Coming out of E3 last year
one of the games that really stood out of the crowd was Bethesda Softworks’s Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The high level of the graphics, the deep gameplay, the
realistic physics, and the fact that they have Patrick Stewart playing the
emperor in the game easily made Oblivion
one of the two standout games at E3 (If you are interested, the other game was
Remedy’s Alan Wake).
I was lucky enough to get
asked to attend one of the three press previews being held across the country
and thanks to a fare sale by Southwest, a lull in work, and a boss who was as
interested in the game as I was, I was able to attend the press event in
Chicago this past Wednesday. You know
I’m looking forward to a game when I voluntarily fly on Southwest, an airline
that I absolutely detest. I won’t go
into my long spiel about the joy of unassigned seats but let’s just say I’m not
a fan of the airline (although their TV show is somewhat entertaining at
times).
To set the record straight I
should admit that I have not had the chance to play an Elder Scrolls game before.
I flirted with the first game when I was in college but I never really got that
far into it and never really got a chance to play any of the other games that
have come out since then. I know this makes me a bad person but with Oblivion I have the feeling I’m going
to be making up for lost time.
For the press event I chose
to spend the majority of time with the Xbox 360 version of the game. My experience with Knights of the Old Republic plays into this as after playing the
game on the Xbox I had a hard time adjusting to playing the game on the PC.
If you’re worried about the
controls on the Xbox 360, then let me reassure you that the controls are
exceedingly tight and easy to use. You
have your basic FPS controls of the left thumbstick controlling movement while
the right thumbstick controls where you look.
Pressing down on the left thumbstick puts you into stealth mode and
pushing down on the right thumbstick switches between first and third person
view. The left trigger blocks, while the
right trigger attacks. The left bumper
allows you to grab objects in the world while the right bumper casts the
currently selected spell. For the face
buttons, the X buttons sheaths/unsheathes your weapons, the Y button allows you
to jump, the B button opens up your journal, and the A button interacts with
the environment (push buttons, open doors, etc).
The real magic of the
controls is the hot keys which are assigned to the eight directions of the
D-pad. The hotkeys allow you to map
weapon sets, spells, and potions to each of the directions giving you quick
access to different fighting styles. This
allows you to easily switch from shooting arrows at a distant enemy to a
sword/shield combo as that enemy gets closer.
It also allows you to quickly switch between an offensive spell to a defensive
one so you can quickly heal yourself and then switch back to hurling fireballs
and lighting at your foes. It is a bit tricky to hit
the diagonals of the d-pad at times but the game does seem to have a little bit
of tolerance built in to handle it.
The controls on the PC
version should be familiar to most people as Bethesda is using the traditional WASD
standard for movement with R toggling the POV, CTRL switching stealth mode, the
space bar for interaction, and the 1-8 keys for the hotkeys. The mouse controls where you are looking with
the left mouse button controlling your attacks and the right mouse button
blocking.
After
playing both versions I really have to say that I still preferred the Xbox 360 controls
over the PC setup for ease of use. You
do lose a little bit of precision with the console controls but the control
scheme is so tight and easy to use that I really didn’t want to go back to a
keyboard and mouse to play the game. That’s
a personal preference though and if you are used to playing the series on the
PC you are not going to be disappointed.
The screenshots on this page are from the PC version of the game
After getting situated with
one of the 360 stations I fired up a new game and got to work. The game opens with a nice sweep of the main
city with some excellent narration by Patrick Stewart that helps to setup the
mood and tone of the game. The sweep
ends with the camera zooming in on jail cell windows and that’s where you take
over control of the game.
Before you enter the game
you have to setup your character. You
can select the gender, race, and look of your character. There are ten different races in the game and
you have everything from the cat like Khajiit, orcs, a variety of elven races
(Wood elf, Dark elf , and High elf), several human races (Nord, Imperial,
Redguard, and Breton) , and the lizard like Argonian. Like most RPG games each race has its own
special benefits and abilities. For
example the Argonian can breathe underwater while the Imperials have a special
speech ability that allows them to manipulating NPC’s more easily. Once you have selected your race you then customize
the face of your character. The level of
customization is extensive and you can control everything from the size of the
forehead to the size and shape of the eyes.
If you really don’t want to deal with the details you can always hit the
random button and the game will generate a unique face for you.
