The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

My first love... first real non-kiddie/nintendo family friendly video game I ever played. My dad used to be much more of a gamer than he is now, and whatever he finished was up for grabs if we still could keep up with it. I played a lot of scraps that way, such as AC: Black Flag, Dragon Age Origins, and even a Mortal Kombat disc that could only read halfway up the battle tower before freezing (my main was between Johnny and Mileena, I can't remember. Whichever was more intuitive for someone who played at ~13.).

But Oblivion was GIVEN to me... I'm older than it by almost a year, so I have no idea why such an old game was given to me. It was the GOTY edition, so I would have been two by the time this was released. The box for the game had a receipt sticker on it that is long gone from my memory, but I for some reason think it was bought in 2010 or 2011.

Either way, it was my first real game, like I said. I don't remember playing anything but the wii and maybe minecraft on my older brother's xbox 360 prior to that. I don't even know that I had interest in fantasy games, either, besides the sort of fantastical things I watched my dad play growing up.

My first and most happy (and still relatable) memories is getting lost in the first Oblivion Gate tower at Kvatch because I couldn't find my way. To be honest, I was way too young to be playing, but those things are literally a maze from hell sometimes if you forget which way you came from. Even to this day I get stuck in them like a complete noob because I forgot which teleporter I used to get up there.

But anyway, what the point was is that my entire childhood and all my preferences now were hooked on actual peak gameplay from Bethesda Game Studios on the Xbox 360. Playstation will never have me because I know what a joy the Xbox 360 really was... they didn't have Kinectimals!!

Since this game is etched in my mind, even though I literally have it open NOW, I can drop a review of it anytime, any place. Actually, I literally never stopped playing this game.. I have the disc of my childhood cradled in my Xbox One as we speak and the game is open on my PC because it was the first game I got off of gamepass. And if we get an OpenMW-style app for Oblivion, It'll be the first thing on this laptop.

With that being said, let me over-hype my favorite game so I can make a matching entry for its little brother who is just as dear to me.

For those who do not know the story of Oblivion, it is extremely easy to summarize the main quests.

Essentually, you are NOT the chosen one, although it does a weird set up for it. You are the one chosen to serve the chosen one. So you get to break out of jail for free, witness the literal emperor get murdered by a cult called the Mythic Dawn, and get forced to help out.

You get out of there and take that amulet that is forced by its own plot armor (scripted quest item) into your inventory to Brother Jauffre at Weynon Priory near Chorrol.

In my professional observations, at this point a lot of people just ignore the quest for a long time... The scenery is GORGEOUS + there's this sick ass Ayleid ruin right in front of the exit I love to raid and a group of mudcrabs to the left that always distracts me anyway.

If you are not one of those people, when you go to Brother Jauffre, he will interrogate you until you present that amulet. Then from there, he presents you with the secret lore that there is a HIDDEN SON of Uriel Septim. He is a priest named Martin whose voice sticks out like a sore thumb because he is one of the only unique voices in the game (Sean Bean). I adore his delivery because he seems so distraught and in the moment while everyone else is just same tone for everything else, 0 immersion.

When you go get that man, that's where you go to Oblivion for the first time after seeing a tense standoff between what's left of a ruined city and its guard. It's not very hard, but the visuals are electric!! The red sky and the ruined ground is so amazing, and I was very impressed with the remake in this regard, too.

Once you go to hell and back for this guy and finally drag him back, there's the obvious revelation that the amulet was stolen. So, since the Priory is not and was never safe from literal multidimensional cultists, they bring him to the most militarized place they can, up on the huge mountaintop where they have high ground advantage and he will be surrounded by like.. a couple dozen at best soldiers. I think it's less men than that, but it just feels like lore-wise it should be ~30-50 dedicated members only.

From there on, you do fetch quests for the man (you are always Bethesda's errand boy, don't forget it) until he sends you to hell to do what you did before but bigger. Then he just switches gears and sends you to the clan leader's original dimension where he lore dumps on you all the lore of Tamriel and his Gaiar Alata and Mehrunes Dagon and the Emperor and how you're going to fail.. then you kill him and his evil, snarky kids, then that plot of his is shot.

And then once you succeeded in killing his human puppet and go to light the dragonfires, sealing the Oblivion world away for good (not reccomended ever until you're 100% sure you never wanna see another one again/100% complete them all). But before you can do that, Mehrunes Dagon appears to stop you once and for all. Martin turns into the huge dragonic avatar of Akatosh (who blessed the septim bloodline.. also a plotline that carries to skyrim for some reason) and kills him in response. Then you're done!

Shoutout uesp.net also, I visited that so much that I had it bookmarked on my little tablet while I played. Sometimes I swear that game is worse than Morrowind... An example comes to mind that there's like two separate points where you can completely fuck up and softlock yourself out of the Thieves Guild questline. I think both are related to the boots of springheel jak? But the BIG one that happened to me was that I locked myself out of the huge finale quest to steal an Elder Scroll itself. UESP had my back and taught me how to fix it when I reloaded. When I wanted to cheat in Skyrim, too, I just read in Skyrim that in the left corner you can force yourself into the wall of the Blue Palace by holding a platter and access the merchant chest full of HUGE spells for someone who doesn't feel like finding them. So that is the bible.

I don't think I learned any gameplay cheats in Oblivion, but if you just jump everywhere you go then you can level up embarassingly fast by the way. And if you want to clip out of bounds, collect every single paintbrush you find and drop them exactly like a ladder. They have no collision set in OG Oblivion but that was patched in the remaster.

I don't know if anyone else loves this man like I do, but Baurus had to be protected at all costs. He becomes killable at the start of that infiltration mission, and he WILL be grateful. In fact, even if he dies, I go out of my way to collect his sword, as Jauffre will hang it on the wall for him. He has to be protected.

