On Evil

After completing Fallout 3 recently, I suddenly had a hankering to return to Oblivion, a game I hadn’t played for well over a year. Fallout had tickled my free-roaming Western RPG bone (if there is such a thing, and I don’t invite you to postulate where it might be in the comments) and I wanted more.

Oblivion is one of those RPGs I’ve started at least ten times with different characters to experiment with different things. The thing I’ve really liked about it every time I’ve played it is that each time I emerge from those Imperial sewers I can wander off in a different direction and do something completely different. One time I went straight for the main quest (and didn’t finish it). One time I headed straight for the Arena in the Imperial City to kick some ass (bare-handed on that occasion, that was an entertaining challenge). One time I headed for the Mages’ Guild and took that questline to its conclusion. Yet another time I decided to explore the dungeons scattered around the landscape, simply to acquire as much loot as possible.

But there’s one thing that all these trips into the wilderness had in common – they all involved me being “good”. Not once did I veer towards the dark side, bad Jedi, Renegade, negative reputation, whatever you want to call it. I always do this. In any game that promises “moral choices” I inevitably end up playing the “good guy” because, at heart, despite my grumpy old man persona, I’m a good guy. I even did this in Fallout 3, where it’s kind of “all right” to be a bit of a bastard because, well, everyone else is.

Not this time, though. I decided that this time was going to be the time I went very, very bad in Oblivion.

I started by hunting down the Gray Fox to start the Thieves’ Guild questline, which I promptly made my way through. For those of you unfamiliar with it (and be aware there are spoilers ahead) this sequence of quests takes you from lowly burglar up to an extremely high-profile thief, culminating in you stealing one of the series’ titual Elder Scrolls from the Imperial Palace. By the time you’ve pulled this off, if you’re anything like me, you feel like you’re a badass thief, but you also feel faintly bad for taking advantage of the blind monks you stole it from.

This is nothing – nothing – compared to how sullied you feel after completing the Dark Brotherhood questline, however.

The Dark Brotherhood come to you in your sleep after you commit your first unprovoked murder in the game. In my case, this happened as part of a sidequest I happened to be completing at the time. I had two possible solutions to the quest, which essentially revolved around a captured bandit and his lover having a disagreement. My choices were to either betray the bandit or his lover. I elected to betray his lover, who had put across the impression of being something of a heartless bitch anyway, and after all, honour among thieves and all that.

Actually, “betray” doesn’t quite sum up what I did to her. I broke back into her house while she was sleeping and shot her in the head with a magic arrow, which exploded and sent her flying, smacking straight into her ceiling before collapsing in a crumpled heap in front of her fireplace. This spectacle was faintly amusing, as ragdoll physics deaths are often wont to be, but the ominous words across the top of the screen “Your murder has been witnessed by forces unknown…” sent a slight chill down my spine. Sure, I’d stolen stuff before, but the Thieves’ Guild questline had felt faintly “Robin Hood”-ish. This was getting into full-on evil territory now, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I also wasn’t sure I liked it when a mysterious robed gentleman visited me while I was sleeping off a level gain and offering me membership in the Dark Brotherhood conditional on my murdering an old, helpless man named Rufio.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I killed Rufio and thus began my run through what many believe to be Oblivion’s best questline. The Dark Brotherhood storyline is a tale of murder, betrayal and vengeance filled with a lot of violence and some excellent plot twists, some of which are left for the player to interpret themselves, which is a touch I really liked. For example, one late quest in the sequence has you picking up a series of “dead drop” orders containing the names and locations of people for you to assassinate. Now, you can blindly continue through this sequence of assassinations by simply following your quest log’s instructions – but if you actually look at the dead drop items in your inventory, you may spot that at a certain point, the “handwriting” that the notes are written in changes. At the time, I simply figured this to be some variation or inconsistency in the presentation but it actually turned out to be an extremely pertinent piece of information.

I had a massive amount of fun with the Dark Brotherhood questline but, as I say, it left me feeling faintly soiled. The experience I had, though, plus the fact that it had an actual emotional impact on me – arguably a more powerful emotional impact than a “good” questline – makes me more inclined to check out more “evil” options in other games from the outset. I know I’m certainly keen to try Fallout again as a more “evil” character in the future, if only because Fallout makes a big deal of the fact that your choices are supposed to have pretty major consequences later in the game. I’m yet to see if this actually is the case, but I’m certainly interested to find out.

Now, of course, my Oblivion character is on a quest for redemption. Wish her luck.