Gamers are looking back at The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with nostalgia, after a viral post on X (Twitter) reminisced on the game’s surreal open world, inhabited by the most unpredictable NPCs to ever appear in gaming.
The game inspired many, many memes during the height of its popularity in 2006; even to this day, awkward, stilted dialogue is reflexively compared to Oblivion.
Not long after, Skyrim dominated the gaming landscape, but despite its glitches and hiccups, Skyrim could never quite compare to the mercurial madness of Oblivion.
What Is ‘Oblivion’?
Before Skyrim, Oblivion was the Elder Scrolls sequel to Morrowind. Set in the pretty province of Cyrodiil, Oblivion embraced a traditional fantasy aesthetic that resembles Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings.
Morrowind was groundbreaking for its time, but players noticed that the game’s NPCs moved on rails and weren’t nearly as “alive” as they seemed. Hence, Oblivion’s NPCs were powered by “Radiant AI,” which programmed them with needs (like hunger and sleep), allowing them to make decisions based on those needs, giving the illusion of a living, breathing world.
Or at least, that was the intention.
In practice, Oblivion’s NPCs were hilariously inconsistent; villagers and town guards could be gripped by a murderous rage in an instant, then switch to friendly small talk.
Limited dialogue options, stilted line readings and strange glitches added to Oblivion’s uniquely uncanny atmosphere; it didn’t feel like being immersed in a fantasy world, but a fever dream.
Why Is ‘Oblivion’ Trending Now?
The original post on X was a prompt asking for “Vinesauce” clips (Vinesauce is a collective of video game streamers who create content around mods, hacks and glitches). One user responded with an amusing clip of an Oblivion NPC murdering another, prompting another user to comment:
“No game will ever achieve the unintentional comedy of Oblivion.”
According to X’s metrics, that post was seen more than 18 million times, and inspired others to post their favorite Oblivion clips.
As one commentator pointed out, the nice thing about Oblivion is that those moments of immersion-breaking absurdity are not rare — new players are going to stumble into something hilarious the moment they begin to traverse the world.
Another highlighted the amusing tonal shift between the game’s dramatic opening scene (narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart, no less), and the unpredictable insanity that follows.
You’d think that releasing such a buggy open-world game would be a disaster for Bethesda, but much of the game’s unique charm comes from its bizarre mistakes, the unscripted moments that were not supposed to happen.
Every bad decision by Bethesda resulted in hilarity; most of the NPCs have bloated, severely discolored faces, and the game insists on zooming in far too close for every awkward conversation.
That being said, the game does have a genuinely soothing soundtrack and a distinctive “vibe” that Skyrim never quite replicated. It’s more like Medieval Times than Lord of the Rings, but there’s nothing out there quite like it.
In a strange way, the glitch-riddled landscape of Cyrodiil perfectly suited the theme of the story, which sees the peaceful land torn apart as portals to the titular Oblivion spawn in unexpected places, warping the very fabric of reality.
Oblivion, a fiery hellscape inhabited by demons, is surprisingly boring, but the game’s world certainly feels unstable, as though reality is coming apart at the seams.
‘Oblivion’ NPCs Were Powered By AI
The decision to imbue Oblivion’s NPCs with so-called “Radiant AI” was meant to meant to impress players, not make them laugh.
Ironically, talk of using generative AI to create smarter video game NPCs is happening today — early reports suggest that the technology isn’t nearly as entertaining as the chaos engine that fuels Oblivion.
At the time, Bethesda’s Todd Howard was proud of his erratic NPCs. Howard boasted:
“Where other games’ NPCs require individual scripting, we can simply provide our NPCs with goals and our system allows them to think on their own and complete the task … The fact that your experience and what’s going on in the world around you in your game is a bit different than other people is pretty cool.”
Howard was right; each Oblivion player is guaranteed to encounter a unique NPC interaction or game-breaking bug that reveals the fragility of Cyrodiil — gamers might never see such a perfectly unpolished playground again.
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