The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles Review

By Jim Rossignol Published 5 April, 2007

I'm mad, me. Crazy.

Version tested: PC

Oblivion had more than its fair share of extra baubles and adventures tacked on over the past year, but this is the big one: a full-blown expansion. Not just another quest arc, but a full-blown extra plane of Oblivion, complete with hordes of new monsters, NPCs and items. Although not as enormous as the landmass of the original game The Shivering Isles are an entirely new geography in which to take up quests, wander aimlessly, club wrong-doers, and rummage around in mushrooms.

On being notified by the game that you've heard of goings on with a portal on an island in the Bay of Niben, you are able to seek out The Shivering Isles. It's a bit of a clumsy introduction, but we'll forgive it that. The expansion pack, like all of Oblivion, adjusts to your level, meaning you can go into this new realms from the very start of the game, or with a high experienced character. On entering the portal (which you have to activate half a dozen times, inexplicably) you are challenged by some kind of chamberlain chap in a room that collapses into butterflies. He tells you to seek out the big boss, his boss, Sheogorath The Prince Of Madness. This brief interview and instruction leads on to a no-man's land outside the isles, and a set of gates - The Gates Of Madness.

Once the gatekeeper and early quests are dispensed with, the game plays a neat trick. The Shivering Isles exists in two different parallel realities, Mania and Dementia. These are suppose to represent the different qualities of the lord of the realm, Sheogorath, although The Prince only really seems intent on exhibiting his manic side. Anyway, the two versions of the Isles must be accessed separately from the different gates, giving you what are essentially two thematically polar, although geographically identical worlds to explore. Mania is bright and colourful, and filled with manic drug-loonies, while dementia is gloomy, dark, and inhabited by depressive paranoids. Each has its own quests, and its own residents.

'The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles' Screenshot 1

Lots of ladies in Oblivion, but none of them seem interested in wrestling.

Both realities are profoundly beautiful, as you might expect. The Shivering Isles is arguably even more interesting to look at than the original game, going for a more fungal, warped look than the soft-focus fantasy of Oblivion-proper. It's far closer to Morrowind than the original, and that's a good thing. Exploring The Shivering Isles for its own sake is a delight, but it's a genuine shame that the game itself gives you far less incentive to get lost in the woods than it did the first time around. There aren't many hidden villages, and the odd quest-related encampments and shrines you'd find in the original game seem to be few and far between in this new plane.

But anyway, there's a rather more significant problem trotting along behind all this madness stuff, one that does degrade the entire experience. It's this: if you're going to use madness as your core fictional motif, then it suggests you're going to pull out the big guns in terms of story-telling. You know the stuff - paranoia, hallucination, betrayal, trickery, illusion, misdirection, and outright weirdness. A realm of pure madness shouldn't be, well, a teeny bit dull. And that's the problem: The Shivering Isles is mildly eccentric and quite pretty, but it's definitely not ecstatically, brain-boiling insane. As such it's a wasted opportunity. All the characters you meet are supposed to be loonies, but instead they generally just say something a bit odd when you meet them. They have over-the-top character traits, but isn't that a bit like all videogame characters, ever? Instead of making us want to take a step back with this screaming lunacy, or putting a chill in our bones with their grotesque fantasies, they're just a mildly weird. One guy is interested in meat (who isn't?!), another is a bit patronising. One person believes she's going to die, another is worried about diseases. One guy is hungry. Are mad people just hungry? It would explain a lot. One guy - get this - wants a house. The crazy fool!

All this might be excusable with a grand turn from the prince himself, but he's just vaguely amusing. It's a childish portrait of a lunatic. He's like the evil madman might be in a children's TV show - all camp and without substance. He never really seems threatening, in the way that the truly disturbed do. It's all an act, and thank goodness he's got quests to dispense so you can get back into that exquisite world...

'The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles' Screenshot 2

These grummites have a wonderfully cold stare as they poke you with spears or fire their arrows.

