Oblivion and the degradation of art

Oblivion and the degradation of art

An article

What am I other than something which exists to be consumed. This constant search for meaning in one’s daily life along with their obsession with the prolongation of this life past the point of satisfaction to me seems insane. I live a life of purposelessness I live how some would say hedonistically I don’t truly concern myself with anything and wish for everything to fall correctly. I coast off of my privileges, and while they aren’t as plentiful as others I still take advantage and hold them high as excuses to not try. I come from a family of failures and those who live at lowest rung of society, it’s almost as if those who try the hardest in my bloodline lead lives of the hardest misery. I found this out semi early into my teens however as a result I led a life of drugs and suicidal ideation, I am different now instead I live more for what I love and in a way I’ve found a happiness which was once unfamiliar to me. Where does this happiness come from and is there a deep-seated misery behind it? I am not sure and why would I delve deeper, I am happy and I am not overtaken by a misery which could still exist. I am still in college and this winter break like all else I have fallen back into videogames. This time Oblivion.

The Elder Scrolls has always been in my life since I first got my ps3 after the ps4 had already come out, this ps3 that I still have to this day. However as a result I’ve only engaged with the last two of the series meaning my exposure to this series is as limited as humanly possible. Oblivion was the first game I ever played on this next generation last gen console. I played the tutorial got to the end of the sewer then stopped playing for the next decade. Playing this game made me want more wanting to play the game which I anticipated, Skyrim. This was before I truly understood what a role playing game was seeing instead a world for me to wonder which held itself as something fantastical. Being young I saw fantasy as something I always wanted to be into looking at art like lord of the rings and game of thrones in high regard. But as I grew older I realized how fickle of an interest in fantasy I actually had as my attention span could not handle reading a book especially of the length of the works that interested me. I sat instead in anticipation of their visual medium I attempted to watch the live action lord of the rings movies but could not find any real reason to actually enjoy it. It felt again fickle simply as a collage of otherworldly tropes, nothing other than a visage that held no baring on my own self. At this point I could not think for myself I didn’t have an existence besides the art I would engage myself with. I was wanting to see grounded stories for the sake of grounding, for the sake of being able to put their existence within my own. I could not see anything below mere aesthetics of a character as a child, as I engaged with these aesthetics as the make up for a hollow husk of a childhood without a brain. When something was fantastical I could only find its meaning when the protagonist was a child or when the art was geared towards children such as Cartoons on cable which made up most of my childhood. Fantasy up until recently has been turned away based off that initial standoffishness, however even as I developed and discovered the ability to learn this non-interest followed along. It changed shape however the face still held the same instead of seeing it as not grounded so I can’t place it onto myself I saw it more as not grounded so I could find no real substance from it. An unfounded aversion from an almost prehistoric time, it is something which I have been trying to address within myself for years now. Within that time I have founded pieces of art which I find value within, these include Beserk and Baldur’s Gate 1. Beserk has been a piece of art that I held in esteem since I was young, while I struggled to always find meaning within the aesthetics of fantasy I had always been able to look at Guts in a high light. In most fantasy video games I would always try to make my characters most akin to guts almost as if by projecting a piece of art from this genre onto art I could not find its purpose in. This was especially prevalent during my playing of much of the souls franchise, I have played through Demon Souls and Dark Souls 2, playing Dark Souls 1 but never finishing it. Baldur’s Gate 1 is a game I had only played just recently around a year ago, though I played less optimally on mobile using the enhanced edition from beamdog. This was an incredibly strange experience for me as this was my first exposure to classic RPGs as well as to actual dungeons and dragons. Though in my life I’ve always liked rpgs but these were not the true classics instead they were coming from the console eras such as the later Fallouts, the later Elder Scrolls titles, more recent BioWare games such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age. As a result I was almost completely out of my element with Baldur’s Gate, however if there is one thing in my life which is constant is the fact that I am a husk, able to be whatever life a loose patch with no interior able to fit into every thing that I try, so I picked it up fast. To my surprise I felt myself enjoying this experience but when I think back I don’t truly understand what I got out of this game, it feels almost as though because I didn’t have the interests such as DND and fantasy I could only get real enjoyment of playing the game in the context that I was playing a good early RPG. Afterwards I tried to play neverwinter nights seeing that the systems within the game looked kind of fun and knowing there were mods that I always wanted to play. However the base game felt like a horrid drag, as if there was no forward but instead just a brick laden pull in a forgotten river. Unable to get through the original campaign and feeling like it was just too much of a chore I dropped the game, the final straw being my inability to download the mod which sparked my original interest in the title.

