Customer Reviews

Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was truly suprised at just how good this expansion turned out to be. Not only does it introduce a completly new realm full of fantastical scenery, objects, and characters, but it also introduces a broad range of vibrante and involving quests.

Upon entering the Shivering Isles, you are automatically presented with two sides of a coin - mania or dementia. The manic half of the Isles are vibrantly colored, producing wacky landscape and crazy characters. The dementia half, however, is more suited for the darker characters with its gothic scenery and clothing. As you begin to explore, you'll encounter a variety of new creatures, including an uber-goblin-like creature that makes its home in extensive, bellow ground networks. It is also of note that the newly introduced creatures of the Shivering Isles are really tough to beat, even at a higher level. To some extent, even with the leveling system, Oblivion's creatures had become rote kills - one or two blows and your done. Not so in Shivering Isles - a nice change. New items are also present, including some kick butt weaponry (which are overall much better than those found in your earlier adventures), as well as the opportunity to harvest certain ingredients and have weapons and armor custom made.

The quests are extremely enjoyable. For instance, in one side quest, you have the option of completly trashing another characters home - havok's real world physics made this a real treat. In addition, nearly every quest following the main storyline presents a new and creative opportunity to create a little chaos. In one quest, you're given the opportunity to torture uncooporative suspects, and in another you are able to choose a life of insanity or a 'dead end' for a band of unwary adventurers.

Overall, Shivering Isles introduces a realm that is built upon fantasy - a nice break from the more realistic style of Cyrodil. It is a truly involving game, making for a very fun play. I might even be tempted to say that its a bit better than Oblivion itself...

Alright, I only started playing the Shivering Isles expansion two days ago, and I have only been able to play about three hours, but I love it. It's probably not for everyone, since it can be dark and kinda twisted (alright, it's actually really twisted), but I tend to think it's the best thing I've played yet from Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls world.

Don't read any further if you don't want any details revealed.

From the moment I entered the Strange Door in Niben Bay and had to figure a way to get past the Gatekeeper, I was hooked. It only got better. It wasn't long before I found myself in a village where all the residents had each been magically split into two persons, one manic and the other one really out there. Naturally, owing to the nature of Sheogorath's realm, the solution they want you to implement for them is to kill their doubles so they can have some peace and get their work done. Later, you get to direct the progress of a group of adventurers as they make their way through a dungeon. You can kill them off one by one, or make things happen that cause them to go insane. Then, if you last long enough to meet the Duchess of Dementia, if you play your cards right, she will make you her Grand Inquisitor and you get to go through her capitol city and interrogate all the residents and torture anyone who can't answer your questions. Of course, at your command, the torturer will inflict pain on them for no other reason than just because.

If you like Oblivion, especially if you like the Dark Brotherhood set of quests, you will love the Shivering Isles. So what are you waiting for?

As others have said, Oblivion is getting a bit "old" for some of us who have completed most of the quests (163 for me) over the past year or so. Shivering Isles is just what the doctor ordered. Great idea, an interesting and beautiful world, great new characters and many challenges for high level characters (or low level if that's where you're at). Seeing those beautiful Golden Saints (or Aurelans) again takes me back to Morrowind (ES 3). Nostalgia to be sure. New armor (either heavy or light; enchanted or regular) and weapons (all kinds) are available. I found the main quest to be just great. The Shivering Island "world" is relatively small so a horse is not needed (and nobody else has one so there would be balance issues). I only wish there were a few more good and challenging miscellaneous type quests -- especially since there are no factions to join. But I say there's 30 hours here -- at least.

After The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's release last year, Bethesda Softworks has been slowly releasing little nuggets of new content. Most of this content, while cheap, didn't add much to the game. Unlike the previous downloads, the Shivering Isles is an expansion pack filled with content, adding roughly 20-40 hours of new gameplay for those still running around Cyrodiil.

