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What are your memories of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?
- Thread starter MrOogieBoogie
- Start date
Freeglader
Member
Blew me away. I think it was actually my first open-world western rpg. The music is amazing too.
HueyFreeman
Banned
It's easy to poopoo it now as outdated, ugly faces etc. but I remember looking at the original screenshots when it was revealed and really struggling to process how they could possibly do this/could this really be an open world etc?
Turns out (despite it not really looking like that on console) that they did.
One of the great leaps forward in gaming, regardless of how well it has held up today.
Turns out (despite it not really looking like that on console) that they did.
One of the great leaps forward in gaming, regardless of how well it has held up today.
A huge game with a beautiful graphic (not the faces), some nice quests... and a lot of bug that breaked my main quest at one point.... I was imprisoned in the Oblivion.... because the teleportation never happened... 
But I really liked it, and the intro was incredibly fun to play, when you escape from the prison!
But I really liked it, and the intro was incredibly fun to play, when you escape from the prison!
bigbaldwolf86
Banned
Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean
Legends
Legends
Darkstorne
Member
Some of my favourite memories are of the teaser trailers for the game in the week leading up to release. One new video every day, showcasing different elements of the game. My hype levels have never been that high for a game, and those videos were a big reason why. I also remember the game being so cutting edge that a friend of mine who love Morrowind on his PC couldn't run Oblivion, so every lunchtime at college he visited a website designed specifically for gamers like him - a collection of 360 degree panoramic screenshots of Cyrodiil so he could get as close to being there as possible =P
My best memory from playing the game is probably working out the skooma trade route to the Imperial City. No quest for it, just radiant AI awesomeness. Morag Tong agents from Morrowind cross the Valus mountains to a mountain camp, selling skooma to an Orc from Cheydinhal who takes it back to his home. The following day he makes the trip to the Imperial City and collects gold from a dead drop location in a back garden, leaving the skooma in its place. I loved that level of detail. There's also a woman, in Anvil I think, who sleeps with a different guy almost every night of the week
I still play the game to this day. Modding tools on this scale is something every RPG needs. Mad that a 2006 game can look this good:
My best memory from playing the game is probably working out the skooma trade route to the Imperial City. No quest for it, just radiant AI awesomeness. Morag Tong agents from Morrowind cross the Valus mountains to a mountain camp, selling skooma to an Orc from Cheydinhal who takes it back to his home. The following day he makes the trip to the Imperial City and collects gold from a dead drop location in a back garden, leaving the skooma in its place. I loved that level of detail. There's also a woman, in Anvil I think, who sleeps with a different guy almost every night of the week
I still play the game to this day. Modding tools on this scale is something every RPG needs. Mad that a 2006 game can look this good:
SugarDaddy
Member
I remember being crazy blown away when first exiting the sewers and seeing this massive open world for the first time.. There are a limited number of games which have such profound nostalgia for me, Oblivion is one of them. Before Oblivion my only exposure to such open worlds came in the form of MMO's (I had not even played WoW yet at the time) so when I got my hands on Oblivion, teenage me lost my shit. I remember driving around with my dad trying to find a store that had a copy near me, couldn't find a standard copy so my dad sprung the extra $10-$20 and got me the collectors edition because he was fed up looking lmao. Runescape, Oblivion, and then WoW.. Man there was something crazy about experiencing all of those worlds for the first time
Helscream
Banned
Of many found gaming memories I have Oblivion has its own special place.
There is one quest from the Fighters guild The Noble's Daughter which really stood out. Essentially it is a typical "Rescue Person" quest, but the Noble turns out to be a Orc who speaks in Shakespeare English. In turn making a typical mundane quest enjoyable.
Thus it is adjustments like these that made Oblivion a great game. Shivering Isles was a fantastic expansion as well.
Enemy leveling scaling fucking sucked though.
