Oblivion Remastered's Personality System Proves the…

Summary

Oblivion's original Personality system offered a more reactive world for players, impacting NPC interactions.
Oblivion Remastered enhances the Persuasion mini-game through clear facial expressions and improved UI.
The improvements in Oblivion Remastered's Personality and Persuasion system highlight its ahead-of-its-time ambition.

Now that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is out, it is shining a bright light on the original game's innovations and proving that it was ahead of its time in many ways. One such innovation was Oblivion's Personality and Persuasion system, which ultimately directly affected how NPCs responded to the player in the world. Now, Oblivion Remastered has taken the Personality system up several notches, with some necessary improvements that only prove all the more that the original game was exploring territory that would one day become somewhat of a norm in the RPG space.

The idea of a reactive world back in 2006 was largely unheard of, so when Oblivion introduced its Personality system — which included its Persuasion mini-game — it was a big deal. However, it was mostly dismissed by players for not really impacting gameplay in a noticeable way. Now, the whole system has been improved to feel more dynamic, along with the fact that the RPG space around Oblivion Remastered has caught up. Players crave agency and reactive worlds now more than ever, and Oblivion Remastered gives them that with several enhancements that make the original game's Personality system more relevant than ever.

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By Josh Cotts

Oblivion Remastered's Personality System Is More Relevant Than Ever

Oblivion's Personality System Allowed for a Reactive World

Oblivion's Personality system wasn't perfect, but it certainly accomplished something that most other RPGs weren't — a more reactive world. With the Personality system in place, the way in which NPCs perceive and interact with the player would change depending on the player's Personality attribute. A higher Personality score improved this for players, allowed them access to better prices from merchants, and made Persuading them more effective. In fact, the original game's Persuasion mechanics played a significant role in its Personality system, giving players more direct control over how others viewed them in the game world.

Players crave agency and reactive worlds now more than ever, and Oblivion Remastered gives them that with several enhancements that make the original game's Personality system more relevant than ever.

In the original Oblivion, players could initiate a unique Persuasion mini-game that required them to engage in a strategic balancing act of flattery, coercion, boasting, and joking in order to influence the disposition of NPCs. Ultimately, the Persuasion system added more depth to conversations in Oblivion, making them more interactive and indicative of the player's social skills. However, as innovative as it was, it went down in history for being a bit gimmicky due to NPCs being too difficult to read, with subtle rather than clear facial expressions. In the end, it was a bit too difficult to determine which choices would result in a positive reaction from the character.

Oblivion Remastered Improves the Personality System

Enter Oblivion Remastered, with some improvements to the Personality and Persuasion system of the original game that not only prove it was ahead of its time but also bring it closer to par with other modern systems like it. Firstly, Unreal Engine 5 has allowed Bethesda an opportunity to improve the facial expressions of NPCs during Persuasion attempts and make each one of them quite a bit more distinguishable from the rest. Additionally, Oblivion Remastered's version of the Persuasion mini-game has been refined with a revamped UI featuring more distinct colors that denote a character's preferences, making the overall experience less tedious and more rewarding.

Oblivion Remastered's Persuasion mini-game also features concentric bars indicating the strength of each option, helping players make their choices more effectively.

All in all, Oblivion Remastered's improvements to the Personality and Persuasion system finally give players a real glimpse at what the original game was aiming for. By sharpening NPC expressions, tweaking the Persuasion mini-game to be more intelligible and accessible, and making social interactions feel more rewarding, Oblivion Remastered shows that the original wasn't trying to imitate anything else at the time. Instead, it was quietly pushing toward the future of RPGs long before the genre caught up, and now, almost twenty years later, its ambition feels more relevant than ever.

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