The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

• 1. Introduction

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  Pete Hines, Bethesda's vice president of public relations and marketing, once described the mood before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion arrived with a wry line. He said: "People were expecting the game to cure blindness and heal the sick." The 2006 action role-playing game came from Bethesda Game Studios and followed Morrowind, a hard act to follow. Critics were already calling it "the first next-gen game," and the label only fed the fever. Hopes that high are rarely met in full. So what did Bethesda actually build, and what kind of world did it promise players? How did a team make a province feel inhabited by people with lives of their own? And what happened when that much anticipation finally collided with a real release date, a ratings board, and a public that had waited years?

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• 2. The Empty Throne

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  Six years after the events of Morrowind, in the era the series calls the Third, the story settles on Cyrodiil, a province of the continent Tamriel. Three human empires have ruled from there. The first began when a slave named St. Alessia led an uprising against the Ayleids, an elven faction that once held dominion over all of Tamriel. The Ayleids worshiped the Daedra, magical beings from Oblivion, a dangerous realm in another dimension. Daedra are largely sadistic and selfish, and they delight in chaos. They are the opposite of the Nine Divines, the pantheon Tamriel's peoples honor. Blessed by the Divines, Alessia forged a covenant that walled the Daedra out behind a mystical barrier. The barrier would hold only while a person of royal blood sat on the throne.

  The Reman Dynasty rose after a war between the Empire and a feudal hegemony from the neighboring continent of Akavir. Its rule paved the way for Tiber Septim, a human warrior who united Tamriel's races and provinces under one banner. After his death he ascended as the hero-god Talos, and his Septim Dynasty now rules the third incarnation of the Empire.

  The player's own story begins in a prison cell, with no explanation of the crime. Emperor Uriel Septim VII bursts in with his bodyguards, the Blades, fleeing assassins who have already murdered his three sons. The cell hides a secret entrance to a sewer escape route, and the emperor pardons the player on the spot. In the sewer the assassins attack, and the captain of the Blades is cut down. Certain that he will die, Uriel hands over the Amulet of Kings and orders the player to carry it to Jauffre, grandmaster of the Blades. An assassin kills him moments later.

  With no heir, Alessia's covenant breaks. Gates to Oblivion open across the land, and Daedra kill and destroy everything in their path. Jauffre explains the only permanent cure. Someone of royal blood must take the throne and use the amulet to relight the Dragonfires in the Imperial City. One candidate exists. Martin, an illegitimate son of the emperor, is a priest in the city of Kvatch. Kvatch lies in ruins beneath a massive Oblivion Gate. The player must enter the Deadlands, one of the planes of Oblivion, and close the gate from inside. Surviving guardsmen then help retake the city, and Martin is alive.

  Back at Weynon Priory, assassins have attacked and the amulet is gone. Martin is recognized as emperor at Cloud Ruler Temple, the Blades' stronghold, and takes command of the order. The trail leads to the Mythic Dawn, a cult devoted to Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction. The cult believes Dagon created the world and wants him to cleanse it of impurities. Killing the emperor was its first step. When the player infiltrates the cult's hideout, its leader Mankar Camoran escapes through a portal with the amulet.

  Recreating that portal takes a Daedric artifact, the Blood of the Divines, and a Great Welkynd Stone. Then comes a final ingredient, a Great Sigil Stone from inside a Great Gate like the one that wrecked Kvatch. Martin and Jauffre choose to let Daedra attack the city of Bruma so that such a gate will open. The player takes the stone and closes the gate, saving Bruma. A portal then carries the player into Camoran's private realm, Paradise, where Camoran dies.

  With the amulet recovered, the player and Martin reach the Imperial City under assault from Daedra and an enormous avatar of Dagon himself. In the Temple of the One, Martin says there is only one way to win. He shatters the Amulet of Kings and merges with Akatosh, the Dragon-God of Time. After a battle, Akatosh hurls Dagon back into Oblivion, roars, and turns to stone. Martin's soul, consumed by the amulet, joins his forebears. His last telepathic words are hopeful. The gates are shut, the throne is empty, and Tamriel's future rests with the player, who is proclaimed the seventh Champion of Cyrodiil.

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• 3. Freedom and Its Rules

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  Ten races, some humanoid and some anthropomorphic, wait on the character creation screen, each with its own natural abilities. Players also customize their character's appearance before stepping out. From there, growth is the central pursuit. The game has 21 skills, split evenly among combat, magic, and stealth, and many skills serve more than one area. Combat skills cover armor and heavy weapons such as blades, axes, maces, and hammers. Magic skills cover spells that reshape the physical world, sway minds, wound enemies, summon helpers, or heal. Stealth skills cover picking locks, haggling, persuasion, bows, and sneak attacks. Lockpicks, weapons, and spells can be bought, stolen from characters, or looted from foes and dungeons.

