Starfield

Starfield is a game that definitely had a lot of hype behind it; both as Bethesda's first new IP in 25 years, as well as a game Todd Howard has purportedly wanted to make for most of his life, inspired by early groundbreaking space-oriented games like Sundog: Frozen Legacy and Elite.  Starfield definitely shows off its influences too, letting the player take on various randomized missions that have them delivering cargo (including contraband that can get them arrested), battling space pirates and purchasing and upgrading new ships.  Gameplay still retains a heavy on-foot exploration element, having the player raid various outposts overtaken by pirates and hostile aliens in search of useful loot and equipment upgrades.  Of course there is a main storyline too, having the player uncover the mystery of strange artifacts scattered throughout the galaxy.  Somehow though, it just never quite grabbed me; standards for the role playing game genre have hit an all time high in 2023, but Bethesda's seem to have regressed to where they were almost three decades ago, focusing on sheer content volume over making any of it unique, deep or memorable.  Starfield very much feels like a retread of Fallout 4's school of design, blending elements together from a half-dozen other popular games to try and cash in - a little Elite here, a little No Man's Sky there, a handful of Starflight, a touch of Fallout 4's gun customization and base raiding, a sprinkling of spaceship customization like... er, Kingdom Hearts? ...and Bethesda's usual dry characters, lore and plotting as the glue holding it all together, without giving any element of it a unique spin or adding any serious depth for fear of driving off that very lucrative casual audience.  They also manage to suck all the joy and sense of wonder out of seeing new sights, which is a pretty grievous flaw in any game about exploring the final frontier.  Much like Arena and Daggerfall you're required to do story missions and read various books and logs to activate fast-travel waypoints if you ever want to see much of anything beyond empty hills and valleys, and there aren't even any land vehicles to make on-foot wandering faster; yeah, they still can't seem to make that oft-requested feature a reality, despite the existence of fan mods that add them in games like Fallout 4 (but then again, why put in the work yourself when fans will do it for free, right?).  Heck, you can't even low-fly over the surface in your ship as you could in even the earliest release of No Man's Sky, so the whole game just boils down to activating a waypoint, going there, raiding generic bases, fighting a spaceship or two once in a while, rinse and repeat until you win or get bored, whichever comes first. I suppose if you want something to get lost in and shoot stuff and collect loot for a bit it reaches the plateau of being passable, but just being "passable" isn't good enough to warrant a $70 purchase when there's hundreds of amazing action-adventure games available for a fraction of that price, or even for free.  For those who enjoy character-based, story driven, mechanically innovative RPGs or more nuanced takes on space combat/exploration, Starfield has very little that several older games haven't already done better.  The experience only feels all the more blasé considering it came out in late 2023, a year that had already brought us incredible titles from other big names like Sea of Stars, Baldur's Gate III and Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.  I did have some hope that Starfield would prove to be the start of a renaissance for spacefaring RPGs and allow Bethesda to finally break free of the same tired, shallow design tropes they've been retreading over and over again since 2006, but alas, it's just another safe, inoffensive* content mine that modders and casual gamers and maybe a dedicated roleplayer or two will have a good time exploring for a while, but those in search of an enduring, emotionally investing journey will forget about pretty quickly.

* Unless you're one of those towering intellects who equates having token bi/gay characters, nonwhites and pronoun choices with the decline of western society, of course.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Released: 2023
Platforms: PC, XBox Series

Fallout 76

Fallout 76 is a game that has been quagmired in negativity from the word "Go", lacking the immersion of previous Fallouts by replacing all human NPCs with robots who dispense quests in the most sterile fashion imaginable, generally buggy design prone to frequent crashing, and preorder bonuses being fulfilled with much cheaper merchandise than was promised.  That, plus rampant and nearly-unchecked player cheating, security breaches in Bethesda's support system, an immensely overpriced in-game microtransaction system and a much-derided premium service that costs another $100 a year atop the already enormous price gouging present, have only worsened its image further, leading to it being known as one of the most cursed games of the modern era.   

But beyond the storm of corporate meddling, is there a worthwhile game to be found?  Well, I suppose that all hinges on how much you enjoyed Fallout 4.  76 is essentially that with a mediocre multiplayer element tacked on, letting you explore a vast world, complete story quests at your leisure and build your own settlements, to either ally with other players against the odds or get into turf wars with them (if you can find a group that's willing to play fair and not just resort to readily-available cheating tools).  Subsequent patches have also reintroduced some humanoid NPCs, improving the game's immersion factor, and the underlying storyline is decent if unremarkable, giving you something to stay motivated in the course of all your extra-curricular settlement building and player interaction.  However, it retains many of the same problems Fallout 4 had, too.  Nothing you do ever feels like it makes much of a significant change in the world, and it really doesn't, as it's only ever acknowledged by other players - usually at the barrel of a gun while they try to tear down your buildings in search of profit.  The crafting system itself is arbitrary and makes little sense, particularly as half the things you build provide no tangible benefit and the system itself lacks some very common-sense things you'd expect to be included.  There's a certain overhanging frustration in the fact that you can build laser turrets, water purifiers and nuclear reactors out of trash you find laying around a ruined office building, but still can't build a functional vehicle because the game's still running on a code base that's over two decades old at this point (and with their shareholders pulling the chain and demanding profits RIGHT NOW, it's unlikely they'll have the time or resources to adopt a new engine anytime soon).

