With Bethesda’s release of Morrowind in 2002, a whole new generation of gamers became immediately enthralled in the world of The Elder Scrolls. The game was novel: a first person RPG set in a sandbox world. The game also made promises of self directed questing, and a unique take on character development. Bethesda claimed their game had ascended beyond concepts that had become cliche in the role-playing community; things like skills, classes, experience points would have no place in their new production. Soon the release date rolled around, and something magical happened: most of those promises were fulfilled. Expectations were met. People were actually happy they had bought the collectors edition. The people rejoiced.
As it turns out, the game mechanics weren’t just novel, they actually proved that innovation wasn’t just a buzzword. It could lead places where gaming had never been before and for the better. Even the setting was unlike anything people had seen before. Giant insects traveled between cities, their hulking chitinous bodies became armor for those that hunted them. A strange race of dark elves built cities guarded by an alien looking elite military force. Magic and Lore were pervasive, with books detailing the histories of this new strange lands scattered everywhere for the player to read and enjoy. The assets of the game were innumerable, and within months of its release people were already calling for online support.
It may not look pretty now, but back then this game was both gorgeous and unique.
Yet they were mollified quickly by developers who chastised them for their enthusiasm. “The technology just isn’t there yet. It would be impossible.” They didn’t see online as an opportunity to make TES really sing. They saw it as a chore that could never fit their goals for the TES series: exploration, sandbox gaming, and a lone hero on a quest to save the world. They didn’t trust their fans to understand the game, and in this mistrust they continued onward without a second thought to online play.
Then Oblivion was released. The reception was good, and the game had merits. Improved graphics were first among them, but the game also did a good job of quickly drawing the player into an immersive world. That being said, the game had it’s flaws. Though the world was big, it was fairly boring. In many ways, the new setting was a throwback to an earlier period in role playing games. Indeed, the first TES game made back in 1992 was set in the same pseudo late-Roman, early dark ages setting. No strange giant mushrooms, no bizarre wildlife, just good ole fashioned fantasy RPG. Even TES lore names were dumbed down. Dwemer became Dwarf, lest the uninitiated find these unusual words off-putting.
Furthermore, the sense of accomplishment from exploration was drastically reduced because dungeons now leveled with you. Very rarely was a player actually at risk of dying. A loud minority had won big with their complaints about the original Morrowind game’s difficulty. People ended up in situations too big for their character to handle. Instead of finding this danger an interesting game mechanic and simply being more careful, they demanded that gamers should be able to tackle any dungeon, any mission, at any time. To the biggest fans of Morrowind the new changes meant Tamriel felt decidedly smaller, less dangerous, less interesting.
Even in the concept art, Oblivion (on the right) seems neutered and drab compared to the previous entry.
Somehow, most gamers didn’t mind too much. Despite it’s issues, it was still a compelling game. Criticisms about the games “cliche fantasy” nature were quickly dispelled with a reminder that The Empire was conceived during a simpler time, way back in the early 90’s when fantasy computer games were in their infancy. PC gaming itself was still only in it’s adolescence. Surely the next entry would be as creative, as compelling as the first game. We need only give them the benefit of the doubt.
In the meantime, gamers still clamored for online play. Just because the world was less interesting didn’t mean that experiencing the world with friends would be any less fun. At this point, fans were practically begging for the inclusion of online in the next game. The developers cautioned their fans. “Listen,” they chided “online play would be extremely difficult. Don’t you want more content? Don’t you want a bigger, more unique world? Surely you see that online would hamper our ability to deliver on what really makes TES great.” We listened, we considered, and we nodded our heads. They were right, we assumed. An online TES game would just be too difficult. We contented ourselves with just another game and once again the developers ignored their biggest fans, writing them off as out of touch.
Then came Skyrim, a game that frequently divides fans of the series. Everyone has played it, and if they haven’t they should. It’s an interesting case study in losing touch with what your biggest fans want in favor of mass appeal, but then that trend was well on its way during Oblivion’s development. Combat was redone to be even more action-game like. The setting was dumbed down, with Nords going from an odd blend of Celtic and Viking culture to essentially Anglo-saxons with smatterings of norse mythology. The flora and fauna was recycled from Oblivion, more or less. The monsters were, aside from new models, nearly the same. The world, while interesting, had become as cliche as ever. So much so that you were literally a knight fighting dragons. To people who always enjoyed the novelty and creativity of the series, it simply highlighted the increasingly lazy writing that began to seep in with the release of Oblivion.
