Games that changed the industry #7 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Imagine yourself locked in a prison cell when, totally inexplicably, the emperor of your world appears before you looking for an escape route through your cell. Naturally you follow him with the hope of getting out only to see that he meets a nasty end at the hands of some assassins. Before he dies, he tells you to take a message out into the world. Okay you say, I could do that. After arriving outside in this world however, all of a sudden you get a desire to become a thief and forget all about the emperor and his lousy last wish.

Image credit: Gamefaqs

That is Oblivion. Or at least it’s one of many different ways that you could start it. Like GTA:San Andreas (which I looked at a few weeks back), Oblivion is a game that really showed off what gaming could be.

As one of the first games to be released on the 360/PS3 generation of consoles, Oblivion set the bar for graphics, voice acting and gameplay extremely high. It also took the RPG genre to a new level, encompassing a huge free roaming world, with more customisable traits than I have time to mention. TES IV blew everything before it away.

Image credit: Wikipedia

The most impressive aspect of this game however is a point that I mentioned before: the amount of choice you were given not just in customising your character, but also in how the game played out was truly impressive. If you wanted to do the main quest before touching the rest of the game, that was fine. Equally though, if you never wanted to do the main quest, you didn’t have to, and your experience of the game would have been at least as good.

Oblivion made the technical jump everyone was expecting for a new generation game, but what made it so special was the enormity of the world it put before you. And if that wasn’t enough, it made way for a pretty special follow up as well – a certain Skyrim, or something?

Games that changed the industry #6 Halo 2

Since the mid 70’s it has been possible to play games against other people. By the early 90’s there were systems in place to allow for gaming over an online network.

Yet, 1994 there was only mere quarter of a million subscribers to the ‘Sega Channel’, but as of April 2013 there were an estimated 143.6 million online gamers worldwide. Obviously, there have been many different factors in affecting the mass rise in online gamers but I think one of the most significant was the rise of Xbox Live in 2002 but more specifically, the release of Halo 2 at the end of 2004.

In many ways Halo 2 is a largely forgettable game. Arguably the least memorable single player campaign in a very successful franchise and as such by no means defining in the first person shooter genre. It cannot claim to have brought a new level of graphics that was seen by the Xbox 360/PS3 generation of gaming. On several fronts, it is distinctly average.

Not that forgettable though.

Of course, I would not be writing about it if it was not influential and the effect of the mass success of the game’s online multiplayer cannot possibly be overstated. The huge amount of players to pick up the online gaming mantle was simply immense. With a wide range of maps and weapons that built upon the solid foundations laid down by the single player campaign, it cannot be seen as at all surprising.

Try now imagining turning on any console without at least the option to get yourself online. It is, frankly, unthinkable, and if anyone were to suggest that it was, you’d probably think they’d been hidden under the rock for the past ten years.

Not everyone loved Halo and just as many still don't care for Xbox Live, but you’d be hard pressed to find a gamer who doesn’t see the importance of online gaming and that is what Halo 2 gave the industry.