Oblivion
It’s always been funny watching Oblivion fans put the game on a pedestal as the last bastion of Bethesda’s true RPGs. Then came the remaster, and history started repeating itself. Every day, you’ll see some iteration of the post, ‘Oh my god, they were right — Oblivion is better than Skyrim! They dumbed down everything’, by countless comments from veteran fans (who said the same thing in 2011) muttering something along the lines of, ‘They finally get it!’.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you don’t have a leg to stand on. This is Morrowind all over again.
Oblivion streamlined the series’ mechanics far more than Skyrim ever did, and it was widely criticised at launch by long-time fans for much the same reasons we’re seeing today. Granted, the streamlined mechanics are what helped push the series into the mainstream, and the same goes for Skyrim.
The Elder Scrolls would not be as popular as it is without map markers and a quest log, but for the Morrowind fans who were engrossed in the series because of its Dungeons & Dragons roots, with its obtuse directions and untrustworthy narrators, most of Oblivion’s more simplified ideas were seen as sacrilege.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the key changes Oblivion made:
- Added quest markers;
- Reintroduced traditional fast travel;
- Replaced the journal with a quest log;
- Introduced hitbox-based combat, rather than using invisible dice rolls;
- Removed medium armour;
- All weapon skills were merged into either Blunt, Blade, or Marksman;
- Removed throwing weapons;
- Allowed you to join all guilds in one playthrough;
- No levitation;
- Made loot far more random;
- Automatic magicka regeneration.
Skyrim And Oblivion Are Just Two Sides Of The Same Coin
So many of these posts point to Skyrim removing spellcrafting and attributes as the death knell of the series (even though perks are a vastly superior system), sanding off every last edge, but Oblivion’s alterations were far more noticeable. It completely shifted the direction of the series, stepping away from the intricate roleplaying possibilities of its predecessor to embrace a more action-driven fantasy, allowing you to become a jack-of-all-trades with little repercussion.
For example, in Morrowind, joining the Thieves’ Guild would put you at odds with the Fighters’ Guild, and the same went for House Telvanni and the Mages’ Guild.
Morrowind, in contrast, is incredibly opaque. You can’t even join one of the key mage factions, House Telvanni, without knowing how to levitate. But from the very beginning, finding your way around requires far more concentration and thought, as NPCs will rattle off vague directions based on loose rocks and twists in the river, which you have to scour your journal to find. You usually end up lost trying to navigate the labyrinth of instructions, and if you don’t put the right care and attention into building your character, you won’t hit most of your attacks and end up dead. Probably at the hands (claws?) of a mudcrab outside the starting town.
It’s like trying to play real-time Dungeons & Dragons while ing the unhelpful guidance of Elden Ring NPCs. Most modern fans would have a hard time penetrating the harsh wastes of Vvardenfell, and tracing the series’ history, it’s easy to see why. Oblivion is the first mainline entry where Todd Howard served as executive producer, and the mythos behind the two games couldn’t be more different as a result.
“They intentionally have different flavours, and different types of writing,” Howard said. “The thrust of Morrowind was to put the player in the ‘stranger in a strange land’ feel, so most of the writing and story is focused on the land and its history […] We told a good story of something that happened a thousand years ago, but there wasn’t a good story that was happening to you, the player. It was very ‘a long time ago this awesome thing happened, read all about it, and walk in its wake.’ With Oblivion, our motto was ‘don’t tell me, show me’, so we wanted the epic story to happen in front of you”.
It’s hard to tell a fantasy epic if you’re too weak to swing a sword. Oblivion had to amp up the power fantasy, drawing from The Lord of the Rings and other grandiose tales of plucky adventurers capable of surprising feats of valour. Older Elder Scrolls games were more subdued, and the gameplay reflected that.
Even though Morrowind started the trend of ‘chosen ones’, putting us into the lofty shoes of a reincarnated Nerevar, it still demanded that the player earn their keep, becoming strong through arduous trials, making the journey feel that much more rewarding. Future TES games wanted that strength to be felt from the start, whether that was tearing through the Deadlands in Kvatch or slaying a dragon outside of Whiterun, but you can’t do that with invisible dice rolls and murky quest directions.
Oblivion simplified so many mechanics because it had to tell the story the way that Howard and Bethesda wanted, allowing you to feel powerful right from the beginning with far less friction. That’s why one game opens with us dispatching a horde of goblins and Daedric assassins, while the other actively warns us against taking the main road. Who knows? Maybe an overgrown bird will pluck your eyes out. The difference is night and day.
It should also be said that Morrowind was one of the first major RPGs to release on console, and Oblivion streamlining mechanics further only made the genre more approachable for a new type of player.
We might not be the Dragonborn (that honour goes to Martin Septim), but the Hero of Kvatch is every bit as rooted in power fantasy as the Dovahkiin, and it’s comical to pit the two games against each other when they have far more in common than any other two Elder Scrolls games in the series’ history. Oblivion was not the last hurrah of an old Bethesda — that Bethesda was already gone. Instead, it was the first step into a new era.
