...

OBLIVION

the most compelling bit about oblivion is the contrast between how safe and approachable it wants to be with how mechanically and aesthetically repulsive so much of it actually is. all that work spent on recapturing arena and daggerfall's nondescript high fantasy only to end up with a dollhouse for skinwalkers and some of the most oppressive level scaling digital roleplaying's ever seen

I'd like to like this thing a lot more than I do, and if I squint I can almost see it as the perfect midpoint in a trilogy that starts with final fantasy VIII and ends with dark souls II, but unfortunately I continue to find it much more interesting to think about than to play. I don't think it deserves its reputation among grognards as the harbinger of the genre's decline (afterall, many of its regressions were the result of returning pre-morrowind design priorities, and even radiant bullshit and gysin cut-up dialogue feel explicitly arenaesque in spirit; this is truthfully more elder scrolls than morrowind ever was) but I don't think it was much of an asset either

word that this is getting a remake has me curious tho: how do you capture the essence of oblivion when it's so thoroughly defined by shortcomings and peculiarities. more than most games that get the treatment it's not host to any particularly great successes, and the images it conjures tend to be that of blinding bloom, bulbous inhuman faces, and bandits in glass armour. if oblivion's no longer unseemly is it still oblivion. if it doesn't have the rotten metagaming and world that rubberbands with every sleep and stat boost will it even be recognizable. I have to wonder then if the concern would not be that they'd make oblivion worse, but that they might end up making it better