And, well, that's another less than satisfactory subject: quests. The overall story-arc is splendid, and well told with it: The Knights Of Boredom are coming along to normalise things, and the forces of madness must put a stop to it. That, I like. It's just all the tasks you have to perform along the way that seem under the bar. There's none of the expectation-defying intrigue and guile that made Oblivion's quests so compulsive. You're killing this, fetching that, and basically clearing out a load of uninspired dungeons. I'm glad to be back in the world of Oblivion again, but really, I was hoping for some more interesting quests than this. The tasks set for you by mad people should, surely, entail some disturbing or alarming situations, but really there's not much to report. It makes you realise how good Oblivion actually was.

Also there's no horse. I really liked my horse. I liked how he stood around waiting for me to kill goblins. He was company when I was alone in the woods. And now I have to walk everywhere. I miss my horse.

And so to the conclusion. I can't see anyone who enjoyed Oblivion enough to get through the main quest not buying this. There's lashings of new fighting and exploring, and it's more gorgeous than ever before. But maybe it was just the artist's turn to smoke the hookah of inspiration. There were plenty of people for whom the easily-broken game mechanics and problematic levelling system of Oblivion was too tortuous to contend with. This expansion does nothing to fix any problems these folk might have had - it's just the same game as it ever was, only this time with a slightly weirder backdrop, and less interesting questing.

Of course this lack of inspiration could (just maybe) mean that Bethesda are pumping all their creative gunk into the newly resurrected cadaver of Fallout 3, which would really be a good thing... Wouldn't it?

7 / 10

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About Jim Rossignol

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Comments (46) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • bonker #1 5 years ago

    Love/d Oblivion but yeah, I can't see me going for yet-more of the same ...

  • Darren #2 5 years ago

    "Both realities are profoundly , as you might expect."

    That line doesn't make sense to me... profoundly *what*?

  • SIDEARM #3 5 years ago

    "Anyway, the two versions of the Isles must be accessed separately from the different gates, giving you what are essentially two thematically polar, although geographically identical worlds to explore."

    Are you sure i thought that mania was the northern half of the islands and dementia the southern half?

  • Darren #4 5 years ago

    I'm a bit surprised at the lowish score really and I'm certainly finding the Shivering Isles interesting. I've also met a man who wanted me to kill him when he wasn't aware of it and I found that disturbing so for me the game is mad enough! And Sheogorath (the Prince of Madness) is an absolute fruit-cake. For me, the expansion pack is an 8 and possibly a 9 considering it only cost £20.

  • speedofthepuma #5 5 years ago

    One guy - get this - . The crazy fool!

    2nd piece of blank text found.

    Or is this some kind of ironic journalism?

  • krudster #6 5 years ago

    italics are borked...one sec....

  • IAmBatman #7 5 years ago

    "Anyway, the two versions of the Isles must be accessed separately from the different gates"

    That's not true - it's one island. Top is Mania, bottom is Dementia, and you can walk between the two as you please - there's only a big cliff seperating them. Enter through the Mania gate, turn right, and there you are in Dementia.

  • Cyhwuhx #8 5 years ago

    .::: I've did just about everything in Oblivion. But to be honest, I can't get excited by the game any more. It's done, time to move on, not to resurrect it.

  • JediMasterMalik #9 5 years ago

    My problem with oblivion is what this gets right, variety.

    Something, which the reviewer mentions, makes it more like Morrowind.

    Oblivion was great, no doubt butif it had the variety that SI brings to it to start with, it could have been so much better imo.

    So I will be getting this then, eventually.

    Edit - accidentally deleted my post :o

  • SBfistfun #10 5 years ago

    "One guy is interested in meat (who isn't?!)"

    MMMmm MM Sb likes.

    Dammmmm

  • Drakron #11 5 years ago

    Of course this lack of inspiration (just maybe) mean that Bethesda are pumping all their creative gunk into the newly resurrected cadaver of Fallout 3, which would really be a good thing... Wouldn't it?

    No.