The developers misunderstood the enjoyment of exploration: It’s not just pretty pictures, there has to be real danger and mystery around every corner.
In general the developers had struggled to make the Nordic lands and people interesting. They instead relied on the most easily telegraphed “norse” traditions for fear of confusing their player base or themselves. The same player base that had once happily gotten on top of a giant bug and rode cross country from one bizarre mud-hut city to another city grown out of giant mushrooms were suddenly being treated like idiots who couldn’t stomach anything too far out of the ordinary. In short, it did not feel like The Elder Scrolls anymore. The mystery and diversity of Morrowind was almost completely gone. In its place was a sprawling, yet somehow boring action RPG whose pretty packaging had difficulty hiding the lack of depth.
In fact there are ways in which Skyrim outright ignored its TES heritage. The developers barely even acknowledge previous lore. After all, the dragon-born had always been the title for those in the line of Uriel Septim, and here now it was some random nord who according to Executive Producer Tom Howard had nothing to do with Uriel Septim’s line. It just sounded cool when the gravelly voiced narrator read the words. “Dragon Born” Ooooooooh, that’s nice.
Like so many other aspects of this game, it was TES only in the looser sense of the word. Where was the sprawling, exploration driven world we’d been hoping for, a world that we’d gladly given up any dreams of online play to achieve? It was only there in bits and pieces. A long and slow process that had started the moment after Morrowind was released was finally complete. The Elder Scrolls had gone from the centerpiece of Western RPG innovation to just another fantasy RPG. They had ignored their fans on many fronts, opting to cater towards a new bigger sect of gamers, ones who played the game with less intensity, who stopped reading the lore, who didn’t care about the series beyond it’s ability to keep the occupied for a few hours at a time. As long as they got to kill stuff they were happy. Meanwhile, the biggest fans of the TES series wondered why they’d been ignored over and over. Why their desire for more lore, more interesting locales, and a removal of the much hated world scaling system had been ignored. Why had online never been implemented, even 10 years after Morrowind? It was the culmination of a long running attitude that TES developers believed they understood what players wanted more than the players themselves.
Cyrodiil from Oblivion has actually been described as some sort of tropical environ since the first TES game (see the first edition of A Pocket Guide to the Empire). Why Bethesda decided to just ignore this is anyone’s guess.
Yes, which of course they attempted to ret conn. in Skyrim. There is a pattern of “do what’s easiest and has the most appeal, then use a few scraps of new lore to cover up our laziness”
If you want to read the ret conn you can find it here: http://www.imperial-library.info/content/many-headed-talos
Your answer is CHIM
http://fallingawkwardly.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/the-metaphysics-of-morrowind-part-1/
Ha! I’m linking that article in my post this Thursday about the way video games deal with time. For a lot of people it seemed like the Imperial province turning temperate was a cheap move but if you’ve looked through the Elder Scrolls lore, you know that there’s been way more batshit weirdness in the history of Tamriel.
I do agree with Ian on the topic of lore though. There was a huge precedent set by Morrowind that Skyrim simply failed to live up to. The return of Alduin was supposed to be an apocalyptic scenario. He’s often lumped together with Akatosh (god of time, looks like a dragon) and though Skyrim makes it clear that they are separate the dragons are tied closely to the concept of time. Considering the utter strangeness of the 36 Lessons of Vivec and the connection between CHIM, the Nerevarine, and the Dragonborn, I expected Alduin to be one of the most mind-shatteringly frightening boss fights ever. Hell, I was actually scared shitless when I saw him in the beginning. Then it turned out to be a slightly bigger dragon that the ancient Nords put on hold using an Elder Scroll.
One thing that makes the setting of TES so interesting is that the lore is told by the characters themselves, and this might actually be wrong or exaggerated. Todd himself has explained that just because something is written in a book somewhere, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% canon. It might be that the author of that book had his own agenda, or he might just be incorrect. You might say that this is just an easy excuse for bad writing and inconsistent lore, but I think it gives the games an extra layer of depth that I find quite interesting. The story of Alduin was probably exaggerated upon and embellished over the generations. After all, most people see it as a myth by the time of Skyrim’s events. Again, this might just be an easy scape goat, but I think it’s interesting to think about.