I jump back and forth with video games as they will always be the first pieces of art I was able to engage with in a semi authentic manner, however the more I play, replay, and look into the more I feel so disheartened at how hollow of an art form this type of art is. Art seems to be losing all point in the era we exist in from the way in which art has transformed into an industry to the way the general populace engages with art discounting it at every turn with the shortening of the internet art is consumed and forgotten in hopes to consume the next. The industry and the shifting in culture feed into one another both being mutilated from the same “innovations” being pushed by capitalism, it is increasingly clear that progress is becoming less and less focused on the human aspect of society (to even say the human aspect demonstrates the horror of the system we exist within). The internet is creating a first world culture of dissociation human interaction is being relegated through the pictures of one another, love and affection has almost become fully linked like all things are becoming into the endless scrolling dump of the modern internet where people use things like dating apps as another form of doomscrolling. Hookup culture taking a hold through this dissociation not out of sexual liberation instead in the same attention deficient culture which came along with this new society being shaped. Hook up culture when I was young did not hold this same dissociative porngraphic masturbatory quality. This is a culture of loneliness where everyone is too afraid to exist within that loneliness so instead they cling to fragmented images of what once was social what once was community. With the advancement of artificial intelligence our suicidal culture is finally reaching its death throes, a form of innovation indicative of capitalism’s endless pursuit for progress even in the face of the harm it will do. AI’s contribution to society exist away from the material world production of the metaphysical while devouring gallons of fresh water. Culture is something I’ve mentioned many times in this paragraph but what this is is not truly culture, its the skinned face of culture being paraded worn as a mask by the capitalism hiding its forked tongue to enable all to participate in their own self-cannibalism.

Have video games, an art form which came about during the beginning of this era at the dawn of the internet. So here I sit level 31 in Oblivion school has begun and I haven’t even wrote about the game. I began playing this game during a very strange time for myself, I had almost reverted back to my primordial state I was without the two toned pill which brings the ability to think. Like every occasion I am left like that I did the only thing I could and distracted myself so I played for hours on end starting when the sun was still up and ending when it was rising again. Bethesda has the unique ability to entrance me completely once I lose my ability to think, however this time it was different instead of the usual headache inducing fever dreams I have from Bethesda games such as fallout 4 I was engaged and enthralled. While I played I actually was able to think and process while not much it still allowed me my brain capacity, Bethesda has lobotomized their games taking away all mechanics which any form of complexity replacing them with one sized fits all training wheels. Here however it was different, still stripped down from their previous installment but with enough complexity to keep the system engaging. I’ve always loved the elder scrolls’ progression system, in a way the traditional experience system always felt too abstracted from the actual gameplay while rewarding there could be a hypothetical where the use of a skill is completely irrelevant to the skills leveling such as leveling a skill you never use. However here it feels rewarding in a non abstracted way, I do not think realism is something which should be strived for which is a conclusion one may come to as a result of this admiration. I feel as though games have to find a way to bridge the gaps of the many different aspects of the systems within, creating a collage that needs to be mended and brought into as close to a whole as can be. For examples within linearly structured games there is clear difference between the moments that are built around when you play and when you interact with the story such as during cutscenes. Within RPGs there is less of a direct cut between story and gameplay, in which half to almost all the story is built around the gameplay and gameplay choices the player makes. When playing an RPG the leveling system is one of the main factors which affects this dissidence, however the traditional leveling system to me feels too far away from how my character is interacting with the game. Oblivion’s use form of leveling makes my character feel more natural within the world that I am engaging with and while there is not much I could do outside of combat with this leveling system, the structure of the game seems as though it accounts for this by existing as more of a dungeon crawler. While the leveling system has been talked down by most throughout this games existence, and it may not be flawless I still find it to be highly engaging. Some of the problems I see within the game having to do with the leveling system is related to level scaling, specifically my problem comes from the level scaled loot which is found throughout the dungeons around the map.

