In many respects, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is my favorite video game. I’ll spare you my misty-eyed recollections of the original box art and instruction manual: Oblivion was to me what Skyrim was to people who like the cold more than I do. I fucking love Oblivion. Hell, I bought the original version on my Xbox last year just so I could run through the game again, this time as an extremely antisocial Argonian (lizard-person).

Needless to say, the surprise release of Oblivion Remastered had me happier than a pig in a shit factory. I downloaded it on Game Pass and started a game as a wood elf acrobat – only to have to leave home for several days, leaving me Oblivion-less.

Enter Playstation’s remote play feature. I ponied up the requisite cash, downloaded it on my PS5, and started a new game, this time as a relatively straightforward Redguard melee specialist named Thaddeus. I got done with a few of the Fighters’ Guild quests before deciding that I was being a little too…safe with things.

So I popped back to an earlier save (right before the exit to the Imperial Sewers) and made some “adjustments” to my Redguard, emerging with a villainous-looking dark elf with a focus on more sorcerous activities.

My first order of business was to fast travel to the notorious shithole of Bravil, poke my head into an Oblivion gate outside the walls (and immediately run run away), then swim to a nearby island.

This wasn’t any ordinary island: this island was crazy. Like, literally. It’s got a three-faced statue on it, and one of the faces has an open mouth with a portal in it that vomits out insane people.

Naturally, I jumped right in, knowing from prior playthroughs what awaited me on the other side:

The Shivering Isles, realm of the Madgod Sheogorath.

Damn, it’s good to be back.

…that said, things are going a bit differently this time, given that I jumped into the Realm of Madness at level 1 and with no equipment besides what I’d picked up in the tutorial.

Now that’s crazy.

DAY 1:

I am confronted with the choice to enter the Shivering Isles proper via one of two gates, labeled “Mania” and “Dementia.”

I choose Mania, because I like to have fun.

This ends with me shooting some goblin-adjacent creatures in the face while I frantically backpedal through a forest of mushrooms.

After a brief chat with the only locals who don’t immediately try to murder me, I make some magic bone arrows (as one does) and kill the freaky dude guarding the gates to the Shivering Isles’ capital city: New Sheoth. I’m making big moves already.

DAY 2:

I gotta say, the “Dementia” side of New Sheoth is a real shithole (I chose Dementia this time, because I figured the elderly would make for less fearsome opponents). I sell some herbs to the sleepy lady who runs the inn and take a power nap to level up before paying a visit to Lord Sheogorath himself. He’s just as nutty and jovial as I remember (pro tip: if you haven’t done it before, you should try attacking Sheogorath in his throne room. It’ll be funny, I promise.)

DAY 3:

Sheogorath has a job for me. That means it’s questin’ time…and this one is a stone-cold classic: “Baiting the Trap,” a.k.a. “the one where you troll a party of adventurers to death.” After a quick-and-easy clearing of a straightforward dungeon,[1] I get to the fun part: tormenting a very unlucky party of adventurers as they explored the place. This entails choosing between one of two ways to mess with them in each new room they enter: one choice is more physically threatening, while the other is designed to fuck with their heads. Naturally, I choose to fuck with their heads harder than the warden of a 19th-century mental institution: we’re in the realm of madness, after all, not the realm of get-your-shit-pushed-in-by-skeletons.

Day 4:

Lord Sheogorath wants me to help out his subordinates, who I’ll call Duke Fuckwit and Duchess Depression for ease of reference.

I speak to the Duchess first, because the door to her throne room is closer, and she informs me that (gasp!) there was a conspiracy afoot – with the objective of dethroning her (or something)!

Thankfully, she loans me a teleporting dude with Emperor Palpatine’s electricity powers and gives me carte blanche to run “secondary debriefings” on pretty much everybody in the district.

I proceed to electrocute more mentally-unwell people than the state of Texas does in an average decade.

Well, OK, maybe not that many.[2] But it was a lot. I track down the chief conspirator, electrocute her a bunch (shocker), and turn her over to the Duchess…along with my electricity-spewing henchman.

It’s at this point that I realize:

1. I’m playing a magic-focused character

And

2. I have no idea where the fuck I’m supposed to buy new spells in the Shivering Isles.

Oh, well. I’m sure I’ll figure it out sometime that isn’t now.

Day 5:

Having completed my business with the Duchess, I meander over to the other side of Sheogorath’s castle and pay a visit to Duke Fuckwit, who asks me to retrieve a doodad for him from some godforsaken shithole. Classic. Off we go, then.

NOTE:

At this point I got distracted by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, by which I mean I became absolutely enamored with it. France: who knew they did art?

Seriously, though. Play Expedition 33. It’s already in my top 10 games of all time, and I haven’t even finished Act II yet – by the end, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the top 5.

In [temporary] conclusion…

I’ll get back to my adventures in the Shivering Isles, but Expedition 33 well and truly has my nuts in a vise.

As is, let me share my (incomplete) thoughts on the Oblivion remaster:

It’s pretty good. The devs ironed out some of the leveling system’s funkiness. but kept most (if not all?) of the doofy-ass voice acting, as well as the, uh, “unique” lockpicking and persuasion minigames. Animations look a lot smoother, now, too, and textures look suitably current-gen. What I don’t like is how they smeared a shit-brown filter all over that glorious bright green grass outside the Imperial City. I’m playing on console, too, so I don’t have the option to mod it out (so far, at least). If you haven’t played Oblivion before, you should! If you have…well, if you liked it the first time, now’s a good chance for another dip in the pool. Come on in, water’s warm (because of the gates to literal hell that have opened nearby, if I had to guess).

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[1] Which I paused in the middle of to power-level my sneaking abilities by crouch-walking up and down a staircase for fifteen minutes.

[2] I guess they probably do lethal injections now? That doesn’t work for the punchline, though.