It’s definitely a plus. When you take that perspective from the Elder Scrolls to other fantasy titles, you realize that there are no fundamental differences in any of their cultures. The differences you find in peoples and worldviews are mostly nominal. Everybody acknowledges the existence of the same gods, nobody has tried to approach spirituality from perspective of mysticism or rationality, and even the gods themselves are so utterly anthropomorphized that their metaphysical significance is more like that of a powerful king or warrior.
With regards to Alduin, Bethesda did cover their asses somewhat by showing the origin of his legendary association with Akatosh (being a dragon sent adrift in the river of time), but it simply made the final confrontation that much less exciting. He is still the World-Eater according to Nord prophecies and supposedly he will still return at the actual end of time. I was disappointed at the end of the main quest because everything about Alduin smelled of time-rending apocalyptic shit. What we got was a prideful dragon overlord who we may not have even defeated.
Oh, Bethesda… u dun goof’d.
Reminds me of an interesting video I watched about The Elder Scrolls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUynhkal1I
Having just watched the video I’m flattered by the comparison. I definitely think this video gets at some similar points to what I was making, just ya know…better than me.
Thanks for reading.
That guy did a pretty great video on Diablo III and why it paled in comparison to the first two as well.
Too bad he dropped off of the face of the earth after his TES vid.
I think you’re projecting a bit here. The fans wanted online play? Maybe a few did, but I certainly don’t think it was a majority. Online play comes with a lot of sacrifices and changes. I don’t think most TES fans want something like Diablo or WoW. TES was able to be unique partly because it was purely single player. I heard a lot of fans groan when rumors of TES Online started to circulate, and I think the response to it since it has been announced has been largely negative.
Also, it’s Todd Howard, not Tom.
First off, thanks for the correction.
Fans groaning about TES: Online is precisely the contents of part two, and if you had read closely my points about it here you’d see I’m essentially agreeing with you but drawing different conclusions.. Tons of fans wanted online play, but the developers always said it would compromise the single player experience. Not only was the single player already compromised out of sheer laziness + the casualization of the series….but the developers assumed that a TES mmo was what fans meant by “online play”. Through a sheer lack of creativity, they turned the TES reigns over to a company and told them to churn out an MMO. In reality, I think fans (myself included) wanted something akin to Dark Souls. Where your hero stays central to the story-line but you get to experience the world with friends over the internet. In fact, my second part argue that Dark Souls channels Morrowind in a lot of ways, and manages to be more successful as a compelling adventure and exploration RPG than Skyrim was.
Thanks for the comments!
“It’s” is an abbreviation of “it is,” the possessive is “its.”
There’s another angle to the writing of the Elder Scrolls games that you missed in this piece – The setting and primary plot-driving characters in Morrowind were so weird that half of the writers didn’t “get” Morrowind. The toning down of alien culture elements in subsequent games may have been as much about keeping all the developers on the same page as it was about wide-audience pandering.
At the same time, a certain laziness has crept into the development of Elder Scrolls games post-Morrowind. So many bugs and inconsistencies were ignored, especially in Skyrim, that the only explanation is that the developers didn’t care, probably because they knew the fans would fix them with the mod kit. Is Skyrim a bad game? By certain definitions, it is, but the mod kit saves it. Still, it’s a bad sign when the programmers are leaning on the fans to write patches.
I don’t hate Skyrim, and I’ve enjoyed playing it… once I’d modded it up to the gills. I even bought the official soundtrack because it really is very good. However, the sense of wonder is much smaller than it was for Morrowind, though greater than it was in Oblivion. I spent hours trying to decipher the metaphors and hidden meanings in the Lessons and Cantatas of Vivec. Years later, when I heard about the rumor that coded messages for the Nerevarine were hidden in them in case Vivec should die before he was able to explain how to defeat Dagoth Ur, I tried to read them again but my brain started to overheat somewhere around volume 15. Skyrim provides much fewer opportunities for interesting interpretation.
Thanks for the corrections. The article was hastily written and published (because I felt I had finally pinpointed what I didn’t like about Oblivion and skyrim), so shame on me for not doing a more thorough proofread.
