Sometimes, in the absence of anything better to do, my mum and I sit down with a cup of tea and play Oblivion. (Obviously, that’s a cup of tea each, otherwise things would rapidly become unpleasant.) We alternate who gets the controller. Two pairs of eyes often work better than one, if you can stand the backseat driving – the person who isn’t currently being flayed alive by imps often notices things the other would have missed. Mum is a pretty nifty console hack’n’slash fighter, which I hate, and I have good directional memory, which stops her running around the same room eight times looking for the way out. Plus, wisecracks are always a lot more fun when there’s someone other than your character there to hear them. It’s actually a pretty fun way to play the game.

Thank God, because otherwise I really hate Oblivion.

Honestly, I don’t really know why I don’t like it. It’s a fantasy universe. There’s a linear overall plot supported by optional side quests, a rambling world for you to explore, moral dilemmas and so on. It could justifiably have the label “RPG” applied to it. It is, in essence, identical to most of the games on my top favourites of all time list. For some reason, The Elder Scrolls series and I have just never clicked.

Oblivion – like Fallout, BioShock and dating back to some of the older pseudo-RPG look-alikes on the market – plays like a shooter. Or rather, it plays like a shooter on ketamine. Combat is first person, hack’n’slash or sniping, and consists of a large quantity of strafing, and if you’re me, not being able to turn around fast enough and wondering why the monster is behind you. And whilst I’m not claiming to be the worlds greatest console gamer, I managed Mirror’s Edge and Portal just fine, so I’m forced to conclude it may actually be a clumsy system, not just me. The stealth system is pretty neat, and some of the dungeon design is sheer genius, but bottom line, as a shooter, it’s no Half-Life.

On the flip side, it also seems to want to be an RPG. Your character is an original creation, unlike the games mentioned above, but the creation process is an ordeal. In all honesty, it seems like the personalisation of the character has been taken to ridiculous proportions as a cynical ploy to boost marketing potential – when there are hair-trigger sensitive sliders for the width, depth and length of the character’s nose, chin and eye setting on the character creation screen, things Have Gone Too Far. Hypothetically, you could have your character look however you liked. Practically, the combination of too much control and badly rendered graphics meant it took me a few days to realise my Argonian had no chin.

The other major issue for me on the RPG side is the conversation. The NPCs are wooden puppets. They talk to each other , but it’s a string of pre-generated responses which often makes no actual sense. I’ll give you an example of a conversation which has occurred as I was writing this:

“Ah, it’s you. Hello.”
<pause>
“Please, go on.”
<pause>
“They say that someone somewhere has been attacked by goblins.”
<pause>
“Hmmm. The country has seen so much political unrest since the Emperor died.”
<pause>
“Goodbye.”
<pause>
“Farewell.”

To be honest, I’d have found the world more immersive if they’d just shut up. It’s not as if I make a habit of listening into the conversations of other people as I stroll through life anyway. I was wounded and going to sell loot. I doubt their loud conversation would really have been on my character’s mind. Likewise, the responses in PC/NPC interactions are wooden and repetitive. I’m not averse to dialogue screens which make it possible to go around and repeat what you missed, but the one-word topic prompters given for your character remove the opportunity for them to develop any kind of discernable personality. The persuasion system for making merchants like you plays as a mini game featuring four styles of conversation and four “quantity” segments, where the player has to match up the biggest segment to the conversational styles the NPC likes best. Again, it’s a nice idea but in practical reality it just results in NPCs smiling at coercion and implying any joke your character tells is crude. Goodbye characterisation, hello dumb-but-muscular hero of the realms. Mum gets around this by playing a slightly dim but likeable Argonian named Horace, but then, she spends most of her time picking flowers in the wilderness and murdering goblins, so maybe social interaction just isn’t high up on Horace’s list.

I suppose, at the end of the day, that’s my problem with Oblivion. The world is beautiful, and a lot of thought has gone into the design (the alchemy system, in particular, is excellent). It’s a good game – but that’s it. It’s noticeably a game. The RPG attributes don’t make me care enough or connect enough with the character to feel immersed, and the shooter elements are rarely tense. Monsters walk back and forth along a single line, posing at the end of each wander in order to give you a better shot. The connection just isn’t there. In all honesty, that’s probably why it’s a good one to tag-team. Wisecracks and backseat driving can’t break an immersion which never existed.

I got back from a Dungeons & Dragons session a few hours ago, and it provided some insight into just how far behind computer-based RPGs are. Let me give you an example: in World of Warcraft, you might cast a dizzying array of pre-prepared spells in a precise order, so as to inflict the most amount of damage on your terrifying foes. But at Nick’s place today, our new fighter suddenly dropped into JRPG mode as he ran circles around what our DM, Jen, portrayed as a terrifying, violent, and most importantly, hungry dungeon-dweller, and what Jon described as “Aaah, fuck.” Trailing his sword along the stone floor, he launched into an aerial spin and whipped his sword round straight into the vile creature.

And promptly missed.

You see, the beauty of role-playing games is the free rein they offer you over your character and his actions. Eve Online, while a sexy beast, will not let me park my ship, wander over to the nearest diner and hit on the pump-adorned waitress. Your cleric (who, in our case, spends more time hitting things with his massive hammer than actually, y’know, helping people) can’t sneak into our party leader’s tent while he sleeps in Warhammer Online and set fire to his hair because he divvied up the gold unfairly. Nowhere else can your resident bard – that’s me – charm an innkeep so well that not only does he obtain all the information you desire, but also three lovely wenches for the night.

Thanks, by the way, Jen.

OK, it’s not all shiny. It’s a little bit of a pain having to roll for everything, and it does make it easy to metagame. It’s tricky, separating your knowledge from your character’s, and takes a while to achieve the balance you need to have fun whilst still maintaining a believable universe. Oh, and levelling up by hand is a bitch. As someone who dislikes computer-based RPGs because it’s too much about the statistics and not enough about going out and bashing in the heads of goblins with my pet mace, Lilah, I’m still not happy that I have to know my character’s exact charisma score every time I want to play my goddamn lute. That said, I love the fact that in this game, though my friends may hate me for it, my career choice of a professional lutist is more fun than being able to juggle any number of broadswords.

This was my second ever session of a tabletop role-playing game, and it’s easy to see why so many still stick with them even when a computer screen offers so much in visual detail, endless content and the ability to connect with people all over the planet. I think it’s the level of freedom a pencil-and-paper game offers over the online equivalent. I may be able to hook up with friends in Guatemala and topple beasties of all shapes and sizes in Age of Conan, but I can’t trip up a friend and push him into a room because I’m afraid I’ll be pelted with more poison-tipped bolts than you can shake a kobold at.