Facebook – Top 100 FAVORITE Video Games: 54

54: Oblivion (PC/PS3/360)
Developer: Bethesda
Year: 2007

No one ever beat Daggerfall. It was impossible. And Morrowind, while fun, was ugly as hell and mostly boring with little direction and mostly uninteresting action. And, having never played Arena, I can’t say much to its credit, but I have to imagine that the game was an attempt at the same stuff the other Elder Scrolls games tried, as such, it likely sucked. With a series that sucks, why are the games so much fun to play for hours on end? Well, the answer is because we all hoped for one that would be perfect, and we got it in the form of one 30-hour game: Oblivion.

Nothing is ever more epic than the ultimate destruction of everything, everywhere, within an instant. That’s what you are fighting for in the 4th Elder Scrolls game. After watching the Emperor die in front of you (or behind you if you weren’t paying any attention at all, you ass*) you start on a quest to stop the evil Mehrunes Dagon, one of the princes of the plains of Oblivion. Along the way you’ll meet some interesting people (including a vampire duke, or, something…!) and solve all kinds of problems. Ultimately, though, the main storyline will draw you back in and you’ll find yourself traveling through large demon gates to Oblivion time and time again until eventually you find yourself looking up at the towering Dagon himself. Will your actions lead to a peaceful ending for everyone? Only you can decide that! So, while some of the quests are kinda lame and repetitive, the main story is enough of a powerhouse narrative to keep things interesting during your 40-hour game.

But let’s look into the reason why Oblivion is ten times better than any of the other games in the series; enjoyability. While the other games, too, offered random quests, sword fighting, and horseback riding, Oblivion is the first one to really nail this down in a fashion that is both enjoyable and fun to play. Quests are now better organized in your journal, the map system has been made better for quick traveling, and, while the NPC’s don’t have golden !’s over their heads, finding people to get quests from is easy thanks to an engaging and deep conversation tree. And the sword fighting and magic system, something inherently flawed in any First Person game, is advanced and made better across all versions of the game, allowing for innovative and – get this – exciting battles to take place during your 50-hour game. And if you don’t even like magic, don’t worry; Oblivion has this covered by having a leveling system dependent upon your chosen class and its attributes (thief levels from use of Sneak, Lockpicking, Acrobatics, etc. for example). This means that, if you aren’t supposed to use a mace, you never have to.

But here’s the real deal; when this game came out, the pictures made it look gorgeous – huge, wide open areas to travel through, giant cave systems and castles, and so many locations across an enormous map that meant you could spend literal days trying to find everything. Having just played this 60-hour game recently, there are locations to be seen, still, that make the jaw drop. And the very first time the character you spent way too long making in the character creator exits the sewers and sees the world for the first time, its an experience unlike any other (aside from Fallout 3’s first look at the world). Other things have diminished over time, but character models, towns, and weapons/armor all look great and have awesome looking textures mapped over their frames. One of the things I really dig, though, is the fact that every town looks different, from the architecture of the buildings to the style of clothes and types of things grown in the farms outside the walls. This helps make the world seem huge and alive and, in a 70-hour game like this, thats really cool.

All in all, Oblivion is a game that will be remembered for making RPGs from the US of A cool and a lot of fun to play, especially on consoles. In a time in which the words “Square” and “Enix” are required to even get role playing games off shelves in this country, having another company introduce a more “American” RPG (and I use quotes because, well, an FPS RPG with swords? How American can you get?) paves the way for other like-games to come out. And, lets be fair, without a game like this, a huge, open world game, we would never have gotten our hands on (the vastly superior) Fallout 3. And what kinda piss-pot world would we live in if we didn’t have Fallout 3? So bless you, Oblivion, and your 80-hour gameplay!

Classic Moment:
I love the quest that puts you inside a painting to find a woman’s missing husband. The design of that world is awesome and the art style shifts to make everything look like the strokes of a paintbrush. Even the enemies in this world, Paint Trolls, look different and painted. Plus, it introduces something cool into the game: circumstantial weaponry. A sword with turpentine on it which kills paint monsters? Awesome, and well thought out, Bethesda. You and your 90-hour game can have a cookie.

*in reference to myself; i never saw it happen, on either play through.

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Added February 20, 2017
Not better than Skyrim, but still very good. And it has some of the best DLC I’ve ever played for a video game with the Shivering Islands expansion. Worth the (likely, at this point) cheap price tag to get in.