When The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released in 2006, it was clear that the studio Bethesda had successfully expanded its fantasy franchise’s charm and oddball magic.
The premise of Oblivion is similar to other modern role-playing games, giving the player a seemingly insurmountable objective and then crucial skills and weaponry on the journey. High-definition graphical processing power for that era contributed to indelible world building, allowing players to freely travel the cities and caverns of Cyrodiil.
But what made Oblivion one of the genre’s most celebrated games was the agency it afforded players, the expansive environment it threw them into and the way it fully embraced the dorkiness of its fantasy world.
In the mid-2000s, the ways players experienced video games were transforming. User-generated content was propelling Web 2.0, and social media, like Facebook, was rising. Although Oblivion was a single-player game, its wonky artificial intelligence, character dialogue and player interactions made it a watershed moment for online memes.
Characters having a conversation would walk away from each other midsentence. Some jumped out of street corners to greet you with a quest and an eerie smile. The rag-doll physics of enemies coupled with their heinous death shrieks made battles more humorous than haunting.
The technical flaws run counter to the cool aura of more recent fantasy role-playing games, like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and Oblivion’s successor, Skyrim (2011), which produced notable memes of its own.
But Oblivion’s rawness resonated. Online pages and forums dedicated to its goofy glitches and bugs still garner an audience. In the game’s opening levels, players can raise their Sneak skill by quietly walking circles behind a sewer rat that runs into a corner endlessly.
So when The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered was announced last week — and then immediately released — some worried that the polish would wear away the charm.
Yet Bethesda has somehow managed the opposite, which became clear to me after spending five days doing everything but the main quest in the refreshed digital landscape of Cyrodill.
The world is stunning. The Imperial City Sewers you’re meant to traverse while learning the basics of the game look hideous and vile. The rolling green hills, once an escape from my stifling nonsocial life in high school, still soothe me. The way the aurora borealis stretches across the night sky, coupled with the unforgettable soundtrack, breathe a deep sense of solace into an otherwise purely digital experience.
And the nonplayer characters are still strange, still overly kind, still poignant, like the wife whose missing husband you eventually discover trapped in a magical painting. The quest “A Brush With Death” is memorable for all its oddities, including freakish trolls and the watercolor effect applied to the entire level.
During an online presentation last week, several members of Oblivion’s original development team recounted how the game broke through in 2006. That was no guarantee in a year of big releases, such as Gears of War, Saints Row, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.
Todd Howard, the executive producer at Bethesda, said that each of the Elder Scrolls games — including Arena (1994), Daggerfall (1996), Morrowind (2002) — tries “to define role-playing games and open-world games for their generation.” Oblivion, he said, was a critical moment for the studio, which has since developed Fallout and Starfield games.
Some of the bugs and glitches in the original Oblivion are still present, with the ability to duplicate highly valuable items and create short cuts to master skills. One popular exploit lets the player quickly increase their Security skill with a single lock pick. An expanded character creator has given rise to new memes altogether, including “Sir Vancealot” — a riff on the internet’s obsession with bloated images of the vice president — and other visual abominations.
Nearly two decades ago, Oblivion proved that games did not need overly polished worlds to thrive. Moments from some of its eccentric characters live forever online.
During one high elf’s dialogue in the original Oblivion, a dissatisfied voice actor can be heard objecting to and then immediately rerecording her line about thieves and their break-ins. The clip, flub and all, made its way into the remaster. As one online commenter noted, “Don’t mess with imperfection.”
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