Customer Reviews

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

5 star:		(99)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

Simply put, Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is not only the best RPG of the year, but arguably the next step of the RPG's evolution. Think of it this way: 25 years ago Wizardry I was state of the art in all parts of the RPG - graphics, game design, and character build (stolen straight from D&D). That one game changed the way others were built. Today, Oblivion not only has state of the art graphics but also state of the art game design and character build - essentially, the culmination of 25 years of electronic RPG design. The competition has a lot of work to do to catch up, and it is likely many of the features here will be borrowed for other games. This is a clear 5 stars overall, with the only two flaws being like its predecessors the game is simply massive and the controls can be a bit awkward.

For those who never played it, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was a great game and major advancement in the genre. (In a sign of how good it was, 3 years after its release the original collector's edition still sells for near its original cost in the secondary market versus other games which might go for 10% of what you paid for them. Incredible.) More specifically, it really reinvented the RPG genre with skill-based advancement - if you want to be a fighter, kill something with a sword - and open-ended quests.

What is most noticable about Oblivion besides the eye-popping but system straining graphics (anything lower than a high end PC from last year will likely have problems, but the upside is this screams to be played on a 45" LCD monitor at 1920x1080p) is that Bethesda improved upon Morrowind rather than reinventing the wheel. Advancement is still skill-based but in general seems more balanced than before as powerleveling only a few skills will generally just get you fighting stronger mobs. Exploring the world through quests and NPCs remains the focus as it should be, but it also doesn't feel like you have to constantly grind FedEx quests to advance. In other words, the open-ended gameplay - arguably the one weak spot of Morrowind - remains open-ended but more managable. Don't fear, however, as with several hundred quests it's easy to lose yourself. If you're willing to put in the game time towards the rumored 1000 hours, the adding on of some long guild quests and other miscellaneous ones can get you a very, very powerful character, or you can simply try to solve the main quest quickly. It's up to you.

The two downsides are the game is massive in all respects and that while simultaneously designed for Xbox and PC several parts of it feel tilted towards the console. First, the size and lack of direction feel a bit daunting, but more importantly there is a tough learning ramp to figure out the game. For instance, your first couple of characters will probably be rerolled as it's hard to understand how useful all but the most obvious skills work until you use them extensively. Figuring out how to build a character around this based on an hour's worth of gameplay (since you do at least get to rechoose everything after the introduction quest) is asking too much. The open-ended aspect can be scary too; even as early as the the newbie quest there's not a lot of linear direction and the hint levels just drop from there. Walkthroughs for this will be immensely helpful, and in a once-in-a-generation event the Prima Guide is actually worth the money. (One note: given how much Amazon has discounted the Prima Guide, if you're looking to save money, consider combining it along with the non-collector's edition of the game and bypassing the collector's edition entirely. For only a couple of dollars more, you'll substitute the immense help of the Guide over the pretty but not hugely important book included in the latter, and while you're giving up a 'making of' DVD you'll save multiple hours of character design even if you choose to ignore the spoiler walkthroughs.)

Second, the game does feel at times like it was designed for a console. This isn't as bad as something that's a console conversion like GTA:SA where a gamepad is mandatory and the graphics are limited by the conversion. However, numerous features like spell selection, inventory management, and NPC interaction all are console-friendly to such an extent where those used to playing on a PC will probably grumble a bit. (It's a bit odd that this got through beta testing on the PC without someone requesting more than the current 8 programmable hotkeys in total that groan under supporting several hundred spells and abilities.) Far more annoying is that while third-person mode is included and playable, it is essentially impossible to use for ranged combat as only the first-person mode has a crosshair to aim spells and weapons. These are minor but noticable nuisances, especially for a game that is otherwise supremely polished.

Still, it's the best of the genre. Bethesda is to be commended for the design, the production (little things like hiring Patrick Stewart for a brief role as Emperor show the quality), and the difficult decision to delay the game for several months to fix things, where so many companies now push out beta editions as gold just to get the game on the market. 5 stars, and there will be a lot of people who don't get much work done for the next month.

Despite the long wait for the development on this title to finish, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has proved well worth the wait. I haven't had more than 10 hours in the game so far, but already I can say it is less buggy, more intuitive, and just as deep if not deeper than Morrowind.

FYI, I didn't play more than 30 hours into Morrowind, because it kept locking up on my Xbox even though the game wasn't scratched and no other games skipped. Just as background - that was my only Elder Scrolls experience till now.