  • Yossarian #12 5 years ago

    "There were plenty of people for whom the easily-broken game mechanics and problematic levelling system of Oblivion was too tortuous to contend with."

    ding ding ding

    loved Oblivion, but it really is deeply flawed. the levelling system is flat-out backwards-ass broken, and encourages not just tedious grinding but tedious, contrary grinding (conjuring skeletons and letting them hit you to get your light armour up, for instance). and the whole thing is horribly shallow in terms of story and characters and dialogue: the real role-playing elements arise in an emergent sort of way, which is nice, and makes for great traded stories between devotees, but makes me sceptical about their ability to do the Fallout universe justice. if they rediverted the time and work put into making a bazillion square miles of countryside and a bazillion quests into a smaller, more detailed, better thought-out, better-written, better voice-acted etc. etc. game with a functional levelling system I would be all over it. as it is, I can't justify the price of Shivering Isles to myself given my issues with the game proper (even if I did get 80+ hours of play from it).
    Edited by 1 at 05/04/07 @ 15:48

  • Jac #13 5 years ago

    Of course this lack of inspiration (just maybe) mean that Bethesda are pumping all their creative gunk into the newly resurrected cadaver of Fallout 3, which would really be a good thing... Wouldn't it?

    Yes.

  • PearOfAnguish #14 5 years ago

    "Oblivion didn't start off great by looking like Morrowind, which looks like shit."

    Bollocks, Morrowind looked great. Art direction was light years ahead of Oblivion's generic fantasy style.

  • Dizzy #15 5 years ago

    Very funny how the min-maxers do not like the "levelling" system. A RPG is about exploring and doing stuff... not levelling. No coincidence that Ken Rolston was the guy behind Oblivion... he is also behind many other Role-play as opposed to Roll-play systems. I would say stick to D&D or any JRPG. Those have plenty of stats to care about.
    Edited by 2 at 05/04/07 @ 19:10

  • tiddles #16 5 years ago

    The levelling system in Oblivion made me play it for approximately 110 hours more than I would have done otherwise.

  • IAmBatman #17 5 years ago

    > encourages not just tedious grinding but tedious, contrary grinding

    I didn't need to do any grinding at all, that's what I like about it.

  • immateriaux #18 5 years ago

    "Encourages tedious, contrary grinding ..." !!! I think it takes a pretty warped perspective on game playing to come up with that one. Oblivion was a sort of wander lust, it wasn't about getting the Uber "Spear of Calculator Fetish + 4". Very much a modern RPG - while the levelling system may have taken away some of the potential challenge in the game, and certainly created incongruous moments later on at high levels (eg with spiffily attired bandits and the like), it did also make the game comprehensively playable throughout.

    Anyway, interesting point in the review about how lunatics should really be giving you "mad" quests: missed opportunity there alright.

  • mkreku #19 5 years ago

    I totally agree with the review. This game (Oblivion) has problems, and not addressing a single one of them in the expansion is like a slap in the face of the fans. Have they not been listening? I DON'T WANT ENEMIES TO LEVEL WITH ME! I DON'T WANT EVERY BANDIT IN THE WOODS TO HAVE DAEDRIC ARMOUR AFTER LEVEL 20!

    Damn.

  • Verwandlung #20 5 years ago

    Fallout , do not ruin it.
    Edited by 1 at 05/04/07 @ 20:00

  • dryden555 #21 5 years ago

    The best review I have seen so far of Shivering Isles. I'm a good 5 hours in and there's no "mania or dementia" represented. I fear the game-makers had a great idea but didnt or coudln't carry it through. Its Oblivion with large fungi and some new armor and weapons. 7 is the right score.

  • gerald #22 5 years ago

    I got Oblivion with my X360 a few days ago, but it did nothing for me. I stepped ot of the prison, admired the huge land, realised that I could go everywhere and, a few minutes later, realized i don't want to go anywhere...

    Having the world leveling up with me felt like playing against an enemy, who will let me win, regardless how i play. It´s like a rubberband AI in racing-games (which is OK for arcade-racers but not for CRPGs). In FFXII, i loved taking revenege on a dinosaur, who killed me early in the game, after levelling up during normal play.