76's premise is a good one - an open-world free-for-all where you can shape the wasteland to your will - but like Fallout 4 before it, the execution falls several steps short.  Fallout is a free-roaming RPG franchise beloved by fans for its immersive storytelling and design, and online open-world sandbox shooters are known for their fast-paced, yet strategic gameplay; when 76 takes a mediocre storyline and pastes a half-baked version of Fortnite on top of it, it just becomes a lesser version of two well-established genre staples that doesn't end up pleasing fans of either.  That, plus all of the aforementioned unsavory elements of its launch and the subsequent money-making scammery associated with it, make it a game I simply can't recommend to anyone.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios 

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Released: 2018

Platforms: Playstation 4, XBox One, PC

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The fifth main entry in the Elder Scrolls franchise was a massive success for Bethesda, becoming a big hit among fans and critics as well as one of the best-selling video game titles of all time.  But is there enough here to appeal to long-time series fans as well, or does it change too much to an action-oriented format and alienate them?

Skyrim is a game that needs no introduction to modern gamers, as it was nothing short of an institution at the time of its release.  As with the earlier Elder Scrolls games, it introduced the player to an enormous, intricately-detailed fantasy world and gave them the freedom to do nearly anything they wished within it - exploring dungeons, fighting bosses, taking on a huge variety of side quests, or even doing more mundane things like gathering ingredients for alchemic potions, mining ore to craft swords and axes, or just taking on the role of a freelance thief or pickpocket.

The exploration aspect of the game feels considerably more well-refined in Skyrim's case, with a dense landscape to dotted with numerous towers, fortresses and caverns to explore.  Many of these have a bit more of a distinct "video game level", feel, with a series of puzzles, traps and enemy obstacles to overcome and usually capped off with a "boss encounter" featuring a powerful foe with some scripted events in the fight (such as a hagraven who summons more foes before teleporting away, only to confront the player later in the gauntlet).  Efforts are made to give a tangible reward at the end of each of these as well, whether it's a nice piece of loot that ties into a larger quest, another word for a Dragon shout (more on those in a bit) or just a nice magical weapon the player can keep or sell at their discretion.  Most even have a quick escape route after the boss is defeated, cutting down on time spent backtracking and keeping the overall gameplay flow smooth.

Combat in Skyrim has seen much improvement as well.  As in Oblivion and Fallout, enemies show a much greater degree of intelligence, requiring the player to time their attacks and blocks in order to counter their opponent's moves and to quickly identify the biggest threat in a group of enemies.  New options are afforded in the various "dragon shouts" the player acquires throughout the game, which have a variety of effects - sending enemies flying with a powerful blast of force, breathing fire, slowing time momentarily, or even speeding up one's own attacks in order to deal damage more quickly, to name just a few.  Spells are similarly overhauled, with the player now having the ability to use spells that consistently launch elemental damage or heal themselves as long as they hold the button, rather than having to continuously cast a spell over and over again.  Using a stealthier approach is beneficial at times as well, as the player can often pick off several opponents from a distance with a bow before they are alerted to the player's position and attack in force.

Dual-wielding weapons is also possible now, letting the player wield two one-handed weapons at a time and gaining the enchantments of both, as well as being able to attack more quickly.  However, this comes at a cost - characters cannot block attacks while dual-wielding, so while they deal out more damage, they will take more as well.  Learning to evade enemy attacks becomes more important when employing this style, and of course having a few spare potions around isn't a bad idea either.  Spells can be used in similar fashion, with the player equipping a different one in each hand and casting them separately, or even both at once, at their leisure.

But with this success came much criticism from long-time fans, who were quick to point out that several elements from earlier Elder Scrolls games were simplified or removed entirely.  Most noticeably, there are three melee weapon types now (swords, maces and axes) and no individual skills for them - instead, they are now coalesced into simple "One-handed weapon" and "Two-handed weapon" skills and are largely interchangeable.  Weapons also no longer break or degrade with use, which effectively takes away the Blacksmithing skill and its associated benefits.  There are no longer Unarmored or Unarmed skills in the game, making fist-fighting rather pointless and all but forcing mage-type characters to either avoid direct combat entirely or bring enchanted gear and spells to offset the disadvantage it puts them at.

Another common criticism is that some of the freedom afforded the player in earlier games is lost in the spell system.  Players no longer have the ability to make custom spells, instead having to find or buy spell books that give them pre-made effects.  Enchanting is somewhat more limited as well, as the player must now find a pre-existing magical weapon and "decompile" it at an enchanting altar, which destroys the weapon in the process but gives the player that spell effect to add to their own enchantments.  Many of these are randomly placed throughout the world, which can ensure that some effects (such as Banish) are entirely a matter of luck to find.

Perhaps the most stark change, however, is that the player's core stats are now completely removed from the game.  No longer does the player have things like Strength, Intelligence, Personality, Speed or Luck; instead, these are either fixed (such as move speed and jump height) or determined by the perks one receives through the refined skill system.  For example, once one reaches a certain level of proficiency in the One-Handed Weapons skill, they can buy a Perk that allows them to deal more damage with all one handed weapons, in effect giving them more "strength" and damage when using those types of weapons.  These don't always boil down to just numbers, either - training the Archery skill tree can give the player the ability to zoom in and slow down time in order to take more precise shots, while powering up the Stealth skill can remove the penalty for moving quickly while in sneaking mode.  Similarly, one can cast two of the same spell at the same time to get a bonus to its effect, whether extra damage, defensive buff or healing effect on themselves.  The Lockpicking tree has some benefits as well, even if the player has gotten quite good at the minigame associated with it - boosting it enough and buying new perks will grant bonus gold or rarer items in chests.  In short, the game abolishes a significant RPG element by doing away with core stats, but also makes efforts to preserve its roleplaying element by rewarding the player for sticking to a certain style of play, all while sacrificing none of the dynamic action of the game.  It's different, but works surprisingly well.

