Last week, we asked our Looters a question: what’s the best installment of The Elder Scrolls? We hosted a two-round tournament to find out. We had a sneaking suspicion that the latest game might have an unfair advantage, so for now, we gave Skyrim some time to rest. Instead, we focused on the first four installments of the series: Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion. After over a hundred votes, we have our answer!
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion won the tourney by a landslide. That had us wondering: is it because it’s the most modern? The graphics? The controls?
Here’s what people had to say about why they love The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
The Side Quests
The number one thing fans had to praise about The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was the side quests. They offer some distance from the main storyline and give you a real chance to explore what Cyrodiil has to offer.
And there’s so many things to love about these quests! Namely, just how many there are. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has over a hundred different quests for players to complete—that’s a lot of play time. Some might find you fighting your way through a haunted ship, or else collecting rare bottles of wine. Fans love the content that these side quests add to the game, and just how fun some are to beat.
Filipa F: “You can play it for 300 hours and still not do all the side quests.”
blue_team_go2004: “The quests were super fun and memorable and…I loved the DnD feel when leveling up certain skills.”
sunriseonthemountain: “Just everything. All the side quests. And the NPC dialogue. Always the NPC dialogue.”
Shivering Isles
Sometimes it’s not about what a game is, but what it can become. So many people gushed about their love for Shivering Isles, the second expansion pack for The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. The division of the realm offers a wide variety of graphics: bright and colorful in Mania, and tense and dark in Dementia.
More than anything, it’s about just how much content Shivering Isles adds to the game. With its quests, explorable area, items, and achievements, The Realm of Madness adds an extra thirty to forty hours of gameplay to The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It’s an expansion pack designed specifically with player fatigue in mind, giving them both a break and more worlds to explore within the very same game.
Fiona L: “Shivering Isles is still one of my favourite DLC’s I’ve played.”
Taylor R: “Can’t forget the Shivering Isles, best map add on DLC for the franchise in my opinion.”
russofage: “I loved the beginning of the Shivering Isles DLC, where the room dissolves into butterflies.”
The Plot
It’s completely possible to play Oblivion without touching the main journey or side quests, but you may not want to. Many fans wrote in to say that the storyline to the fourth The Elder Scrolls game is by far their favorite of the series.
Specifically, there was a lot of praise for the storyline of the Dark Brotherhood. There are more than a dozen factions you can join in the game, but for many people, joining a guild of merciless assassins is the most rewarding. There’s an additional 30 quests you can receive from the members of the guild, many of which have bonus rewards for achieving them a certain way. Sometimes, it pays to kill!
ondarkendwings: “The main storyline was gripping. I was invested from start to finish. As much as I like Morrowind and Skyrim, their storylines weren’t as interesting or compelling. The dark brotherhood were fantastic in this.”
kenny_b203: “The writing in this game was so good. Like playing a movie!!”
soft_pillow_boi: “Dark Brotherhood murder mystery quest was ? ? ?”
Honorable mentions go to The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion soundtrack, the varied settings, and the high control of character customization. It’s a game that truly allows you to put yourself into another world and experience so many different challenges. We think Luucca F put it best: “It’s the best medieval-style high fantasy game out there…not because of the story, but because of freedom.”
What’s your favorite installment of The Elder Scrolls? Let us know, and make sure to check out The Elder Scrolls Crate, on sale this weekend for QuakeCon!
