TES: Oblivion - Retrospective Review

This game is equal parts masterpiece and equal parts insane fever dream.

The personal note at the end was very touching. I’m glad you at least had a game you loved to give you an escape and some joy in difficult times. Wish you all the best in the future!

The last bit about your relationship with Oblivion was very inspiring although I knew of it from watching your past videos. You are in a way Hero of Kvatch: starting out in rough situation and ending gloriously as a champion.

Man, we all remember the day we emerged from those tutorial sewers. Genuinely been chasing that same high ever since - no game has even come close to giving me that same sensation.

This game gave me a treasured memory that is indelibly burned into my brain: During one of the fighter's guild quests, you accompany your quest giver into a ruin to investigate something. In the ruin, you find nothing but vermin, which is weird, and once you clear the dungeon the quest giver tells you to meet him back in town and the quest ends. Well, I triggered this dialog in a big room on the far side of a trap where the floor rises up and smashes you into ceiling spikes. I had avoided it earlier, and after the quest ended, I watched the quest giver pathfind straight across the trap and get smashed up against the ceiling. He got knocked unconscious, but the trap just kept cycling over and over again. It took him several minutes to get through it. That cracked me up so bad I actually had to put the game aside for a whole week because every time I'd fire it up, I'd just start laughing all over again. Oblivion is a beautiful, glorious, ridiculous mess, and it will always be one of my favorite games.

Thank you for sharing that personal note at the end Mortym, very poetic way to close that chapter of your life and it's a credit to your character that you've come through all that pain to do amazing things, both in general and on this channel. I was also wondering, do you think you'll play the latest expansion for Underrail? It has a continuation from the original main game ending.

My favorite thing about Oblivion is that the magic isn't tied to "hands". I loved using a greatsword and casting at the same time

Was not ready for that surprising heartfelt and emotional bit and the end. That cut me pretty deep. Love your content brother, keep doing great things!

I think I spent well over 200 hrs in the first year this came out. I remember being in year 12 (Final year of high school in Aus) and someone talking about the game. I used the library 'Study Period' time I had to research the game and wagged the rest of of the day (I think this was a Thursday as I wagged Friday too). Put the game in at 1pm - then it was all of a sudden it was 12am. A few years later, a friend was playing through it for the first time and I watched him play for about 50 hours. Game has attached itself to my soul along with STALKER and Fallout NV.

Man, those closing statements hit hard.. I'm glad you shared this, as this is something I did with a couple of old games I had played. And the fact that you skipped the "all that youtube jazz" part makes it even more powerful. That's what games are about, and you've driven the message home perfectly, thank you!

Man, I have cried a bit on that last part - even your voice cracked a bit. Very emotional. And happy for you, really!

We can easily say that we all got a little bit emotional with you at the end. Beautifuly done.

So glad to see you doing these TES retrospectives! Oblivion was truly a formative game for me. I got it when was a teenager and around the time my family got internet for the first time really. I remember that it was the first game I played to 100% and I was obsessed with it. I spent my free time on the UESP wiki updating information and guides as well as on the Gamespot forums in an Oblivion fan group called Lords And Ladies of Oblivion lol. It's also the game that set me on my IT career path funny enough. I built my first PC to play Oblivion with money I made cutting grass and shoveling driveways. I got super into modding the game and back then there were not fancy mod managers you had to do everything manually. It forced me to learn a ton about how computer hardware and software worked and while it sounds funny now I literally had to troubleshoot my PC on a regular basis to get the game running. I built my analytical skills by trying to get Oblivion working! It's amazing how things work.

Discovering this game as a 12 year old is an experience that I'll never forget. I was shocked that I could just roam around in such a big world after leaving the prison. It really brings all the nostalgia on me, also that ost while roaming around the forests... I was always happy while playing this game.

The ending of the video alone deserves a double like 🎉. Great stuff

Thanks for sharing that personal part of your life with us at the end. Playing video games to "escape" or find some sort of joy in an otherwise tumultuous part of life resonates very strongly with me personally, and I think it hits home with a lot of your viewers as well. Glad to hear that you were able to officially say "goodbye" to that part of your life!

The art style of the classes and signs etc is so good. I can never get over how much I enjoy that style. Really goes well with the game

Okay my favorite random npc dialogue was after I went to sleep in an inn after killing the Grey Prince in the Arena I got a visit by Lucian Lachance after he tasked me to a kill a man and walks out of my room an npc approaches him while invisible and told him "Thry say if you kill someone the Dark Brotherhood comes to you in your sleep."

I almost cried at that last bit. Thanks for sharing that. It sounds like I didn't have it quite as tough as you did, but I did grow up in an abusive household. I played videogames to escape that. I didn't really have one game to latch onto like you did, although if I had to choose it would be a tie between Civ 5 and COD WAW, specifically the zombies mode. Its awesome to see just how much video games can mean to people. I'm happy you're doing much better now, and happy early birthday to your son. Sounds like he has an awesome dad :)

Fantastic review and loved that touching end segment. That's the double-edged sword with games as escapism. They take you to these fantastical alternate realities in the moment, but also take you back to those bad memories and headspaces when you replay them later. The role reverses, basically. That's my struggle with Dark Souls, so I replay it every year to try to form new positive memories to associate with it because I love the game itself so much.