The More You Know: (Week 2) Life Has No Free Will

Welcome to The More You Know, Andrew Nino's column in which he takes his gaming experience for the day and looks for a lesson behind his daily experiences to benefit you and him both. We’ll see how this goes, and who knows. Maybe we’ll learn a thing or two along the way. This week Andrew covers The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and how sometimes, life has no free will to speak of.

Alright, let’s get down to the lesson that I learned today. This time our lesson comes courtesy of Bethesda Game Studios’ The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Looking back, I got into Oblivion around the same time that Fallout 3 had come out, even then the Gamebryo engine was showing its age and I couldn’t help but feel as though the presentation in terms of graphical performance was a bit lacking. Finally after a three year break however I’ve gotten back into the swing of things and have been playing Oblivion while appreciating the quality of the game for its time. However, that’s a whole other lesson in and of itself. What I want to talk about today is how in the world of Oblivion despite having all the freedoms in the world, there is no such thing as free will.

Beginning anew in Oblivion meant creating a new character and class. This time I decided to be a Wood Elf Mage, a decision I quickly grew to regret. As I emerged from my cell into the lush green world I knew I wanted to be powerful, yet not in a conventional sense. You see, I learned that magic is not something that I want to be dependent on. Sword and shield in hand and I was on my way to a new life. Unfortunately as I began my adventure and (obviously) ran into a few situations in which I had to resort to violence, I realized to my dismay that I had was not growing.

Even now the sights are stunning

You see Oblivion has a system set up in which the only way you can level up is by becoming adept at skills that relate to your race and class that you chose at the beginning of the game. Of course, while this encourages you to stick to your roots it completely ruins any sense of being a dynamic character.

Thanks to this system, there is no way to play the game fluidity as though you were a real character. You see if my character were to wield a sword for long enough toiling endlessly amongst the weakest of enemies, they would eventually become better at using their sword. Even if it’s not a significant improvements by working and training long enough I should be able to get better at doing something.

I mean correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think there is anything in Elder Scrolls lore that prohibits Wood Elf from using a sword effectively. It’s not as though it’s magic in which some classes may not have the ability to use it.

However what’s done is done and I’ve forgiven Bethesda in the past (Brink). I’m looking towards the future specifically to this November and the release of Skyrim. I want Bethesda to take the proper steps to making sure that Skyrim is the most fluid and real RPG of the year. After all, we’ve seen how misleading a Bethesda game can be (Brink).

So let’s start by seeing what Oblivion did right, which admittedly is quite a bit. For example, despite not being able to level up as a whole you are able to level up particular skills by using them often, such as getting greater defense by getting hit by enemies. Or becoming a more proficient runner by jumping and running around. These methods of increasing your skills not only lend themselves to make stats much simpler, it also makes the most sense. Unlike games like Fallout 3 where you can manually distribute stat points through each level up, Oblivion doesn’t allow you to excel at something you’ve never done.

In Fallout 3 if you felt like you wanted to be a pro energy weapon user you could increase that class of skills with each level up without ever even having used one before. I believe that for the most part Oblivion has a very impressive leveling system, with just a few tweaks I believe that it could be possible for Skyrim to not only live up to- but surpass the expectations laid down by Oblivion.

What I learned is that freewill in an RPG is becoming more and more of a necessity, limiting a player just because they choose not to play the way you’d expect is not the right way to go. For a realistic experience, everything you do needs to contribute to your growth at least a little. Saying you aren’t becoming stronger as a Swordsman despite using a sword is the exact opposite of what we’ve come to expect as gamers. During a 20+ hour experience we are being punished for a decision that we made within the first few minutes of ever touching the game. Skyrim can remedy this by allowing users to level up no matter what weapon or class type they’re using.

Maybe Skyrim will alter the rate of growth depending on what class you pick in order to reward players who pick and stay with one class type through the game. What I do know for sure however is that we won’t be seeing the same Oblivion styled leveling system, and regardless of whatever leveling system the game goes with we can expect to see an explosive amount of sales coming this November!