Game delays are a real bummer, and not all of them have a happy ending. Take Batman: Dark Tomorrow, for example. As a Bat-fan, I remember being bummed when the game got delayed, but I thought, "maybe this will help in the end." After all, the dev team will be given more time to fix major and minor bugs, put in the extra stuff that will give the game that special something, and in general prepare to release a polished product. While this was not the case with Dark Tomorrow, there are games that are certain to be worth the wait. One of those games is, without a doubt, Elder Scrolls IV. Given the recent delay of Oblivion until the end of the new year's first quarter, I felt the time was right to put the spotlight back onto one of the PC and Xbox 360's most promising games, and Bethesda's Pete Hines was only too happy to help. Those familiar with the fantastic Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC, Xbox) and its expansions (for PC, Bloodmoon and Tribunal; available in the Xbox Morrowind Game of the Year edition) will be familiar with the world of Tamriel, but if you're new to the Elder Scrolls experience, that's fine, too. An entirely new location, Tamriel's capitol province, Cyrodiil, has been designed to entice players new and old. The new location was designed so that anyone who has not played any of the previous Elder Scrolls installments can leap right in without any confusion bogging them down. Meaning, Oblivion is not a direct sequel to Morrowind; it takes place several hundred years after its predecessor's conclusion. "We like for each game to stand on its own," Hines says. But it won't be standing on its own for long, if at all, unless a hero surfaces to save the day. Tamriel is in the midst of facing its greatest threat yet: the Emperor and his sons have been assassinated, leaving the barrier to Oblivion unguarded. As one might expect, the barrier falls, and all sorts of vicious demons begin to pour through and ravage the land. On his deathbed, the Emperor tells you that he has one surviving heir. Taken away at birth, the Emperor's long lost son must be found so that he may take his place as Emperor and repair the barrier between Tamriel and Oblivion. A perilous hero is what is needed, and Oblivion has plenty of options for creating just such an avatar. At the start of the game, the player will choose his or her race as well as what the character should look like. There are ten races to choose from in Oblivion: Imperial, Breton, Nord, Redguard, High Elf, Dark Elf, Wood Elf, Orc, Khajiit, and Argonian. Their differences will be revealed when you're forced to decide which race is for you, and of course, certain races combined with certain classes divided by specific abilities equals tons of possible choices. After you've chosen your race, you just start playing. No long-winded introductions, no lectures pertaining to what does what; just play. "We want you to try different types of weapon, magic, stealth gameplay...basically get a good feel for how you want to play the game," Hines says. After a short while, you'll get to further customize your character by choosing your birth sign, through which certain perks and/or abilities will become available to you. When you've gone a bit further into the game, you'll be allowed to choose a class type that best suites your playing style. Again, as with all ES games, choices are what the game is all about. You'll have access to pre-defined classes, or you can create a custom class. For the latter, you choose a basic specialization, (Warrior, Mage, Thief) and then two attributes that you would like to favor, such as strength and endurance if you go the warrior route. Finally, you'll choose seven skills that will be your preferred skills over the course of the game. These are the skills that you'll be able to level up during the game, so careful selection is a must. Although this will take a bit of time - millions of possible combinations exist - character creation is one of the best parts of role-playing games. After all, if you're going to be spending 20+ hours with this character, why not make certain it's exactly the way you want it to be? The player's character will be fleshed out using the popular trend of practice makes perfect; meaning, you learn by doing. To be honest, it's never made a whole lot of sense to do a lot of fighting and then miraculously become more proficient in a skill or spell that you've barely even used. You get better at something by doing it, and that is the methodology applied in Oblivion. If you want to get better swinging a sword, then keep on swinging it. As previously mentioned, seven out of the twenty-one available skills will be chosen at the beginning of the game. The more your selected skills are used, the more adept you will become at using them. Simple. To track your progress with any given skill, six different skill tiers have been created. They are, in order of ascension: novice, apprentice, journeyman, master, and expert. Rising to each successive tier grants you access to something new: the ability to repair magical armor with the Armorer skill; a new kind of attack granted to the Blade skill. Some are not as straightforward, but not in a confusing manner. For example, when leveling up the Mercantile skill, you can earn the ability to invest in a merchant and increase the total amount of gold required of them to purchase your wares. The skill cap is a generous level of one hundred, but if that's not enough, that maximum can be increased through spells or the magical properties on weapons, items, armor, et cetera. Various character attributes are available to coincide with the skills available: strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, speed, personality, luck, and endurance. Each attribute will govern three skills, though it's important to note that