10. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) – PC
This game is unbelievably huge. I picked up the “game of the year” edition, which came with added quests in an add-on called Knights of the Round, and a massive expansion: Shivering Isles. I read in reviews that the main game could take as long as 100 hours to finish and the Shivering Isles expansion adds another 30. It seems hard to believe. What’s even more impressive is that the game manages to keep the stories and gameplay fresh and compelling even after so many countless hours.
From a design perspective, the best part about this RPG is that you can play it however you want. You can treat it like a first-person shooter, albeit with swords and shields, you can play it like a third-person action adventure, a brawler, or a stealth game. You can choose to utilize bows and crossbows, or not. You can use magic and spells, or not. It makes no difference. The opportunity exists for you to play exactly how you like. Being an RPG, you do have to make the requisite character creation choices when you start out, but the level-up system is where the genius kicks in. If you want to level up a particular attribute or skill, just perform the respective action. If you want more speed, run. For agility, jump around everywhere. You swim to swim faster, you attack to improve competence with a particular weapon group, and you use magic to improve you magical prowess. It’s so simple that it’s a wonder why nobody ever thought of this before. I jumped, instead of walked, everywhere for the first little while and ended up with an absurdly high and long bounce. Yay!
Now back to the game’s size: when you leave the first dungeon, you’ll step out into an expansive landscape. It is a massive continent with 7 major city centers, but also an endless number of villages, roadside inns, caves, Elven halls, obelisks, and artifacts. There is much to see, and the flora, fauna, geography and architecture is distinct in each area. There are no loading screens as you travel the overworld, which is remarkable considering it would take you an hour to walk from the southern tip to the northern tip. Luckily you can requisition a horse, and once you have been to a location you can fast-travel there by clicking your map.
The main quest takes you all over the map, but is relatively short and restrictive. The real meat is in the sidequests, which are nearly infinite. They never become repetitive, like you imagine they would, and all have been well-thought out and are deeply layered. Many play with standard quest expectations and conventions. Take for example a quest that has a middle-aged women hire you to kill a pack of mountain lions that visit her property at night. You investigate and find that a spiteful neighbor has been planting fresh meet in your employers back yard to summon the beasts. Instead of killing the lions, which is also an option, the long term solution is to deal with the evil neighbor. My favorite quest has you searching for an artist who has been cursed, trapped within his own painting. You go in after him, into a world of soft pastel and smudgy trolls. There is so much variety to the adventures you can have. Some are easy, some are next to impossibly, such as trying to cure vampirism which you may accidentally fall victim too.
The game has two main guilds you can join, the fighters’ guild and magicians’ guild and two secret guilds, the thieves’ guild and the assassins’ guild. You can guess which ones are more fun. You can perform duties for each guild, working your way up the ladder, eventually advancing to the highest rank. This may take as long as 10 hours per guild, and this is only a fraction of the extra quests the game has to offer.
Alas, there is a sad ending to my story. I had logged around 60 hours of game time: I was finished the main quest, I had worked my way up the ranks in the guilds, but not all the way, and I had completed a huge number of sidequests. It was evident that I was still far from total completion, but I felt like a change of pace so I decided to visit The Shivering Isles: a location I had totally ignored up to this point. This area exists in an alternate universe to the main world, and it is a long journey just to get there. The landscape and architecture is radically different here. Where the main world is grounded in medieval realism, Shivering Isles is a fantastical fairy-tale world complete with giant mushrooms and magical extremophiles. It’s a nice change of pace. It wasn’t long after my first visit here that I had to take my computer in to have the wireless fixed. They wiped my hardrive and I lost everything, except for my documents which I had backed up. Will I find it in myself to take the journey again? Maybe one day.
By the way, the game features the voices of Sean Bean and Patrick Stewert.
This game is unbelievably huge. I picked up the “game of the year” edition, which came with added quests in an add-on called Knights of the Round, and a massive expansion: Shivering Isles. I read in reviews that the main game could take as long as 100 hours to finish and the Shivering Isles expansion adds another 30. It seems hard to believe. What’s even more impressive is that the game manages to keep the stories and gameplay fresh and compelling even after so many countless hours.
From a design perspective, the best part about this RPG is that you can play it however you want. You can treat it like a first-person shooter, albeit with swords and shields, you can play it like a third-person action adventure, a brawler, or a stealth game. You can choose to utilize bows and crossbows, or not. You can use magic and spells, or not. It makes no difference. The opportunity exists for you to play exactly how you like. Being an RPG, you do have to make the requisite character creation choices when you start out, but the level-up system is where the genius kicks in. If you want to level up a particular attribute or skill, just perform the respective action. If you want more speed, run. For agility, jump around everywhere. You swim to swim faster, you attack to improve competence with a particular weapon group, and you use magic to improve you magical prowess. It’s so simple that it’s a wonder why nobody ever thought of this before. I jumped, instead of walked, everywhere for the first little while and ended up with an absurdly high and long bounce. Yay!
Now back to the game’s size: when you leave the first dungeon, you’ll step out into an expansive landscape. It is a massive continent with 7 major city centers, but also an endless number of villages, roadside inns, caves, Elven halls, obelisks, and artifacts. There is much to see, and the flora, fauna, geography and architecture is distinct in each area. There are no loading screens as you travel the overworld, which is remarkable considering it would take you an hour to walk from the southern tip to the northern tip. Luckily you can requisition a horse, and once you have been to a location you can fast-travel there by clicking your map.
The main quest takes you all over the map, but is relatively short and restrictive. The real meat is in the sidequests, which are nearly infinite. They never become repetitive, like you imagine they would, and all have been well-thought out and are deeply layered. Many play with standard quest expectations and conventions. Take for example a quest that has a middle-aged women hire you to kill a pack of mountain lions that visit her property at night. You investigate and find that a spiteful neighbor has been planting fresh meet in your employers back yard to summon the beasts. Instead of killing the lions, which is also an option, the long term solution is to deal with the evil neighbor. My favorite quest has you searching for an artist who has been cursed, trapped within his own painting. You go in after him, into a world of soft pastel and smudgy trolls. There is so much variety to the adventures you can have. Some are easy, some are next to impossibly, such as trying to cure vampirism which you may accidentally fall victim too.
The game has two main guilds you can join, the fighters’ guild and magicians’ guild and two secret guilds, the thieves’ guild and the assassins’ guild. You can guess which ones are more fun. You can perform duties for each guild, working your way up the ladder, eventually advancing to the highest rank. This may take as long as 10 hours per guild, and this is only a fraction of the extra quests the game has to offer.
Alas, there is a sad ending to my story. I had logged around 60 hours of game time: I was finished the main quest, I had worked my way up the ranks in the guilds, but not all the way, and I had completed a huge number of sidequests. It was evident that I was still far from total completion, but I felt like a change of pace so I decided to visit The Shivering Isles: a location I had totally ignored up to this point. This area exists in an alternate universe to the main world, and it is a long journey just to get there. The landscape and architecture is radically different here. Where the main world is grounded in medieval realism, Shivering Isles is a fantastical fairy-tale world complete with giant mushrooms and magical extremophiles. It’s a nice change of pace. It wasn’t long after my first visit here that I had to take my computer in to have the wireless fixed. They wiped my hardrive and I lost everything, except for my documents which I had backed up. Will I find it in myself to take the journey again? Maybe one day.
By the way, the game features the voices of Sean Bean and Patrick Stewert.
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