26th April
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, Tom P has been loving his time in Cyrodiil, Victoria has been playing with dragons, and Tom O has been mostly just wandering about.
Content warning: The Split Fiction section below talks about losing a beloved pet and the feelings of sadness and grief that go along with it.
What have you been playing?
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, Xbox Series X
Bethesda has been a little vague over exactly how its creaky old engine has been plugged into (or wallpapered over by) the new Unreal Engine 5-powered remake of Oblivion, but from the moment of that first cinematic pan around Emperor Patrick Stewart’s castle I was thinking: thank goodness it has.
Of course, this is an older and (despite its lovely new lick of paint) simpler game than something like Starfield or Fallout 4. But, returning to Cyrodiil and creeping through its sewers blasting lovely 4K rats, things also just seem to work.
Reaching daylight on the ray-traced shores outside the prison, seeing a mudcrab and it not be flying backwards in mid-air… it got me wondering. Alongside filling a handy gap in Bethesda’s release schedule as we all wait another five years for a proper new Elder Scrolls, is this version of Oblivion something of a test? To see if things work smoother in Unreal Engine, and act as a template for further projects in future – be that more ports, or all-new games. As I explore The Gold Coast, and as the game seems to be landing successfully with old and new fans alike, I wonder if we might have seen the end of that old engine for good.
-Tom P
Avowed, Xbox Series X
I really wanted to jump into the Oblivion Remaster, but I know that if I leave Avowed for a considerable amount of time I won’t go back to it. I’ll lose track of what’s going on and inevitably lose interest. So, no Oblivion for me, not yet anyway. I’m currently wandering around a farm operated by reanimated corpses, which isn’t something I expected to be doing, and also smashing up a lot of mushroom men.
As I think I’ve said many times in this regular column already, I just love exploring the world. Give me a small opening in a cave that leads to a vast underground cavern, and I’m happy. Put some strange goings on in there, perhaps some kind of arcane magic, and boom, my evening is tip top.
-Tom O
Split Fiction, Xbox Series X
I, like many, have been playing Split Fiction. I won’t talk at length about how brilliant it is, you know all that already. The co-op shenanigans are of course great, and I have had a lot of fun making my way through the game’s sci-fi and fantasy worlds, trolling my co-player at every available opportunity. That’s all I really have to say about that.
What I will talk about further, though, is one particular chapter which I found surprisingly affecting. It was the chapter where Mio and Zoe are joined by two dragons. These dragons start off as eggs, and as things progress they eventually evolve to become fully grown and very competent beasts (I am using the word beast affectionately, here).
At the end of April, I had to put down my dog The Captain, after he was diagnosed with cancer. He had been off his food for a few days, and I took him to the vet just thinking perhaps he had a stomach bug that needed some antibiotics to help clear it up. However, the vet found a tumour, and one that was too big to remove safely. I was heartbroken, and still am. But, what has all this got to do with Split Fiction and its dragon chapter? Well essentially, I became more emotionally attached to my dragon companion than I expected, because I kept thinking of it as The Captain.
The Captain was by my side when I went through some of the hardest times of my life, and he was a constant source of reassurance and love during our 13 years together. And if I was ever being attacked by a whopping great big and very fierce dragon enemy like Mio and Zoe in Split Fiction, I know he would have absolutely had my back.
When I said goodbye to my dragon at the end of that chapter, a dragon I had nurtured from a tiny little thing in need of my protection before it grew into an incredible and confident creature, I cried. I am actually crying a bit now.
-Victoria
