Nearly two decades after its release, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remains a fascinating time capsule of mid-2000s RPG design. Sandwiched between the revolutionary-but-clunky Morrowind and the streamlined juggernaut that was Skyrim, Oblivion occupies a unique middle ground in Bethesda’s flagship series. So grab your enchanted longsword and questionable character creation choices as we dive back into Cyrodiil to examine what holds up and what should probably stay buried in the Deadlands.
The Golden Glory of Imperial City
When Oblivion launched in 2006, its visuals blew minds and melted graphics cards. While the potato-faced NPCs may have aged like milk left in the Shivering Isles sun, the world itself still captivates. Cyrodiil’s diverse landscapes – from the lush forests surrounding Chorrol to the misty highlands of Bruma – created a fantasy realm that felt genuinely alive.
The game’s architectural design deserves particular praise. The Imperial City remains one of gaming’s most impressive urban centers, with its massive White-Gold Tower dominating the skyline. Each city maintained a distinct visual identity, from Skingrad’s gothic spires to Anvil’s coastal charm. Even today, emerging from the Imperial sewers for the first time and seeing that vista spread before you remains a genuine “wow” moment.
Oblivion’s attention to detail extended beyond visuals. NPCs followed schedules, monsters populated appropriately to their environments, and the world responded to player actions in ways that felt genuinely reactive for the time. Finding a bandit wearing the exact helmet you pickpocketed from an NPC two towns over was the kind of environmental storytelling that made Cyrodiil feel cohesive.
Questlines That Defined a Generation
If there’s one aspect of Oblivion that remains unequivocally fantastic, it’s the guild questlines. The Dark Brotherhood saga stands tall as possibly the greatest questline in Elder Scrolls history. From the murder mystery at Summitmist Manor to the shocking twist with Lucien Lachance, the assassination faction delivered a perfectly paced narrative that rewarded stealth and creativity. 🔪
Not to be outdone, the Thieves Guild culminated in stealing an Elder Scroll from the Imperial Palace – a heist so grand and well-designed that it puts many dedicated stealing games to shame. Even the Mages Guild, which started with the somewhat tedious task of gathering recommendations, built to a climax involving necromancy, betrayal, and magical catastrophe.
These faction questlines outshone the main story in almost every way, providing player agency and memorable characters that many modern RPGs still struggle to match. The Shivering Isles expansion took things even further, dropping players into the realm of madness under the rule of Sheogorath in what many consider the best DLC Bethesda has ever produced.
Combat: The Clunkiest Link
For all its strengths, Oblivion’s combat system has aged about as well as its character models. The floaty, disconnected feeling of hitting enemies with weapons that seem to pass through them like ghosts was awkward even in 2006. Today, it’s borderline painful, especially when compared to contemporaries like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic that offered more tactile combat experiences.
The leveling system deserves special criticism. Oblivion’s infamous level scaling meant that as you improved, so did literally everything else in the world. This created the bizarre situation where bandits who once wore fur armor suddenly sported expensive glass or daedric equipment worth more than everything they could possibly have stolen in their careers. 🤦♂️
Worse, the optimal way to play involved deliberately choosing non-combat skills as major skills to avoid leveling too quickly in combat abilities. When your RPG punishes players for naturally improving at the things they actually use, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the design philosophy. This counter-intuitive system led to the ridiculous spectacle of master assassins jumping everywhere to level their Acrobatics skill before attempting difficult missions.
Those Faces… Those Terrible Faces
We can’t discuss Oblivion without addressing the horrifying character models. Every NPC looks like they were stung by bees, suffered an allergic reaction, and then had their face partially melted and reassembled by a blind sculptor working from verbal descriptions. The “potato head” phenomenon became so iconic that it spawned countless memes and remains instantly recognizable to gamers who’ve never even played the title.
Voice acting presented another uncanny valley problem. Despite securing talent like Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, and Lynda Carter, Bethesda employed only about six voice actors for hundreds of characters. This created the jarring experience of having seemingly different people suddenly sound identical mid-conversation, shattering any sense of immersion.
