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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Hands On Preview -
by Ron Burke
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This week I got to sit down with Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing at Bethesda to see their pride and joy, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The time we got to spend with the title pales greatly in comparison to the overall depth of the game – you cannot begin to touch the surface of a game with over 300 hours of content in a 30 minute session. Oblivion starts off with a character creator. The character creator allows you to create any character in almost any shape you can imagine. You will select from the Imperial, Khajit, Nord, Orc, Redguard, Wood Elf, Argonian, Breton, Dark Elf, and High Elf. You then customize this character and make it your own. You can do this by customizing the age, face, brow, cheeks, chin, eyes, forehead, jaw, mouth, nose, skin tone, beard, eyes, eyebrows, lips, and nose. One of the members of the press made a character that had a football-shaped head like Stewie Griffin from The Family Guy. It is your avatar and the options are almost limitless.
As so many other previews (including my own) have described, you start off in prison. Your cell mate will taunt you with slurs such as “Is the kitty hungry? Huh? Would you like a little rat? A nice juicy rat? Eh?” Soon, the Emperor and his guard come to your cell and are slightly surprised to find it occupied. No matter, this is just an added bonus for you when they open a secret passageway to facilitate the Emperor’s escape. All the better for you as it works nicely for your hasty exit as well. Since you are a prisoner, the only equipment you have are the chains that bound your hands and the tattered rags that cover your body. Unfortunately for the Emperor and his guard, the assassins know about this tunnel as well. A few short scuffles later and you’ll have your option of picking up some nice red assassin clothes or some Imperial gear – they won’t be using it any more. Just as in Morrowind, any gear you pick up is immediately shown on your paperdoll and also on your character.
The details present in Oblivion will make the game. You will immediately notice that the dungeons are far more dark than in Morrowind. If you would like to do some deep dungeon work you’d better have the Eye of Night ability like my Khajiit, or a torch. The dungeons look wet and slimy, the walls are slick and well textured.
As you work through the dungeon you’ll get to experience sword fighting. It is a bit more advanced than Morrowind with parry and strike timing playing a more important role. With the new casting system in place, you can switch from active spell to sword strikes without having to equip and unequip. The controls on the game are set up and maintained externally. You set up a profile in the Xbox 360 system, and that profile is saved and mapped to the game instead of each game having to be set up individually. This means if you don’t like inverted controls, you only have to set that option once.
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