  Seven skills are chosen early as major skills, and the rest are minor. Each time the major skills rise by a combined ten points, the character levels up and can improve attributes such as speed and endurance. Attributes are broad, while skills are specific, like armorer or athletics. Reaching 25, 50, 75, or 100 points in one skill unlocks new abilities tied to it. Disease and poison can drag attributes down.

  Nothing forces the player toward the main quest. It can be ignored or postponed indefinitely, and the game keeps going after it ends. Travel is open to anywhere in Cyrodiil, except areas locked to specific quests. Each newly visited location puts an icon on the map, and selecting it moves the player there instantly. The main cities are unlocked for this fast travel from the start. Play can be first-person or third-person, and difficulty can be changed at any moment. The mobile phone version is the exception, offering only an isometric view. A constant display tracks health, magicka, and fatigue. Losing all health means death, while magicka powers spells and returns over time.

  Enemies range from imps and goblins to bears and wolves, and they grow stronger as the player levels. Looted weapons and armor improve alongside them. Designers built this level-scaling to hold difficulty at a steady, moderate pitch. It drew criticism anyway. A character whose major skills rise on their own, such as athletics or armor, can level too fast, and the enemies then become far harder than intended.

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• 4. Carving Cyrodiil

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  Work on Oblivion began in 2002, shortly after Morrowind shipped, with Morrowind's lead designer Ken Rolston overseeing the team. By mid-September 2004, the game had been officially announced and its title revealed. Bethesda wanted a more realistic storyline, believable characters, and quests that mattered. The visual toolkit included the Havok physics engine, high-dynamic-range rendering, and specular mapping, techniques that had become far more practical in the seventh console generation.

  Terrain came from procedural content tools that let developers build landscapes much faster than for Morrowind. Erosion algorithms produced craggy ground, replacing Morrowind's artificially smoothed-over hills. Artists worked from their own travel photographs, nature books, texture images, and reference photos. A new level-of-detail system stretched the view distance to the horizon, so distant towns and mountain ranges stayed visible. According to a Microsoft press release, the world covers roughly 16 square miles, or 41 square kilometers. Wilderness quests, ruins, and dungeons filled the surplus space, and the dungeons packed in more creatures, quest characters, and puzzles than Morrowind's.

  One gap remained between the game and its own lore. In-game books describe populations in the "thousands upon thousands." The team set character counts at what played well instead, because crowds on screen would have slowed the game.

  Morrowind's characters had been criticized as too simple, so Bethesda built the Radiant AI system. Instead of running scripted routines, characters chose how to reach goals such as eating, sleeping, reading, and talking to others. Their choices depended on the surroundings, on what other characters did, and on programmed personality values. A penniless character hunting for food might eventually steal from someone, given the chance and the right character. Later games in the series scaled the system down. Over time it led characters to kill each other after witnessing thefts.

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• 5. Voices and Music

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  Patrick Stewart, Lynda Carter, Sean Bean, and Terence Stamp all lent their voices to Oblivion, with the firm Blindlight handling celebrity acquisition and voice production. Stewart played Emperor Uriel Septim, Bean played Martin, and Stamp played the cult leader Mankar Camoran. This was the first time the series fully voiced its characters. Reviews in the gaming press were mixed. Many outlets called the acting excellent, while others tired of repetition, which was blamed on the small pool of actors and bland dialogue.

  Rolston himself had reservations. He said full voicing was less flexible than Morrowind's partial recording, gave players less room to imagine a tone, constrained branching, and cost more in production and disk space. He still called voice acting a powerful expressive tool. Then came the shrug: "But I'm told that voiced dialogue is what the kids want."

  The score belonged to Jeremy Soule, a series mainstay who had already won a BAFTA in the game music category. He also had two nominations from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences for original music composition. The soundtrack came out in March 2006 through his digital distributor DirectSong, with 26 tracks spanning 58 minutes. Soule kept the music soft and minimalist so listeners would not tire of it. He imagined no particular characters or events, wanting the music "to comment on the human condition and the beauty of life."

  He traced that wish to a crash during the composing. He described rolling his car several times on an interstate while "flying headlong into oncoming traffic." He escaped with minor injuries, and the sense "that life is indeed precious" stayed with him through the rest of the work. The result later won the first MTV Video Music Award for Best Original Score, decided by an international popular vote.

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• 6. Delays and a Rating Change

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  Oblivion made its public debut on the 18th of May 2005 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. The demo was substantially finished, lacking only the polish of the final months. Journalists handed it a string of best-of awards. GameSpy named it RPG Game of Show, GameSpot gave it Best Role-Playing Game, IGN called it Best PC RPG, and RPGFan chose it as Overall Game of E3 2005. The E3 Game Critics Awards also gave it Best Role Playing Game. In January 2006, a near-final build showed off the game's exteriors in Microsoft's press tent at the Consumer Electronics Show.

