![]() Beneath these two central categories a host of less abstract images take their place: light and dark, artisanship and technology, the pastoral and the industrial binaries that are already evident in these cut-scenes. ![]() Like much high fantasy, Oblivion is set in a world, constructed from a highly wrought set of fictional histories, myths and cultures, which acts as the venue for a simple moral tale of good and evil. As we enter the dungeon, the screen darkens.įigure 1: Oblivion as represented in the game's opening cut-scene.įigure 2: The garden city, the pastoral countryside and the sublime landscape in the opening sequence to Oblivion. The strings build to a screeching climax and the shot accelerates toward the window. We are descending, fixed on a barred window at the base of a prison complex outside the city. The forbidding music of the Oblivion sequence is now replaced by a brighter, heroic tone complete with swelling strings and epic brass. As the circling horizon changes from mountain peak to plain, to ocean, the brass and percussion return. The shot circles the city, revealing its several districts. Wisps of clouds part to reveal snow-capped mountains in the distance and pine trees on each bank of a river that flows toward an island city (Figure 2). We are now flying through a blue sky above a vast landscape. Tremulous strings, portentous brass and the steady crash of cymbals escalate menacingly, then break and are replaced by a delicate, celestial chorus. ![]() There is a cut to one such gate, which, under a red and stormy sky, opens to reveal a massive machine of war lumbering toward us, flanked by an army of monsters (Figure 1). His voiceover predicts his own death and the opening of a series of flaming gates to the hellish plains of Oblivion. The sequence opens with a shot of the Emperor of Tamriel - Oblivion’s medievalesque setting - in a darkened space, his face lit by flickering candlelight. The opening sequence for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Game Studios, 2006 hereafter Oblivion) establishes the importance of landscape in Bethesda’s epic role-playing game (RPG). Keywords: Oblivion, pastoral, landscape, sublime, picturesque But as the landscape becomes more familiar to the player it tends to migrate from the sublime to the picturesque mode, a waning that may be read in relation to the game’s resolution of its narrative conflict. This lends the game’s moral framework an epic grandeur. The landscape is encountered in the sublime mode, understood here through Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, in that it emphasizes an incomprehensible largeness and expanse. The landscape, which is made up of the human realm of Tamriel and the demonic realm of Oblivion, reflects a Manichean moral framework that is at the game’s heart. The landscape in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is treated here as an expressive aspect of the game whose meaning transforms as it is explored. In fact, you can still play that game on an Xbox Series X if you still have the disc and didn’t give it away to your friend’s kids like some kind of well-meaning goof before going to grad school.Īnyway, as Sam White explains in the GQ feature, Microsoft has had an unofficial partnership with Bethesda Games since 2002 with Xbox as the “lead console” for development, long preceding last year’s acquisition of the studio.The Pastoral and the Sublime in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by Paul Martin While The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Skyrim were released on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at launch, the Xbox was alone among the three major consoles of the sixth generation to have the processing power to run The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. In an interview with GQ magazine, Xbox head Phil Spencer confirmed that the long-awaited sequel to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the yet-to-be-subtitled Elder Scrolls 6, will be exclusive to Xbox consoles and PCs. ![]() Good news, bad news, or ugly news, we’re getting another direct ripple from the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.
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