When the massive, open-ended fantasy game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion debuted on the Xbox 360 and PC a little over a year ago, fans were promised new adventures, locations and goodies in the form of premium (i.e. paid) downloadable content.
First out of the gate? A suit of armour for your in-game horse. Priced at three bucks.
Fortunately, the outcry over paying $3 for virtual equine defence didn’t cause fans to actually storm developer Bethesda Softworks’ headquarters and burn it to the ground. Otherwise, we never would have beheld the mad beauty of the Shivering Isles.
While Bethesda has released several other downloadable add-ons for Oblivion in the past year, Shivering Isles is the first full-fledged expansion pack for the game, priced at $30 for the retail release on the PC or 2400 Microsoft Points ($37.20) to download for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live.
Downloading or installing the expansion causes a mysterious portal to appear in the Oblivion game world, a pathway into a hitherto undiscovered realm ruled by the Prince of Madness. And as Gwen Stefani would say, this s—t is bananas.
Shivering Isles is a little slow to get started, forcing you to first undertake a quest to defeat the giant, shambling Gatekeeper that guards the entrance to the new lands. But once you start unravelling the main storyline, you’ll be hooked.
This psychedelic expansion isn’t just more of what’s great about Oblivion, it’s a very focused and self-contained world, society and ecosystem that plays with the ideas of perception and sanity in a way that’s too seldom seen in video games.
There are plenty of new critters, weapons, alchemy ingredients and so on to discover in the Shivering Isles, but its residents are the big draw. Most of them are not quite right in the head, and some of the most insane characters are the ones who will be asking you to do their bidding.
Though a few of the expansion’s quests are standard fare – go to this dungeon and retrieve that item – the overarching storyline is consistently cool, and even some of the minor side quests are a little bit... unsettling. Like a suicidal man who begs you to kill him, but to do so in a way that he doesn’t see it coming.
(If you do choose to help him, he agrees to turn over the key to a jewellery box in his home, which contains a surprisingly heartwrenching note and a magical “Ring of Happiness” that seems to be a subtle poke at our society’s reliance on medicated contentment.)
By the time I’d finished criss-crossing the geography of the Shivering Isles’ dual realms of Mania and Dementia – there’s a solid 25 to 30 hours of new content here – and worked my way up the ranks in the Court of Madness, I felt sad to leave this weird and wonderful new place behind.
It seems that once you go crazy, it’s tough to go back.
Bottom line: The first full-fledged expansion for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion takes you on a trip to a skewed and psychotic Oz, full of odd people, new magic and killer creatures. And chances are you’ll love it there.
WHAM! Rating: |
8 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
M (Mature) |
Official Web Site: |
|
|
Steve Tilley’s Cheat Sheet
READ UP: As soon as you get a chance, buy (or steal) a copy of the Shivering Bestiary. This isn’t one of those filler books, it’s got genuinely useful information about the fauna of the Shivering Isles, particularly strategies about how to defeat them.
BLOODTHIRSTY: Once you have the Duskfang/Dawnfang sword in your possession, you’ll want to power it up by killing 12 critters in each day/night cycle. If you have enough conjuration skill, simply summon lowly Scamps or Hungers and “feed” them to the sword. It ain’t picky.
A PLACE TO CALL HOME: About halfway through Shivering Isles’ main questline you’ll gain a home of your own in the realm of Sheogorath, so you don’t have to haul butt back to Cyrodiil to drop off loot. Until then, be careful where you store things. They may not be there when you return.