You mention that keeping the entire dev team on the same page might account for lapses in both depth of writing, and utilization of lore. I’m not sure that your theory is any more flattering to the development team than mine was. Either they made a conscious decision to remove interest from the games because their staff couldn’t be trusted to keep the flavor of writing and art direction consistent, or they made a conscious decision to remove interest from the games out of sheer laziness. In the end I don’t think we’ll know ever know the true motivation for the direction of the latest two games, and I’m not sure it matters. We are stuck with the end result either way.
And I agree about Skyrim. It’s not a bad game, and neither was Oblivion. These piece is definitely the rantings of a nitpicking fan rather than a troll trying to argue that some clearly good games were actually bad. It’s only their relationship to a masterpiece like Morrowind that makes me level these criticisms against them.
Thanks for reading!
I didn’t mean to imply that my idea for the decline of the setting elements was less of a criticism than yours – I just believe it’s a likely part of the explanation, and I thought it was worth pointing out. I suspect what actually happened was some of both.
I also miss the opportunities for horribly mismatched armor pieces.
Actually “it’s” is a contraction of “it” and “is”. Not an abbreviation.
buying TES games for the story and not for waifu mods
that’s almost as hilarious as buying TES games on a console
I applaud Bethesda for not listening to the small minority of cataclysmically stupid dipshits who have been clamoring for online play. These people are part of the problem, and this is one example where I am perfectly allright with the developer telling them to piss off. The single player games that have been ruined or compromised in some fashion because of the developer devoting resources to a worthless online component are too numerous to mention.
The real problem with Elder Scrolls since Morrowind is that Bethesda wants to be able to brag about how huge their games are without putting any craftsmanship into their design. So what you get is a series of copy-and-pasted algorithms in lieu of a game.
I’d actually love to hear what games were “ruined” by the inclusion of online play? I’m not trying to be an asshole, rather I genuinely can’t think of one. I’ve heard of series ruined by shit MMOs hastily developed and then released on an unsuspecting fanbase…but then that’s the focus of my part II.
As for what you consider the “real problem” to be? That’s almost precisely the point I made in the article. They’ve continually sacrificed story, immersion, and features that might increase those factors for what amounts to easily advertised tech specs they can slap on the box.
I would just like to point out that I utterly disagree with almost all of these opinions, including those of the article’s author. Not the thing about online play. I couldn’t care less about that. But the setting! You might say it was “dumbed down” to attract a bigger audience. Maybe it was even that Bethesda’s plan for TES. But, let’s look at it another angle. Morrowind is ulgy as sin (it was pretty in the old days, granted, but we are not in the old days any longer). There’s little to no voice acting (and I do love good voice acting. Can’t say that it is great in later games, but it improved. A lot. A real lot). The fact that Morrowind is based in an “alien” and original setting doesn’t make it better. Or maybe it does, but just for those who have already spent thousands of hours playing typical fantasy games and are eager for something new. I don’t spend thousands of hours playing games, much less fantasy. I wasn’t thirsting for something new. I find chitinous creatures and giant mushrooms deeply displeasing, and the “alien” atmosphere doesn’t appeal to my sense of aesthetics. It is ugly, even with improved graphic mods. About the narrative, the same thing applies. I don’t want to have to decipher, decode or whatever. This is supposed to be a role playing game, not a puzzle adventure. Do Oblivon and Skyrim lack in mature themes? Yes they do. Are they “dumbed down” because their puzzles and combat are easier? No, they are not. Role playing games is about exploring, interacting with NPCs and the environment, interpreting a character (in the way you can “interpret a character” in a computer game, of course). So, about the lore. It was more complex and weird and it was made simpler in Oblivion and Skyrim? It’s not a great move, because it destroys coherence, but on the other hand, most people don’t really memorize all the lore, so most are (probably) unconsciously thankful for Skyrim having a simpler and less weird lore. When I want weird and complex I watch a David Lynch movie, read Kafka, I don’t play a role playing game. The same applies to the less verbose dialogues and narrative. I would rather have shorter dialogues, but voice acted (they aren’t less profound because of that), and I don’t like spending an entire afternoon reading an in-game book about whatever theme it is. If I wish to read a book, I can do it in real like, in games book/note/diary entries should be short and meaningful, not long and boring. People who write computer game stories aren’t writers, neither they are supposed to be. They are paid to write compelling, immersive interactive stories, and not literature. All this said, I would love to love Morrowind, as it must have a lot of hidden treasures, precious secrets and wonderful side stories. But for me it will always be an ugly game, with characters who move with limps, with ugly backgrounds, almost no voice acting, not much music either, and where, once, I tried to play a Nord barbarian, born under the sign of the Warrior, strong and bold, and was beaten to a pulp in hand-to-hand combat by and elderly wood elf store owner (why did I try to beat her up? Just to test how stupid it would be If I lost. And I did).
