I spent a lot of time playingSkyrimas a kid. I couldn’t tell you how much time, exactly. I could easily be either underestimating or overestimating the hours I sat cross legged on my parents’ basement floor, murdering and robbing people as a Dark Brotherhood assassin, or exploring icy caves as a mage in the College of Winterhold, because childhood memories are weird that way.
It was a lot of time, though. After speeding through the campaign, I’d spend weeks of my precious after-school leisure time doing every possible side quest, seeing how doing things differently would or wouldn’t affect the events of the game as I knew them. When I ran out of things to do, I’d simply start a new save file, or move toStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republicfor yet another playthrough ofthat.
Players Are Angry That Oblivion Remastered Doesn’t Have Enough Endgame Content
Gamers these days aren’t like this, and the games we play have changed to cater to their tastes. Or perhaps it’s the other way around? The idea of the ‘forever game’ proliferated with the live-service boom. Games meant to keep you playing forever with constant additions of seasons and new content have likewise influenced attitudes towards single-player titles. People want to grind forever against the same bosses, with the game scaling infinitely to suit them. They want to be able to base build forever. They want endless stimulation from a single game.
That’s probably why people aremad about Oblivion Remastered’s endgame, or rather, its lack of one. Fans are bemoaning that they’ve collected oodles of gold and have nothing to do with it, and that you can’t increase your stats forever. They expect to have more content, more of a reason to stick around in a game as long as humanly possible.
My God, Just Play Another Game If You’re So Bored
The whole thing is very indicative of how attitudes have changed sinceOblivionfirst launched in 2006. Back then, it clinched countless GOTY awards and was widely praised for how vast its open world was – there was so much to do that it boggled the mind. It influenced games for console generations to come.
Now, it’s not bigenough, because games have only gotten bigger and bigger in scope, focusing more on monopolising player attention. Somehow, the end product is that single-player games likeAssassin’s Creed Shadowsare, bizarrely,incorporating live-service elements.
I say end product, but I have no doubt things will only get more ridiculous from here.
And lest we forget, plenty of games are now acting as pseudo live-services, indefinitely adding free content to keep players engaged.Stardew ValleyandDead Cellsare perfect examples of single-player games that have been added to in perpetuity, normalising player attitudes of expecting games to have infinite playability.
More than this being a silly thing to complain about – it’s a remaster of a game from 2006, when things were different! – it’s a worrying reminder that live-service models are, indeed, rotting our brains. A campaign is a campaign, and a single-player, narrative-driven, campaign-based game is going to eventually end.
This used to be an accepted norm, instead of something to complain about. You paid for a tangible product with a certain amount of content, and you played through it, and then you set it down. Now, every open world has to have an impossibly large endgame. I hate to sound old, but back in my day, we just moved on to other stuff.
