When The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released in 2006, it was clear that the studio Bethesda had successfully expanded its fantasy franchise’s charm and oddball magic.
The premise of Oblivion is similar to other modern role-playing games, giving the player a seemingly insurmountable objective and then crucial skills and weaponry on the journey. High-definition graphical processing power for that era contributed to indelible world building, allowing players to freely travel the cities and caverns of Cyrodiil.
But what made Oblivion one of the genre’s most celebrated games was the agency it afforded players, the expansive environment it threw them into and the way it fully embraced the dorkiness of its fantasy world.
In the mid-2000s, the ways players experienced video games were transforming. User-generated content was propelling Web 2.0, and social media, like Facebook, was rising. Although Oblivion was a single-player game, its wonky artificial intelligence, character dialogue and player interactions made it a watershed moment for online memes.
Characters having a conversation would walk away from each other midsentence. Some jumped out of street corners to greet you with a quest and an eerie smile. The rag-doll physics of enemies coupled with their heinous death shrieks made battles more humorous than haunting.
The technical flaws run counter to the cool aura of more recent fantasy role-playing games, like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and Oblivion’s successor, Skyrim (2011), which produced notable memes of its own.