    And wasn't the guy in prison supposed to be the king of this land? Nobody seems to care his was just killed...

  • Drakron #23 5 years ago

    "Very much a modern RPG"

    You mean a FPS with some stats so they can call it a RPG?

    If I started a list of what is wrong with Oblivion it would pretty long and level lists would be just one of the issues.

  • immateriaux #24 5 years ago

    No, I mean that it does not bind itself to an archaic model of constant dice rolling - there was a time when the only possible way to create a Role Playing experience was by using a D&D model of throwing dice. Technology has moved on appreciably since then (though many gamer's mind sets have not apparently). Role Playing in a game may be stats focused purely, or it may not - there are more ways to present that experience to the player now, and although some people may miss the mechanics of the D&D model in modern games like Oblivion, it does not mean that Oblivion is not still a role playing game (and, if flawed, still quite a good role playing game).

  • bonker #25 5 years ago

    "And wasn't the guy in prison supposed to be the king of this land? Nobody seems to care his was just killed... "

    With respect mate, you have to put something into a game like Oblivion to get something out of it.

    If you talk to the right people then you'll see there's plenty of story/plot driven by the King's death but you gotta make the effort to get around and talk to people ...

  • Drakron #26 5 years ago

    For god sake ...

    Do I really have to point the differences of Role Playing and Acting?


  • BrokenSymmetry #27 5 years ago

    Dizzy said: "No coincidence that Ken Rolston was the guy behind Oblivion".

    Ken Rolston was the man behind Morrowind. He has mentioned several times that his role in the development of Oblivion was greatly diminished, and he did not agree with the direction of Oblivion (simplified lore, more generic fanatasy world, etc.). Oblivion is probably why he left Bethesda.

  • Miths #28 5 years ago

    I just finished the SI main quest the other day with a new character, and I absolutely loved both the story line/quests as well as the beautiful island that's generally very far from the generic fantasy look of Cyrodil - in some areas closer to Morrowind.

    I do agree that they haven't made enough use of the "madness" theme, but this expansion is still a 9/10 for me, 8/10 if I had to be a bit more objective and take the flaws into account rather than just how much fun I had and how much I loved the landscape.

    I never actually got very far in the original game, barely scratched the main quest and probably only played for 10-15 hours total - most of it just exploring. Now I feel inspired to dive into Oblivion again with my new character - and the popular OOO mod installed to get rid of the leveling issues, and add a bunch of extra content as well.

  • bluebird #29 5 years ago

    mkreku +1

    Oblivion was a painful experience to me, first you get excited, then after 10-some hours of play slowly the problems sink in, and for me at least it ended in great disappointment. I hope their next game will include better storytelling (that evoke some emotion), better AI, and most of all does away with the horrible rubberband leveling of the enemies.

  • tridentz_83 #30 5 years ago

    @Bluebird: My sentiments exactly.

    Got bowled over by the hype and the graphics of Oblivion, but scratch anything beyond the surface and you find a game that's mind numbingly shallow.

    Fallout was one of the greatest CRPGs of all time with a great story and atmosphere, in fact, the very antithesis of Oblivion if you but think about it... in Bethesda's hands, well...

  • immateriaux #31 5 years ago

    @Drakron
    "If I started a list of what is wrong with Oblivion it would pretty long and level lists would be just one of the issues. "

    "Do I really have to point the differences of Role Playing and Acting? "

    More pertinently, do you actually have anything to say here or are you just making wind?

  • gerald #32 5 years ago

    <em>With respect mate, you have to put something into a game like Oblivion to get something out of it.

    If you talk to the right people then you'll see there's plenty of story/plot driven by the King's death but you gotta make the effort to get around and talk to people ...
    </em>

    Maybe I talked to the wrong people or got bored to quickly... The storytelling aspect seemed limited, due to the open nature of the game. Technical issues (chrashes, loading), broken german localisation and general lack of polish didn't helped either to hold my attention. Too much effort, too small payoff (For me! I'm not saying Oblivion is a bad game. I certainly can see the appeal).