I feel that also sums up my feelings about the game as a whole.  While it makes some controversial changes to long-established genre and series tropes that were unpopular among many series fans and its main plot is pretty lacking compared to its predecessors, its action is quite engrossing and its atmosphere is quite heavy, though the fun books, dialog trees and notes from the earlier games that filled in a lot of its lore and backstory in an interesting way seem considerably less prevalent this time.  However, in spite of those issues, as well as series' trademark bugs and balance issues, Skyrim remains a fun adventure to undertake - one you can easily get immersed in for hundreds of hours.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Playstation 4, XBox One, Switch
Released: 2011, 2016, 2017
Recommended version: As with the other Elder Scrolls games, I'd recommend the PC version solely on the fact that it features modding support, which allows for virtually unlimited replayability by tweaking some of its gameplay elements and adding new content.  The Playstation 4 and Xbox One ports include all of the DLC and have modding support as well, however, making them worth consideration for those looking for a console version.  Finally, the Switch version provides a bit of exclusive content (in the form of Amiibo support and an exclusive Link costume) and includes all the DLC from the earlier releases, making it an excellent portable version of the game.

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is a game that met with much skepticism among long-time Fallout fans, with concerns that its shift in development teams and change to a more action-oriented engine would ruin the magic the first two games conveyed.  But did Bethesda do an admirable job trying to build a new game in the Fallout universe, or is this the archetypal killing blow to the series that so many feared?

Fallout 3 is certainly an odd case among video game development cycles, beginning its life under Black Isle at Interplay during a time when they were facing severe financial problems.  Eventually Interplay closed down Black Isle and sold off several of their popular IPs in an attempt to avert bankruptcy, with the Fallout license being purchased by Bethesda Softworks.  Rather than use the work already done on Interplay's Fallout 3, however, they controversially decided to scrap it all and create their own game from scratch using the Gamebryo engine (already used in their earlier games Morrowind and Oblivion) and with their own original plot and mechanics.  From there, virtually every move they made on Fallout 3 was heavily nitpicked and criticized by long-time series fans, with many dismissing it as another "dumbed-down game" ruined by a shift in developers well before it was even out (not aided by the lackluster reception of Fallout Tactics and the extremely mediocre console spinoff, Brotherhood of Steel).

However, Bethesda took things in stride, and even made some genuine efforts to address fan complaints and criticisms.  Rewrites were made to better accommodate their game to series lore (with the discrepant Super Mutant designs and behavior being explained, for example) and some elements of Fallout's design were worked into Fallout 3, such as having damaged or crippled limbs hinder the player and even a slight "turn-based" aspect in the VATS system.  The latter essentially lets the player stop the action temporarily to take aim at a specific enemy, allowing them to target their limbs with as many shots as their AP gauge allows.  AP slowly recharges over (real) time, though, so one can't simply abuse this system constantly to pick off every enemy they encounter with heads hots.  Finally, they secured the rights to "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" - the song originally intended to be used in Fallout 1's intro (which was ultimately replaced by "Maybe" in that game); both songs, as well as several other era-appropriate ones, prominently feature on this game's soundtrack, adding much to the game's feel.

Fallout 3 still clearly plays to Bethesda's strengths rather than Black Isle's, however.  Their skill in world design definitely shines through here, with the ruins of DC providing a sprawling, vast area to explore.  Venturing through subways, ruined stores and finding the various landmarks about the area lends much to the game's charm, as does some of the occasional humor seen throughout - entering a particular convenience store sets off a lengthy Rube Goldberg trap that eventually blasts the player with a shotgun, for example.  Also included are a crude weapon-crafting system (letting the player construct a poisonous dart gun and a device that throws junk at enemies for surprising damage, to name two) and they do actually manage to make the world feel like a desolate, bombed-out hellhole in a lot of ways.  Unlike the first two Fallout games, radiation is a very real danger in Fallout 3, with nearly every consumable the player encounters adding to their overall count and slowly weakening and killing them.  Clean food and water is scarce, mutated animals are everywhere and there is quite a lot of bleak atmosphere, with radio signals revealing messages from long-dead people caught in the bombing raids and desperately trying to save themselves and more than a few other bleak stories told through the game's text and audio logs.  The game's overall mood and tone is easily its strongest suit, even if it's not entirely in line with the Black Isle produced Fallout games.

On the other end of the coin, Bethesda's shortcomings are also evident in Fallout 3.  In a reversal from Oblivion, the main quest of the game is easily its strongest element from a writing perspective; it's essentially a family drama with the player's character frequently being tempted by evil as they seek out their father and attempt to complete his life's work.  The rest of the game's quests, however, are relatively forgettable and handed out by characters that aren't really given much in the way of depth or personality.  Some just come off as rather silly (such as having to find a clan of "vampires" or destroy an entire town for no satisfactory reason) while others are relatively mundane (the Nuka Cola collecting quest).  They also seem to have taken note of the karma system from the first two Fallouts and implemented in the most literal of senses here, with quests only really being defined as boolean good-or-evil choices with no real depth or problem-solving element to them - basically, you're either a paragon of virtue or evil for evil's sake, with no real nuance or option for a middle ground.  A pretty disappointing turn for a franchise that formerly defined itself on questlines that often required genuine detective work on the player's part, where the most "evil" option often wasn't just to shoot everybody they could and where even being a "good guy" could prove troublesome for you down the road.

