I tell you this with a mixture of pride and embarrassment: during the course of my life I have written exactly one piece of fan fiction. After putting a few hundred hours into Bethesda's Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, I found it was impossible to get their world out of my mind. All of the overflowing inspiration was poured into a story about a man who was bitten by a wereboar. The main character had to choose between spying on the were-creatures for the humans or siding with the were-leader, who lived in a hidden mausoleum called the Scourg Barrow. In the end, the main character deciding that the humans were the real monsters, and so "He began walking. To the East. To… the Scourg Barrow." It was all quite dramatic and ground breaking, so much so that I was able to get my story published on the internet.
Elder Scrolls invited me back six years later to explore Morrowind. This time around I was spared the need to write fan fiction, but I was still entranced. Every day I woke up with the previous night's stories still fresh in my mind. At that time my friends and I were working at a university campus fixing computers, and between jobs we would have a competition over who could tell the most outlandish Morrowind story. One day I was positive I had the winning adventure: The Discovery of Creeper. My report went over well, and everyone was excited to learn about the Scamp merchant who paid huge amounts of money for all the loot we were accumulating. Then, one of my friends cleared his throat, and began his tale. That same night he had done nothing but practice jumping, and he proudly boasted that he could now do superhero-size leaps from tower to tower in the giant city of Vivec. We called shenanigans. During our lunch break we all flocked to his apartment for him to prove it. He won.
Thanks to these experiences, the Elder Scroll series has come to define role playing games for me. On a very superficial level, they do everything we expect. Their games are overflowing with monsters and weapons to stick into the monsters. The world they create is real, and you genuinely feel as if you are part of a living ecosystem. All of the characters grow and level up, and you can gleefully worry about refining your existing skills or unlocking that next game-changing ability. None of these things, however, are enough to create the great memories and experiences that I associate with my favorite role playing games. After hundreds of hours playing Elder Scrolls games, I am left with only one criteria that I use to evaluate the greatness of a role playing game. "Does it let the player tell their own stories?"
After Morrowing my love of Elder Scrolls had advanced to the point of being an obsession, so it was only natural for me to find myself, on a particularly cold November night, sleeping outside a local Best Buy with only a shrub for a blanket. I was sixth in line for a launch Xbox 360, and I still hadn't decided what game I was going to buy with the system. It didn't matter, though. The real game I wanted wasn't due out for a few more months. When dawn broke I walked out of the store with copies of Call of Duty 2 and Kameo, but the real prize was the knowledge that, when Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion came out in March, I would have my system, and I would be ready to play.
Despite this overwhelming pressure, Oblivion did not disappoint. When I first loaded up the game, I was instantly taken back to that feeling of excitement and curiosity. Still, I couldn't help but notice how the series had evolved. Oblivion stayed true to its legacy, but it was still able to reinvent itself, rising even higher than its previous acclaims. The game presented me with a living world like its predecessors, but this time it was a world full of bright, deep colors that contrasted with the bleakness of so many other games. The scope of the landscape was both awe inspiring and diverse, with environments ranging from high mountain passes to deep underground tombs to alternate dimensions. The combat felt considerably more real and concrete, and it no longer felt like a dice roll hidden under a layer of armor. It was truly a great game. What made Oblivion stand out, however, was its ability to combine all of its elements with one goal in mind – let the player live in its world.
I played through Oblivion with a passion. The world was literally littered with quests, and I couldn't help but be lured in. Running through a rich forest I might uncover a hidden cave, a bandit campsite, or even a whole town. I rarely considered using "fast travel" to instantly transport myself from town to town, and instead I preferred to climb mountains just to see what was hidden in their peaks. Behind every rock was a story that I was able to discover and respond to in my own way, and in turn I was able to make the cumulative story my own. The entire game seemed to be designed so that I could experience it on my own time, and the main quest would always wait for me to finish being distracted by a damsel in distress. In the end I created multiple characters, but they all shared three common traits: Attention Deficient Disorder, Obsession Compulsion Disorder, and wanderlust.
In every role playing game I buy, I always tell myself that I will go back through a second time and replay the entire game as an evil character. Despite these bad intentions, I have never actually done so, and I always seem to get lured into playing a different game. Oblivion is the one exception. Of the thousands of lives in Oblivion, I lived two. The first was a swordsman with a flair for summoning monsters and lighting things on fire. After climbing through the ranks of the mages guild and the fighters guild, this heroic soul went on to save the world. The other character I played was slightly less responsible. Armed with a bow, arrows, and a herb addiction, he was a rising star in both the assassins guild and the thieves guild. This second character never even considered saving the world from certain doom – that was someone else's job, someone who didn't understand management skills and the value of "delegating work". These two characters played different, talked different, and lived entirely different lives. In what may be Oblivion's most impressive feat, my second character was able to tell his whole story by playing through different faction quests, and he never even touched the main quest. In fact, ignoring the main quest just became part of his story.
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Oblivion is the Best Xbox 360 Role Playing Game because it truly lets you choose what role you will play. Hundreds of paths exist, and it is up to you to find your way through a world filled with countless adventures. Everyone who plays Oblivion is able to craft a story that is uniquely their own. In the end we only have one shared experience – the starting point. We all walk out of the dim, dark sewers and are greeted on the other side by an open, expansive, vibrant world. Where the game goes from there… that is your decision. Me? I just started to walk. To the east.