After creating your
character you start off the game like every other Elder Scrolls game; in a dark
dank cell. Being the big dork that I am
I immediately went up and started playing with the hanging chains in the room
to check out the physics model in the game (re-creating the early part of the
E3 demo). After that I explored the cell
a bit and was immediately insulted and taunted by the prisoner in the cell
across from me. I believe the taunts
were race specific as he taunted my freshly minted Argonian about the fact that
I would never see the water again and a few other things that seemed race
specific. After he got done talking I
heard approaching footsteps and down came the emperor and a group of his royal
protectors: the Blades. As mentioned
earlier the Emperor is voiced by Patrick Stewart and the voice work in the game
is excellent. It turns out that both of
his sons have been killed and that he is probably next on the list. As luck would have it the secret escape
tunnel out of the castle is through my cell so it looks like my stay in the
jail isn't going to be as long as
planned. From here you follow the guards
out and the rest of the tutorial level starts.
Like most games the first
level is there to introduce you to the basics of the game and Oblivion is no different. Initially you learn how to control your
character, equip weapons, cast spells and learn the combat system. What Oblivion
does a little differently is that during this first part of the game it allows
you to also select which sign you were born under (which adds certain
abilities/weaknesses to your character) as well as which class you want to
select. If you don't
like any of the pre-defined classes you can actually create your own where you
select which attributes and skills you want your character to have.
Once
you've gone through the first level
(I'm not going to spoil how the
level plays out even though I'm sure
other writers will) you end up outside the castle. Before exiting the sewer you are given one
last chance to change your race, name, and birth sign. It’s a nice touch as you can see if this is
really the direction you want to go without having to play through the tutorial
level again. Once outside the sewer it
is up to you to either start working your way through the game or start
exploring the land.
The screenshots on this page are from the PC version of the game
The first thing you notice
about Oblivion is how stunning the
graphics are. The sad thing is that the
screenshots that Bethesda
provided look great but really don’t show how well and fluid the graphics move
because part of the realism and depth of the graphics is how well things move
and flow in the game. Trees and bushes
gently sway in the wind. The things that
inhabit the world are well animated and move as you would expect. I think I spent about three minutes just
chasing deer around to see how well they moved.
There are a lot of subtleties to the graphics as well. While working through one of the side quests
in one of the villages I was about to cross a stream as dusk was approaching
and as I entered the water I actually saw the sunset reflected back at me. The realism of this moment was so intense
that I actually sat at the side of the river and watched the sunset reflected
in the water, the sun slowly turning from yellow to a burnt red as it worked
it’s way through it’s orbit. Things like
this have been done in games before but not at this level of realism and
detail. Bethesda has done a great job of creating a
living, breathing world.
The second thing you’ll
notice when you are in the game is how big the world is. It’s almost too big and overwhelming to be
honest and there’s definitely that feeling of if I can see it I can get to it
in the game. This feeling is further
compounded by the amount of missions, quests, and things that you can do in the
game. You can do just the main quest and
call it a day but that’s like going to the Louvre and only seeing the Mona
Lisa. Sure that’s the main piece of the
museum but you are missing out on a lot of other things inside the place. Besides the main quest there are the
corollary guild quests, town quests, and over 200 dungeons to for you to
explore and purge. The quests in Oblivion aren’t all going to be
gigantic epic adventures as there are some nice shorter quests in there to help
you feel like you are making some progress in the game.
Thankfully there are quite a
few ways to get around Tamriel. The most
obvious is that you can walk/swim from point A to point B. In the time honored RPG tradition expect to
spend a lot of time hoofing it to destinations.
Speaking of hoofs, Bethesda
has introduced horses in Oblivion to
help expedite the process somewhat. As
you progress through the game you will be able to get different horses from the
different towns. You’ll be able to buy
bigger and faster horses later on down the road. The drawback to the horses is that you can’t
engage in combat or cast spells while you are mounted. This is a little frustrating as every time
you are attacked by a woodland creature you will have to dismount from the
horse to kill it, giving it time to get a few digs in at your horse or
yourself. Horses are not entirely
defenseless and will defend themselves against enemies but after a few attacks
they will eventually succumb to their attackers. The game does speed travel up a bit with the
Fast Travel system where you can just point and click on the map and the game
will take you immediately to where ever you want to go. This only works for areas you have been to in
the past so will not be able to Fast Travel throughout the game.
I did have a pretty
interesting event happen to me as I was playing the game. I'm
riding my horse to get one of the waypoints of the main quest and I get
attacked by a wolf and a rogue woodsman. It was getting late (just after
dusk) so I can barely see the wolf but I hear the arrows from the woodsman
landing near me. I get off the horse to take care of them as you can't attack or cast magic while mounted. As soon as I’m off the horse the wolf attacks
and chases the horse off into the woods. I break out the sword and shield
and chase after him. I catch up to the
woodsman and cast a few flares (light fireball spell) at him while moving
closer to finish him off with the sword. The spells help provide some light at
night as well. I take care of him and then turn around to find the wolf
heading my way. After finishing off the
wolf, my horse is still no where to be seen so I wander around a bit and
eventually find the body of the animal further back in the woods. It looks like
the wolf finally caught up to the horse, killed it and then came back to finish
me It was a pretty cool event and showed
off a lot of what makes the game so special.