Most of the DLC for Fallout 3 is pretty mediocre as well.  While one can argue that Broken Steel at least provides a more satisfying conclusion to the game than the stock game did, the rest just feel largely by-the-numbers and unnecessary, not really giving the player much more to do than a few more generic quests and stronger enemies to shoot at.  The one I found most enjoyable was Point Lookout, which had a nice, creepy swamp area to explore as well as a rather twisted sense of humor that, at its best points, felt like something from one of the earlier games' better questlines made manifest in a 3D engine.  The rest mostly just consist of relatively small, 2-3 hour quests that add little to the overarching story and don't really provide a lot for the player to do other than shoot things, which is just a bit of a letdown from a company that built itself on crafting huge RPG worlds with intricate lore and mechanics.

When all is said and done, Fallout 3 is a valiant first attempt at a Fallout game from Bethesda.  While they did show some trouble cutting their teeth on the dense lore and the franchise's dark sense of humor, they did at least make an attempt to capture the feel of Fallout as they put their own spin on things, playing to their strengths of world design and giving it a bleak, almost horror-esque atmosphere.  It honestly gave me hope for future games in the franchise as I thought they would take in in more fan suggestions and continue to expand the vast, bombed-out America the franchise was set in.  It's just a pity that they didn't keep going in that direction with Fallout 4, instead focusing more on throwing in countless ideas and gameplay elements with no real direction or integration between any of them...

Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Released:  2008
Recommended version:  Once again, I have to go with the PC versions, which add in modding capabilities.  This allows for an even more bleak and harsh survival experience, more fluidly animated characters and even letting you remove that ugly green smog that permeates the entirety of the game, letting you view the capital wasteland in its full splendor.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The fourth entry in the Elder Scrolls franchise marks a transition into a more dynamic-feeling game world and a much heavier emphasis on action-oriented gameplay than the flat dice rolls of its predecessors.  But does this change-up work in the franchise's favor, or has it simply lost any charm it held with this new format?

Elder Scrolls, despite being a 3D game experience from its origins, was always at its core a tabletop RPG, with a large emphasis on random dice rolls, statistics and role-playing being integral to enjoyment of the core experience.  Quests could easily be made or broken by a single skill roll and combat was overall rather dry, mostly just consisting of swinging or firing arrows/spells at an enemy and hoping you deplete its HP before it does the same to you.  This was somewhat necessary due to the game's heavily randomized design (with most quests in the game being randomly generated monster extermination/item delivery quests), but in light of the series' jump to a new engine and a smaller, more detailed game world with Morrowind, didn't make a great deal of sense there.  Particularly when one's actions could make key NPCs unwilling to talk to their character and when seemingly innocuous but actually plot-important NPCs could die, rendering the player unable to continue in the main quest.

For lack of a better description, Oblivion is less of a tabletop game and much more of a video game.  While obviously the player's abilities are still reliant on their stats, the overall gameplay now has something of a more common-sense approach.  For example, weapon statistics no longer roll a hit or miss based on your stat - if you see a weapon physically connect with an enemy, it counts as such.  However, boosting your weapon's stat can cause you to do more damage, and when certain milestones are hit, unlock new moves that can pierce an enemy's defenses or otherwise give you an advantage in a fight (such as knocking them down or disarming them).  Armor skills work in similar fashion, with the player unlocking benefits once they hit certain milestones, such as slower degradation or being able to perform defensive dodge maneuvers to evade enemy attacks.  Lockpicking is now governed by a minigame rather than a simple dice roll, though raising one's skill with it can give bonuses like not resetting all of the tumblers when a click is mistimed.  NPC interaction now works on this principle too, with a minigame that allows the player to raise or lower disposition by clicking quarters of a rotating circle with the right timing (or handing out bribes to gain a free boost).  Finally, the days of having to wander aimlessly around the landscape to find one's next goal are largely gone.  Oblivion features a first for the series with the advent of a waypoint system, pointing you to your currently selected objective with a marker on your map and compass.  Fast travel is also more convenient, returning to the Daggerfall-styled system of letting the player pick their destination on a map and quickly travel there at almost any time.  However, this only works for locations they have already visited, so there is still quite a bit of emphasis on exploring the game's world.

Great strides have also been made in making Oblivion's environment feel much more alive and realistic than in previous Elder Scrolls games.  NPCs now freely wander the world, operating by their own schedules and acting in a fairly realistic fashion - visiting pubs, talking in the streets, working at their shops at the day and going home at night, guards changing shifts and leaving brief gaps in their security, and so forth.  This can occasionally be annoying when a quest requires you to track down a particular NPC and speak to them at a specific time or place, but adds much to the immersion factor of the game overall.  The player can also no longer kill plot-essential NPCs (they will simply be "knocked unconscious" instead), so they no longer have to worry about putting the game into an unwinnable state as they pursue goals not relevant to the main quest.

Also helping matters is the fact that every character in the game is now voiced (and quite well at that), though this comes at the tradeoff of having far fewer dialog options than in previous Elder Scrolls games; generally, one can only ask NPCs about a limited range of topics referring to their profession, or the generic coverall choice of "Rumors".  This does lend itself to a lot of repeated dialog as well, with the game quickly achieving some notoriety for its frequent and inane conversations between NPCs.

As with most open-ended RPGs of this time, the game's sidequests are where much of the development's effort took place.  Oblivion is no different, and great strides have been made to make the sidequests much more diverse and interesting than the usual slew of slay-the-monster or deliver-the-item quests that plague most games of this type.  The thieves guild goals are largely open-ended, simply requiring the player to steal and fence a set amount of goods from any NPC they can before another story-driven quest comes up; these tend to be more high-profile, requiring the player to break into noble mansions or even castles to acquire a particular item.  The assassins' guild gets equally creative, with some particularly depraved moments throughout its questline that I won't spoil here (though anyone who has played the game will probably have vivid memories of the infamous party mission).  Even some of the one-off quests are quite fun, such as tracking down the cursed sword Umbra (in the hands of an extremely powerful and dangerous NPC) or just using a map and a few vague clues to seek out hidden treasures can all be quite fun.  The DLC missions are surprisingly good, too - from new strongholds for the the player to liberate, rebuild and decorate to their liking to  quests like Mehrunes' Razor to two fully-featured expansion packs in Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles that add hours of new content and, in the latter's case, a pretty twisted sense of humor to the proceedings.  Of course, not all of it is golden; the notorious Horse Armor DLC is commonly cited among gamers as a prime example of overpriced and ultimately useless game addons, and is frequently blamed for a trend of them that persists to this day.

