Look, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I entered the Oblivion Gate, a plucky young adventurer overflowing with zeal and a desire to prove the nine divines were right to give me a second chance. I channeled the spirit of the dearly-departed Patrick Stewart in a wig. His words, commanding me to CLOSE SHUT THE JAWS OF OBLIVION, they were ringing in the ears attached to my potato-shaped head adorned with a face only a janky mother could love.
I was not ready.
I followed those Bruma guards in, and they weren’t ready either. I watched them slide down the slight incline into the lava, powerless to stop them from meeting their tragic and toasty fate. The hairs on the back of my misshapen neck pricked up as I listened to their cries of pain.
UURGH. HAHHH. WUHUGHH. OUUOOGHH. HGGGHHH. The screaming of spring lads that don’t know to run, it paralyses you. But the silence that followed, once they’d all flopped down into the orange ooze, either dead or unconscious. That’s what really turned the screw. “Jauffre,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Baurus! Where are you both? Come and save me from this fresh hell, this oblivion of Oblivion!” No one came.
And so, I trekked on, searching for the sigil stone that would teleport my helpless form, bedecked in armour the condition of which would be improved if only I’d remembered to pick up some repair hammers during my last trip to the Market District. I began to acclimatise to the realm. With its looming, spiky towers housing unspeakable horrors. Its pale dirt paths, penetrated by jagged stone slabs jutting out of the earth and patrolled by bloodthirsty scamps. The constant auditory screaming and bubbling in the background.
I would be okay. This was just a generic hell. Terrifying, sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unique, nothing weird. Nothing too alien from the very Lord of the Rings movie-ish forests and fields back in Cyrodiil I was accustomed to wandering or jumping past because my acrobatics skill was lagging behind. I knew no jungles, despite what some lore books in Vvardenfell might have once said on the matter.
Then, I came to the first door. ‘Enter: The Blood Feast’ it read, and suddenly the tights under my cuirass were no longer clean. The Blood Feast, I whispered to myself as though just saying the words could curse my family for generations. Oh, by the nine! Foul and horrific imaginings of what could lie within were conjured in my mind. Two Clannfears roasting an Imperial on a spit. Spikes being thrust into places that spikes should not be thrust. A dinner date with the Adoring Fan that ends with his entire still-living form being surgically implanted into your skull.
I shuddered. Surely it cannot be this bad? Thankfully, it was not. Each section I ran through, from the Blood Well, to the Meat Harbor, to the dreaded Corridors of Dark Salvation, all contained things, but none quite lived up to their uber-saucy names. They were all just rooms, halls, and passages that looked a bit spooky, and were home to a few enemies. They weren’t areas you would breathlessly tell your grandkids you fought through, rather tales you might save for if you need to deploy a distraction while holding up the queue at Jensine’s ‘Good as New’ Merchandise because you can’t find the official Tiber Septim memorial wallet you bought in the White-Gold Tower’s gift shop.
I overcame them, grabbed the stone in the equally grandly named Sigillum Sanguis, and CLOSED SHUT THIS PARTICULAR JAW OF OBLIVION.
I wasn’t done, though. There were a bunch of other gates that required slamming like a car door in the rain, and I was the only one who could do it. So, I braved the Caverns of the Abused, the Halls of Shame, and the Embers of Hatred. I scaled the Brooding Fortress, climbed the Gore Steeple, and mounted the Flesh Spire. I endured the Molten Halls just to battle the craven innards of the Lust Keep. I wandered the Rending Halls, then negotiated the Portals of Natural Disaster. I overcame the Red Gnash Channels, the Bowels, and the Chaos Stronghold, though not necessarily in that order. The Smoke and Scorch was nothing to me and I roared with booming laughter as I strolled through Vaults of End Times to secure a date with the summit of the Great Gate’s World Breaker.
As I became a more and more seasoned Oblivion Gate delver, Merhunes’ monikers ceased to scare me at all. I came to love them, because like a lot of the rest of my adventures in Cyrodiil, the surface-level ridiculousness they offered often brought me more joy than the solid elements that lay behind them. I revelled in the style – the aesthetics – of Oblivion, because a lot of the time it was that which played the most prominent role in making the experiences I had so memorable, rather than the substance of them.
Long after my adventuring days were done, and I had CLOSED SHUT THE JAWS OF OBLIVION, I found myself reminiscing about this aspect of them during a spot of midnight afternoon tea with Sheogorath at New Sheoth Palace. The Mad God, not often one to be too interested in what I said, suddenly seemed interested on this occasion.
“In that case, and given that mods exist, do you think The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is worth remastering?” he responded, out of the blue. I was taken aback.
“My Lord, what are these strange things of which you speak?” I spluttered.
“Humour me, mortal, or Punishment Point awaits!” he commanded.
“Does any video game that you can still actually play on a fair amount of platforms in something close to its original state really need a remaster?” The words left my lips without my brain even having formulated or processed them. Could it be that the Prince of Madness had used a scroll of hot take on me without my knowledge?
“Hm,” he replied, “Haskill reckons Morrowind or Daggerfall might have been more useful subjects to receive such a treatment.”
“That’s fair,” I said, again without thinking, “I guess it was just supposed to be like this.”
