If you consider yourself a gamer and you haven’t played any of the Elder Scrolls games, you are really missing out. With the 5th installment coming out in early November, it’s time to pick up those controllers and play the predecessor.
Upon starting a new game of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, you are prompted with a character customization screen. Age, color scheme, and proportions can all be modified. You could easily spend the next 30 minutes tinkering with the bar sliders, making your ideal character.
After choosing you character the game starts in a dungeon. Uriel Septim VII, the emperor, is fleeing the castle from an attack and you must assist him. This level acts as a tutorial to help you with basic skills such as fighting and sneaking. This is a great improvement over the third game, Morrowind, which pushed you immediately into the game. At the end of the tutorial, the emperor is assassinated and you are told to find his illegitimate son, the only heir to the throne. Cast out into the world, you are free to do whatever you want.
Traveling to a major city and joining the fighters guild will help you level up your player’s skills. Don’t try to go straight into the main story line; you’ll just get frustrated when you are killed by a fire throwing daedra. Combat is hard for a beginning level character especially if blades or blunt weapons are not one of the major skills. In order to have a more enjoyable run through, stick with combat based characters in your first time such as warriors or rogues.
The world of Oblivion looks beautiful and graphics have been improved from previous games. All interaction has also been updated. Characters now talk to the player doesn’t have to read, although captions are still displayed. There were only two things that really irked me. The first was fighting with others in game characters. If your component becomes distracted, your hits don’t count. The second annoying thing was that people seem to mysteriously disappear when you are looking for them, only to reappear later.
All in all, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is a great game that can provide days worth of playing time. The 5th game, Skyrim, will be officially released on November 11th.
Article by: Cara Loehding