  • Mashum #33 5 years ago

    Gerald, if you have the temperament for RPGs then it's worth giving it another go if you can get the crashing issues sorted out. It's massively flawed but has more than enough charm to make up for it. I can't think of many other games that are as much fun after 130+ hours.

  • Drakron #34 5 years ago

    "More pertinently, do you actually have anything to say here or are you just making wind?"

    There is a comment over Fallout "3" in the review, I am making a comment on that.

    Oblivion was released about a year ago, making direct comments on it are now besides the point (even if I do get a kick when reviewers now suddenly see flaws in it as a year ago ...) but still SI does not fix some of the most viewed flaws, scaling everything to the player level is one.

    Besides you are the one that made such comment over role playing saying Oblivion is "next gen" because it lacks roll dice ... I could have easy pointed out it DOES roll dice except they removed the failure for almost everything (only lock picking have failure).


  • immateriaux #35 5 years ago

    It would have helped if you pointed out something, somewhere, rather than continually making vacuous insinuations ... Especially, if what you were about to point out was apparently so explicitily wrong! I didn't actually say they "removed" dice rolling, I said it did not bind itself to that game mechanic. Which is an important difference and is exactly what modern games are trying more to do.

    What gets me about criticisms of Oblivion are how narrow focused they are. So it's trying something different and hasn't succeeded completely - there is apparently no recognition that the old style of levelling was not a perfect solution itself and Bethesda were at least facing up to that fact. I would hope that they continue to look forward and not get dragged back by the conservatism and reactionary opinions of people who want Morrowind endlessly repeated: warts, flaws, longeurs and turgid traipsing all firmly fixed for forever...

  • holy_bazooka #36 5 years ago

    Of course this lack of inspiration (just maybe) mean that Bethesda are pumping all their creative gunk into the newly resurrected cadaver of Fallout 3, which would really be a good thing... Wouldn't it?

    yess yesss come my preety come. come out of the womb of bethesda into my lap.

  • Drakron #37 5 years ago

    Oh?

    Except the mechanics of level gaining were in fact altered, what making everything scaling to the player was making the player actual level irrelevant.

    There was no sense of accomplishment since the challenge remain always the same.

    I can guess why Bethsoft did it, Morrowind had some scaling but after level 20 the enemies stop leveling so a level 40 had no challenge but then again question is should a level 40 character have the same challenge as it was at level 10?

    Also not all classes are equal, the game scales to the character LEVEL and not player offensive/defensive abilities so a character that is specialized in non combat suddenly faces tougher opposition simply because he leveled.

    And you are the one that brought up dice rolls on your post about D&D archaic model, even if (A)D&D is quite broken (especially the older editions) it does the job in being a simple model that functions as intended ... complicated models are nice but really, what Oblivion does is simply the model further, not adding more realism ... after all when in reality do the wolves suffer sudden extinction and are replaced by mountain lions?

    Are we back to the old days of D&D were since the party became stronger the world runs out of goblins? since that is what Bethsoft did.

    Morrowind certainly had flaws but Oblivion had even more flaws ... I read a amusing comment from a developer were he stated the fast travel map made the world seem smaller ... well its convenient to the player and perhaps the reason the world seems smaller is instead of making actual towns and villages they were busy populating the world with tons of ruined forts and alyeid ruins that serve no purpose beyond some dungeon crawling with scaled rewards.

  • NewbieZilla #38 5 years ago

    "And wasn't the guy in prison supposed to be the king of this land? Nobody seems to care his was just killed..."

    Really?

    "The Emperor and his sons... Dead... Thats never happened before..."
    "We are a legion without an emperor"
    "The Blades were trusted to save the emperor. And they failed."

    Yeah, them quotes seem somewhat familiar to me. Wonder where from.