The conversation system didn’t help either, with its uncomfortable zoom-in on those terrifying faces and stilted dialogue delivery. The now-infamous “STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM” guards and bizarre NPC interactions (“I saw a mudcrab the other day. Horrible creatures!”) have become enduring memes precisely because of how awkward and unnatural they feel. 😳
Radiant AI: Ambitious But Chaotic
Bethesda heavily promoted Oblivion’s Radiant AI system as a revolutionary advancement that would allow NPCs to make decisions based on needs and desires. In reality, what shipped was a significantly scaled-back version after early tests resulted in NPCs murdering each other for food and items.
What remained was still impressive for 2006 – characters had schedules, would interact with objects in the world, and generally created the impression of a living society. However, this system also produced some of gaming’s most unintentionally hilarious moments. NPCs would get stuck in loops, have bizarre conversations with themselves, and occasionally still manage to break their scripting in spectacular ways.
The guards’ crime detection systems bordered on omniscient, somehow knowing instantly if you stole an apple in a locked basement with no witnesses. Yet these same guards might completely ignore someone being murdered in broad daylight due to quirks in the detection system. This cognitive dissonance between the game’s ambitions and its technical limitations created a weird charm that many fans actually came to love.
Oblivion Gates: Less is More
The main questline’s central mechanic – closing Oblivion gates – stands as perhaps the game’s biggest structural weakness. What initially felt epic – storming into a hellish dimension to save Tamriel – quickly became repetitive busy work. With limited environment variations and nearly identical objectives every time, closing these gates transformed from heroic adventure to tedious chore within hours.
The Deadlands themselves, while visually striking at first with their lava oceans and twisted architecture, lacked the environmental diversity needed to sustain player interest across dozens of similar incursions. After your fifth gate, you’d seen essentially everything these realms had to offer, yet the game asked you to keep closing them like some daedric pest control service. 🔥
This repetition undermined what should have been Oblivion’s most epic feature. The gates that gave the game its name and appeared on all the marketing materials became the content players most dreaded engaging with. When your title feature becomes something players actively avoid, that’s a design problem no amount of world-building can overcome.
The Mod Renaissance
No discussion of Oblivion would be complete without acknowledging its robust modding community. The game’s technical flaws and dated systems created the perfect canvas for modders to improve, expand, and completely reimagine the experience. From graphical overhauls that replaced those horrifying faces to complete gameplay redesigns that fixed the broken leveling system, modders transformed Oblivion into something that could rival modern RPGs.
Some mods became legendary in their own right. Nehrim offered an entirely new game built in Oblivion’s engine. Midas Magic expanded the spell system to fantasy-fulfilling depths. Vilja introduced companion depth that Bethesda themselves would learn from. The modding scene didn’t just enhance Oblivion – it often surpassed the original developers’ vision in specific areas. 🔮
These community contributions extended Oblivion’s lifespan far beyond what would have been possible otherwise, with new mods still occasionally appearing even today. For many PC players, modded Oblivion represents the definitive version of the game, addressing nearly every criticism while preserving and enhancing its strengths.
Legacy of a Flawed Masterpiece
Revisiting Oblivion in 2025 reveals a game caught between eras – more accessible than Morrowind but less streamlined than Skyrim. Its ambitions often exceeded its technical capabilities, creating both frustrating limitations and charming quirks that have become part of gaming folklore.
What’s remarkable is how many of Oblivion’s innovations we now take for granted. Features like radiant AI, physics-based object interaction, and fully voiced NPCs set standards that influenced countless RPGs that followed. Even its failings proved instructive – Skyrim’s more measured level scaling and streamlined attributes directly addressed criticisms of Oblivion’s systems.
For all its flaws, there remains something magical about Cyrodiil that newer games sometimes lack. Perhaps it’s the earnestness of its fantasy setting, unburdened by the cynicism that permeates many modern titles. Or maybe it’s those moments of unscripted chaos when the ambitious systems collide in unexpected ways, creating stories unique to each player.
Oblivion stands as a beautiful, ambitious mess – a game reaching for the stars while sometimes tripping over its own feet. Its legacy lives on not just in what it accomplished, but in how it shaped the expectations and possibilities for open-world RPGs that followed. So here’s to you, Hero of Kvatch, Champion of Cyrodiil, and unwitting victim of some truly questionable game design decisions. The Realm of Oblivion may be flawed, but it remains worth visiting all these years later.
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