prefer the Oblivion way here.

Freedom versus Set Storyline

Although there is a limited number of quests available in Oblivion, that number is bloody enormous. There are a number of grouped quests (say, for a certain guild) but also a huge number of individual quests that can be stumbled upon in cities and wilderness both. Not only that, but it’s possibly to be tremendously nice and heroic, or vicious and brutal.

Dragon Age also has a large number of quests, but they are clearly fewer in number than its rival’s. Discounting the central quest, which is not optional (unlike Oblivion where you can ignore it and play the game for 80 hours or more quite happily) there are real grouped quests, and most of those available are pretty simple. However, the Dragon Age storyline (which is far more important than in Oblivion) is far better.

Verdict: For quests, it’s a clear win for Oblivion. For the story, Dragon Age.

Solo versus Party

In Oblivion you can summon various thralls for a limited time and occasionally you’ll fight in a loosely knit group for a short time. It’s also possible, sometimes, to have an underling follow and support you, if you rise high enough in certain organisations. Almost the entire game is spent on your own, however.

Dragon Age is exactly the opposite. A smallish party (4 active members including the player) roams around, mixing up rogue, warrior and mage skills to slay the enemy. A fantastic addition is the fact that your companions will engage in banter between themselves, giving some extra replay value as some companions get on and others really do not.

Verdict: I prefer the party.

Voice Acting

Hmm. Oblivion got some big names (Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean and Terence Stamp) to play some key characters, which was nice. Unfortunately, they then lumbered a small and clearly recognisable number of voice actors with doing everybody else. God knows how many hours the other voice actors put in, but I dislike the fact that in a world with hundreds of NPCs you can often recognise the voices used from numerous other characters in the game.

Dragon Age does have some big sci-fi names (Claudia Black, Kate Mulgrew etc), but, more importantly, it also has a pretty large cast. Many voice actors have a couple of roles, but it’s a vast improvement on Oblivion. Furthermore, a few actors turn in stellar performances (Loghain, voiced by Simon Templeman, is fantastic) and the overall quality is better than in Oblivion.

Verdict: Dragon Age, by miles.

Longevity/replay value

Oblivion has no set longevity. It does have a main quest, which is pretty brief (maybe 20 hours, at a guess) in total, but the world is such that it can be played for over 100 hours. Replay value is high, given the enormity of the world and the large number of available races.

Dragon Age, played fully, is probably a 30-60 hour game (depending on how quickly you play and whether it’s your first time). Undoubtedly it has less replay value than Oblivion, but I played it quite a few times. There are multiple races, and six separate origin stories, plus you can vary your party quite a bit and make different, and important, decisions throughout the game.

Verdict: Oblivion can be played for months on end.

So, the two games are actually very different, but both are very enjoyable and I’m looking forward to both follow up games.

Thaddeus