The expansion begins when you hear news about a strange island that has sprouted up in the middle of Niben Bay. Upon inspecting the island, you are greeted by a soldier standing guard outside of a strange doorway. Apparently everyone that has entered the portal has either come back out insane, or has simply not come back at all. Being the brave adventurer you are, you enter to find that you have arrived at the Shivering Isles, the realm of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. He has put a call out for a champion to help him stop the Greymarch; a sort of cleaning that happens at the end of every era.

The world of the Shivering Isles is divided into two regions: Mania to the Northeast and Dementia to the Southwest. Both areas are visually stunning and look absolutely nothing like anything that you have seen in Cyrodiil. Mania is very bright, vibrant, and oversaturated with plants like tall trees and large colorful mushrooms. On the other hand, Dementia is a very dark, foggy, and washed out swampland. The main city, New Sheoth, is also divided into two sections called Bliss and Crucible. The entire size of the Isles is about a quarter of the size of Cyrodiil, and is packed with tons of stuff to explore.

The main quest is pretty epic in scope and is easily on par with the one in the main game. The quests, of which many are memorable, will take you all over the Shivering Isles to complete various tasks. Your first job upon entering the realm of Sheogorath is to defeat the Gatekeeper. He is an extremely large and powerful enemy that is guarding the Gates of Madness, which is the only exit from the Fringe (a holding area of sorts that prevents those unworthy from entering the actual Isles). You can face him as is, but innovative players will find ways to tip the battle in their favor.

Another one of the early quests involves you reactivating Xedilian, which is an old dungeon that was used to deal with unwanted adventurers before the Gatekeeper was created. Once activated, the dungeon magically draws any visitors to it, at which point you can either kill or play tricks on the NPCs that find their way into its chambers.

Besides the main quest, the game offers a lot of interesting side quests, many of which are just as crazy as the people who reside in the Isles. One of the citizens of Bliss will explain to you that while he has perfected getting boats to float on the water, he has had less success in forcing the water to fly through air. Logically, a boat carried by flying water becomes a Skyboat. So he tasks you with searching everywhere for calipers and tongs to achieve the effect of keeping water airborne, and pays you gold for each caliper or tong you bring him. Another resident is afraid to sleep inside because he believes the walls will fall on top of him. So he asks you to find a safe place for him to sleep outside.

In addition to the new quests, the expansion also includes new weapons and armor, some of which you can craft from raw materials found in various dungeons throughout the Shivering Isles. Players will also get some new spells along the way, the most interesting of which are a few summons. Also, those who like to create their own potions will find a huge amount of new ingredients to experiment with.

Overall, the Shivering Isles is pretty good. It features all of the stuff that you would expect from an expansion pack: an interesting plot, a good amount of quests, new weapons, armor, ect. Not to mention that this expansion offers more hours of gameplay then other full priced retail games, making the Shivering Isles a convincing reason to revisit an already excellent game.

Personally, I think this expansion pack is worth it on merit of Sheogorath's voice acting and dialogue alone. Yes, there's more to a game than that. But he's hilarious, and they did a good job giving the madgod a personality that, despite his insanity, he is almost believable. His mood swings mid-sentence, sometimes he rambles on about clowns and butter... or says stuff like "Come back and visit anytime... or I'll pluck out your eyes!"

The people in town are all just as bizzare in their own ways. They're not quite as believable, but you'll meet hypochondriacs, people who think everyone is trying to kill them, and people who collect (and steal) forks.. needless to say, they are also amusing, though I wouldn't say as much as Sheogorath himself. Their quests are often bizzare - there's one orc that's afraid of cats (i.e. kajit), and asks you to get rid of a Kajit, which then gives you several different solutions to his quest.

Gameplay-wise, I'd say it's the same caliber as Oblivion itself. The quests in the main storyline are engaging and fun. The sidequests are fun too, but tend to be fairly short, and there aren't anywhere near as many as Oblivion (that may be expected, though, seeing as this is an expansion).

My only real complaint is that I played through the whole game and only bumped into like one of the small villages. They are not at all essential to the storyline. Sure, you can get like one sidequest from the 4-5 villagers at each town, but if you never find the town, you're not so far out of luck.

