The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Interview

Geek.com was able to track down Oblivion PS3 producer Craig Lafferty for a quick Q&A about some of the team’s design choices and the game’s current and future downloadable content.

Some of the possibilities in character creation seem somewhat odd. For example, why would someone want to be born under the sign of the Lord… Isn’t that just asking for people to be forced to start over? Or did you want to give people the freedom to hurt or help their characters as much as they wanted… sort of like real life.

Exactly–it’s all about choice. The player can chose what type of character they want to play, what quests they want to do, etc. The sign of the Lord offers a benefit for characters without a restoration skill, but only gives that benefit once a day. Each class and birth sign offers something unique and by including many options, we give the player many choices for how they play the game.

The interviewer obviously doesn’t play role-playing games.