Is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion still fun for a first-time player in 2025?
To be sure, Patrick Stewart’s regal delivery in the early game helps paper over a lot of potential weaknesses with the initial narrative. And even beyond Stewart’s excellent performance, I appreciated how the writing is concise and to the point, without the kind of drawn-out, pause-laden delivery that characterizes many games of the time.
The wide world of Oblivion
Once I escaped out into the broader world of Oblivion for the first time, I was a bit shocked to open my map and see that I could fast travel to a wide range of critical locations immediately, without any need to discover them for myself first. I felt a bit like a guilty cheater warping myself to the location of my next quest waypoint rather than hoofing through the massive forest that I’m sure hundreds of artists spent countless months meticulously constructing (and, more recently, remastering).
Credit:
Bethesda Game Studios
This horse is mine now. What are you gonna do about it?
Credit:
Bethesda Game Studios
I felt less guilty after accidentally stealing a horse, though. After a key quest giver urged me to go take a horse from a nearby stable, I was a bit shocked when I mounted the first horse I saw and heard two heavily armed guards nearby calling me a thief and leaping into pursuit (I guess I should have noticed the red icon before making my mount). No matter, I thought; they’re on foot and I’m now on a horse, so I can get away with my inadvertent theft quite easily.
Determined not to just fast-travel through the entire game, I found that galloping across a rain-drenched forest through the in-game night was almost too atmospheric. I ended up turning up the recommended brightness settings a few notches just so I could see the meticulously rendered trees and rocks around me.
After dismounting to rid a cave of some pesky vampires, I returned to the forest to find my stolen horse was nowhere to be found. At this point, I had trouble deciding if this was simply a realistic take on an unsecured, unmonitored horse wandering off or if I was the victim of a janky engine that couldn’t keep track of my mount.