Dungeons in Oblivion come in few different forms, these include caves, ruins, aelyiad ruins, and oblivion gates which are generated from a pool of around 7 — 10 different maps. Within these dungeons inhabit many chests filled with loot which depend on the players level with the exception of items placed there for the purpose of quests. Along with chests enemies are equipped with items which level alongside the player having highly powered weapons and armor later into the game. As a result of this level scaling for loot takes much of the character of the game away. Replacing predetermined loot with leveled was probably to try and eliminate the threat of players gaining high leveled items too early while also making it so that late in the game you wont have to go through dungeons for unimpressive rewards. This goes along with human enemies carrying leveled equipment, as a result of both of these mechanics the game then feels as though its missing it’s character. The dungeons you engage with do not feel as though they are real existing places within the world but instead are random no name dungeons which could be pasted on any of the others and if it weren’t for the aesthetic there wouldn’t be much difference. The only time difference does come into play is when they are associated with quests, and when they are associated with quests the best characterization of the world comes about but in all the others their is almost nothing to tell about the world. In exploring these dungeons it feels like these are independent spaces away from the world, the forts around the world are simply facades of a war that never happened, when they are meant to be castles or catacombs they are nothing more than facades internally they are all designed as a facsimile of a catacomb no matter the purpose. While exploring these I gain no information about this world other than this place exists within it, this goes along with the aelyiad ruins which should be rich places of world building to show the culture which preceded the dominate human culture of Cyrodil and to show what has differed and what hasn’t changed. Instead these are simple dungeons giving no indication of what they were used for and how they existed as a people with the exception that they show how magically inclined of a culture they were which is something that could be intuited by the fact that they are high elves which by means of their race are already magically inclined. Their are few examples of interactions with these ruins from the current culture with a few examples of the mages guild utilizing the cites for places of onsite research however at times this is only alluded to instead of actually shown. It is almost as if in hopes of always allowing the player to have endless content to slosh through which makes sense when dungeon crawling is what is focused on however out of the plethora of locations in the game having naturally occurring pieces of world building beyond facades, this is something that Fallout New Vegas excels in showing how locations effect each other. locations within the world showing a culture which proceeded it while also showing how people are utilizing the ruins now and how the ruins of what came before effects what exists their now. However even though it is still poor the caves within Oblivion seem to stand out above the rest in this category I am also including mines. They either are tombs, mines, or simply just caves, though they still are faulted by the same problems I spoke of before they are made up for by having clear purposes within the world. These caves are occupied by natural creatures which is in line for these natural dungeons, or they are occupied by Goblins which use these caves as almost cities, while the design of these caves are lacking their are clear intent with the Goblins as they are usually even supplied with kitchens and what are basically pantries, this is inline with Bethesda’s priorities with the Goblins making them feel more like living tribes using the radiant AI system to set up clan wars. However the natural caves are not just entirely goblin centered as their are simply natural caves which are just that simple caves occupied by natural creatures, these may seem to be the worst and most uninteresting of the dungeons however they are almost always my favorite form of dungeons. These dungeons are not shackled like the rest to much of the world building flaws that Bethesda has, they simply need to make it aesthetically pleasing while also making the dungeon interesting to engage with, and due to this blank slate they thrive usually these caves have the best use of interconnection through vertical space, they have very nice aesthetics with the use of tree roots dug and protruding from the ceiling or dead flora unable to thrive but still clinging to life. Environmentally they usually hold interesting mechanics as well, though this is very limited as the way the environment effects the lay out of Oblivion dungeons is not in the slightest complex their are still interesting interactions between water and the environment itself. Natural caves also hold its weakest form which are the ones inhabited by bandits which is equivalent to the goblin dungeons without the complexity. In the tombs there is usually some visual indication outside the caves showing what it is, either with a statue or a bowl of blazing blue fire, within the tombs there is a mix of undead enemies depending on the level of the player. These tombs are laid out in a way that are consistent with what they usually going deeper within the tombs the more important looking tombs are placed, with the lesser tombs being separate giving clear indication to the hierarchies within the world; one of my favorite of these dungeons which I cannot remember the name of right now was laid out in this way as the lords and servants tombs were separated through passages which lead to trapdoors into the tombs.

