Ramble on Rambling: Exploration Games
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...my return to Oblivion, mixed both nostalgia for the excellent couple of weeks in which I'd originally played it (including an 3am, rather intoxicated, first plunge into the Oblivion realm which was remarkably intense), with a sense that I might not like the game all that much this time. I wasn't expecting much my recollections of Oblivion were faded and dulled. I expected it to have aged and recalled my eventual boredom with it the first time around. In some ways, it seems, my memory had been playing tricks on me. Discussion since Oblivion seemed to have dwelt on its failings: dodgy character development mechanisms, the lack of Morrowind's weird-ass world design, and so on. It was as if this had overwritten what I actually felt about the game.
The truth, of course, was that I love Oblivion far more than I remembered. Even while just running across its wondrous open vistas, stopping to marvel at the sheer scale of its visual accomplishment (vegetation-drenched wooded valleys, walled cities visible from the horizon), it only took moments to spot something that I've lauded some other games for: something irrelevant going on in the world. A priestess of some kind was hunting and using magic to kill deer. I could ignore it, or go up to her and talk. The choice was mine. It didn't matter, but it was still there. It was then that I got the same kind flash of freedom that Tom had done on coming out of the sewers. It's a game that charms you with its breadth from those earliest minutes in its open world.