The main quest, on the other hand, doesn't feel quite as well-polished.  While it does tell a fun story, it does lend itself to several annoying moments.  Once the player gets a few steps into the main questline, "oblivion gates" begin spawning frequently throughout the countryside, which they can then enter and close by making their way through a series of towers and traps.  However, the lack of variety in these, as well as the frequently repeated enemies and layouts, quickly got me burned out on them; before long I just began ignoring them entirely.  They didn't give enough of a tangible reward to make them worth exploring after a while, and their layouts just ended up being more confusing to navigate than anything.  As many have also attested, the ending to the main questline feels rather rushed and more than a bit like a copout; indeed, developer comments reveal this is actually the case, with a lot more planned for the idea they had that was dropped due to looming deadlines.

Other signs of the game's somewhat rushed development are evident as well - many of the ruins and dungeon interiors one encounters look very similar, with a lot of the exact same wall textures and 3D models present throughout.  More infamously, though, some lines of dialog aren't voiced at all, while others contain outtakes that were accidentally left in the game, which is a bit awkward (and unintentionally funny) when one runs across them.  Character faces and lip-syncing are also rather awkward-looking overall, though this was still before such things were common elements of gaming, so it is forgivable to a degree.  The leveling system in the game leaves something to be desired too; enemies' strength scales up with the player's, which can lead to the game becoming exceptionally difficult if they gain too many levels without taking care to keep their equipment and spells up-to-date to deal with new threats; ironically, one way many players deal with this is to specialize in numerous skills they rarely (if ever) plan to use so that they can more easily control when they, and by extension the enemy - will gain levels and power up.  There are various player mods on the PC version to offset this, though you're kind of out of luck for the console ports.

Oblivion definitely took the Elder Scrolls series in a different direction, for both good and ill; the action it provides is satisfying for a time, as is the bigger focus on immersion with its voiceover, active world and story-driven questlines that rarely fall into the boring "go here get this and return" format.  However, its falls short in other ways - the base storyline is pretty dull, the balance is all over the map (and much easier to exploit than even Morrowind's) and the greatly simplified NPC interactions and still-not-great combat make its gameplay feel pretty monotonous after a while.  One step forward for gameplay, but a significant step back in storytelling, balance and polish factor.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Released:  2006, 2007
Recommended version:  As with the other Elder Scrolls titles, I generally prefer the PC versions for their modding capabilities, as well as the ability to get the maximum benefit from the more powerful  hardware the platform generally allows.  Oblivion doesn't have quite as many mods as Morrowind or Skyrim, but the ones it does have - such as a leveling system overhaul, revamped interface, slews of new monsters and a variety of new spells to play with - nevertheless add much to the experience.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The game that put the Elder Scrolls franchise on the map and turned Bethesda into a major player in the gaming industry, as well as helping to redefine the entire RPG genre into something much more grandiose in scale.  But does Morrowind still hold up today, or is this an interesting piece of history that should remain in the past?

It's a bit hard to believe given the current gaming landscape, but Bethesda's Elder Scrolls franchise was actually rather unpopular in its earliest days.  While critics praised Arena for attempting to create a sprawling virtual world in a game engine similar to the Ultima Underworld franchise, its procedurally-generated environment, high system requirements and overall bugginess made its gameplay difficult to enjoy, which led to a mixed reception overall.  Still, its ambitious and open-ended design let it build a cult following that led to slow but steady sales, and Bethesda was eventually convinced to release a sequel two years later.  Daggerfall upped the ante even further, moving the game to a true 3D engine and giving the player guilds to join, the ability to build their own spells and enchant their own items, the option to become a werewolf, wereboar or vampire, and even simulated a virtual economy and law system.  However, much of the game was still randomly generated and it managed to be even buggier and more system-intensive than the original title, leading its developers to eventually release some of their development tools publicly so that players could attempt to fix it themselves.  Nevertheless, Daggerfall won over many gamers for its sheer scale as well as its open-ended design that encouraged character roleplaying (including six different possible endings to attain), and it attained great critical success for these factors as well.

Morrowind, the third numbered game in the franchise, followed six years later and drastically changed up the series' format.  Rather than giving the player free reign of the whole continent of Tamriel, the action was now restricted to a much smaller geographic area in the island of Vvardenfell.  The game no longer featured procedurally-generated towns, dungeons, quests or terrain, trading them in for a fixed game world populated by NPCs with scripted dialog and quests.  While this change did attract some criticism from long-time fans, both newcomers and veterans soon saw the benefits of this new style, being treated to a world full of unique sights and sounds that added much to the appeal of roaming the landscape and exploring its every facet instead of just skipping over everything with fast travel.  This was only further compounded by Vvardenfell's design - a strange, hostile and yet oddly beautiful environment filled with towering mushrooms, flying invertebrates, giant insects used for a variety of purposes (most prominently traveling from city to city), countless ruins and tombs to explore, and a dense history and lore told through NPC interactions and dozens of books that can easily stretch on for a dozen or more pages.  All of this was accompanied by an excellent soundtrack composed by Jeremy Soule, which only adds to the feel of the player being on a grand adventure with its overall uplifting feel and sense of intrigue.

