What I’ve Learned Playing a 16-Year-Old Video Game
It was time to delve back into Oblivion, and this is what I found.
About two weeks ago my gaming PC died.
Admittedly, it was partly my fault. I’d unplugged it when I replaced my desk and didn’t turn it back on for a couple of months. Then again it was eight years old, so it was probably time.
I couldn’t replace it immediately, so I found myself looking covetously at my old Xbox games. I dug out a game that, despite being made in 2006, still runs on the Xbox One.
It’s one of my favourite games of all time. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
One of my fondest gaming memories was when I was staying at my grandparents’ house and my cousin had brought a new game with him. We set up in one of the old bedrooms and he let me watch him play.
I was blown away. This game had a day and night cycle. You could sleep in inns! Buy food! Go shopping! You could walk wherever you wanted, anywhere on the map, whenever you wished. There was nothing to stop you. You could, as Bethesda, the developers of Oblivion, said: live another life, in another world.
Little pre-teen me had to have it. It was an obsession. I thought of little else before I finally got my hands on it and I proceeded…