On my PC (currently with a 6800GT and a 2.6Ghz Athlon 64 with 1 Gig of DDR400), load times between areas are short - maybe 5 to 10 seconds TOPS - and when moving through outside areas loading is non-existent. Definitely much better done than Morrowind.

The graphics are stunning. The auto-detection sets everything for you, and doesn't allow you to make many changes. I'm sure there will be ways to force higher settings on lower cards later on, but the gameplay was smooth and stunningly gorgeous, and I expected no less than that.

Indoor and city textures are best, smoke effects are absolutely amazing - ultra-realistic. Flames are also brilliant. The night sky and moon are a sight to behold, and the vegetation doesn't extend to the horizon, but looks great as it appears, and smoothly fills in as you cross the terrain.

The voice acting and sound effects are done brilliantly. If you have 5.1 surround, it won't be wasted on this title. Patrick Stewart's voice acting work at the beginning is a wonderful and fitting introduction to the quality of this game overall. Bethesda really does seem like the Shakespeare of game developers to me, after only a short time with this game.

Travel has been simplified. Once you hear about a city, you can instantly travel there. Of course, taking the "long way" leads you past all kinds of ruins, harvestable vegetation, random farmhouses, dungeons, caves, and wild animals. So whichever you choose, you're in for a treat.

Inventory space is easily managed, equipping items is quick and simple, and setting hotkeys is also easy, useful, and also necessary.

The tutorial is sufficient, and paced slow enough to allow you to get your brain around each feature as you go through it. However, they do not explain to you how to level up - or if they did I missed it - and I had to find out about travel from a review online. So those two things I think could be introduced more obviously.

Other than that, I found crafting and lockpicking to be enjoyable and useful, and the process of selecting your class/race/etc was well layed out. Character customization options seem literally infinite, and I must have spent 25 minutes designing my character's face. Of course, you can just hit random and skip that if it's not your thing.

As stated, I'm not too far in yet, but it's bigger and better than Morrowind, looks better than just about ANYTHING out there, and they immediately set you off into your first quests and on the road to greatness. On PC you can't run HDR and AA at the same time, but even on a ~$200 card like my 6800GT it looks gorgeous, runs smooth, and I expect someone to figure out how to run both on a PC eventually anyway.

To be quite honest, except for the few items I somehow missed during the tutorial, I can't say enough good things about this game. It's a must-have for any RPG fan.

**** To clarify, because some people are spreading misinformation about this title, it is possible to remap your controls on the PC. Also, F1 through F4 open each of your menus, from character sheet to inventory, spells, accomplishments, etc. As a tech writer by profession, I find it amusing that those who are having a hard time with the controls on PC have simply failed to read the manual, or RTFM as we say in my line of work. Personally, I just started pushing buttons in game and found them all in a matter of minutes. Most can be remapped (I always play eadf instead of wasd), including the spell casting hotkey, and I would be willing to bet that with a little diligence someone will find a way to modify the config file so that the rest of them (F1-F4 I believe are locked) can be remapped.

First, I'd like to be honest... No review can do this game justice, this one included. I would also like to note, I was never a fan of Morrowind. Played it for a few hours, felt lost, and got bored... This game has similar potential to turn you off, BE CAREFUL!

The first thing you must understand is that this game rivals the real world. It's vast. It's beautiful. It's easy to get lost and feel lost. After playing for a few hours I was ready to throw in the towel... Then I found the games true potential. Two hundred hours later... I'm still playing. =)

Let's go point by point (because it's fun):

1) Graphics. Amazing! Trees, flowers, snow, bugs, dust, smoke... It's all here. While a top-end PC isn't required, the game will eat as much power as you have, enhancing every aspect unbelievably! If you on the lower side, do not worry. There is a fully customizable video section allowing you to alter settings to your visual delight. Additionally, there are "Tweak guides" which will help you attain the best performance for your machine (google!). Personally, I fell in the "Medium" category, and was amazed to say the least.

2) Sound. Since this review has to be G-Rated I'm going to put this lightly... I do a lot of gaming in the dark, at night, and to say the least, I've mistaken a few in game sounds to be real around me. My speakers aren't top notch, pretty much the run of the mill Dell 5 speaker setup with a woofer, but I kid you not... You will get startled from time to time. Sound levels adjust beautifully for distance, nature will buzz, doors creek, etc, etc.

