Last night, I finally picked up a copy of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (I know, I know; I'm late to the party). The Fifth Anniversary edition just came out, and with its incredibly low price-point and the fact that it comes with everything Oblivion has to offer, now seemed to be the best time to actually try out a game that I’ve been called insane for never picking up.

I popped it into my PS3, let the disc spin, and six hours later I realized I was still playing the game. The weirdest thing -- and something I’ve been assured is absolutely normal for this game -- is that I feel like I’ve done nothing in it. Seriously, I'm six hours in, and I’ve seen more of the environment than I have of the actual storyline. I’ve explored, I’ve fought, and I’ve loved. I’ve also been turned into a vampire and contemplated restarting.

As I reflected on my adventures thus far, I decided to open up my trophy collection and see what treasures awaited me on what is likely to be an incredibly long and enjoyable adventure.

And that’s when I noticed this game has no trophies whatsoever.

I thought it was odd or that something was possibly wrong with my version of the game, so I took to the wellspring of information that most geeks and gamers go to when they come to an impasse; I went to the Internet (namely Twitter) and cried out in woe that I had no trophies -- no means to show off what I’ve done on my adventures thus far. How would I, much like the writer in a coffee shop with his MacBook Pro, exhibit my accomplishments to the world?

Ok...that’s a bit of a dramatization. All I really did was make a comment that I was surprised by this apparent oversight. I know there are achievements for Oblivion on the 360, and thought it incredibly surprising that they hadn’t been carried over in this new collection for Sony’s system (the original came out before trophies existed). But the answer I received, coming from a kindly gentleman from across the pond (Hey Pete Davison!), made me realize something grave -- something I had never taken into account before:

Achievements are ruining adventure games for me.

It’s weird how the Pavlovian desire for recognition has trained me to, without even a second thought, peruse the achievement/trophy list for every game I’ve owned. For some games, this doesn’t really matter: fighting games, puzzle games that have no story, and other simple time-wasters that I don’t devote weeks of my life to. I play those games for the enjoyment and the mind-numbing (or massaging, in the case of puzzle games) pleasure of the systems in play. Games with stories, on the other hand, I’ve always played for the experience: the writing, the imagery, and the symbolism displayed in this interactive medium we’ve all come to know and love.

And achievements, to an extent, kind of ruin that. As simple as the system is (and as simple as it is to avoid), achievements have been put in place for an incredibly simple reason: to get you to fully experience a game. They hint at and show you things you may not have known to do otherwise, give you small ideas at the upcoming story at hand, or simply exist as hidden counters that tick off as you complete key objectives.

By looking at the achievement list, you’re almost spoiling the hidden world created for you. Suddenly, as you realize that if you count all of the hidden achievements/trophies, you’ll know just how long a game is and just how many areas there are to explore. They’re never random and never spread out; they’re consistent, because they have to be to get you to want to unlock them. Pete brought up an amazing point: trophies within Oblivion make a game that monstrous and all-encompassing (I’ve heard stories of people having 600+ hours on the game) seem incredibly more static and more linear. With each achievement hunted and conquered, the lifespan of the game draws nearer to a finite number instead of the “infinite” exploration possible within it.

As the idea dawned on me, I realized that’s completely true for a number of different games I’ve played. Games like Bioshock and Dead Space completely wrap you into their story and have every means of keeping you there forever...until you see that you’ve received half of the achievements in them. At that point, the game suddenly becomes more like those mind-numbing puzzles and fighting games than the interactive stories they strive so hard to be.

Are achievements terrible? Not at all. I certainly think they have their place within the scope of gaming as both bragging rights and a way to get many gamers interested for hours more than their attention spans normally hold (or at all, in the case of some achievement hunters). But the system, as it is today, may end up holding great interactive adventures back from being the true masterpieces they could be.

And that’s a damned shame.