Oblivion: Shivering Isles – Drug Taking Madness!

Plus latest screens, art and more inside

Posted by Staff
If, like many here at SPOnG, you’ve spent hundreds of hours over the past year wandering and questing around the world of Cyrodiil in Bethesda’s glorious Oblivion then you will want to know more about new expansion pack to the game, Shivering Isles which is out on PC (as a retail pack) and Xbox 360 (as a download only) later next month.

One thing that's bound to draw attention is the taking of 'Felldew' - an addictive drug that players have to take in order to complete one of the many quests in the game. We await the uproar that this is bound to be caused by the massed-meedja, before it does, however, we'd like to point out that this Felldew taking is about as controversial as Sonic's desire for gold rings or Pele's desire for goals. You're not going to have much of a game without them... so back off Daily Mail readers.

SPOnG caught up with Bethesda’s VP of Marketing and PR for a good long chat about everything to do with Shivering Isles earlier this week and we found out, among many other things, that the designers took some inspiration from such classics as The Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The realm in Shivering Isles is divided into two areas – Mania and Dementia – which Pete Hines described to us as follows:

The realm in the Shivering Isles is really a reflection of Sheogorath himself. As the daedric Prince of Madness, he’s got a bit of both sides in him. He’s got the ‘happier’ insane side – you know, almost like an insane artist. And then he’s got the darker, more demented side in him – more paranoid, twisted and slightly frightening. So the world is very much representative of his two halves. It’s a world created in his image…[Mania is] a bit of Oz, a bit of Alice in Wonderland…anything where you see really bright, oversaturated colours…it’s definitely designed as a bit of a contrast to the more classical fantasy feeling of Oblivion itself. And then dementia is yet another contrast to that Oz/ Alice in Wonderland feel… much more oppressive, dark and dreary.”


It also seems that one of the key characters in the game, the ‘Duke of Mania’ is a filthy drug addict! Well, he’s addicted to something called ‘Felldew’ which Hines described as:

An ingredient that you get off some of the creatures in the world. So one of the things you have to do is to use the Felldew yourself to get to the end of a quest and finish something… and… well, I don’t want to spoil it… but you end up having to use Felldew yourself as part of a quest, which has the same properties as a drug… so it gives you a boost in the short-term but then after a while the effects wear off and you start feeling negative effects, unless you can find some more… so it’s a bit of a challenge to get through as fast as you can before the effects wear off… while at the same time finding more features to get more Felldew from so you don’t start going into withdrawal and getting really big stat damage…So it’s a bit of a balancing act.


Check out SPOnG’s full Shivering Isles interview with all the details you need to know about the RPG event of the year. Well, so far at least!

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