But while the game's explorable boundaries have been greatly scaled down in size, Elder Scrolls retains its core appeal in that it is essentially a free-roaming role playing experience.  The player is given plenty of options to customize their character, with ten races to choose from, ten birthsigns to choose (which each grant either bonus stats or extra abilities) and a number of premade classes in addition to letting them create custom classes by picking  skills from a list.  Daggerfall's tradition also continues in that the player can only gain levels by using skills that pertain to their chosen class (a fighter, for example, can't level up by casting Illusion spells); however, boosing minor skills can allow them to earn greater stat gains when it comes time to level up.  The player can buy or find premade spells, potions and enchanted weapons, or if their skill level is high enough, even create their own.  There are countless quests to explore in the game and numerous factions to join, some of which even skirt the bounds of the law like the Thieves' Guild and the Morag Tong (government-sanctioned assassins).  One can even become a vampire or (in the Bloodmoon expansion) a werewolf in order to put a new spin on the game, though both of these carry substantial drawbacks as well, making them more of a novelty or an avenue of challenge than anything else.

While efforts have definitely been made to make Morrowind a more immersive and realistic place, there are still some things lacking in the game that were present in earlier RPGs like Ultima.  Most NPCs don't abide by any real schedule according to their occupation or the time of day, mostly just standing in place or being restrained to a small area to roam about aimlessly.  Many NPCs serve no real interesting purpose, either just repeating canned lines in response to player queries or even having nothing at all to say when spoken to.  Creature AI is disappointingly simple for the most part, simply having them stay in a small area until the player wanders in close enough for them to notice, at which point they immediately run to them and attack.  Combat as a whole in the game is also rather underwhelming, often consisting of little more than holding and releasing the attack button (or firing off a spell) and rolling the dice with each swing/spell until your target dies.  While one does still have the ability to swing, thrust or bash with any weapon as in the earlier Elder Scrolls titles, there is an option that simply enables the player to always use their particular weapon's strongest attack, rendering it rather pointless.  Voiceover in the game, while of decent quality, is relatively limited, with only a few plot-relevant characters having distinct dialog and most NPCs being limited to a handful of canned lines corresponding to their race and gender.

Another element present in earlier Elder Scrolls games but oddly absent here is freeform fast-travel.  In Arena and Daggerfall, one could travel to any location on the map by either clicking it's icon, or, in Daggerfall's case, typing in part of its name on the map screen and pointing the player toward the nearest match.  Morrowind's fast travel is considerably more limited, having the player travel by boat, Silt Strider or teleporting between Mage's Guilds, all of which only take them to a small handful of fixed locations (which vary by your current location - one can only travel to relatively close-by towns).  While this does arguably get the player more immersed in the environment, it can lead to frustration as they may have to travel through areas filled with dangerous enemies and low draw distance for a fairly long period before they discover their destination.  This was also before the ever-controversial objective markers became the norm in open-world games, so finding an area tucked between two large mountains or a switch needed to enter a Dwemer ruin can quickly lead to frustration as well.  Moreso because moving at a decent clip requires one to deplete their Fatigue meter, and when it is low, all of their skill and attack rolls suffer as well.

Finally, and as most people who have played the game eventually figure out, its overall balance leaves much to be desired.  There are methods in the game by which one can quickly earn thousands upon thousands of gold pieces with only a few minutes of work, which they can then turn around and spend on training with one of the game's many NPCs who offer it, maxing out their skills and levels in mere minutes while doing so manually could take many, many hours.  One can also boost their stats to absurd levels through clever use of alchemy, brewing potions that last for days of game time and grant thousands of points in Strength, Luck or whatever stat they may wish to boost (in a game where the normal statistic maximum is 100).  One can even give themselves a 100% Chameleon effect through clever armor enchantments and effectively make themselves untouchable, as no NPC will even attempt to attack a target they cannot see.  While it can be amusing to see just how far the game can be pushed in this direction, it does considerably dampen the immersion factor that Elder Scrolls seems to pride itself on.

Regardless of its faults, however, Elder Scrolls was a monumental step forward for both the franchise and for CRPGs on the whole.  It's amazingly realized world, intriguing storyline that remains carefully ambiguous about whether you're really a reincarnated figure of legend or simply being manipulated by the bigger players, and dense lore set a new standard for the genre, and for many console players whose genre exposure was primarily limited to the more linear, anime-esque fare of Japanese RPGs, it was a very drastic change of pace.  While it may not be the best-balanced experience or have the same gameplay hook as its sequels (or arguably even its prequels), its immersive design, ingenious narrative and sense of freedom ensure Morrowind is nevertheless a game of interest for any serious genre fan.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: PC, XBox
Released: 2002
Recommended version: Both versions of the game are essentially the same (being developed concurrently and released a month apart), though the PC version gets the benefits of its platform by allowing players to create custom mods for all manner of tweaks and additional content through the use of the included Elder Scrolls Construction Set.  This allows for all sorts of balance tweaks as well as new features like more convenient fast travel, magic regeneration and entirely new questlines, weapons, enemies and so forth, so it is definitely the version to play these days.  A fan-created executable called "OpenMW" also makes it run flawlessly under modern operating systems and further expands what it will be capable of (with multiplayer co-op in an experimental state), so keep an eye on that too.

Fallout 4

Bethesda's latest entry in the Fallout series exhumes a lot of the storytelling and bleak atmosphere in favor of a much larger emphasis on action.  But does that work in the game's favor, or does it just end up becoming another dime-a-dozen shooter once all is said and done?

