TES IV: Oblivion

By Sam Waldron

Time to bid the real world goodbye. The latest Elder Scrolls game is on it's way, and it will swallow your spare time whole. Oblivion marks the fourth proper instalment in the venerable RPG series, and it looks like this adventure into the world of Tamriel is going to be the best one yet.

The Elder Scrolls series got its start in 1994 with Arena, an ambitious first-person RPG that allowed you to explore a massive world filled with cities, dungeons, wilderness, and monsters. One of the most important aspects of Arena was its sense of freedom - you could follow the main storyline if you wanted to, or you could ignore it entirely and do your own thing.

Daggerfall, released in 1996, expanded on its predecessor in every way, providing the player with a game world the size of Great Britain and a much deeper role-playing experience. It also had eight different endings, none of which we have ever seen - the game simply had so much to offer that we never got around to pursuing the main storyline. You could own houses, be turned into a werewolf, slaughter thousands of innocent people in one country and be a hero in the next, and (most importantly) ride a horse.

After Daggerfall, Bethesda released a couple of spin-off games set in the world of the Elder Scrolls. Battlespire was fairly average: a more action-oriented, single-dungeon RPG. Its main claim to fame was its multiplayer features, which also left much to be desired. Redguard was a further departure from the main series leaving behind the RPG genre in favour of third-person action adventure gameplay.

In 2002, Morrowind brought the Elder Scrolls series back to its roots. While not on the same geographic scale as Daggerfall, Morrowind still offered a ridiculous amount of things to do, places to see, and people to kill. It combined cutting-edge graphics with an epic storyline to create the most immersive Elder Scrolls game yet. To date, the game has sold over four million copies and has spawned two expansion packs, Tribunal and Bloodmoon.

This year, gamers will once again be able to enter the world of Tamriel. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion promises to be bigger and better than Morrowind in every way. Oblivion is set in the land of Cyrodiil, where you must find the heir to the Imperial Throne, after the last Emperor (voiced by Patrick Stewart) is murdered.

The first thing that you notice about Oblivion is that it looks absurdly good. The game features a state of the art graphics engine loaded with all the modern bells and whistles that you would expect to see in a big-budget first person shooter. More importantly, it is also capable of procedurally rendering realistic forests, creating them leaf by leaf based on elements such as soil type, levels of erosion, and climate. The end result is a world that will feel much more alive than, say, the real world.

As you would expect, the game world is huge. In terms of geographic scale, it is somewhere between Daggerfall and Morrowind, but has more content packed in there then either of them. Lush forests, snowy mountains, and sunny beaches are a few of the location types that you can expect to visit - they'll make a nice change from Morrowind's desolate terrain.

Probably the most exciting feature of Oblivion is the 'Radiant AI' system. This innovative approach to AI basically means that, everywhere in the game's world, NPCs will at all times go about their business, making choices about who to talk to, what to eat, and even fighting and stealing from each other, whether or not the player is involved. Obviously this is a truly epic undertaking, but the pay-off in terms of creating a living breathing world will be immense. Furthermore, all the dialogue in Oblivion will be spoken, and great pains have been taken to give NPCs detailed facial features and accurate lip-synching.

Oblivion's combat system is also a huge step up from Morrowind. While attacking still involves your character's stats, the way in which you fight has been changed quite seriously. The button mashing of previous Elder Scrolls games is out - in its place is system which actually requires some skill. A simple left click gives you your basic attack, and holding the left mouse button gives you a power attack (dealing more damage, but also tiring you out and leaving you open). Blocking is no longer automatic, and now involves a (hopefully well timed) right click. Also, you will no longer need to put away your weapon to use magic; spells can now be cast at any time, allowing you to use a handy fireball or curse in the midst of a swordfight where it's really needed.

As you can probably tell, we're pretty excited about this one. Not only does it improve on all the aspects that the Elder Scrolls series is famous for, but it also has horses again, a feature that was sorely lacking in Morrowind.

While no release date has been set at this point, Oblivion is expected to be out for PC and Xbox 360 towards the end of 2005. In anticipation, we have already started warning loved ones not to worry if we aren't seen at all in the months following Oblivion's release. There'll be no time for the beach this Summer!

 del.icio.us  StumbleUpon  Facebook  Reddit