Finally with dungeons there are Oblivion Gates, pocket realms of Mehrunes Dagon (the ES deadric God of destruction) plane the dead lands. While conceptually incredibly interesting mechanically they are mindless after the first few. The deadra in the Elder Scrolls are incredibly interesting, the same way fictional religions usually seem to grip me. One of Oblivions greatest inspiration was The Lord of the Rings film series, this is both aesthetically and narratively however narratively it is clear in its conception of good versus evil. Mehrunes Dagon with the aid of his cult the Mythic Dawn led by Mankar Camoran plan to take over Tamriel. According to Camoran Tamriel is the rightful home to the Deadra and the Aeadra are false Gods who betrayed Lorkahn. In their motives the cult is not just evil for evils sake instead they view themselves as liberators of what they deem their land, however through gameplay it is made clear that these motives are backed with the torture and destruction of all in its path, even the cult members who were promised immortality are victims of the torture by the deadra. While the story of an invader committing horrific acts against nature and destruction upon a people who it claim to be in their promised land seems poignant to current tragedies that Israel is committing against the people of Gaza this analogy seems to fall as much of this context is not given the weight it should be. Besides the city of Kavatch and Bruma the threat and destruction of the invaders is almost nonexistent, this is a result of many different issues within the game such as the limitations in technology to create such a mass scale war zone with only some areas not being effected by this destruction but still feeling the weight of the event. However the limitations of the technology is not a complete shield against this flaw there are many different reasons this was not able to be fleshed out in Oblivion’s world that are at almost completely the fault of the developers but also on open world RPGs as a whole as well. Within open world RPGs there is a colonial history around its map and can be seen everywhere is the distinction between the wild area and the civilized area, in most RPG worlds they take on an almost frontier mentality of civilization always having to take on these wild unkempt areas of nature. This as a result creates a world of empty untouched and most importantly dangerous land filled with harsh nature and social outcasts unable to integrate with civilization and misanthropic and as the player character you in a way take the role of the colonizer you are there on part of the civilization to brave the wild and face its danger taking what is valuable from this wild and returning it to civilization for profit. As a result of this direct breakdown of wild and civilization means that majority of the map is uninhabited wilderness untouched by civilization with the exception of minuscule residences of a few buildings, as a result in this invasion on Cyrodill it is taking place in places that would not bring any form of destruction on the civilization simply it just added a bit more danger to what is supposed be a dangerous land. There are ways this could’ve been handled much better such as again in Fallout New Vegas which created a world that felt more like a real living place instead of unkempt frontier however it is a war zone and they made it feel the results of this war such as having towns and places of residence be turned into battlegrounds or completely destroyed like the town of Nipton, the areas of wilderness come almost as a result of military power being unable to hold back bad actors such as the vipers or the local wildlife however these areas are usually given the context that they were once used and only fell into disuse due to the military conflict. However Bethesda does not care about making logically consistent worlds that feel as though they are actual things instead of playgrounds, and why would they Oblivion is mainly a dungeon crawler but when creating a story like they were having such a large inconsistency truly hurts the narrative as what is being talked and heard about does not feel like it is a real threat in the game. Getting back to the original topic these gates are interesting the first few times and in the quests associated with them however they are very tedious and besides the sigil stone system does not give any real reason to close more than their already is. The first few times they are interesting and have fun and engaging ways of getting through them but then it doesn’t take long to run into repeats of the same map killing all fun and interest in engaging with this dungeon creating a repetitive and draining chore of a dungeon.