  The launch itself kept slipping. 2K Games had wanted a late 2005 release so that Oblivion could be a launch title for the Xbox 360. The PC and Xbox 360 versions were first dated the 22nd of November 2005, but development delays pushed them to the 20th of March 2006. A mobile phone version from Superscape, published by Vir2L Studios, arrived on the 2nd of May 2006. The PlayStation 3 port, made by 4J Studios, reached North America on the 20th of March 2007 and Europe on the 27th of April 2007, with graphical improvements. A PlayStation Portable version was canceled before release.

  On the 3rd of May 2006, the Entertainment Software Rating Board in North America changed the rating from T for Teen to M for Mature. It cited more detailed blood and gore than its original review had considered. It also found a locked-out art file in the PC version that, through an apparently unauthorized third-party tool, enabled topless versions of female characters. Bethesda Softworks agreed to tell retailers, supply stickers, show the new rating in future shipments and marketing, and release a patch making the file inaccessible. It complied but disagreed with the board's reasoning.

  Some retailers began checking identification before selling the game, and a California Assemblyman used the episode to attack the board's efficiency. Michael Zenke, editor of Slashdot games, remarked that the change punished developers for content they never produced.

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• 7. Horse Armor and Expansions

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  On the 3rd of April 2006, Bethesda released its first downloadable pack, a set of armor for Oblivion's ridable horses. Players liked the idea of paying small amounts for extra content, but many complained online and elsewhere about the price of such a minor item. Hines assured the press that Bethesda would not react rashly to the criticism. Later packs through the end of 2006 cost less and offered more, and the gaming press received them better. They included houses themed on the game's factions, a new dungeon, and spells missing from the original release. The final pack came out on the 15th of October 2007.

  Two full expansions followed. Knights of the Nine, released on the 21st of November 2006, centers on the sorcerer-king Umaril and a quest to defeat him using a lost crusader's relics. It changed little about the basic mechanics, and reviewers found it brief but polished. Bethesda Softworks developed, published, and released it. Shivering Isles arrived on the 27th of March 2007 for Windows and Xbox 360, and on the 8th of December 2007 for PlayStation 3. It offers more than 30 hours of new adventuring in the realm of madness ruled by the Daedric prince Sheogorath, who asks the player to save it from an approaching cataclysm called the Greymarch.

  The two expansions were bundled into a Game of the Year edition, announced at the 2007 E3. It reached Xbox 360 and PC in September 2007 and PlayStation 3 in October 2007. Steam began selling Oblivion on the 16th of June 2009, and a fifth-anniversary edition reached North America in July 2011 and Europe two months later.

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• 8. Reception and Return

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  By the 10th of April 2006, 1.7 million copies of Oblivion had shipped. Sales passed 3 million by January 2007 and 3.5 million by November 2011. The research firm Electronic Entertainment Design and Research estimates 9.5 million copies worldwide. Critics were nearly unanimous in their praise. Eurogamer's Kristan Reed wrote that the game "successfully unites some of the best elements of RPG, adventure and action games and fuses them into a relentlessly immersive and intoxicating whole." GameSpot's Greg Kasavin judged it "hands-down better" than Morrowind, which he had considered one of the best role-playing games in years.

  Some reviewers pushed back. Patrick Joynt of 1UP.com found it jarring when a character delivers a custom line and then slips back into stock dialogue options. GameSpy's Justin Speer complained of loading stutters, long load times, floating objects, and lip-sync that drifted from speech. IGN's Charles Onyett criticized enemies that scale to the player's level instead of combat ability, along with loading times and imprecise combat. Even so, he called the game a thoroughly enjoyable and gorgeous experience.

  The trophies piled up. In 2006 it was named Game of the Year at both the G-Phoria Video Game Awards and the Spike TV Video Game Awards. At the 24th Golden Joystick Awards it took three prizes, including Xbox Game of the Year. Outlets such as 1UP.com, G4, IGN, GameSpy, GameSpot, GameRevolution, and PC Gamer US named it the best role-playing game of 2006. Computer Games Magazine called it "an unforgettable masterpiece." PC Gamer ranked it first on its 2007 list of the top 100 games of all time. At the 10th Interactive Achievement Awards, it won Role-Playing Game of the Year and Computer Game of the Year. Patrick Stewart's performance as Uriel Septim also won a Spike TV award.

  The story did not end there. An internal ZeniMax Media presentation dated 2020, released in the 2023 FTC v. Microsoft case, listed an Oblivion remaster for the 2022 fiscal year. On the 15th of April 2025, images and promotional art leaked from the website of the studio Virtuos through an accessible WordPress file repository. On the 21st of April 2025, Bethesda announced a livestream for the next day. More than 600,000 people watched it, and the remaster launched shortly after it began. It arrived on Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and on Xbox Game Pass the same day. Four million players had tried it within three days, with a peak of 216,000 at once on Steam. Under the hood, a modified version of the original Gamebryo engine runs without rendering and passes the game state to Unreal Engine 5, which draws the world with ray-traced lighting.

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