Rather than walk the rest of the way to the town I just pulled up the map
and fast traveled to the city I was going to as I was just exploring the
countryside to check out the various locations and collect some spell
ingredients.
The screenshots on this page are from the Xbox 360 version of the game
No preview of Oblivion could be complete without
talking about the RadiantAI system that controls most of the characters in the
world. Rather than having set scripts
for the characters in the game each NPC is controlled by a schedule and a
series of wants and needs. Characters
will eat when they feel hungry and go to sleep when they are tired. During the day they will report to work
around nine in the morning and shut down around six in the evening. It was actually kind of interesting to watch
the characters go about their daily lives, interacting with each other as they
walked through towns. This of course
makes them a little easier to predict so you usually know when and where they
are and can act accordingly. For example
if you wanted to rob one of the stores you know that there probably won’t be
any one there at 2am in the morning. The
game does have a wait feature that allows you to progress through the game in 1
hour increments so you don’t literally have to sit in one spot while time moves
on. Although you have to think it might be weird for the denizens of Tamriel to
see someone standing in place for 12 hours straight while you wait for
something to happen.
Interacting with the NPC’s
in the game is one of the most important parts of any RPG as they are usually
critical to the plot of the game. Here Oblivion takes the existing dialog tree
model and breaks some new ground. When
you first talk to someone you are given the typical dialog tree of
interactions. However you can also try
and persuade them. This brings up a
circular diagram that is broken into four quadrants with a number in the middle. Each of these quadrants (Joke, Admire, Boast,
and Coerce) will elicit a different response from the person you are talking to. They will either like the response, like it a
little less, not like it, or not like it a little less which you can tell by
the look on their face. When you start
the actual persuade mini-game, each quadrant will be filled with wedges of
different sizes. The wedges are in one
of four sizes (small to large) with each representing the effect of the
quadrant it is currently in. When you
invoke an action, the wedges move clockwise so the trick of this is to try and
have the big wedges act in the quadrant they respond to the most and have the
small wedges in the quadrant they like the least. The number in the middle represents how
likely they are to give you more information and it goes up when you activate a
quadrant they respond to well and it goes down when you activate a quadrant
they don’t respond to well. The amount
is determined by the size of the wedge currently occupying that wedge so the
trick is to try and get the big wedge in the positive action and the small
wedge in the most negative one. You can only click each action once. It’s something that takes a little bit of
getting used to but once you get the hang of it, it is quite fun. If you don’t want to play the game you can
also just bribe the person. As you gain
experience in the Speech craft skill the losses for picking a negative choice
will go down and the increases for a correct placement will go up.
Once you reach a high enough
score you will gain access to additional dialogue options or even be able to
get past certain limitations. An example
of this was that in one of the towns I visited the Count who oversaw the town
wouldn’t let just anyone buy a house there so I had to work my way through the
game just so that I could buy a house in his town.
The screenshots on this page are from the Xbox 360 version of the game
Of course there’s another
way to interact with the NPC’s of the world and that’s with a sword, bow, or
spell. You can get away with
occasionally killing an NPC while no one is around but if you attack kill
someone while in a town expect the guards to bring the thunder down on
you. What’s great about Oblivion is that killing everyone in a
town is an option if you are so inclined.
While you can’t kill every single NPC in the game you can come pretty
close to it. There are certain ones that are critical to the plot that you can
knock unconscious though and they are market with a crown sign when you put the
crosshairs on them.
Writing all of this now
I’m trying to cover every single thing that I saw during my four hour period
with the game and I know I’m missing a lot of items like talking about the
excellent journal system that tracks your quests, the cool map UI and way that
you equip/unequip items, or the different types of classes and skills that are
in the game. There’s only so much that
you can really cover in one preview.
The one thing that I know
about Oblivion is that after playing
the game for a scant four hours I know that I feel a little differently about
gaming now and that Oblivion has the
potential to be one of those games that changes things; one of those games that
you will judge other games by for years to come. To qualify that statement, I’m not sure if
it’s just because this is my first experience with the Elder Scrolls series or
because Oblivion is such a big step
forward in the gaming world. Either way
I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time in Tamriel whenever the game is
released. I’m guessing that the game will be on stores by the end of March unless
something dramatic happens. The game
feels so deep and wide that you could probably play through the game three or
four times and not see everything that there is to see.