luck does not govern any, but has an affect on them all. The more a skill governed by a particular attribute is used, the larger the modifier will be when it comes time to level up. "If you're playing a thief-type character," Hines states as an example, "who uses stealth and picks locks a lot and you improve those skills a number of times, then when you level up, you can assign one point to your Agility and actually have it go up by four, or five, or whatever the modifier might be for that attribute." This is put into practice for any skill, so if you happen to be using skills that aren't a part of your regular repertoire, you'll still receive a substantial modifier for that attribute when it's time to level up. If you're partial to switching back and forth between multiple styles of play, you can alter which attributes will receive the largest bonus. When push comes to shove, combat in Oblivion will force you to put your skills and attributes to the test. Luckily, the battle system is rather easy to use. One button attacks, (melee) a second blocks, and a third is used to cast magic spells. Casting does not require you to equip or un-equip items; you just click the cast button with whatever weapon (or lack thereof, in some cases) you have. The system allows you to choose when to attack and when to block, effectively using your character's skills to aid in determine the outcome. The skills you use will figure into how much damage is inflicted upon a successful hit, how much damage is done to you, any additional effects that come with the attack itself, (e.g., paralyze, disarm, et cetera) and more. The system is very "fluid and natural," says Hines, allowing "combat to be fun while still remaining an RPG where your character's skills and abilities ultimately determine your success or failure." Success or failure, by the way, will be determined in over two hundred unique dungeons, so you won't have too much difficulty find a price to have a good ol' fashioned brouhaha. But what good are all those special skills and abilities if you have no place to show them off? The world showcased in Oblivion is huge, which is a series standard. "The world is bigger than Morrowind," Hines says, "so there's more space to explore. It's about sixteen square miles in size." Very much an open-ended gaming experience, there are heaps of quests (both main and side) for players to partake in, each more robust than previous entries have demonstrated. There are also lots of locations to explore, and only the truly diligent will be able to find them all. Even though it sounds like quantity is the focus, it is quality that takes center stage. Pete estimates the completion time for the main quest to be around twenty, twenty-five hours, but that's only if you're going from point A to point B, all the way through to point Z. If you want to experience even half of the available side quests in the game, you're looking at three or four times that much game time. _PAGE_BREAK_ At the very start of the game, only the major cities are familiar to you. In order to get to them or anywhere else, the map must be uncovered as your adventure progresses. As this occurs, map markers are laid down so players can easily see where they've been and how to get back. Each map marker indicates a different location. Locales ranging from caves and shrines to camps and forts are waiting for you to uncover and explore them. Exploration can be done on foot or on the back of a noble steed. Horses speed up the traveling process and are also used as a status symbol. They're pricey, which means owning one is quite an achievement. Of course, owning a horse isn't your only option; you can also steal them should you feel so inclined. However, upon dismounting, the stolen mount will make immediate tracks back to its rightful master, so plunking down the necessary gold is your best option in the end, though you could always go from city to city by means of stolen horses. There are many different breeds of horses, all with their own levels of speed and health, so you'll have to travel to different locations if you want to find your horse soul-mate. Thankfully, previously explored locations do not require time-consuming (read as: boring) return treks and be be re-accessed via a fast travel system. Just point to a location on the map, click it, and off you go, horse (should you have one) and all. There are restrictions, of course. For example, if you're spelunking a deep dark dungeon and are in the middle of a battle, you can't just open the map and warp away. The world of Tamriel is quite a sight to behold; mere screenshots do not demonstrate even one one-hundredth of the effort that has been put forth into this visually stunning game. Given that the game is being hyped as one of the first "must own" titles of the first generation of games for the Xbox 360, the look had to be something special. The engine has been redone from scratch, meaning that if you happen to recognize anything from Morrowind, it only looks similar; it has been redone. All of the new tricks featured on the latest video cards and the 360 (such as specular, normal, and parallax maps; HDR lighting) have been used to the fullest. The forests rendered in the game are a stand-out feature of Oblivion. Pain-staking detail was put into making the trees look realistic, and without Speedtree, the level of detail achieved would not have been possible. The program allows for all sorts of variations to come to fruition. Trees will have different variations in their branches, leaves, and trunks, giving each piece of nature a very unique look. Hines puts in that "forests were the big, crazy thing we wanted to try in Oblivion that hadn't really been done to a really high level previously. We do all the rendering and shader effects ourselves." Just as the forest must be seen for