There is one quest from the Fighters guild The Noble's Daughter which really stood out. Essentially it is a typical "Rescue Person" quest, but the Noble turns out to be a Orc who speaks in Shakespeare English. In turn making a typical mundane quest enjoyable.
Thus it is adjustments like these that made Oblivion a great game. Shivering Isles was a fantastic expansion as well.
Enemy leveling scaling fucking sucked though.
Amory
Member
It was the most amazing experience I've ever had in a video game. Even though it's dated now, I still remember being absolutely floored by the openness of Oblivion and being free to make my own fun outside of the questlines.
I picked up a used copy from gamestop, not really knowing what it was, when I first bought an Xbox 360 in college. Might've been a mistake in retrospect, because I wasted literally hundreds of hours playing that game over the next few years.
Skyrim is an objectively better experience in pretty much every way. But Oblivion is probably my favorite game of all time. It changed my expectations for what a game could be.
I picked up a used copy from gamestop, not really knowing what it was, when I first bought an Xbox 360 in college. Might've been a mistake in retrospect, because I wasted literally hundreds of hours playing that game over the next few years.
Skyrim is an objectively better experience in pretty much every way. But Oblivion is probably my favorite game of all time. It changed my expectations for what a game could be.
RoboGeorgeForeman
Banned
I remember the beautiful OST, getting lost in dungeons for hours, the great quests, and loving it so much I bought it on X360, PS3, and PC.
I've gone back to Oblivion several times since and while I've grown to love Morrowind more, it still is a great source of nostalgia for me.
I've gone back to Oblivion several times since and while I've grown to love Morrowind more, it still is a great source of nostalgia for me.
Yup, it was one of the most beautiful games back then by far. The 360 and PS3 releases were considered to be one of the best looking games at the time, despite being an open world sandbox RPG - it really was an unbelievable technical achievement given that your PC alternative was to spend big bucks, only to get slightly better IQ and certainly unstable performance (locked 60 in 2006? Ha!).It's easy to poopoo it now as outdated, ugly faces etc. but I remember looking at the original screenshots when it was revealed and really struggling to process how they could possibly do this/could this really be an open world etc?
Turns out (despite it not really looking like that on console) that they did.
One of the great leaps forward in gaming, regardless of how well it has held up today.
Sure the faces were ugly even when it was first reviewed but due to aging rather poorly in this aspect, it seems more extreme than it was. The game world actually still holds up very well to this day along with dense foliage on modern systems.
And how can one forget the brilliant soundtrack by Jeremy Soule?
https://youtu.be/ZnQf1J8r_ig
GillianSeed79
Member
I first played Oblivion on 360 and this was my first experience. The leveling system/scaling enemies made the game impossible because I over leveled my character. I started over and mainlined the main quest and was left underwhelmed. Turns out Sky rim became one of my favorite games so just recently I decided to go back to Oblivion on PC to mod the hell out of it to see if there is a diamond hidden under the vanilla game mechanics. Also the PC version hopefully won't crash every 5 minutes like the 360 version.
The levelling system is what put me off Oblivion, in particular the way you increase your attributes via what skills you acquire as you level. I must have restarted the game like 5 times trying to understand how it worked then when I realised I wasn't playing the game in an enjoyable fashion, that the mechanics had driven me to micromanage and effectively min-max my character growth, I just gave up on it.
See I like to play characters, like a heavy armour wearing archer, so high strength and agility, but to get high strength you'd have to running around using melee weapons. It'd be incredibly unintuitive to do. I'll return to it in the future but with the mindset of picking a more "traditional class"
Stallion Dan
Member
Breaking the unbreakable skeleton key.
FiveSix4Three
Member
Oblivion was pretty great, but I had my 'mind blown' experience with Morrowind.
A kid on an OG Xbox exploring the world, learning the intricacies of larceny, murdering fools, and working through the quest log with no game guide.
Neck and neck with bloodborne for my GOAT single player experience. I fucking loved Morrowind.
