There are few things more entertaining than the jank of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Don’t get me wrong; Oblivion was a watershed moment. It was the first RPG of its size that was approachable and readily available on console without compromise. It was an immersive, high-fantasy epic for wider audiences. It was and still is the blueprint for the modern action RPG the industry continues to obsess over.
But production values have made so much progress in video games that it’s hard not to chuckle at the cracks in the armor: the campy, melodramatic voice acting, the hilarious results when NPC pathing gets screwed up, the unpredictability of its complex physics. It created a unique blend of lovable jank that later Bethesda games, despite having their own glitches, mostly ironed out.
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