Summary
With the release ofOblivion Remasteredlast month, players are discovering that Oblivion has quite a dark tone, full of difficult themes and sinister narratives.
Arecent threadfrom Yukirae on Reddit poses the question, “Was Skyim this dark, too?” accompanied by a picture of the Dark Brotherhood assassin Gogron gro-Bolmog speaking about murdering a child.
Every Land Has Darkness
Gogron is known for being an assassin completely without subtlety, preferring to alert his targets to his presence before their inevitable death, allowing him to relish in their fear before he cleaves them in two. He’s intended to be some comic relief, but the orc is one of the most sadistic characters in the game beneath his jolly demeanour.
Gogron is far from the only maniac (and child killer) in Oblivion — the character Ortis, driven mad by Sheogorath, is quoted as saying, “I wish there were children here. Scrumptious, darling children. I haven’t eaten in so long. Ravel will tell me what to do. You, too.”
The player’s first target in the Dark Brotherhood quest line, the old man Rufio, is heavily implied to have murdered a woman connected to Claudius Arcadia after she refused to stay still during a sexual assault.
Oblivion also has a surprising number of child-sized skeletons. There are children’s skeletons present in the Night Mother’s Crypt — the children she sacrificed to Sithis. This same model appears in several other places in Oblivion, primarily for environmental storytelling.
However, to respond to the original question, Skyrim also doesn’t shy away from dark themes. For example, the character Babette implies that she uses her youthful appearance to attract and kill pedophiles. The character Sapphire from the Thieves' Guild has a traumatic personal story, describing how, as a child, her family was killed in front of her and bandits “violated” her for over two weeks.
There’s plenty of darkness in Skyrim: Serana is a Daughter of Coldharbour, which means her father sold her to Molag Bal at a young age — you can only imagine what the prince of domination and enslavement of mortals thinks is acceptable behaviour.
you’re able to speak to the ghost of Helgi in Morthal, a child who died in a house fire set by her mother. Skyrim is a harsh land in more ways than one.
Oblivion does have a certain grim quality about it — the society seems more medieval than in Skyrim, where justice seems to prevail more. However, there’s no doubt that both games are very dark in their own right.
