Category: 
Elder Scrolls : Oblivion for PS3 is now available as the game of the year edition. A package including both Shivering Isles and the official plug-in Knights of the Nine, is called The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. Even though it wasn’t released on PS3 until the fall of 2007 the franchise had been around for quite some time before that. The PC and 360 versions of Elder Scrolls : Oblivion came out in 2006.
Even though it has been around for two years now it has a game play engine that is superior to many newer games. The camera works very well and you can get full view from almost every angle. The fighting is very good for an RPG and has a better feel than an MMO or a PC game. Immersion is better when you are seeing it on a large TV screen. It’s an open ended game that plays a lot like an MMO without the M for multiplayer. It’s a solo first or third person adventure. It is fun to cast spells and combat with swordplay in first person.
The main difference in playing a massively single player RPG like this and a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) on a PC though is the amount of customization and storage that you have on the interface. You can only hot key a limited number of spells and weapons in this his game. In many PC MMO’s you have an interface with more slots than you have with a console’s controller. But the difference doesn’t seem important enough. Once you’ve played an RPG that has finally gotten all the controls right, you won’t care. It would be great if you could play World of Warcraft and Dungeon’s and Dragons with this engine.
With a musical score by Jeremy Soule from Guild Wars the background music is expansive, serene at times and beautiful. There is voice over work by Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean in the game. The sound and music are very well done.
Character creation is fairly vast and detailed. You can customize every facial feature. There are five different races to choose from and then many professions and options for skill specialization’s.
The game is a full on RPG, where you can play the game with little combat, or go for it in the guise of a warrior. The quests range from simple local focused ones to increase your skills and develop your character in, or you can go into the epic main quest and battle through all of the story line. Any of the many experiences that you can choose is going to be fulfilling.
The entire game is richly detailed. I especially enjoy the alchemy. There are collectible plants and herbs that you can forage for and the approximations of the look of the real plants are remarkably good. You can harvest flax, ginseng, aloe leaves and many other plants to trade for gold or to make into potions. Health and fatigue remedies are readily available so that you could survive off the land without spending your gold for healing potions.
The lighting effects are gorgeous. You’ll want to stop to observe the orange, gold and fuchsia clouds passing over a valley at sunset. Every area is strewn with loot that you can examine and take. There are thousands of opportunities to steal as well. Generally loot that you can acquire legally or quasi legally is everywhere. Your items can be combined, upgraded repaired and sold, all in a well tuned RPG fashioned. My female dark elf battle mage joined the mages guild, giving her access to all the food, clothing, books and equipment that she can find in the mages guild lodgings in every town. It also provided her with a free place to sleep.
This game does so many things well. Horse riding is available right after an initial mission and there are horses at many stables. The game gives you the chance to be who ever you want, dark or light. Your choices effect how the NPC’s react to you. You can barter and persuade them to give you better deals. The personality and people skills that you develop have a lasting effect on how they will treat you.
Only thing it is really lacking is an online component and a cooperative mode. It would be great if you could put in a second controller and have a friend join you in all or some of the game. The map could function better but those are minor complaints.
There is one thing that I view as a big problem. There are imbalanced differences between the female and male sexes of each race. One of the few things that I ask of developers is that the genders have equal strength and skills. I would tolerate skimpy clothing on avatars more readily than inequality in statistics.
I found out that it is said that in general the females are weaker than the males. It was justified by offsetting the Willpower, but not in every race. Males characters have better Endurance which effects melee play and they have an unfair advantage over the females. That would not translate well to an MMO where player vs player (PvP) is very popular. Females in the game have more Personality. Argonian and Orcs females have more intelligence.
Many mods have been made for this game on the PC. Wikipedia recalls that Oblivion, “on May 3, 2006, had a historic and botched rating change from the Entertainment Software Rating Board. The ESRB “changed Oblivion’s rating from T (Teen 13+) to M (Mature 17+), citing game content not considered in the ESRB review, including “more detailed depictions of blood and gore” than had been previously considered and in the M rated version more blood and gore was added. Also, “the presence in the PC version of the game of a locked-out art file that, if accessed by using an apparently unauthorized third party tool, allows the user to play the game with topless versions of female characters.” The “third party tool” in question was a game modification, the Oblivion Topless Mod. In response to the new content, the ESRB conducted a new review of Oblivion, showing to its reviewers the content originally submitted by Bethesda along with the newly disclosed content. The new review resulted in an M rating.”
Despite sexist character statistics and a nude mod, the strengths of the game outweigh its flaws. I give Elder Scrolls : Oblivion Game of the Year Edition a 9 out of 10.
Recently:
- Tomb Raider Underworld : Underwhelmed PS3 Review
- Geek Woman’s Best Video Games of ‘08
- Girl Geek Shopping Guide
- Lord of the Rings Online : The Mines of Moria PC Review
- Good Girl Power : Nancy Drew
- A Glimpse Inside Moria
- Not Much to Write Home About
- Bleach: Dark Souls DS Review
- Adam Sessler : Home is on the Way?
- Myvu on Ellen