Fallout is a series with a long and convoluted history.  The first game was released on the PC in 1997 to the great acclaim of CRPG fans for its grim atmosphere, wry sense of humor and for conveying a true sense of immersion.  Each quest in the game had multiple roads to completion, allowing the players to approach them guns-blazing, use a more stealthy approach or even resolve things through diplomacy (it was possible - and even viable - to complete the game without firing a single shot), and the choice therein gave the game some considerable replay value.  A sequel followed two years later, greatly expanding the amount of content therein but also introducing a large amount of bugs and numerous pop-culture references, which some fans found distracting.  Nevertheless, Fallout 2 was another highly-acclaimed game, and the sheer amount of things to do and the choice the player has in executing them makes it a game that holds up remarkably well even today.  Then came the mediocre-to-terrible spinoffs (Tactics, Brotherhood of Steel) born of Interplay's financial troubles.  These same troubles would lead to Fallout 3's cancellation and the license being sold to Bethesda Softworks, who produced their own Fallout 3 completely independent of Interplay and Black Isle's work.  While Bethesda's Fallout 3 was a decent attempt at moving the series into 3D, it also felt lacking in much of the choice, sly humor and polish that made the first two Fallout games so great, though it did succeed in having a bleak atmosphere and telling a pretty good story in its own right.  A followup came two years later in Fallout: New Vegas, returning the reigns to its original developers and allowing them to create a sprawling, ambitious and almost completely open-ended adventure with multiple endings in much the same vein as the earliest games (and easily making it my favorite of the 3D Fallouts, as well as one of my favorite games of all time).  However, it failed to meet Bethesda's high standards and Obsidian was ousted from working on future Fallout games, leading to Fallout 4's development falling back to Bethesda's hands.

And that's where we are today.  Fallout 4 was Bethesda's second outing for the series, moving the setting to the Boston area and utilizing the power of current game systems to expand upon its gameplay, introducing new elements like a much more in-depth equipment crafting mode, town building and a new "radiant quest" system that, at least in theory, provides the player with randomized quest objectives to give each player a unique experience.  Which are all good ideas in theory, but for various reasons I'll get into further down, none of them really work on the level they intended them to.

One stark change is the game's handling of character creation and development.  While earlier games had you create a character, set their stats, pick a few skills and tweak your character build gradually over the course of the game via Perks, Fallout 4 opts for a route that is distinctly anti-roleplaying.  You do still tweak your stats at the outset, but when you gain a level now, you get a point to spend on either boosting a single stat, or to buy a perk tied to a single stat.  Having 2 or more Strength, for example, lets you purchase levels that grant bonuses to your melee weapon damage, while at least 4 Intelligence lets you buy points in Hacker, allowing you to hack into progressively more secure terminals.  However, unlike earlier Fallouts, you are given no ability to shape your stats as you please - every Perk now has a strict minimum level requirement, so if you want to take a risk, dump all your points into Lockpick and get into a high level area behind a Master rank lock early, too bad - you can't. You're forced to wait several more hours to reach Level 42 to buy that Perk, which adds an unpleasant feeling of restriction to a series that built itself on being almost entirely open and free-form.  It gets worse, though - owing to the game's uninspired quest design (more on this later), gaining levels generally just amounts to a lot of tedious grinding, further removing the experience from feeling anything like a Fallout game.

The combat in Fallout 4 is obviously where much of the development team's focus went, and it pays off on at least some level.  Battles in this game are much larger in scale than they ever were in Fallout 3 or New Vegas and enemy AI is much more complex, with quests often encompassing dozens of enemies at a time shooting at you, lobbing grenades or just bum-rushing you (in the case of less-intelligent creatures).  Similarly, the game has frequent "legendary" enemies, which serve as boss battles of a sort - they're generally larger and much tougher than their counterparts, and defeating them usually gives you a pretty substantial experience reward and a piece of rare equipment or two.  They only get more over-the-top as your level increases, as well - from twenty-foot Mirelurk Queens to Irradiated Deathclaws to enormous hordes of super mutants and even a new type of robotic enemy called "Assaultrons" who attack with a vicious barrage of lasers.  You really do have to make the best of your equipment and abilities to persist and make your way through the game, though it does frequently have the unfortunate effect of forcing you to stop and grind, or just avoid combat entirely, in order to complete many quests.  This overall makes the feel much less like a Fallout game and much more like a generic action title, which may satisfy many modern gamers, but probably won't appeal much to long-time series fans.

Combat aside, equipment crafting is easily the game's most interesting feature, allowing the player to collect various types of scrap materials in order to customize their weapons to suit their personal play style.  Almost every aspect of every type of weapon can be customized - barrels, stocks, expanded magazines, sights and so on can be changed out or upgraded, with each having their upsides and downsides (usually sacrificing power for firing speed or accuracy, or vice versa).  This, paired with the relative scarcity of some ammunition types, also encourages the player to utilize and customize many types of weapons throughout the game, with even the low-quality junker weapons frequently used by Raiders are handy in some situations; while they are all but useless against heavily armored enemies, ammo for them is extremely plentiful, making them ideal for fighting off weaker foes.  Armor and clothing can be customized in similar fashion, utilizing scrap materials to tweak them in various ways (usually in the form of adding lining to make your character more resistant to some types of damage).

Disappointingly, however, you still can't make or find vehicles of any kind to travel the wasteland more quickly.  The closest the game comes to that is in the Power Armors, which appear frequently throughout the game and have interchangable and upgradable parts that allow things like short-distance flight, enhanced radiation resistance, and even custom paint-jobs.  There are just as many options here as there were for weapons and armor, though I was ultimately reluctant to use them much; all Power Armors run on fusion cores, which are a scarce resource in the game and drain too quickly to ultimately prove very useful until late in the game when you'll probably have a large stockpile of them.

