The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006 on J2ME)
Description official descriptions
A lowly prisoner has been cast into the depths of the dungeon in the Imperial capital of the province Cyrodiil. The fate of this prisoner suddenly changed when Emperor Uriel Septim descended into the prison with his guards, fleeing from unknown assassins who have already slaughtered his children. But even an emperor cannot escape his destiny. Before the last assassin delivered the lethal strike, the old emperor entrusted the prisoner with the Amulet of Kings and asked him to find his illegitimate son, the last of the Septim bloodline. The Septims and the Amulet are the last barrier between the continent Tamriel and the dark dimension of Oblivion, and the delicate balance is threatened by the Daedra Prince of Destruction, Mehrunes Dagon, the prisoner being Tamriel's only hope.
Oblivion is the fourth title in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series. The game sticks to the style of its predecessors featuring action-based combat, first-person and third-person views, and vast free-roaming environments. The player's chosen race and class determine the abilities the protagonist has in the beginning. The game allows the player to develop multiple types of characters without being limited to a specific role.
The advancement system, as was the case in previous games, is based on skill usage. When the player repeatedly uses one of the skills, it improves. NPCs offer training (for a price) to help in advancing to the next stage. In time the protagonist can become an Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, and Master and gain certain bonuses for the skill. The skills of the foes are "leveled" to be approximately equal to or slightly above those of the main character.
There are numerous side quests that help the hero advance his or her abilities as well as gain fame. The player is free to roam the world without a particular goal, exploring towns, forts, caves, mines, and old temple ruins. Visiting shrines scattered around Tamriel grants the protagonist specialized skills, some permanent and some temporary.
Weapons and armor wear out with use and need to be repaired either with the help of special non-playable characters or by using an appropriately trained Armorer skill. Enhanced items (weapons, armor, clothing, rings, amulets) abound in the game for protection, resistance, reflection, and special activities like walking on water, exploring underwater, becoming invisible, or lightening the load. It is possible to open the gates to the Oblivion realm to grab their sigil stones, which can be used to make enhanced items. Higher-level mages can create their own spells and enchant weapons, armor, and clothing using filled soul gems in addition to sigil stones.
As opposed to Morrowind, mana points gradually regenerate over time, without the need to rest to replenish them. Active blocking has been added to melee combat. The game features full voice acting for all the NPCs. Dialogues typically contain fewer topics than in Morrowind, but more responses unique to different characters. In addition, the so-called "radiant AI" system makes characters follow their own schedules, engage in various activities, or talk to each other regardless of the player's input. The game features fast traveling, allowing the player to instantly visit Cyrodiil's major cities or previously explored areas.
Spellings
- 上古卷轴IV:忘却之地 - Simplified Chinese spelling
- 上古捲軸4:遺忘之都 - Traditional Chinese spelling
Groups +
- Animals: Cats
- Elder Scrolls series
- Fantasy creatures: Elves
- Fantasy creatures: Goblins
- Fantasy creatures: Minotaurs
- Fantasy creatures: Orcs
- Fantasy creatures: Trolls
- Fantasy creatures: Unicorns
- Gameplay feature: Alchemy
- Gameplay feature: Arena fighting
- Gameplay feature: Armor / weapon deterioration
- Gameplay feature: Auto-mapping
- Gameplay feature: Character development - Repetition
- Gameplay feature: Drowning
- Gameplay feature: Equipment quick slots
- Gameplay feature: Fishing
- Gameplay feature: Horse riding
- Gameplay feature: House ownership
- Gameplay feature: Interior decorating
- Gameplay feature: Journal
- Gameplay feature: Lock picking
- Gameplay feature: Paper doll inventory
- Gameplay feature: Pickpocketing
- Games made into books
- Green Pepper releases
- Middleware: Bink Video
- Middleware: FaceFX
- Middleware: Gamebryo / Lightspeed / NetImmerse
- Middleware: SpeedTree
- Physical Bonus Content: World Map
- Physics Engine: Havok
- PlayStation 3 Greatest Hits releases
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Protagonist: Visually customizable character
- Software Pyramide releases
- Technology: amBX
- Technology: FaceGen
- Xbox 360 Classics releases
Screenshots
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Credits (Windows version)
285 People (239 developers, 46 thanks) · View all
Executive Producer | |
Senior Producer | |
Lead Programmers | |
Lead Artist | |
Lead Character Artist | |
Lead Dungeon Artist | |
Lead Designer | |
Quality Assurance Lead | |
Producers | |
Programming | |
Additional Programming | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 93% (based on 174 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 285 ratings with 13 reviews)
A shining star, but why not a sun?