There is a serious problem within the world that has its effects within the arts and society as a whole, ever since around the 90s there has been a growing emphasis that the only important field is STEM due to the growing emphasis due to rising technologies on the skills associated with STEM. As a result arts and humanities are on the downswing and with things like the whole movement to get women into STEM more it seems as though these more fields built upon the critical engagement with though are being replaced with fields that are viewed for only financial purposes. This push for the technological advancement with no thought for the artistry can be seen in the populace as a whole where engagement with art when it comes from a digital medium like videogames realism is what seems to be valued the most what the technology can do to replicate a sterile reality instead of how can this technology be best utilized to make art. Looking past just the art but also the stories being told using these mediums, due to this focus on STEM as well these art forms when they attempt to tell their story they are told by people who don’t value the basis of these stories. Programmers and game designers given roles having to do with stories and this is especially prevalent when it comes to the early days of video games however in most companies which deal with game development their is a focus on writers have taken a more important role with lead writers existing in most gaming projects. Bethesda on the other hand seems to not have much of an emphasis of people who truly value writing however which seems to be in line with what seems to be their association with the technocratic system of billionaires such as Elon Musk who there is some connection with him and Todd Howard. Howard also being connected with the podcaster Lex Friedman a man who has interviewed much of the new right and their biggest ideologues. This whole philosophy of pure STEM pushing back against the humanities have been in Bethesda since the days of Morrowind with people like Michael Kirkbride. The world of Starfield is an example of how this focus has truly took hold, even in their description of the world they entitle it NASA punk teetering between the old world technocracy versus the new right private billionaire worship along the lines of Musk. There is a line between stale technocracy as well as just a general sense of amateurism within the writers and designers such as Emil who seems to write in that he only alludes to concepts without any actual engagement with these concepts in meaningful ways. This is something I spoke of in my article about Fallout which is better seen as the 3D Fallouts.

What did I like about Oblivion beside the leveling system? My enjoyment stemmed from my inexperience with RPGs as a whole. What stuck me most was the cities within the game, as I first started to play the simulation of what existed within these places struck me in a strong and powerful way. The guildhalls, and the people within created a sense of tangibility that made me awe at this world as something intense with how it creates a simulation of its world. However this started to fall as soon as I entered a guildhall for the fighters guild not located in chorrorl anvil or chedynhall, they were just empty husks of nothingness. Writing this I have a sense of what it must’ve felt for those who first played oblivion when it came out, either with minimal or no experience with RPGs yiu are given this world which allows a simulacrum of depth through the technological jumps it performed, being pushed towards the central fighters guildhall in chorrol due to its nearness to the main quest and joining as my character is a spell sword I immediately was pushed towards the mage guild as well there I heard of the integration of all the mages guildhalls into its overarching story hearing this I assumed that the fighters guild would also be populated and rife with map stretching quests so I proceeded to Anvil then to chedynhall and I found nothing. This was the beginning of the when it came to my enjoyment of Oblivion once this veneer was shattered boredom began to peer its head, this designation of falsity was very clearly manufactured by Bethesda you are steered towards early what exists and what doesn’t exist is looked away from. The first of the main quest leads you towards Chorrol where the main branch of the fighters guild is located, close to Kvatch is Anvil one of the only two other fighters guilds used for quests however once this was over that mask began to fully slip, after I was done with Anvil I moved onto Chedynhall where in I focused on the side quests which the main side quest within this town was incredibly compelling looking at the corruption of the guard and afterwards I accidentally stumbled on Chedynhall’s fighters guild guild master who spends a lot of time in the Island in the river that separates eastern and western regions of the town. Due to my forgetfulness of the fighters guild this stumbling act caused the world to feel in depth and once I finished it and the mage guild I decided to go to Bruma to do the fighters guild there and when I did I found nothing, the one who seemed to be the leader of the guild was interesting to me in him being an Argonian in a town which did not have many but there was nothing. This simulacrum of complexity is something which defines Oblivion such as the different races within the world, racial relations and cultural differences were barely if ever touched on, with the exceptions of high elves which is given a bit more but still could’ve been much more interesting than the surface level its given. Even within the fighters guild there is a racial conflict within the Blackwood company which is mainly populated by beastfolk and the hist sap taking one of the bigger roles of the quest and being culturally significant to the Argonians with it being what the Argonians originating from but these nuances are barely touched on, even the conflict makes no sense as they are not entirely able to be evil as they are under the hist sap’s spell during the times they commit the crimes they but none of this is acknowledged instead it’s just another story of good versus evil. The mage guild also suffers from this as their quest line is nothing other than good versus evil nonsense with the necromancers existing as a nothing faction with no ideology besides the want for power with no bounds, this is contrasted with the also incredibly shallow mages guild which exists for the study of magic but what they believe in makes no sense as their designation of necromancy as a dark art is almost guided by nothing when one realizes that there is a whole guildhall dedicated to conjugation which allows one to summon the undead, what this is other than necromancy is unclear, Hannibal Traven in general seems like an unstable and ideologically bankrupt individual who makes decisions based around nothing with an enemy who are simply just an enemy due to their association with dark colors, even the worst we see that they have committed isn’t that bad when compared to the arcane university which sends the protagonist who is nothing more than a human sacrifice to the count of Skingrad who they believe is committing necromancy. In a way I made the game worse for myself as I committed to my class as a spellsword and didn’t want to go into guilds that did not fit my class which include the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild which to the best of my knowledge have a much better reputation.

