Review

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (page 2 of 6)

By Lunchbox
April 05, 2007 14:10 PM PST
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The game begins in a fairly provocative manner. Confined by behind bars in the capital's prison, your character becomes embroiled in the assassination of the king, a man who declares you a destined hero. As one of only a few survivors of the attack, you are tasked with delivering the news and an important object to the king's son Martin, a man who is not even aware he is the heir of the king.

When you emerge from the secret underground passages into the bright sunny country side, the world literally and figuratively breaks wide open. From this point on, what you do and how you do it are entirely up to you. You can blaze right into the central storyline and finish it in about 25 hours or so. Or you can engage and explore the world along the way, a quest that can suck well over 100 hours of gameplay.

The tension between the game's golden path and the entertainment and character development value of meandering across the country side seeking fame and fortune is one of the game's rare inconsistencies. If you're supposed to be saving the world, why in the world are you exploring random dungeons and taking on missions for the Wizards and/or Fighters guilds instead of hurrying to close all the demonic dimensional "Oblivion" gates that are opening up across the continent?

The short answer is because it's fun engaging in Oblivion's thousands of side quests. Sometimes, these missions come to you, and sometimes you have to seek them out. In almost every instance, these mini-adventures are extremely gratifying, either in terms of the resulting gameplay mechanics or the rewards you receive for completing them. The longer answer is that the game will wait for you to come back to the main quest, which feels a little odd given the high stakes of the storyline.