Writing this article, I was 100% sure that at least a few people would disagree with me, possibly more than agree. If this wasn’t the case, I don’t believe Skyrim would be the game that it is. They are appealing to a certain type of gamer. Unfortunately, they are completely losing the core audience that made Morrowind a success.
It appears that the old school games (category into which Morrowind would only fit in spirit and age, not in mechanics) have been blessed with a wave of nostalgia, although Skyrim did sell a lot and it is indeed an action RPG. Anyway, though I don’t find many things to be nostalgic about old games (specially when we are discussing RPGs) I admit that recent games lack something that those oldies had (not all oldies, most were forgotten, but the oldies that went into the “classics” department), and was the the strive to achieve something different from the norm. That’s something to be expected now that money is more important than ever when producing games or whatever. Money was also important in the 90s and early 2000s, of course, that’s why most oldies are forgotten trash, but some are still played. I guess that originality or (if that’s becoming impossible to achieve) to make something that tries to deviate from the norm (recently Dishonored did it, and with apparent success) is the goal to aim. To revive the spirit of Morrowind, in my opinion, of course, that’s the only salvageable part: trying to be different. But in another way, not rescuing old mechanics or bringing back verbose texts to cut the expenses in voice acting, not going all out crazy with nasty mushrooms just to be “original”, but striving for creativity. Games are not an art, just interactive entertaining, but they could be much better interactive entertainment if more games were made to last and not just to sell a lot.
So what you’re saying is that you want video games to be shallow an meaningless?
Also, why can’t video game writers be good writers? I mean, I know it isn’t exactly the case right now with most games having fan fiction level writing (excluding a few very special cases), but why can’t we have excellent writers that are able to write compelling stories?
The last thing on my mind is that games should be shallow and meaningless. I don’t think Morrowind is deeper and with more meaning than Skyrim (more than Oblivion, yes, not Skyrim). It just appears so because it is an old game, with old graphics, with less voice acting, because it was cheaper that way, and by that time people weren’t really used to voice acting anyway, and strange and bizarre environments.
Does that make a profound and meaningful story for you? It might be, but being strange and looking graphically ugly doesn’t make a better story. I would like games to be more meaningful and deep, but not delving in the past, always repeating the same old mistakes. That’s what’s happening now… The answer isn’t in the past, as sure as any one who really likes Morrowind should say. That game was ground breaking in it’s time.
About writer’s not writing for games, well… I have nothing against it, but they don’t, do they? Maybe because a game by Paul Auster wouldn’t sell a lot. Maybe a game by Clive Barker would sell (although the games associated with his name aren’t nearly as good as his books). A game by Guillermo del Toro would certainly sell, but as far as I know it was cancelled. Maybe one by Neil Gaiman, but I suppose he wouldn’t be interested. Umberto Eco would be terrific, but I won’t be expecting that. So… They don’t have to be REALLY good writers, but they should be good enough writers!
Well I’m not particularly saying that we have to have already established writers, I just wish that the level of writing in video games wasn’t trashy romance or trashy action. I hadn’t ever really considered movie directors/screenplay writers creating games, but it would be interesting to see what their input would be. Speaking of writers I completely forgot Orson Scott Card did that Advent Rising game. I have fond memories of that one, but I haven’t played it in years.
I think we are misunderstanding each other, though. The innovation of Morrowind (oh yeah I guess I should mention I’ve never played it so I’m dealing purely in the hypothetical and what you guys have told me so far) is what should be striven for. That’s more of an across the board statement for video games as a whole, though. I don’t think we should be looking backwards either, but I do think there was a magic to the games of yore that has been lost, maybe because it became a normal thing, maybe because devs have gotten lazy, who knows. I think it’s because games have been focusing more on the spectacle, though. “Look how big our maps are”, or “Look how many endings there are” have trumped the quality of those maps or endings. They harp on this one part of it (“See that mountain? You can climb it!”) but neglect the other parts of the game for that part, putting all their eggs in one basic so to speak.