Another little thing is the horses... If we fused Skyrim's power horses and Oblivion's breed-based speed system, we could have it all. I have a mod that sort of does that in Skyrim, but it works more like BOTW/TOTK in that they are individuals.

I think that the main strength of Oblivion is the quests and the visuals. For the quests, I think the writing and direction kind of hit the peak they could go. For the visuals, I like that it is an actual fantasy painting some to life. If you've ever played Shivering Isles and got to speak to Haskill, you would know that opening to the DLC is actually so, so cool... Remastered ruined it just a little with all the glowy lights, but I haven't played the DLC myself JUST yet, so maybe my opinion will change.

The thieves guild questline is really nice! I would prefer if it had some reasonable post-questline action, but the gray fox hood shenanigans kind of make up for it. The environmental storytelling even pre-thieves guild when you go to Anvil at all is really a nice touch. If you even pay attention to The Stranger, you'd be like, oh, he's just a stalker.. You might attribute him to the guild as a beggar, and I think he has some strange dialogue that gives him being in the guild away that has to do with faction tags? But there is no way you'd actually know his real identity.

The silent resolution, a secret between you and him as you rewrite the world with the Elder Scroll you stole? And you become a thief so legendary even Urag references you however many years later Skyrim takes place.

The Dark Brotherhood is really nice too, the way you get so sympathetic towards someone who probably deserves exactly what he got and more. And then it gets glossed over like it never happened and you get to take over like you weren't basically the agent of chaos the entire time? Bellamont dies and the Night Mother just goes sure, what the hell and names you official Listener.

For me, though, it's the Applewatch-related quests that really made me wonder. Killing that sweet old lady and all her adult kids just living their lives? Then the devs torture you by leaving notes about their lives and wishes... They're the kind of quests that make you actually wonder just WHO is this evil and what did an entire family do to get THIS?

And ofc we get the classic 'murder mystery' that is Whodunit. I think it constantly gets put on top Oblivion quest lists because it is just that entertaining. You can play the diplomat to stupid people whose AI is tuned super low, you can just go in and butcher everyone recklessly, or you can be sneak assassin without even touching anyone. You can kind of even make alliances and make one friend, and in the end they believe there is another person secretly in here killing because they refuse to believe that it was you.

In my opinion, the Skyrim DB questline is a little better in terms of having some really fun themed moments. Realistically they're pretty even. But Skyrim dropped the ball on Thieves Guild just a bit? Both are still very fun and rewarding, though.

It is here in my review that I both am excited and regret to inform you that I never really played fighter's guild in like my many, many years of gameplay.

The most you'll get from me is I loved the Blackwood Company questline BUT I got Shadowmere stuck in some random's house and had to kill her to get her out... I don't even know why that was possible but it does make sense.

Thinking back on it, actually, I did play a little more than that. Most of it I remember is in Anvil because I think you can sign up in Anvil (?) I remember the rats and always loved the rats, I remember getting sidetracked from the guild after the rats to deal with the seductresses in their little sexy house where they extort cheaters, I remember the Blackwood Company (obviously)... but not much else. I remember getting kicked out like twice and never really caring to get back in.

Ultimately fighter's guild is the weakest link unless you just like fighting people.. which I guess, there you go! But the Arena is better for that and has crazy glitch and cheat potential.

The Mages' guild on the other hand is FIRE!!! Some of it gets to be the fetch quest slog, but the fact one of the greatest cheats is that you can hold off on the Bruma recommendation and get free 100% invisibility all day is amazing. And even cheats aside, it has one of the more unique quests in the game, through a nightmare, darkly.

Also, as an aside, you should do the Thieves Guild before the Mages Guild... I can't recall what happens if you don't, but I know you're stealing that staff either way. If you're already archmage, are you just stealing from yourself? I never cared to find out, but doesn't that create lore conflict? And the goal is to do high-profile crimes then, so are you just pretending? Anyway..

So Mages Guild is what the College of Winterhold should have been (although I adore the Midden and have multiple Midden extension mods) and the Companions is what Fighter's Guild should have been! And I was also confused on why Fighter's Guild wouldn't have you also deal with Oblivion Gates...? The game is built though so that everything leads you to something else, so at that point you are just a member of the fighters guild who is also taking out gates. Plus, I suppose they want it to be standalone in case you just did main quest and then the rest of the game (which is HORRIBLE, never do this).

Speaking of Mages Guild? Become archmage today and YOU can have your own little convenient way to make spells that can nuke everyone in the widest scale possible with only your magicka as the limit. I find it highly amusing to do, expecially when you cheat in materials to do so using console commands. I made the most amazing bloom-infested potion that just set everyone on paralysis and fire. And also inadvertently found out that if you do it right, you can avoid getting bounties from paralysis. And you can pickpocket freely and run away so they don't know what happened. Very fun.

I think a good way to cap this off for now is that I love all the little meaningless NPCs like adoring fan and the random ass people in the woods that jump out at you and try to kill you... I like that you can get snitched on by a horse running as fast as it can to tell on you for stealing it (and subsequently if you sneak up on it from behind it won't and you can just... steal it). I like that if you complete the main quest you get probably the most mid armor set ever, and it might as well just be ceremonial. Your real reward is the sick ass dragon in the middle of town now in the temple of Akatosh where HOPEFULLY the argonian you DEFINITELY saved during the MQ from being a sacrifice for the Mythic Dawn initiation is looking after Martin nicely.

But every real player knows that the real reward is being able to have that huge statue of yourself in town that wears what you wore when it was made, ignoring that for some of you, you are intentionally the most hideous person who has ever lived... So many people's modded gameplays have it fully naked and modded 'anatomically', it's so peak.