What are video games, in my want for video games to hold some greater meaning I truly have been struggling especially with games which attempt to use their medium in an engaging way and diverge from the usual move towards becoming cinematic. However there are video games that understand their medium however they still strive to be cinematic one of these being the games by Hideo Kojima, recently I played through most of the first Metal Gear game and found it incredibly engaging regardless of the longer cutscenes such as the way it uses the actual console like psychomantis or using the mechanics in interesting ways like the escape from the holding cell. I had recently gotten into an argument about how video games are trying to become more cinematic and for some reason I was told I was wrong but when I look at the history of RPGs there is a clear move away from the use of the game as a medium for gameplay and more into telling a linear story with ideas of choices, simply viewing the history of BioWare is clear and Bethesda also is moving in this direction with Fallout 4 being a big example. Recently there has been a move to returning to a more classic formula of RPGs such as Larian studios which has had incredible clout as of late and games such as Disco Elysium which for the most part is fairly popular. However RPGs still are moving towards cinematics as well such CD Projekt Red and games like Cyberpunk 2077 even though this is a game I thoroughly enjoyed. What is the difference between RPGs and other games, this is not a clear distinction however there seems to be some distinction in its use of percentage based systems within the game and especially in the progression in the game, progression not simply leveling but also gear as well, a good example of this is the dice roll based game play of Baldur’s Gate 1 using THACO as the way damage is calculated in replacing the dungeon master and the calculations based within the table top format. Another way that RPGs are distinct is choices and consequences, choices and consequences aren’t simply binary choices that one makes but instead are the results of gameplay choices that you have previously made a good example is basically all of Fallout New Vegas. However with the move into 3D a lot of the uniquenesses within RPGs have been flattened especially with the emphasis on action gameplay instead of dice roll based gameplay look at the move from Morrowind to Oblivion. This is a hard conflict to contend with however because with this move into third and first person the RPGs which handled gunplay turned into first person shooters as moving it into a dice roll type of gameplay would slow down the gameplay into more strategy and turn based gameplay which eliminates much of the reason to turn it into a shooter instead it would make more sense for it to be simply an isometric game as it would be a more mechanically better game, an example of how games have tried to combat this is through mechanics that are present in Fallout New Vegas such as item condition, weapon sway based on position and strength, and the VATS system and while I enjoy the gunplay in FNV a lot this is not a common position to hold even today there are tweets which speak on how awful the gunplay is that get thousands of likes. However what is the true artistic depth within these systems, I believe these are artistic decisions but what can be gained from roleplaying games the way you can get out of something like literature, this is greatly dependent on the writers of the game for example what seems to be the gold standard for RPG writing regardless of his controversies is Chris Avellone who has been lead writer for some of the most well written games such as Planescape Torment what seems to set him apart from other writings is his ability to write themes that are actual tangible even in intangible worlds. Looking at Baldur’s Gate 1 which is a game that some very much praise however there is little when it comes to what can be taken away from the story, showing a clear difference between writing just a good story versus one that is truly great, what is truly gotten out of the story of the two Baal spawn orphans, there are many themes however what these themes amount to are set dressing for the story with at the very least surface level ideas coming through, however cool conceptually the story is and I did enjoy the story quite a bit I still did not reach any interesting ideas from what was given. This is one of the biggest problems I have with video games primarily RPGs as art they are able to have so much good around the story and can even tell an engaging story however this seems to be primarily surface level just look at the more recent RPG AtomRPG a game which thoroughly enraged me as their was so much good within the game however played everything for cheap jokes, never taking its story seriously and never truly trying to do anything with its story it felt like this post modern horror of references to its own existence it was nothing and no matter how good the systems at hand are having something so hollow means its existence falls apart soon after engaging with it. Oblivion is nothing it inherited what is so awful about the Lord of the Rings with its Christian morality however places this moral upon a world of much more nuance and complexity in turn creating a strange and distorted story of nothing but the simplest path ahead a story of good versus evil where good martyrs itself for the destruction of evil and continuation of humanity, nobility and virtue being placed on a holy campaign. What is ever gained from this story except the virtue in believe and holding strong to the faith of the right God against evil, the nuance of a character like Martin Septum is lost with this Christian morality his history of being an illegitimate heir, of being a former deadra worshipper, of his knowledgeableness which causes him to question major institutions such as the mages guild and also question the divinity itself, this all is nothing it is tangential to Mary M…’s past of prostitution or Satan tempting Jesus before his Martyrdom there is no deeper meaning other to show that he was wrong and because he eventually chose write makes his righteousness all the more grander showing the strength of this decision. There is a backdrop of faults within the Septum empire however these faults are truly given no clearance for one reason they aren’t truly addressed and for another they are almost entirely handwaved away why would it be a problem when a heritage of. power causes problems when its also the whole reason that what is almost fully just Hell in Oblivion doesn’t invade. However there are preexisting concepts which are incredibly cool within the game which truly holds up all the bad that comes about from the Elder Scrolls conceptually it it great but in practice post Morrowind these concepts are hollow stumps unable to hold up against anything.