We might as well be misunderstanding each other, because I also didn’t play a lot of Morrowind, I just tried it recently because I had heard/ red so much good things about it when compared to Oblivion and Skyrim. I think I tried to play too late in time for being able to appreciate how much Morrowind did for it’s genre. The same happened with other games, I guess, like Fallout 1/2 and Planescape: Torment. Though I’m old enough (too old, indeed) for having played all those classics, for a number of reasons I was too occupied with other stuff and almost missed all of the classics of yesteryear that are nowadays being brought to light once again – I suppose because of the success achieved by some indie games and, mostly, all those nostalgic old school kickstarsters.
Anyway, I agreee that there’s a lot that could be improved in games nowadays. Not looking only at the probability of sales (this is too naïve, but we’re talking about wishes….) and just how nice the graphics are. But there are still very good games coming out, in my opinion, with good stories, with some originality (I suppose we can’t ask too much in the field of originality, it isn’t only a question of marketing, but it is difficult to be original when so much things were already tried…).
I suppose that respecting the gamers, and delivering something that was made with quality in mind, and not only the prospective of return, is good enough. At least it would be an improvement. Although I must say that there are still games coming out that I consider to be masterpieces of interactive entertainment, and that couldn’t have been made in the distant past. I mentioned before Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, but I’m also a fan of the Mass Effect Trilogy and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (this last one I consider to have been unjustly left out of the instant classics just because it had too much action and a couple of awful boss fights… Besides that it was a beautiful game, with an extremely interesting ambiance and Blade Runnersque enough to make me love it, no matter the flaws). More recently Dishonored and Sleeping Dogs proved that there are still very good games being made. I expect Far Cry 3 to prove that. And, all in all, the last year was not a bad year, game-wise. Will it get better from now on? Frankly I don’t believe that.
And after 11 years of waiting, enter The Elder Scrolls Online…excuse me, I mean DAOC 2: TES Edition.
OH MORROWIND SO GUD OMG LE SKYRIM SUX XDDD
Fuck off, nostalgiafag.
I straight up said that both Oblivion and Skyrim are good games. This is game criticism, not a review. I reccomend people play, and enjoy, all of the TES games. They’re all worth playing. That being said, the latest two games could’ve been improved.
Well, yes they could, everything can be improved (except Monty Python’s movies). But is the problem “no strange giant mushrooms, no bizarre wildlife, just good ole fashioned fantasy RPG”? In your opinion, I suppose so, in my opinion what is wrong with Skyrim is that they could have improved the interactions with the NPCs, more so with the possible followers (it isn’t impossible, it was done in Fallout: New Vegas). Maybe it has too many NPCs, less would be good, if they had more to say, more to do. The quests could also be more varied – or, another way of solving it, more DLC with quest content. Dawnguard wasn’t enough, it doesn’t involve expanding the map (granted, the world is already huge, but it needs somewhere less icy). Oblivion has the same NPC problem and also a lack of maturity. The exhumation of Morrowind would not resolve the problems I mentioned because it suffers them in a vaster degree. It’s originality is pointless besides the fact that it was a groundbreaking game. That was it’s biggest asset, now lies in the past. The correction of what is going wrong in TES has nothing to do with going backwards, but going forward in a more mature way, “stealing” from other games Bethesda owns (like Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, which were both better than Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind put together in the “RPG factor”, although incomparable in other aspects because neither of those two are fantasy) and NOT copying from past incarnations . Again, this is my opinion…
You aren’t on /v/, shut the fuck up.
I have played Daggerfall,Morrowind,Oblivion and Skyrim. Now that thats said i can proceed to my comment. Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game that i played and my god did i play it, thousands of hours of pure joy with that one. Eventually Oblivion was released, was i disappointed? Not really, Oblivion improved allmost every single aspect from Morrowind. Skyrim on the other hand was just another action game and its definatly is not The Elder Scrolls game, its more like mediaval Fallout. Now that allmost 7 years have passed i still play Oblivion and i play loads of it, its the only The Elder Scrolls game that has really grown in me so i honestly think that Oblivion which is the last true The Elder Scrolls game is the greatest in the serie and is the greatest game of all time.