3) Voice. Usually this would fit under "Sound" however, I'm sure you'll agree, in this case, it deserves its own category. There are hours of recorded speech by many different people, hundreds of different lines and some very nice dialog.

4) Guilds. There are four different guilds you can join, each with their own fully developed story line. I was entertained for over 60 hours just handling missions from two of the guilds. Your options are: Mages Guild, Dark Brotherhood (Assassins), Thieves Guild, and Fighters Guild. These quests alone feel like their own game. You can participate in all four at once, none, or any combination. Dark Brotherhood/Thieves guild offer stealthy missions, including large scale assassinations and thefts! Completing each, truly feels like beating the game.

5) Guild Storylines. AMAZING! You almost need recovery time the revelations are so profound! The twists so unexpected! More importantly, they're as strong as the main mission, no diluted fillers here... Pure fun.

6) Quests. Many games have the misfortune of turning "quests" into "chores," NOT THE CASE HERE! While many could be classified as "FedEx" types, they're the kind you don't realize are FedEx. You get caught up in the story, or the dungeon, or just the beauty of the world in general. You look forward to quests with a smile, not a scowl! Aside from the main story line and guild missions, quests can be picked up from random people, Inns, guards, etc. Asking about "Rumors" will turn up a bunch of leads easily.

7) OMG I'm Lost! Where should I go??? - You're not lost, look at the map! While many consider this a feature to be a spoiler, I simply love it - MAP MARKERS! Your map is equipped with your quests objectives, you follow the green/red marker which will lead you around. Why do I like it? Because I don't HAVE to use it. Nothing is worse than searching for something that isn't there, or getting lost and fed up with the lack of progress because you can't locate where you should be. Many games use "mystery" as a way of prolonging the game it feels long, when in reality you could have beat it in 6 hours. Oblivion has enough content that you can play marker tag and still have plenty to do, and have plenty of fun.

8) Experience/Leveling. If you've never played the Elder Scrolls series, then you'll be happy to know that you don't need to slay monsters for experience! Nope! In fact, there is no "experience," per se. It's based on your MAJOR SKILLS, which will be touched on more in the next section. As your major skills level (i.e. blade from hitting opponents, or training) you have opportunities for level advancement.

NOTICE: Leveling in this game is NOT like others. Most people believe that reaching the highest level ASAP is a GOOD thing... Not necessarily! Your level determines two things: 1) Your stats, 2) the loot. You can beat the game as level one. Everything is scaled to your level. Levels unlock cool new gear, and the appearance of different monsters (i.e. you won't see bears till level 4ish). Leveling should be done when you are ready, not when it's first available.

9) Character creation. As you might expect, you're giving a bunch of races and classes to choose from. Don't like the 30 predefined classes? Make your own! When you create your character you pick your class, or "Major Skills." Major skills have 2 important functions. 1) They level you, 2) They level faster than minor skills. THAT IS IT. You can get EVERY skill to 100. Yes, you can wield a sword, spells, bow, heavy armor, light armor, sneak, etc all at once. You can be every class at once; it all depends on what you use and how you choose to play.

10) Attacking. This is not a turn-based RPG. This is real time, dodge and swing action. It's a FPRPG (First Person Role Playing Game) so expect the FPS action complete with beautiful spell effects and hand motions. At first, one may find this difficult to adapt to... But once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun!

11) Player Housing. Buy anything from a cozy shack to a luxurious mansion! When purchased, houses come with literally walls and a bed. Rooms of furniture are sold in bundles (i.e. dining room: table, 4 chairs) and are not movable once in place. However, the design is decent at worst. They also come with display cases to show off flashy weapons and gear, or anything that will fit in them! Placing armor on shelves (which can be tedious) looks great, and didn't add any lag for this player (I have stuff ALL OVER).

12) Customizations. DO NOT OVER LOOK!
A) Spells. You can make your own spells, with the requirement that one of that type is in your inventory. Take the basic fire ball, it hits one target and damages them. Okay, so after gaining access to the Arcane University, I can go to the spell alter and alter: Damage, Distance (AoE), and whether it's a touch/target/self spell. Touch spells cost less than target spells, so tinkering between the options affects mana cost and usability.

B) Gear. The most frequent gear you will pick up is vanilla (plain), and allows for enchantment. Using Soul Gems (which trap creature souls) you can add any stat to your armor OR weapon. This includes draining/adding an attribute (strength/int/etc) or skill (blade/bow/sneak/etc), damage attack, health drain, etc, literally every spell available.
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Okay, to be honest, I'm getting tired and there's still a lot I haven't covered, even though this review is hitting four pages single spaced. The point? Buy the game. You can literally hate HALF the game and still LOVE it by the end, there's THAT much to do.