A kid on an OG Xbox exploring the world, learning the intricacies of larceny, murdering fools, and working through the quest log with no game guide.
Neck and neck with bloodborne for my GOAT single player experience. I fucking loved Morrowind.
Spiritwalker
Member
I remember the lush hills, cozy villages and soothing music. It was super impressive at the time, but I never got very far in the story. It has aged horribly on console (bought it on PS3 recently) but on PC you can still make it quite playable with mods.
The Shirt Of Hurt
Oblivion had a superior enchanting system compared to Skyrim which led to my ultimate creation: The Shirt of Hurt. It was an otherwise ordinary shirt that was enchanted (cursed) with fire elemental damage. You may be wondering what is the point of a shirt that inflicts fire damage when worn.
Well, say you're taking a trip to the Shivering Isles and there's a quest where you are required to assassinate some crazy Argonian local but you're roleplaying as a non-violent character who never outright murders. You break out the ol' Shirt of Hurt.
When they are sleeping, you pickpocket their clothing out of their inventory and insert The Shirt of Hurt. Because of the way Oblivion Radiant AI logic worked, when they wake up in the morning, they will automatically equip the best items in their inventory including clothing, armor, rings, etc. They'll put on the shirt and immediately start wandering around as they burn, unable to realize why they are burning. The walk around like idiots, "ahh!"ing and "ooh!"ing in pain until they eventually fall over and die.
Quest completed.
Oblivion had a superior enchanting system compared to Skyrim which led to my ultimate creation: The Shirt of Hurt. It was an otherwise ordinary shirt that was enchanted (cursed) with fire elemental damage. You may be wondering what is the point of a shirt that inflicts fire damage when worn.
Well, say you're taking a trip to the Shivering Isles and there's a quest where you are required to assassinate some crazy Argonian local but you're roleplaying as a non-violent character who never outright murders. You break out the ol' Shirt of Hurt.
When they are sleeping, you pickpocket their clothing out of their inventory and insert The Shirt of Hurt. Because of the way Oblivion Radiant AI logic worked, when they wake up in the morning, they will automatically equip the best items in their inventory including clothing, armor, rings, etc. They'll put on the shirt and immediately start wandering around as they burn, unable to realize why they are burning. The walk around like idiots, "ahh!"ing and "ooh!"ing in pain until they eventually fall over and die.
Quest completed.
Memnoch
Member
Yes and going into my first random dungeon and saying wow this is amazing. Incredible game. I just lost myself for countless hours.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
The Strokes
Banned
"Mankar's commentaries on the mysterious Xarxes"
Loved it. My first WRPG and made me fall in love with the series. I still have fond memories of it and the soundtrack is top notch.
Loved it. My first WRPG and made me fall in love with the series. I still have fond memories of it and the soundtrack is top notch.
Bolivar687
Banned
Going to sleep at the Bloated Float, the ship repurposed as an inn at the imperial waterfront. Waking up to find out it had been hijacked by bandits and was heading out to sea. Sneaking through the ship to take down the bandits one by one, before confronting their leader on the deck, under a full moon, in the middle of the ocean, and drawing our swords to dance. That's when I knew Oblivion wasn't like other games.
Luring enemies across trip wires and false floors to turn the physics-based traps of the dungeons against my foes.
Walking through the forests overlooking the Niben river, with sunlight spilling through the branches, and coming across an abandoned chapel. There were signs someone had been through there recently, possibly looting the site for materials. When I entered the chapel, there were two necromancers performing experiments on a cadaver on the altar. They stopped what they were doing, looked over their shoulders at me in the doorway, then drew their weapons and summoned zombies to take me out before I could report their activities to the authorities. As I played the game, I kept hearing about what a big deal it was that the Mages Guild had outlawed Necromancy and its practitioners must now operate in secret.
In the Red Wastes of Oblivion, raising bridges between different guard towers so I could eventually activate the bridge that led to the central tower that controlled the Oblivion Gate. Walking hundreds of feet in the air between these towers, I realized this game is actually top 5 in terms of dungeon design in my experience.