Overall, though, I found the dialogue to be amusing, quests entertaining, and the landscapes rather interesting. There's a shortage of sidequests, but the characters are much more fleshed-out and distinctive than in vanilla Oblivion. Granted, they're crazy, but at least for me, that made me talk to everyone I saw. I had a lot of fun with Shivering Isles.

First, do you have The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? You'll need it for this expansion.

The installation is easy and the expansion integrates into the overall game with ease. Even if you're well on your way with Oblivion's main quest, the entrance of Shivering Isles into the realm of Tamriel is unobtrusive and natural. A strange door appears on a little island near Bravil. Whether you investigate immediately or later is entirely up to you.

Think of this expansion as a much-deserved vacation into lunacy, a break from saving the "real" world from infernal Daedra.

So what happens? To say anything of the plot would be spoiling the fun. Suffice it to say that you'll dealing with an impetuous god, one of the Daedric princes. Sheogorath has a wicked sense of humor, a personality split right down the middle, and a very elaborate plan (or two) for you. To accomplish the goals that Sheogorath sets before you, you will engage in dungeon crawls, caving expeditions, tragic battles and political conspiracy. And rest assured that the decisions you make will have a marked impact on your future.

From my experience, the lessons learned and the abilities gained from the Shivering Isles quests and adventures can prove incredibly handy toward completing the main Oblivion quests, should you decide to visit Sheogorath's realm before saving Tamriel entirely.

As with Oblivion, the technological demands are remarkably steep, particularly where graphics cards are concerned. If you're a Nvidia enthusiast, you'd best be armed with an 8-series card (Examples: eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB PCI-Express Graphics Card or eVGA e-GeForce 8800GTS 320 MB PCIe Video Card), at the very least. While Oblivion and its expansions can be played on older, less muscular systems, the experience will always be sub-par without the full effect provided by a better graphics card.

There are plenty of good reviews here so I don't want to rehash things. I do just want to point out that you can play this with a new character and not have problems. I finished Oblivion long ago and deleted the game from my hard disk, but thought I'd kept my save games. Ooops. I loaded Shivering Isles and couldn't find the saves, and was concerned that I'd have to spend hours leveling up before I could start the expansion pack. No worries. Just create a new character, wait for the quest to pop up, and jump on in as a Level 1. You can work the side quests while you build levels and get some nifty new armour and weapons. It's a good chance to try a new character type and experiment with new abilities. Until Elder Scrolls V comes out, this is the best we're going to get, and a great value for the money.

I must be one of the few people who can't get enough of the Oblivion game world. When the Shivering Isles expansion was announced, I was incredible excited. And the wait was well worth it!

Shivering Isles adds a gigantic new game world, with two vastly unique art styles. One half of the island, Mania, is a colorful world full of vibrancy and overindulgence. The other half of the island, Dementia, is a dark and foreboding place, with a depressed color palette.

The quests throughout the island are nearly as diverse, ranging from tasks for the mad god Sheogorath to helping out the island's inhabitants. The main storyline is incredibly engaging, and features a number of twists and turns. I highly recommend this expansion for fans of Oblivion!

ES4: Oblivion was an amazing game. The combat system has gotten a lot better than it was in Morrowind, the story is deep and engaging, the side quests are plentiful and the personalities diverse. So once I had played through all of Cyrodiil, I made a new character and did it again. And again. Each time the game was different because of the strengths and weaknesses of each archetype. But eventually the whole game was "Been there, done that, killed it." Shivering Isles (and Knights of the Nine, for that matter) gives additional content, professionally done with voice-overs and quest progressions worthy of inclusion in the original release. It's more of the same great, diverse content, which is what you wanted to begin with. Pick it up. You won't be disappointed.

There really isn't much more to say. The strange environments, exotic creatures, interesting quests and compelling core story all make this expansion an excellent investment for owners of Oblivion.