Sometimes, one screenshot comes to define a game’s entire existence — for better or for worse. Is it good that a former SNL cast member is my primary mental image of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion? Bad? I’m not sure. But let me give you some normal examples, before we get to my weird one.
Reducing A Game To One Screen
Half-Life: Alyx will forever be represented for me by a screenshot of three Combine soldiers pointing guns at the player, who has their hands up in surrender. For Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it’s CJ heading down the alley with subtitles reading, “Ah sh*t, here we go again.”. For Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, it’s a shot of Jeanette Voerman with her hair in pigtails, head cocked at the camera. For Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s the Blue Blur standing at the start of Green Hill Zone. Some games have one image that instantly communicates, ‘This is that game.’
For The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, that screenshot is Fred Armisen in a dungeon dressed like a king (or queen? Honestly, until I did some research, I couldn’t tell what the character’s intended gender was). I’m talking about this one:
I never played Oblivion, so until today, I had no idea what role this character played in the game. All I knew was that they looked exactly like former SNL star Fred Armisen. Every time I saw this screenshot attached to a story about Oblivion, I’d first think, ‘Hey, that looks a lot like Fred Armisen,’ before I could absorb what the article was actually trying to communicate
More specifically, this character looks like Fred Armisen playing Candace, the female owner of Women and Women First, a feminist bookstore in Portlandia. Here’s a look at that character:
This has haunted me. Did Bethesda design this character to look like Fred Armisen on purpose? The game came out four years into Armisen’s 11-year stint at SNL and, by that time, he was well-established as a major player in the ’00s iteration of the cast. It was years before he would play Candace on Portlandia, but he had played women on SNL at this point. Was Bethesda inspired? Is this just a strange coincidence?
For some more chronological context, Oblivion came about a year before Armisen started playing Barack Obama on SNL.
Getting To Know Emperor Uriel Septim VII
A little research revealed that this character is Emperor Uriel Septim VII, who reigns over Tamriel throughout the first three games, and is assassinated at the beginning of Oblivion. Though, not before he can free the player character from the prison cell they find themself in as the game opens. And, after watching the intro cinematic and a couple of dialogue scenes between the player and Uriel, he doesn’t actually look that much like Fred Armisen (and, for the record, wasn’t played by him). It’s really just from that specific angle and in that specific pose. Here’s another angle where he looks significantly less Armisen-y for reference:
Getting a look at the character in motion instantly changed my perception of him. It has me thinking about whether screenshots are useful at all. After all, we experience games in motion, and we experience them by playing them. Does passively looking at a character standing still give you an accurate sense of what a game will be like to play? No, and that’s part of the reason that every gaming magazine had to grow to include video content. Players want to see what a game is like when it’s moving.
But this enlightening experience has not changed what I see in that screenshot. No, I expect that, for as long as Sonic will be Green Hill Zone and San Andreas will be CJ in that alley, Oblivion will be Fred Armisen in drag.
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Oblivion Doesn’t Need A Remake
Oblivion holds up surprisingly well, and a remake risks losing so much of its awkward, janky charm.