Looking for a woman's missing husband and her debtor taking me to an abandoned island fortress, where they charge criminals and murderers to hunt other human beings for sport. I escaped by turning the game against them, jumping unseen among the rafters above them in stealth like Batman and jumping down to take them out. When I made it out, after failing to save her husband, I made it back to Bravil in the middle of the night and woke her up to inform her her that he was dead. She gave me a book about the War for the Red Diamond. I read it cover to cover and never sold it.
I played Morrowind after finishing Oblivion. I liked the story and setting but it was not a good game. Even the act of moving your character was stiff and awkward, to say nothing of having to stop running every forty feet so you can regain your stamina, so your attacks won't consistently miss against the next cliff racer or slaughter fish which is assuredly coming your way within the next thirty seconds. After Morrowind, I returned to play Shivering Isles and I remember just jumping around for a bit, so happy to be back in Oblivion where the movement is so fluid and fun.
The one thing that really stands out to me about Oblivion is the emotions it conveys about the joy of solitude in nature. Bethesda achieved this in part by generating it's world with an algorithm to have natural topography. This made the valleys stand out, how you can't really see what's at the bottom of one until you make it below the treeline. Everything just felt so real and natural to explore, it enhances the curiosity of exploration when you can't see what's over the next hill. Skyrim is pretty flat in between it's mountains and Morrowind's hills are the size of sand dunes. It's the use of topography and elevation that make Oblivion my favorite Elder Scrolls to play and explore.
Luring enemies across trip wires and false floors to turn the physics-based traps of the dungeons against my foes.
Walking through the forests overlooking the Niben river, with sunlight spilling through the branches, and coming across an abandoned chapel. There were signs someone had been through there recently, possibly looting the site for materials. When I entered the chapel, there were two necromancers performing experiments on a cadaver on the altar. They stopped what they were doing, looked over their shoulders at me in the doorway, then drew their weapons and summoned zombies to take me out before I could report their activities to the authorities. As I played the game, I kept hearing about what a big deal it was that the Mages Guild had outlawed Necromancy and its practitioners must now operate in secret.
In the Red Wastes of Oblivion, raising bridges between different guard towers so I could eventually activate the bridge that led to the central tower that controlled the Oblivion Gate. Walking hundreds of feet in the air between these towers, I realized this game is actually top 5 in terms of dungeon design in my experience.
Looking for a woman's missing husband and her debtor taking me to an abandoned island fortress, where they charge criminals and murderers to hunt other human beings for sport. I escaped by turning the game against them, jumping unseen among the rafters above them in stealth like Batman and jumping down to take them out. When I made it out, after failing to save her husband, I made it back to Bravil in the middle of the night and woke her up to inform her her that he was dead. She gave me a book about the War for the Red Diamond. I read it cover to cover and never sold it.
I played Morrowind after finishing Oblivion. I liked the story and setting but it was not a good game. Even the act of moving your character was stiff and awkward, to say nothing of having to stop running every forty feet so you can regain your stamina, so your attacks won't consistently miss against the next cliff racer or slaughter fish which is assuredly coming your way within the next thirty seconds. After Morrowind, I returned to play Shivering Isles and I remember just jumping around for a bit, so happy to be back in Oblivion where the movement is so fluid and fun.
The one thing that really stands out to me about Oblivion is the emotions it conveys about the joy of solitude in nature. Bethesda achieved this in part by generating it's world with an algorithm to have natural topography. This made the valleys stand out, how you can't really see what's at the bottom of one until you make it below the treeline. Everything just felt so real and natural to explore, it enhances the curiosity of exploration when you can't see what's over the next hill. Skyrim is pretty flat in between it's mountains and Morrowind's hills are the size of sand dunes. It's the use of topography and elevation that make Oblivion my favorite Elder Scrolls to play and explore.
