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. 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.īut anyway, there's a rather more significant problem trotting along behind all this madness stuff, one that does degrade the entire experience. 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. It's far closer to Morrowind than the original, and that's a good thing. 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. Lots of ladies in Oblivion, but none of them seem interested in wrestling.īoth realities are profoundly beautiful, as you might expect.

Each has its own quests, and its own residents. Mania is bright and colourful, and filled with manic drug-loonies, while dementia is gloomy, dark, and inhabited by depressive paranoids. 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. 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. The Shivering Isles exists in two different parallel realities, Mania and Dementia. Once the gatekeeper and early quests are dispensed with, the game plays a neat trick. 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.

He tells you to seek out the big boss, his boss, Sheogorath The Prince Of Madness. 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. 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. It's a bit of a clumsy introduction, but we'll forgive it that. 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. 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. Not just another quest arc, but a full-blown extra plane of Oblivion, complete with hordes of new monsters, NPCs and items. 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.

Should i buy shivering isles