The Good
Welcome to the best RPG released in the last few years. What makes it so great? The prime factor is the freedom of choice. At the end of the tutorial you are left to a world that you are free to do as you will. You can explore the magnificent and extremely huge world of elder scrolls. You can be a fighter in the dreaded Arena. You can join one of the many guilds for the adventurers and be a part of Tamriel's history. You can delve in to deep dungeons and uncover riches you can hardly imagine. Or maybe you should just climb to the next hill and watch the sun rise. The point is the game lets you do anything and everything that you want, any time you want. And of course it lets you breath the atmosphere of Tamriel, a detailed RPG world, in a graphic quality that will not be matched in years to come. These two traits make this game a real classic and a worth game to play. Actually they make it a star in the night sky.
The Bad
Still there are things, in my opinion, diminishes this game. The game on the surface is detailed and beautiful. But that stays in the surface. One of the most important parts of RPGs, the character system is a serious mistake. While it is usage based (To improve a skill you need to use it, The more you use it, the better you become doing it.), the system and the game world does not leave room for flexibility. The only way to gold is through dungeons. The shops does not allow trade opportunities. They are only places to sell your loot. Also thieving is worthless, simply because you would mostly be finding worthless junk inside other NPCs houses. Some NPCs do have a daily routine. Some don't. It is easy to find tavern keepers who stand on the same spot 7/24. One other point is the difficulty level, that is for lack of a better word. The game world (and I mean world) advances in levels according to your progress. The city watch is always a few levels higher than you, thus your character who can beat the proverbial dragon is beaten down by mere town watch. The same is true for the bandits on the roads. While they start with fur armor, in no time they will be wearing mithril or even elven armor and weapons and skills to match. But this has another down side. The loot, the monsters in the world outside, inside the dungeons. They are all leveled according to you. So a first level character can go to any place on Tamriel, enter any dungeon he wishes, and he could finish it. And when he returns there after, say... 10 levels, he will be facing real monsters, but still he will be able to finish the dungeon. Simply said the difficulty is linear at best.
The failure that comes with this linearity is the skill system. In this kind of setting you "must" get the best from each level up. Which forces you to power gaming, keeping papers around to write needless stat changes, or for others simply cheat.
Still most of these things are design decisions and not flaws. While I prefer a deep RPG environment, maybe other would like to see more action.
The Bottom Line
To sum up this game is a star that shines brightly through all those games in the shelves. However it is a real classic, it is far from sating the thirst of a hardcore RPG fan.
Windows · by Zolansilverspear (449) · 2006
One of the most broken and monotonous RPG's of recent memory.
The Good
First off all, the graphics and sound are very good, and combat feels nice and frantic. Oblivion features a large game world, and hundreds of hours of gameplay...
The Bad
...and that's where the good stuff ends. The 'hundreds of hours of gameplay' almost exclusively consists of roaming dark dungeons that consist of the same textures, and most of the dungeons consist of copied segments from other dungeons. After the first dozen or so dungeons this becomes oh so not fun. Worse yet, there is a huge disparity between the amount of equipment there is to find and the sheer number of dungeons in the game. You won't finish a tenth of the dungeons in the game before the rest have pretty much nothing to offer you, making the dungeon crawling as pointless as it is boring and repetitive.