Wind blows branch rustles

Meaningless walk blown forgot

Stasis blamed anger

Want forgot hate turn

Stagnant hunger in eyes lost

Water washed in dirt

Words scratched beyond eyes

Land lost to nature’s soft breeze

Misery degrade

What can be gained from Oblivion? This is probably a question I’ve already asked in many different forms throughout this article but it is something I always go back to. There are themes of duty to higher powers, colonial empires being doomed to fall, loyalty to higher government beyond its faults. The Elder Scrolls and most games which take place in fantasy worlds such as theirs don’t try to truly dig into the metaphysics within the systems that they lay out, what truly makes games Chris Avellone has worked on stand out is their willingness to see the internal contradictions of these worlds such as KOTOR 2 and Planescape Torment. Within Oblivion the theology and how this manifests itself is not truly addressed except for some window dressing, Mankar Camaran speaks of the nuances within the universe in a surface level missable manner, spiritual moments are simply there for the aesthetic and while this aesthetic can be very interesting such as that which surrounds the armor of Tiber Septum where you must kill the walking skeletons of ancient Blades to undo the curse of the shrine, what sounds interesting turns to simply a cool looking dungeon with nothing deeper. The whole quest line of fetch quests to open Paradise it is clear how little thought was put into the quest beyond getting the player to participate in side content and the human story of Martin, what do the blood of a deadra, blood of a divine, wealken stone, and great sigil stone truly mean for the story? They seem to be motifs of the good versus evil as well as prosperity arising on the back of the past. Martin gains the power to enable the hero of Kvatch through reliving the past glories of the empire while utilizing this past as the weapon against what challenges them now, fantasy stories ignoring reality seems to be a fault especially when stories in fantasy can inadvertently parrot ideologies which cause harm, the Roman stand in with a ruler appointed by the Gods who seeks out his mythical past to destroy a revolution driven by the poor seems a very telling narrative however one which can’t even be seen as bad due to how poorly it was delivered.

