When The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion blew past its tenth anniversary last year, I remember thinking that it felt like just yesterday I was playing it for the first time. I rushed home with a preorder copy and ended up putting 300 hours of my life into exploring Oblivion’s manifold environs. Whether lurching through enchanting forests as a heavily armored member of the fey folk, sneaking through bandit lairs, trying (and often fai🐭ling) to not get spotted, or avoiding frostbite near Bruma, the game was the richest video game experience I’d ever had. As well as the environments, the range of ways to earn your daily bread (or indeed, skooma) were as broad as a troll’s shoulders. If you fancied your chances being a high-fantasy Lara Croft, you could raid tombs and dungeons for artifacts. You could rise to the top of the Mage’s Guild (without even knowing magic, if you wanteꦬd a laugh.) Become a vampire, a ghostbuster, or spend your days fighting demons. The choice was yours.
The point I’m coming to in this long and rambling introduction is that while its age may be showing these days, I genuinely believe that Oblivion is a better game than Skyrim. The shift from Oblivion’s varied landscapes to Skyrim’s snowy plains hurt it for me, and no amount of northern lights could dazzle me out of seeing the faults in its writing. In this article, I’ve written on 25 of the coolest things you don’t know about Oblivion. When you’ve finished, spin the game up. It rules, and yꦑou n💎eed to remember that.
25 You Can 🌸Be A Horseman/Horselizarꦦdman Of The Apocalypse
Oblivion’s daedric quests were masterclasses in the weird, dark, and f🌃unny, and none more so than Sheogorath. This guy loves a jape, so when he finds Border Watch, a village that believes the end is coming, he enlists your help in proving them…well, kind of right. Their first sign of the apocalypse is the appearance of a plague of rats, so you sneak into a cheese collector’s house (that’s right, a cheese collector,) steal some, and put it into a cooking pot to attract rats. Who knew they loved fondue?
The second sign is livestock dying, so you need to grab the poison that’s put down to kill the rats, and poison their sheep’s food. Once this happens, Sheogorath fulfills their prophecy’s final sign, making it rain burning dogs from the heavens. It’s the end of their world as they know it, and they don’t feel fine at a🍸ll, actually.
24 💫 Search The Forests And You’ll Find This Unique Beast
Little do most people know, but there’s actually a unicorn present in Oblivion. Unfortunately for you, they aren’t the placid and pure-hearted be♏asts depicted in most media, no, it’s out for your blood, and will turn you into a kebab as quick as look at you. You can find it in a sacred grove northwest of Bravil, guarded by three Minotaurs of the Grove. Now. This is where it gets tricky. Attack any creature near it, and this thing will skewer you. Unsheathe a weapon near it too, and it’ll kill you.
Stealth is in order here. Sneak past the minotaurs, ideally with a chameleon effect, and you can gallop away. Once you moun꧟t it, it’s yours, but it will make its way back to the grove should yoไu stray too far from it.
23 𒁃 Never Thoꦇught I’d Feel Sorry For That
Oblivion is, by comparison to many other RPGs, actually pretty light in its subject matter. Yes, the game is about a demonic invasion of a Tolkien-esque high-fantasy realm, but it still doesn’t ever feel weighty. Occasionally, however, it genuinely does – one such case is the suicidal troll. Yep, the game made me feel for a troll. You’ll find this guy, and his chicken scratch suicide note, where he laments his inability to collect a toll from passers-by under a bridge near Bravil. So he necked a bottle of wine and threw himself into the river like the star of a demented Three Billy Goat’s Gruff.
The troll decided to end it all because it was the “wurst troll evurr.” Impost💮er syndrome can be tough Troll dude!
22 Paintbrushes Are For More Than Just Art 🍰 🌟
So if you’re one of those speedrunner types, listen up. Paintbrushes are for more than just making art in the world of Oblivion. If you place them in midair, they𝓡’ll float. There’s also a duplication glitch that lets you clone 𝓀them as many times as you want. Do you see where I’m going with this?
As well as climbing over city walls, escaping from guards’ wrath with a makeshift ladder powered by creativity and glitches, you can use it to complete the 🌼game in record time. Duplicate enough paintbrushesﷺ, and climb into the Imperial City’s Temple. A couple of glitches later, and you can trigger the game’s ending sequence, without ever starting it. Gotta love programming holes, and the length that speedrunners will go to to find them.
21 𓆏 There’s A Hidden Zelda Reference 🀅
I remember when I first played Oblivion, my first Elder Scrolls game, the idea of glass armor and weaponry seemed bizarre. That doesn’t seem like a good idea, unless you’re a bar brawler, right? However, it goes deeper than that. If you’ve played any of the Zelda games, you’ll be familiar with the Mirror Shield, a glass shield that can reflect magic. You can actually find these in Oblivion too, with the same abilities!
