The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition
by admin on Thursday, April 7th, 2011 | 2 Comments
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition (GotY) for Windows is a digest of this classic RPG competition. Oblivion GotY will comprise the original approximation of the awarding-winning RPG Oblivion along with the prescribed enlargement, The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles, and the downloadable aggregation, Knights of the Nine. This unexampled ware allows player who have ne’er played the 2006 Game of the Year to familiarisation Oblivion for the first clip with extra aggregation. In improver, gamers can cont
List Price: $ 19.99
Price: $ 21.95
Outstanding, well deserved GOTY categorization,
Oblivion most certainly lives up to its reputation as a Game of the Year for 2006/2007.
The interface is very easy to manipulate. The combat system is intuitive, and I found the regeneration of fatigue and magicka/mana to be quite unique to the RPG environment. I often found myself lugging around potions for regenerating mana and hitpoints in other games. This is not the case with Oblivion! My dark elf character regenerated fatique and magicka, while it was extremely easy to cast spells that restored health.
The game crashed to desktop only a handful of times out of the dozen or so days I spent playing, so I’d say it was above average in terms of reliability. The game runs smoothly at 800×600 with a P4 3.0 GHz CPU and an ATI Radeon X1950 GT 256MB AGP video card.
The most noteworthy aspect of this game is the sheer number of quests and the “sandbox” aspect of exploration and character development. I did not have to stick with the main quest, but I often found myself sidetracked with various quests that lead to additional quests! It is not uncommon to have a dozen or more active quests in your log!
The second most intriguing component of this game is the ability to manufacture potions, spells, and enchantments for your items. This is quite a unique feature! No longer is the player restricted to cookie cutter items and equipment. You can enchant armor to provide chameleon (invisibility), while you can enchant weapons to suck the life out of your opponents with each strike.
One “mini-quest” even allows you to play as a vampire, whom must feed on sleeping victims or else you begin to lose hitpoints under the sun (complete with smoke rising off your skin).
I must say that Oblivion is one of THE most innovative games I have played in the recent years. This special GOTY edition includes Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles expansion, providing months upon months of playability. I have spent over 50 hours and have not even started the main quest.
Pros: Intuitive interface for exploration, enchanting items, and making spells. The combat interface is exceptional for a RPG. I recall the days of text-based RPGs and RPGs like Final Fantasy II for the SNES where you were always forced to take damage during turns. Oblivion is a mix of a first-person shooter and RPG. Godfather fans will probably see quite a resemblance, with the exception that Oblivion is far more fleshed out and involved than Godfather.
The GOTY edition includes the latest patch and I have not run into any problems with the quests that were previously found in earlier versions.
Cons: The voice acting gets repetitious since they keep recycling voice actors for the minor NPC’s. This is also a pro because this allows for a bigger budget in developing the game itself. I find myself reading the text more than listening to the NPC’s whining that someone stole their ring, or they need some special wine.
I found that not being able to fast travel to marked locations was annoying. Fast travel is useful because you can go from one location to another without being forced to ride a horse or run on foot. Unfortunately, fast travel only works if you have explored the region and found the location. In addition, fast travel only works if there aren’t enemies attacking and if you are outside in an open area. You can’t fast travel from the inside of a cave or inside of a building. This can be get rather boring at times.
While you can develop your character by improving his or her skills, there isn’t much development in character interaction. For example, when you join the Dark Brotherhood, almost everyone is open and receptive. It felt like this was the friendliest faction. Antoinetta Marie seemed to have more than a friendly disposition towards your character, but it never developed any further than typical banter with NPCs. I feel this is a major flaw in many of the games today, but it is most likely a technical limitation more than anything.
Bottom line:
Oblivion Game of the Year Edition gets a 10/10 rating from me based on being an overall excellent game. Very rarely does a game get almost everything right, and still be able to run smoothly on budget PC hardware. There is simply so much to accomplish in this game.
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|The Future of CRPG (computer role-playing game),
What can I possibly say about this revolutionary computer RPG that hasn’t been said?
To me this is arguably the best computer game in the history of video game, period.