I am currently player Baldur’s Gate 2 and again I am enjoying it I still find it hard to see the point of the story, however I am very minimally into it and have not dealt much with the main quest line however the way the quest structures are laid out for the side quests have been incredible with their interconnectivity the way they lay themselves out and the gameplay that comes with it. It is incredibly refreshing to play a game as good as it is ever since my dive into Oblivion, I have not finished Oblivion and I do plan to however towards the end it is the most difficult as the tedium of the game is getting to me, it is so incredibly strange to me how the replication of RPGs into a first person open world game has only been accomplished once in Fallout New Vegas.

RPGs give a shadow of complexity using the branching narrative as a smokescreen for what ultimately could be a shallow plot, the complexities in character creation, build variations, strategic combat, and most importantly player choice and consequence. This is the sense which I am getting with the early portions of Baldur’s Gate 2 as well, I am having a lot of fun when it comes to the complexity of the combat encounters I have come across and the quests have a lot more intricacies that were missing from the side-content within the first game however what have I actually gained from these stories? Maybe due to me not being that far within the story I can’t find the deeper meaning but so far what has been most withstanding is the idea of learning to navigate one’s existence coming to terms with the strifes and being able to move past these especially when it comes to past traumas this is seen in Minsc’s loss of Dynahier as well as Jaheira’s loss of Khalid, in the opening dungeon Imoen also speaks of the nostalgic yearning for Candlekeep. However this is all contrasted with the player character’s lack of a past, as people tend to ignore Gorion’s Ward’s childhood in candlekeep in favor of placing emphasis on the lost history of his birth as a Bhaal spawn, this theme connects to the quest that comes with Korgan Bloodaxe where the graveyard within Athkatla is placed on top of an old tomb. However even now thinking of this I am reminded of the idea espoused by the YouTuber Warlockracy which goes along the lines that RPG stories are simply based around the repetition of patterns which when found creates a sense of satisfaction and gratification within the player. This view seems incredibly nihilistic and downplays the medium’s ability to be used to express creative and well thought out ideas however when looking at much of writing in RPGs however limited my experience with them is I still find that this idea rings true. However this seemingly nihilistic approach I seem to be falling into may be a result of the ever greater depression I have seeped into as of late. As before I used to use these articles as less of an objective analysis and more of a way to express the personal perspective of these games and how important the player, reader, observer, etc… is to art however in my depression my sense of self is becoming more alienated from me and my own personhood is coming out in ways I do not recognize. In my replacement of my own personal problems I look more and more to larger failings around me and though these social problems are always within my mind now they are the all consuming thoughts used as a distraction from my own failings. This has been such a whiplash as beginning this article I was on top of the world and now I am sunken, and through all of this I still haven’t finished Oblivion.

I haven’t finished Oblivion and now I have finally decided that I will never finish it. There’s no reason to keep going when the passion is lost, I am here to appreciate art not to do a job, an article like this is not a reason to keep going even if it was a source of income I would not force myself to keep going. Moving aimlessly without passion is something only cured by the passion of death, it has been such a strange movement through this article as it has been a slow documentation of my loss of interest as well as my increasing depression from the outside the story. I thought beginning this article that I had finally found something lost which excited me, hope for a company subsumed into nothingness but instead I saw the beginnings of a shift into the shell seen today with vestiges of an era past. In my personal life I believed that peace was finally coming moving past difficulties I was subsumed under and understandings were being found in places where I’ve always begged, instead problems grew and my hateful attitude only became more prominent. It’s been 2 years since I last got into a fight and now that streak is broken, my life was once dictated by violence and I was trying to grow away from that violent nature but instead it only took a break. In my relishing over the violence I committed and my own dominance in that event I find a disgusted tinge of guilt at a past I longed to move away from. People are becoming more aggressive towards me, I am becoming angrier and the world is only getting worse. I have to maintain hope however that hope is something which could falter and if it does I am most terrified. I do not wish to break and it seems whenever I gain the strength to avoid the break I am eventually brought to that end. Focus lost gone without a trace in a small moment I try to capture me and it is never given a moment to breath who am I other than lost potential.

Early heat swelters

Jasmin green bud withered lost

Moon lost in its tears