  • immateriaux #39 5 years ago

    I don't agree that Oblivion had more flaws than Morrowind, they are just different games with different styles: plus there's a lot of "rose tinted specs" views of Morrowind now, it was a great attempt at a game in it's time but let down by a lot of tedium, far too much of the game involved doing nothing in particular, just walking or going back and forth trying to discover something hidden somewhere etc. and there was a lot of very basic "fetches" in the quests.

    Also there is a big contrast to the experience in Oblivion of people going about their business in a fairly vibrant way and Morrowinds static NPCs always on the same bridge or same part of town etc etc. Some of the quest ideas were much more interesting in Oblivion too, a few were really stand out ideas, though there was a very definite slant towards the "assassin" type characters in the game having the best experiences. So undoubtedly if you didn't want to be an assassin character you were losing out some.

    Another thing I think gets overlooked is the narrative logic of both games: Morrowind had you in unfamiliar territory and building your character whereas in Oblivion you were in your home land and were meant to be a already formed in a way - you get that at the end of the initial prison break where you pick your character type, the soldier guy there is giving you respect as an assassin or whatever, ie you are to a degree "fully formed". If you were then to go out and be absolutely useless at killing anything it would make no sense to the internal logic of the game. Hence, things must be scaled to your character level. As you say, somewhat in parallel to Morrowind, when you character got to a high level, then cracks in the model appeared, but I think the flaws lay more with item scaling than the levelling per se.
    Edited by 1 at 08/04/07 @ 21:34

  • Krun #40 5 years ago

    Well I like it.

    It is still the most played game in my collection.

    I'm glad they made it for those of us still playing the game who actually like it.

    its not a slap in the face, that they didnt "fix" what you may have thought was wrong with it. The chances are if they had "fixed" it, those of us still playing wouldnt have liked it.

  • blackw0lf #41 5 years ago

    All I want to say is that the "ghosts" quest is easily one of the coolest quests I've seen in a game.

  • Scimarad #42 5 years ago

    "There's none of the expectation-defying intrigue and guile that made Oblivion's quests so compulsive. You're killing this, fetching that, and basically clearing out a load of uninspired dungeons."

    Whaaat? The second sentence seems to better describe the main Oblivion game than the first - I certainly don't remember any 'expectation-defying intrigue and guile'...

    I wish there had been more quests like that one where you had to travel way to the north to discover that old fort - Would that be the ghosts one you were talking about?

    Edited by 1 at 10/04/07 @ 07:52

  • Owain #43 5 years ago

    Scimarad...

    *MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW*








    I think think the ghost quest he means is the ones where you buy that cheap mansion, I thought "bleh this looks a bit shit and run down" anyway if you spend the night there the game wakes you up and you're attacked by like 3-4 ghosts around the bed... yeah its a good one.

  • tiddles #44 5 years ago

    I love the complaints about Oblivion that go along the lines of "after 120 hours it gets really boring..." - so you played it and enjoyed it for 119 hours first?

  • darc #45 5 years ago

    Actually, I think the "ghost quest" he's referring to is one of the early quests in Shivering Isles. At least I hope it's early, otherwise this is a very short game. :)

    "'after 120 hours it gets really boring...' - so you played it and enjoyed it for 119 hours first?"

    LOL That's true. I think I should have known better than to expect an expansion pack to bring it back to life after I'd worn the original game so thin. Even if S.I. were completely inspired in terms of content, the process of playing Oblivion is just old hat, no getting around it.

    And is S.I. inspired? Well, red flag number 1: the game flaunts its whole premise by starting out with two doors to two alledgedly distinct worlds. Choose wisely, grasshopper, and all that drama... and then they lead to the same place. For those without the patience to play another 30 hours of Oblivion, that probably sums it up for us in advance.
    Edited by 2 at 12/04/07 @ 19:55

  • Bremenacht #46 2 years ago

    Interesting reading this again now:

    "Of course this lack of inspiration could (just maybe) mean that Bethesda are pumping all their creative gunk into the newly resurrected cadaver of Fallout 3, which would really be a good thing... Wouldn't it?"

    Just maybe you were right! :)