Further adding to the heavy customization element is a town building system, wherein numerous areas throughout the wasteland can be cleared of enemies, then set up as "bases" of sorts - generators can be constructed, guard towers can be set up to provide defense, and various buildings, shops and other amenities can be built, complete with setting up trade routes between each outpost.  Occasionally said outposts also fall under attack by raiders and rely on the player to come save them in a timely manner, lest the outpost be ruined and most of its inhabitants killed.  This proves to be an entertaining distraction for a time, but the novelty quickly wears off once you realize that there simply isn't much point to it.  Were this used to power up your character or advance the storyline in some way, a la Actraiser or Dark Cloud, it would be worth doing, but they ultimately went down neither route - there's no substantial story benefit to town building, and you just don't earn enough benefits from constructing trade routes and defending outposts to really make it worth doing.  Not to mention your villagers have a bad habit of arming themselves with your stashed equipment and power armors if you leave them within easy reach, so it can be quite a nuisance as well.  I'd also hoped that this would be used in a way that Fallout had never really explored before - namely reclaiming the wasteland by rebuilding strongholds of civilization and an armed militia to do so - but it doesn't ever really go that far either, despite a few clues throughout that it would.  Even if it did, though, there's little logical rhyme or reason for how power, defense and other elements work, so the whole thing just feels very slapped-on.  As an example, a guard tower provides a flat 2 defense and requires a settler to man it, regardless of how they're armed or armored, or you can just spend a few common resources to get a level 1 turret that provides 6 defense that doesn't even require power.  A simple water pump can be placed anywhere for a pittance and provides 3 water, and you can build any number of them, while a powered water pump requires that plus many more resources, a skill perk to be taken and a water source to place them in, yet only provides 20 water.  It also seems that no matter how much defense you set up, raiders will invade your camps and destroy them unless you drop whatever you're doing and intervene to help whenever a defense quest pops up on your HUD.  It all just feels underdeveloped, like they were trying to cash in on Minecraft and similar "builder" games while making no effort to integrate it into the experience in any interesting way.

Another large detriment to the game is the "radiant quest" system, where objectives, enemies and locations are randomized to a degree for each quest you're given.  Theoretically this would allow each player to have a unique experience, but with the way it's implemented, that's not really the case; there are only so many locations to visit, and with the minimal rewards and overall simplicity of the quests (usually just amounting to eliminating a particular enemy or retrieving an item from a location), it doesn't take long before the law of diminishing returns kicks in.  In fact, between that, the giant boss monsters, the sheer emphasis on powering up to survive battles and the randomized loot (using a Diablo-styled prefix and suffix system), it feels like they weren't even trying to make a proper Fallout game, but rather trying to shoehorn action-roguelike gameplay into the Fallout engine and make something more akin to the Borderlands franchise.

That aside, the major failing of Fallout 4 is just how dumbed down it feels in the storytelling department.  Rather than having a dense universe to explore full of interesting characters, a wryly grim atmosphere and creative lore, Fallout 4 doesn't seem engineered for anything beyond endless shoot-the-monster or collect-the-item quests.  This is nowhere more evident than in its dialog system, which no longer even allows the player to see the full text of the lines they'll be speaking; instead, we get the dumbed-down Mass Effect dialog wheel, simply having the player react in one of four ways to NPC's spoken lines (with a solid 95% of the choices having no tangible effect whatsoever).  This overall makes the game's main storyline feel very railroaded and ultimately gives the player no real feeling of choice, save for choosing which of three factions to align themselves with.  Which itself feels like a flat attempt to recreate the main storyline of Fallout: New Vegas while carrying over none of its strongly-written characters or interesting quests.

Oh, and just to drive the Mass Effect comparison home, they also have character romances, with the player able to romance NPCs of either gender.  But as in the other game, the consistently wooden dialog, flat acting and lack of any interesting arc or history for any of the characters ends up making these scenes just as forced and cringe-worthy as you'd imagine.  And yes, Fallout 2 mostly played the character romances/sex scenes for humor, but even that at least gave you a slightly more tangible and rewarding reason to pursue them than an arbitrary digital trophy and the approval of a bunch of eleven-year-olds on Xbox Live.

At the end of the day, Fallout 4 is the perfect example of a sequel that was designed by committee and suffers a sharp decline in quality as a result.  Gameplay-wise, it's a hodgepodge of ideas that just seem to be shoehorned in for marketability above all else, with no thought given to making them mesh together in any fun or rewarding way. "Minecraft is the most popular game of all time, put a town-building element in our game, quick!  Call of Duty and Battlefield let you customize weapons and those are big sellers, let's do that too!  Mass Effect had that dialog wheel and bisexual romance scenes that everyone liked, let's add that in!  Diablo and Torchlight and a zillion popular mobile games have legendary monsters and loot that gives you superpowers and scales with difficulty and people like that, add that in too!"  They also seemingly ignored the fact that the reason fans pick up a Fallout title is not to collect randomized loot and complete arbitrary quests just to "power up", but to follow an interesting storyline, uncover the lore of the universe and complete quests according to their own particular gameplay style, feeling like they're playing a part and accomplishing something in the world, for better or worse.  Too shallow to be an immersive RPG or sim and too brain-dead to be a memorable action experience for very long, Fallout 4 is a game with nothing fresh to see and no identity of its own, save perhaps for being the "I told you so" for what Fallout 1/2 fanboys claimed the franchise would become under Bethesda's watch.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Playstation 4/Xbox One/PC
Released: 2015
Recommended version: As far as I know, all three versions are roughly equal in quality and all three even support player mods.  The PC version does still have the widest selection, though.