Oblivion Remastered: How the Persuasion minigame works

If you’re used to playing Skyrim, then one thing that will strike you as different very quickly in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is how you interact with NPCs, as many of them will only be willing to talk about certain things if they like you enough. Every NPC in the game has an individually tracked opinion of the player, which you can influence by doing favors for them, growing your Fame/Infamy, or more directly via the Persuasion minigame.

This minigame can be quite confusing the first time you do it, even with the game’s brief tutorial, so we’ll explain how it works and how to get the best results. The lockpicking minigame is also troublesome, but thankfully you'll never have to worry about it if you can get the Skeleton Key in Oblivion.

How the Persuasion minigame works

When you start the minigame, you will be presented with a circle split into four segments: Admire, Joke, Coerce, and Boast. Each has a different number of bars attached to them, which indicates how effective selecting that option is for that NPC. Whether that effect is positive or negative depends on the facial expression of the person you’re talking to.

So, for example, if you hover over “Boast” while it has four bars and the person you’re talking to has a big smile on their face, that is the ideal scenario, as it will give a big positive boost to your relationship. Note, though, that your relationship will slowly tick down for the duration of the conversation, so you have to be quick.

When you select an option, the circle will rotate one segment clockwise, moving the bars around the circle and changing how big of an impact each option will have. To succeed, you need to click the positive reactions when they have many bars, and the negative ones when they have few, as this will maximize your gains and minimize your losses. You have to select all four options before you can exit the minigame, so you need to plan your moves out in advance.

To make things more obvious, from your second attempt onwards, the bars will be color-coded to more clearly indicate how your partner will react to each prompt. Green is love, Yellow is like, Orange is dislike, and Red is hate.

It’s complicated and your effectiveness is determined both by your Personality attribute and your Speechcraft skill, but there are ways you can get around needing to use it at all.

How to skip the Persuasion minigame

There are two ways to avoid needing to use this minigame at all.

Before beginning a Persuasion attempt, you will have the option to bribe the person you’re speaking to, which will increase their relationship score for some cash, though it’ll have diminishing returns each time you do it.

The second way is to use any of the Charm Illusion spells. These include spells like Charm, Beguile, Mesmerising Touch, and many more that all temporarily increase a person’s relationship with you. It’s not considered a crime to use any of these spells on people, so you’re free to do it as much as you need and get some Illusion training into the bargain, but remember: it’s temporary.