Editorial | The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Helping with depression and anxiety: A 15 year retrospective.

 

By Sam Coles:

There are times in life where situations can be rather cumbersome and laborious to put it lightly, however there are games that you can go back to over and over again to give you a sense of comfort. As the game is turning 15 years old in the year that is 2021, I thought it would be great for me to go over The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and how it helped me in my darkest times in my mid to late teens and early 20s. Let’s talk about it as it helps to get things off my chest.

When I was a child in my secondary school years I wasn’t exactly well liked nor had many friends, this was mostly due to my nerdy tendencies and introverted attitude to social life. Most of the time I was bullied due to my accent being posh and I went to a school in a less than favourable area, so I was mocked for have a well cut accent as well favouring a more intellectual approach to life. Anyway most of my days were somewhat lonely and I would hide away in books, however it was one afternoon that changed my life.

I was at a friend’s house and he was playing his PS3 and it was a fantasy game with total freedom that caught my eye, I asked him “What is that game”? His response was “Oblivion”. So after that my Dad got me the game for the PC because at the time I didn’t own a console at all, and when I got it installed on my PC which was pretty beefy for the time I was immediately enamoured with the game. I wouldn’t put serious hours into the game until I got it for Xbox 360 in 2009, when I got one for my 16^th birthday.

The game started off a bit dull as you were in a dark and damp dungeon, and I suppose that is the point when they lead you up to the big reveal of the world of Cyrodiil. What a reveal it was with the first moment you step out of the sewers, where the sun pierces through the clouds as you see an ancient ruin from another civilisation in front of you. It was at this moment that made me realise video games are more than games, they can be these living and breathing worlds where I can get away from the grim, depressing and anxiety filled reality I was experiencing at the time.

I was enraptured with this world immediately, at first I thought about doing the main quest but like most Elder Scrolls games I did a 180 and waked in the other direction. That is what made me fall in love with this game was the total freedom it offered me, where you could go to your local tavern have an ale, steal people’s property and sell it to the thieves guild or become an assassin and kill important figures within the empire. There is so much to do that it almost puts modern open world games to shame, or if you are like me just explore with no goal in mind taking in the scenery.

Speaking of scenery for a 15 year old game it still holds up surprisingly well, yeah the character models are horrifying as they look like a shrivelled baked potato. Anyway vegetable analogies aside the scenery still looks beautiful, with rolling green hills, large forests rich with vegetation and populated towns and cities with people that go about their business. That’s another aspect that I like that helped me deal with things the towns and how they go about their business, yeah it’s pretty static these days but it was very impressive for the time as each NPC has a routine and it made it feel alive.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a game that helped me with the darkest parts of my life, and to this day it is a game that I will boot up if I’m feeling down or just need a bit of nostalgia to escape the world. It’s a game that I hold very close to my heart and it made me the gamer that I am today, If you have the chance give it a go it’s widely available on PC and Xbox One/Series consoles via backwards compatibility.