It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I love The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The remaster has been on rotation for me since its release, and I'm generally really happy with how it turned out. However, it did make me reconsider one recurring problem that the game has, and that The Elder Scrolls has more broadly: for RPGs, there's not an awful lot of role-playing.
Let me be more specific – of course, the games allow you to play roles, but generally, the games offer little reason not to do everything in the game. Yet do this, and you will be both the yin and the yang of Cyrodiil. You are the Hero of Kvatch, a legendary daedraslayer who rebuked evil and drove it away from the mortal plane. You are also an absolute bastard, you will commit countless murders as a member of the Dark Brotherhood, steal cultural artifacts as a member of the Thieves Guild, exploit Glarthir, a mentally ill Elf, and commit many other misdeeds.
