Fractured Reality

Almost four years ago, a chance reading of a magazine article lead to me purchasing a game called Morrowind, and the subsequent loss of a month of what could otherwise have been a productively spent summer holiday. It is natural, therefore, that I have been looking forward to playing Oblivion - the next game in Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls series of which Morrowind was a part - from the moment I discovered it was in development.

The best word to describe games of this ilk is epic. On stepping of the initial dungeon and into the wider world for the first time, a sense of amazement settles over you at the expanse of lush, green, rolling hills and the thought that this land, this huge, completely and freely traversable land has been created for your benefit. The world of Tamriel really is your oyster. Following the main quest will save it from demonic invasion, but there are many diversionary activities - join the Mages' or Fighters' Guilds, become a thief, an assassin, a gladiator, or simply an adventurer looking to the next horizon and the ancient ruins or unexplored caverns which may lie in wait.

Morrowind was something of a graphical breakthrough at the time, but while it was impressive, Oblivion is in a different league, leading the next generation field with a vastly impressive array realistic graphics and visual effects. The number of options for face alteration during character creation is staggering all by itself, and at that point the game hasn't even started yet.

But the closer we get to realism, the more noticeable unrealistic details become. Random dialogue between the inhabitants of Cyrodiil - the province where Oblivion is set - is better than ever before, with varied conversations frequently taking place. There are, however notable pauses between line deliveries, so instead of marvelling that such a thing is possible, you end up focussing instead on the fact that it's all rather stilted. The same applies to the graphics while roaming the world. All dungeons, cities and so on are completely rendered when you enter them, but there's far too much detail for this to be possible in the open. As a result, grass, trees and any other detailed objects appear and disappear in a circle around you as you move, as if a couple of mad artists armed with pencils and erasers are fighting over the right to draw the landscape. While it is possible to increase this drawing distance, it is highly unlikely that you will have a computer capable of doing so to an extent where the effect is unnoticeable.

To criticise Oblivion for things of this nature, however, is grossly unfair. It is a wonderful game with a seemingly endless supply of things to do, see, kill, kill again because the game crashed the first time (welcome to the world of mid-range PC gaming), quests to be had, loot to be found, horses to be ridden, character levels to be raised...

Speaking of level ups, Oblivion's system remains practically unchanged from Morrowind's, and thus is utterly intuitive. Skills are improved by repeatedly performing them, finding someone to train you, or reading certain books on the subject. Once you have gained enough skill increases, you achieve a level-up, where you choose three attributes to improve. Each skill is governed by an attribute (for example, Heavy Armour is governed by Endurance), and the number of points you can increase them by, ranging from one to five, depends on how many of their dependant skills you have improved over the course of the level. While this description may not be the clearest, the system itself makes so much sense that you wonder why it hasn't been adopted by all games in the RPG genre.

Another impressive feature is the game's much talked-about Radiant AI system. Instead of scripting action sequences for the people and creatures of Cyrodiil, Bethesda chose to give them each specific needs and wants, and let them get on with it. This produces an incredibly natural feel to the populace, as each day people go about their business, eating, working, going to church, sleeping, meeting at the local inn for a few drinks. Admittedly you never seem to see them having those drinks, but it can be assumed that this is why they are there.

The AI also works well in combat situations. Mages and archers will attempt to retreat and attack from range if you charge at them, like the weaklings they are, but will usually pull out a melee weapon if pressed into a corner. Fighters will simply bull-rush you, clearly searching for some manner of inglorious death. From your side, combat is a simple affair - holding down the attack button swings your weapon, with your direction of movement and the length of the hold determining your type of stroke and power respectively. As you improve your combat skills you gain access to new power attacks, with the chance of disarming, performing a knock-down, or paralysing your opponent. This can easily be blended with blocking using your shield (or weapon if it's two-handed), and spell-casting to allow for healing, fortifying your attributes, or just hurling a good old-fashioned fireball at your enemy.

Oblivion is far from perfect however, although for a game of this size that's hardly surprising. I've briefly mentioned that the game occasionally crashes when you kill something, and there are other terminal bugs of this nature, all to do with having a mid-range computer that can't always cope with what it's being asked to do. But there are other, system-independent issues, problems with quests that cannot be completed and the like, which make you wonder if the game was play-tested at all. At the time of writing (a full 10 weeks after the release date), Bethesda have only produced a beta patch for Oblivion, which fixes some but not, it seems, most of the bugs.

Aside from these technical issues, there are two design choices that particularly stick out as slightly strange. The first is the fast travel system whereby, at any point in the main world, you can call up the map and basically teleport to any specific location (i.e. dungeon entrance, city, etc) which you have previously visited. While this saves a huge amount of time, it constantly serves to remind you that this is just a game, and thus breaks the immersion in Oblivion's world. Morrowind had a fast travel system involving massive creatures known as Stilt Striders, which could transport you from one city to another for a small fee, and while that system was no where near as flexible as Oblivion's, it made sense for the world, and therefore didn't seem as jarring.

The final issue is with Oblivion's difficulty curve. Simply put, it is practically non-existent. The game works by a system of world-levelling, which means that as your character levels up, so does every other creature in the world. In other words, you always fight creatures whose difficulty to overcome is proportional to how far you have progressed. Weapons and armour also improve in this manner, so eventually even the lowliest bandit has equipment whose value, if fenced, could allow him to retire from his life of crime, buy a farm, and start raising cattle. But where would the fun be in that? The point is that, unless you attempt to work through the main quest from the very start, and do nothing else, you won't notice the game getting that much harder as you progress. Nor, once you reach the higher levels, can you go back and slaughter your way through thousands of those creatures which used to bother you, because they no longer appear in any sort of abundance. Instead you just reach a point where you never seem to die any more, and that's about it.

One thing is for sure though. None of this can detract much from the sheer brilliance that is Oblivion. For me, Morrowind, with its unique architectural styles in each city, and greater diversity in terms of flora and fauna as you travelled the land just holds the edge over Oblivion in terms of having that extra, extra special something, but this says nothing negative about Oblivion in the slightest. Its magnitude and scope are awe-inspiringly huge, and the execution of the developers' ideas, considering this, is nearing perfection.

There's still a vast amount which I haven't mentioned. In fact, the time it would take to comprehensively describe the Oblivion experience is probably about the same as the duration of the game, or at least its main plot, so I suggest you do that instead. There's a world in peril and it's calling out for you to save it. What are you waiting for?