With the exception of the too short main quest, the quests feel mundane and unimportant --and seem to serve more as filler than as material. A longer main quest and fewer meaningless side quests would have made Oblivion a much better game.
Even worse is the monster leveling system which scales all the in game enemies to your level. In other words, if you are level 1, so is the "Grand Champion of The Arena" and if your level 99, all the bandits and highwaymen will also be level 99.... good bye immersion. Even worse, if your character is not centered on combat, all of your enemies will still scale to your level and will hugely overpower you. There are mods that give enemies a more static level, but as Oblivion was not originally designed with static levels in mind, these mods ruin both the gameplay balance and the pace of the game.
Last but not least, the game is chock full of bugs. I get random crashes to desktop all of the time, and sometimes I will get a crash when I attempt to save... ruining that savegame file. Oblivion also crashes every first time I attempt to run it, and I can only continue my game after my second attempt at running the game.
The Bottom Line
If you want to play a good RPG with a solid storyline, try Gothic. Oblivion is a giant of a game that fails due to gaping gameplay holes, the lack of an intricate and focused main quest, and the pure mind boggling repetitiveness of the thing.
Windows · by Jeffrey Graw (8) · 2006
The Good
First of all, the graphics are breathtaking. Superb lighting effects, great 3D models, impressive textures.
Second of all, the voice acting is just right, transporting you in the virtual world of Tamriel.
The next game of the Elder Scrolls series keeps the races and classes from the previous versions, and adds great features such as horseback riding (present in Daggerfall, but removed from Morrowind) and an active cross-hair showing the health of the NPC (or monster), the possible actions with the NPC, and if it's OK to use an object or not (it turns red when you look at an object that's the property of an other NPC).
The new combat system is just great, with the option of manually blocking an attack, and being able to cast a spell even if you have weapons / shields equipped.
The story (with it's flaws) is perfectly integrated in the world of Tamriel and there's loads of books and scrolls that add to the Elder Scrolls lore.
The Bad
The bad things...
The leveling system is a great idea, but it still allows you to turn your character into a "jack-of-all-trades". I mean there's actually no problem for your orcish character to sneak around pickpocketing people and braking into the NPC's houses, or to become a heavy armored, axe wielding wood elf.
The requirements for this game are rather high, meaning that you need a high end system to play it. (Kind of restrictive, huh?)
The story: You were a prisoner back in Morrowind. Come on, can't you guys come up with another setting for the start of the game?
The Bottom Line
This is like the ultimate single player RPG. If you enjoyed the previous Elder Scrolls titles, you should play this game. As for all of the game's problems, they'll surely be solved by the massive Elder Scrolls community through mods, just like the previous title, Morrowind.
Windows · by tata_lu_stefan_cel_mare (11) · 2006
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Incorrect group “Gameplay feature: Fishing”? | cawa | Aug 2, 2023 |
Odd inclusion in game groups. | Indra was here (20752) | Sep 8, 2009 |
The Real Barenziah | Unicorn Lynx (181772) | Oct 8, 2008 |
Glowing faces? | Daniel Saner (3503) | Dec 28, 2007 |
Perspective | DreinIX (10445) | Dec 26, 2007 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Cancelled PSP version
A PSP version was in development and planned for release in the Spring of 2007, but it was eventually cancelled with no official word.
Development
The game has been in development since mid 2002. The long period of development was necessary due to the implementation of a new Radiant AI system and the graphics. A player may encounter while travelling the world of Tamriel: 35.544 shrubs and bushes, 67.730 plants and mushrooms, 94.013 trees and fallen logs, 395,696 rocks and about 1500 NPCs.
DLC
As a part of Xbox Live's Deal of The Week, Bethesda Softworks released all Oblivion downloadable content for half the price in April 2009. For Horse Armor however, the price was doubled, proving that Bethesda didn't take the criticism against their first DLC pricing too seriously.