‘Oblivion’ is a non-linear, free-form, 1st-person RPG, colored with beautiful next generation graphic that enhances the immersive gameplay set in the gigantic gameworld, where you can do anything anywhere anytime you feel like it.
There are over 20 cities and settlements, 300 quests, 300 dungeons, caves, ruins, tunnels, and whatnots available in the game (combining ‘Knights of the Nine’, official DLCs, and ‘Shivering Isles’).
Then there is TES Construction Set. Using this amazing toolset used by Bethesda to create TES IV Oblivion, there are literally over 2000 mods made by gamers like you and I, available for free and still coming out on a daily basis.
I spent close to 200 hours with over 50 mods installed and I only covered less than 70 quests. I was too busy crawling underground, fighting monsters, retrieving loots, selling them for better equipments and houses, decorating.
To hell with saving the world. I only finished half of the main quest, and I have no intention to finish it in the foreseeable future.
The production value is simply stratospheric. From character design, character model, environment, grass, tree, flower, water, animal, item, monster, building, right down to single pebble and stone, Bethesda paid so much attention to details that it is breathtakingly marvelous.
Music by Jeremy Soule and sound effects are another praise-worthy achievements.
No other RPG in the history of video game gives the gamer so much freedom in gameplay as it is so evident from the very beginning in character creation.
If you spend enough time, you can virtually create any actual person’s face both living or dead in uncanny resemblance.
Whether you like it or not, I think ‘Oblivion’ has set the standard by which all future CRPG, and even other genres to some extent, will be measured for a long time.
To Bethesda’s credit, ‘Oblivion’ successfully streamlined the CRPG mechanics from its beloved franchise into more accessible mainstream game that became a runaway success; or dumbing down for console kiddies as many describe, depends on how you look at it. I know many of people were turned off by the changes made from older TES series, and ‘Oblivion vs Morrowind: Which is better?’ is still one of the most fiercely-debated topic in the official forum. Since I have fond memories of all previous TES series, I won’t get into the flaming war. I just don’t see any constructive point of insisting one game over another. They all have pros and cons, and no game is perfect.
I couldn’t read single review of new CRPG called ‘Two Worlds’ without comparing it to ‘Oblivion’. What a burden and curse it is for ‘Two Worlds’, which has been brutally trashed by critics and users alike. I really love that game, too. Although I really enjoyed that game, it was ultimately not enough to erase the memory of ‘Oblivion’. If ‘Fallout 3′ becomes anything close to the success of ‘Oblivion’, Bethesda Softwork will become the next formidable RPG Giant like ‘Blizzard’ / ‘Black Isle’ / ‘Bioware’ trinity once achieved back in the days. You can be sure Bethesda will come out with TES V, and its success is pretty much guaranteed no matter which direction it will take.
Now I think far too many game mechanics from the past CRPGs such as ‘Ultima’, ‘Baldur’s Gate’, ‘Wizardry’ or ‘Diablo’ series stemmed from the limitation of technology at the time rather than game design choice. I still have the original copies of ‘Baldur’s Gate’ and ‘Diablo’ series along with ‘Ultima’ series, ‘Wizardry 8′, ‘Planescape: Torment’, ‘Fallout 1, 2′, and of course ‘Daggerfall’ and ‘Morrowind’.
Except for ‘Morrowind’, I don’t see myself playing and enjoying those game as I once used to anymore.
I tried them recently and was pleasantly surprised how pathetically they are outdated now. The vidio gaming asthetics have grown exponentially since those days.
Even ‘Morrowind’ took some adjusting time to re-immerse myself. When I say technology, I am not just talking about graphic but the scope and possibilities that was just not feasible in the past. The improved technology doesn’t always result in better game but it immensely helps to create immersive gaming world, and the technology lifted all the barriers for game developers to realize their vision into games. This will result in new convergent games that crossover the genres. Upcoming games such as ‘Mass Effect’ and ‘Fallout 3′ are the evidence of new gaming asthetics being formed right now.
What would you like to see in the future Bethesda RPGs in terms of game mechanics?
For me, one thing I really like to see is the interaction with NPCs improved…
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