Culture

Platforms: PC, Xbox
I'm still not certain what the elder scrolls actually are. Old rolled-up papers, presumably with something mega-important written on them. I guess. If the third in the seventeen-year old series, Morrowind, doesn't ring a bell then maybe the forth will: 2006's Oblivion. No? What if I told you they are a series of RPGs set in enormous worlds. Marketing campaigns tended to revolve around many permutations of the phrase. “go anywhere, do anything”. If by “anywhere” they really mean “caves” and by “anything” they really mean “kill stuff and sometimes talk to people”, then that's a pretty darn accurate description of the game.

 
Oblivion, which gained more critical acclaim and probably a touch more commercial success as well, was an improvement over Morrowind in every conceivable way except for the one way that actually matters. It was prettier with more rewarding combat, more interesting quests and hours of voice acting. Townsfolk sat down and ate stuff. They ate stuff, like real live people. Amazing. It's a shame that it took place in one of the most bland fantasy regions ever conceived.

 
I feel bad reviewing a game by contrasting it with its sequel. But honestly, I do think it's the best way to do it justice, because I couldn't even call the world of Oblivion generic. It needed more cool stuff, like dragons and orcs, before it could even become generic. It's sub-generic. Where Morrowind had, for example, alits (crocodile head with two legs), and corpus disease victims (Joseph Merrick-like zombies) as enemies, Oblivion had wolves and goblins. Where Oblivion’s towns were plain, even comfortable, European-style villages Morrowind had the Telvanni (egocentric wizards who would prefer to levitate than build stairs) and the Redoran, who live inside the hollowed-out carapaces of giant insect creatures. Armour, in Morrowind, is often made of chitin (arthropod shells) and bonemeld (whatever that is), but in its sequel armour is just made of chain-mail and steel. In retrospect, neither were incredible games, but I was totally okay with a Morrowind quest being nothing more than going to a bookshop. Why? Because the world was so fantastic.