the trees, Oblivion provides realism through more than just a pretty face. The graphics are undoubtedly an important aspect of this feat of realism, but they are only one part of a collective whole. When you combine the mouth-watering graphics with the physics engine, sound-based physics, full digitized speech, facial animations, the unique look given to each NPC, lip-synching, and more, you have fitted together the elaborate puzzle that is Oblivion. Perhaps the most important variable in the equation is the gameplay style that seems unique to the Elder Scrolls series. The player is given so many choices about who (or what) to be, where to go, and what to do when they get there.... Each of these elements is impressive on its own, but it is the sum of all parts that makes the game even more lavish and majestic. Thankfully, the gorgeous sixteen square miles you'll be trekking through are far from sparse. There are approximately one thousand NPCs, stuffed to their virtual gills with countless lines of dialogue. Story is an important part of Oblivion, and the script does not aim to disappoint. Hines estimates the total recording time to be somewhere around the fifty hour mark. The printed version of the script was, he puts aptly, "ridiculous." Voice acting in video games is something that is taken very seriously by the industry in this day and age, so no expense was spared in procurring a triple A cast in order to provide an even more immsersive experience. Patrick Stewart has been signed on to provide the voice of the Emperor, while Sean Bean will voice the Emperor's son, who is the focal point of the game's main quest. Terrance Stamp provides the villainous voice of the villain behind all the terrible deeds, and Lynda Carter returns to lend her vocal talents to the Nords. So the NPCs can talk. So what? That doesn't make them smart... does it? By itself, no, not really. But that's where Radiant A.I. comes in. "None of the behavior in the game is scripted," Hines says. Instead, a goal-oriented system has been created that allows parameters to be set for behavioral types. Since each NPC is completely unique when compared to any other, every NPC will have to figure out how to accomplish its tasks specified with the goal system. Pete illustrates the system with an example: "we don't tell an NPC to go steal an apple from this table at this time, we tell the NPC that it needs to eat during a certain period of time. If the NPC has a low level of responsibility and doesn't own any food or have money to buy it, it'll go off and try to steal it from someone who does." How will events like the one described above affect the player? In different ways. If you're not around to see the apple being stolen, then it probably won't affect you in the slightest. The event is, like everything else in Oblivion, a small yet crucial piece of the whole that helps to affect the way the way characters move around the world and interact with each other... and you. It doesn't matter if you're around to witness something or not: NPCs may not always be at the exact same location one day that they were the previous. You're given different options regarding how to go about achieving your own goals, just as the NPCs are. And again, in the Elder Scrolls games, options are more important than anything. You should know enough about the game by now to warrant an impatient drumming of your fingers from now until the game's imminent release. But what platform to play it on: PC or Xbox 360? Both are lucrative options, and to be honest, there aren't many crucial differences. If you only have one or the other, the choice is made much easier, but what if you're one of those uber-cool multiplatform owners? Again, options are what Oblivion is all about. If you're more comfortable with a keyboard and mouse combo, go with the PC version. If you prefer a controller, Xbox 360 will fit the bill. According to Hines, "The only real difference between the two versions is that the PC version has [software] that allows you to edit and add your own content to your game. WeÂ’ll be providing downloadable content for both versions of the game, but you canÂ’t add your own stuff to the Xbox 360. Maybe someday, but not right now anyway." Speaking of Xbox Live, it is a well-known fact that Microsoft has required every 360 title to have some sort of Live feature. Oblivion, of course, steps up to the challenge of keeping players immersed and entertained. Pete says that from the very first day, downloadable content will be made available that will add to the game. The content will "range from new items to new quests to anything in between. Being able to charge something for it allows us to dedicate more resources to it than we could in the past and be able to bring out things on a consistent basis." Yeah, you read that right: you'll probably have to shell out some bucks. But it's no different than paying for an expansion pack, which is always desirable when a game is good enough to warrant one. PC owners, never fear: The 360 gamers of the world will have to share their content with you, as Bethesda wants to ensure that no version is overtly greater than the other. How payments will work has not yet been revealed. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion looks extremely promising, and gamers across the globe are counting down the days remaining until the late March release date. Whether the game will deliver remains to be seen, but from everything I've seen so far, there is nothing but infinite potential on the horizon. The delay was unfortunate, but should be more than worth it in the end. PC gamers, upgrade your systems; Xbox 360 owners, whittle away your time on the games you've managed to get your hands on thus far. When Elder Scrolls IV arrives, prepare for all other aspects of your life to be cast into Oblivion.