ESRB
On 05/03/2006, the ESRB re-rated this game from T (Teen) to M (Mature) and added a "Nudity" attribute because of a secret topless skin that is present on the game media and because there is allegedly more blood and gore in the actual game than shown in the video footage that was originally presented to the ESRB for rating.
This is the second Take-Two game that has undergone an ESRB re-rating, the first one being the notorious Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
German version
One book found in the property of a killed necromancer, called "Wälzer des Unlebens" in the German version, contains just bloody drawings of symbols. In the German version, they were replaced a sentence describing the symbols.
References
The 'Shadow over Hackdirt' quest makes several references to one of the most famous novel by HP Lovecraft: The Shadow over Innsmouth. There are references to the 'Deep Ones', the Brethren, a whole town of suspicious people, caverns underneath the earth and so on.
References to the game
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 08/2006.
Title
By highlighting certain letters, it is made clear in the menu menu that it is no coincidence Bethesda chose the title "OblIVion" for the fourth main game in the Elder Scrolls series.
Awards
- Computer Games Magazine
- March 2007 - #2 Game of the Year 2006
- GamePro (Germany)
- February 01, 2007 - Best Console RPG in 2006 (Readers' Vote)
- Games for Windows Magazine
- March 2007 - Game of the Year 2006
- GameSpy
- 2006 – #8 Game of the Year
- 2006 – PC Game of the Year (Gamers' Vote)
- 2006 – #2 PC Game of the Year
- 2006 – #10 Xbox 360 Game of the Year
- 2006 – PC RPG of the Year
- 2006 – PC RPG of the Year (Gamers' Vote)
- 2006 – Xbox 360 RPG of the Year
- 2006 – PC Mod of the Year (for Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul)
- GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 12/2008 - One of the "10 Coolest Levels" (for "A Brush with Death" because it connects simple technical variations with a big passion for stories. )
- Golden Joystick Awards
- 2006 - Ultimate Game of the Year
- 2006 - PC Game of the Year
- 2006 - Console Game of the Year
- PC Powerplay (Germany)
- Issue 02/2007 – Best RPG/Adventure in 2006
- Issue 03/2007 – Best RPG/Adventure in 2006 (Readers' Vote)
Information also contributed by EboMike, karttu, Mad Griffith, MDMaster, PCGamer77, piltdown_man and tata_lu_stefan_cel_mare
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Related Sites +
-
Adamantytowa Wieża
Polish site devoted to the Elder Scrolls series. -
Alex's Oblivion Guide
Solutions and strategies on HonestGamers.com -
GameFAQs Files
Collection of guides and FAQs contributed by GameFaqs users -
GamePressure Guide
Another strategy guide for Oblivion -
OXM UK's oblivion forum
The UK Official Xbox Magazine Oblivion forum. -
Oblivion Hint File
Solution to Oblivion in question and answer format. -
Oblivion Official Site
at Elderscrolls.com -
Planet Elder Scrolls
The biggest collection of Mods, articles, screenshots and discussions related to the Elder Scrolls Series -
TES4: Oblivion - Portal
Community, forums and news on this Fan site. -
The Elder Scrolls
Official website for The Elder Scrolls series -
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Source
The resource for all things for Oblivion. Here you can find the TES4 Construction Set. -
Universal Hint System File
Provides solutions in question and answer format. -
Washington Post Article
Contains some history about Bethesda and the making of Oblivion. -
Wiwiland
Biggest french community about the Elder Scrolls, especially Oblivion and Morrowind.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Spartan_234.
Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox One added by Sciere. PlayStation 3 added by Kabushi.
Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Sciere, UV, Aubustou, tata_lu_stefan_cel_mare, lord of daedra, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, FatherJack.
Game added March 22, 2006. Last modified April 10, 2024.