While the Mirror Shield itself is random, as a poster on Neoseeker pointed out, it’s also just an enchanted shield. If you’ve got the magical skills, you canꦛ go to an enchanting table and create your own. You could even make it more powerful than the base shield🐈’s 14% reflect magic, giving it 100% reflect magic (for an extortionate price.) Go for it. Make Link’s look like a baby’s toy.
20 One Of The Thieves’ Guild Quests Turns You Into♈ A Monster Of British Legends
In the Thieves’ Guild quest “The Boots of Springheel Jak” you steal (who’d have thought) a pair of eponymous boots, with the game intending you to Gray Fox. However, if you decide to deviate from the deviant pathway the Thieves’ Guild instructs you to follow, and don them, they’ll grant you a +50 to your acrobatics skill. Through a little glitching involving a Daedric quest and a trip to the Leyawiin dungeons, you can make that effect permanent, regardless of whether you’re wearing them or not. Though many wouldn’t give the boots a second thought beyond how nice it is to bounce around like a rocket-powered bunny, there’s a neat backstory. The boots and quest refer to a British legend of a demonic creature who terrorized Vi🍌ctorian London, and was able to jump vast distances in single bounds.
19 🥃 There’s ไA Town That Worships Demons And Practices Argonian Sacrifice
In the quest “A Shadow Over Hackdirt” you have to investigate the small town of Hackdirt. The uninspiring name of the town belies a deeper and darker secret. If you’re familiar with H.P. Lovecraft, you’ll probably have read the story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. While old H.P. “Race Hate” Lovecraft’s message is abominable, the story of townspeople who are intermingling with inhuman monsters has evidently left its mark on Oblivion.
In Hackdirt, the inhabitants are revealed🥀 to worship creatures known as The Deep Ones, and employ bug-eyed near-naked lunatics called the Brethren as security. The quest’s goal is to rescue an Argonian woman from Chorrol called Dar-Ma, who is due to be offered up as a scaly sacr𝄹ifice. The Brethren’s massive eyes allow them to see better in the caves where she’s being held, so you’ll either need excellent alteration, superb sneaking, or a huge hammer to make your way through.
18 ꦬ Some Inns Are Better Than Others
Well met, tired traveler. Are you exhausted from hours of fighting everything from minotaurs to city guards, and marching endlessly across Cyrodiil♈ like a medieval meth head, and need a place to crash for the night? May I invite you to The Bloated Float in the Imperial City’s harbour? Spend a night on here, and you’ll see what makes us so different from the other Inns in the city!
That is certainly true. Decide to get some shuteye, and you’ll wake up to a nasty surprise. The boat has been sailed out to sea by a bunch of small-time pirates called The Blackwater Brigands! So what do you do? Well, grab your weapon and start prac🐟ticing some restorative justice. If you’re a low-level character, I highly recommend grabbing the Blackwater Blade from the leader, Selene. It’s a good one-handed sword with a pretty nice ab𒐪sorb fatigue enchantment.
17 🌌 Who You Gonna Ca✨ll?
In the town of Anvil, you can find a huge house, the Benirus Manor, for sale for the paltry price of 5000 gold. This seems a bargain, before you find the house isn’t so empty after all. Turns out its previous resident never really moved out, and they’re anxious to introduce themselves. T🧸he first time you sleep, three ghosts will show up to say hello (and try to tear your face off.)
Over the course of this quest, you’ll have to face down ghost af💙ter ghost with silver weaponry (or, amusingly, your fists. Never saw Rick Moranis doing that.) Eventually, Velywyn, who s𝄹old it to you, fully aware that his grandpa, who lived there previously, was a necromancer, and will reluctantly come back to lift the house’s curse for you, but chickens out at the last minute, leaving you to fight a lich of another of the home’s owners.
16 𒁏 Everything About The Shivering Isles
There’s enough strange goings-on in The Shivering Isles for a list on its own, but in this entry, I’m going to try and sum up what makes it so cool. The Shivering Isles is a psychedelic dreamscape, made clear from the moment you first enter its lands amidst a flood of butterfliꦆes. Once you’re there, you have to fight a hulking metaphysical doorman known as The Gatekeeper, before moving into the Isles proper. The land is divided into the dark Dementia and bright Mania. You can choose to side with either Dementia’s Dark Seducers, or Mania’s Golden Saints.
I don’t want to get into the plot too much, because it deserv🔯es to be experienced, but all is not as crazy as it may seem with Sheogorath, and it’s time that the Isles had a change o𝓀f management.