The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Preview

Olly: A newly born Elder Scrolls fan

It would be fair to say that I wasn't a fan of Morrowind at all. I was late to the party but I found the sleep-inducing pace and the fact that it seemed rendered only in varying shades of brown rather off-putting. I seem to remember playing it around the time that Knights of the Old Republic came out, so if only one RPG was going to get my time it had to be Star Wars.

A few years later and I find myself looking at another Elder Scrolls game, but with Star Wars holding little lure anymore, rave reviews all around, and inescapable hype, I seem to have little choice but to give this one a proper look. The technical advancements are obvious, but it's the tweaks to the gameplay and story progression that make this seem much more appealing.

One thing I felt Morrowind lacked was an immediate sense of direction, with the game leaving you to your own devices from the off. Oblivion provides a much better introduction by holding your hand for the first half-hour and starting the main quest immediately (with Patrick Stewart, no less), before setting you free to continue the story or branch off and make your own way for a while. The story can seem like the easy route because the scale of the world is positively daunting at first, especially after inevitably giving into the temptation to climb the nearest hill and look back at the Imperial City, making the huge size of the world immediately apparent.

By wandering around you can find loads of little villages

Oblivion can be incredibly engrossing, and does a better job than any epic-but-linear Japanese RPG at making you personally, as opposed to your disconnected avatar, feel like one of the major players in the storyline. How much of that is down to the perspective is debateable, but the coherence of the virtual world certainly goes a long way. The way that almost every character looks unique and has different things to say, and that you can see and hear NPCs going about their business all around you is highly effective at pulling you into the world. It isn't flawless by any means, but it's the closest I've seen any game come.

The whole swords and sorcery thing may seem hackneyed after everyone and their mothers has seen the Lord of the Rings movies and there are some serious aesthetic parallels here (Oblivion even looks like Mordor), but frankly, this is what every LOTR game wishes it was. It remains to be seen whether or not the game can keep enough content coming to keep it fresh throughout the tens of hours that it's supposed to take to get through, but either way Oblivion is a seriously impressive game.