By the end you'll be agreeing... The price on this game compared to others is a STEAL! It's literally a crime that other games cost the same as Oblivion and never even ATTEMPT at covering HALF the depth this game does. It's truly a value, and will keep you busy for many, many hours.

Do enjoy.

If you have tracked this release for awhile you will already know the graphics are top knotch and miles beyond what we seen in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Now, with that being said how does it stack up to its predecessor on gameplay? Pretty darn good. The scenery is more vast and open compared to Morrowind. For example, you can stand on top of a mountain and look out into a valley and see another mountain in the distance where you can actually walk to if you want to spend the time to do it!

The UI is pretty user friendly and I prefer it to the four windows in Morrowind. Everything is organized by tabs and its not too many mouseclicks to find what you need to.

One thing players might notice is the amount of customization you can get with your character from hair, skin tone and even facial strucuture. I'm sure if you spent enough time you could probably make your own face in the game (Yes it is that indepth).

The Radiant AI that was so lauded is right on the money. NPCs act according to what time it is so no more shops open 24 hours a day. NPCs will eat, sleep and walk around or mind their shops depending on the time. It's a nice touch overall and adds to the immersion factor.

The quests are pretty enjoyable so far with a lot of variation and not too many FEDEX quests (so far). One of the more enjoyable ones i've had was where an entire town and the surrounding monsters were all invisible because of a Wizard's spell that had some adverse side effects. I actually thought it was a bug because I kept getting whacked on and couldn't see it until I blindly swung my sword around until the wolf died.

Speaking of bugs, there have no real gamekillers for me so far. The Elder Scrolls Forums so far have bug complaints mainly associated with Video Cards. If your video card is not in their recommended list then chances are you are going to have some problems which I'll list here:

ATI X1900 series
ATI X1800 series
ATI X1600 series
ATI X1300 series
ATI X850 series
ATI x800 series
ATI x700 series
ATI x600 series
ATI Radeon 9800 series
ATI Radeon 9700 series
ATI Radeon 9600 series
ATI Radeon 9500 series
NVIDIA Geforce 7800 series
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 series
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 series
NVIDIA GeForce FX series

I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT and am having problems where the screen will go completly black except for my UI and other 6800ers have had the same problem even with the latest drivers released on March 17th. **Update*** Problem solved - When you first click to launch the game select OPTIONS then select -- BLOOM -- instead of -- HDR --. Haven't had a problem since and have logged close to 20ish hours of game time. However, video problems still exist except the new 7XXX and 6800 series don't seem to have any.

I am willing to cut a little slack though and only knocked off one star for this mainly because the game is extremly vast and patches are on the way for mainly video support. It is a bum deal when games come out that don't fit everyone's computers but hey, it's a really really good game with a LOT of bang for your buck.

Would I recommend this? Yes, but I would only buy it now if you have the supported Video Chipsets. If not I would wait until a patch is released and you can check this on Elderscrolls.com when it is released. Otherwise you might have a game you just can't play until your Video Card is supported via some patch lubbin'.

Pros
- Great Graphics
- Immersive gameplay
- MASSIVE world with countless hours of playing
- Good story (Of course..it's Elder Scrolls!)
- Fun Quests

Cons
- Video support issues

Oblivion is very, very pretty to look at. But it is hollow at its core. The reason is apparently the fact that Bethesda had a collective stroke and decided it would be smart to bring back leveled monsters, a concept that we all thought had mercifully died off around about Final Fantasy 2. For those of you newer to RPGs or who haven't read some of the other reviews here already, the idea is thus: any time your character goes up a level, so do all the monsters. The stupidity of this scheme should be apparent to anyone, let alone any RPG players, because it makes leveling pointless. One of the great things about a real RPG (which, sadly, Oblivion is not) is that you get to "inhabit" your character - train them, customize them through various levels and skills, and enjoy the game in new ways as they grow stronger.

A long time ago, when RPGs were particularly new and (by today's standards) crude, monster levelling was common. You'd start off at level 1, take your pixelated character icon for a stroll on the World Map, and get ambushed. Typically, regardless of where you were or what terrain you were in, you'd get ambushed by monsters about your level. Eventually, you would end up in completely ridiculous situations like getting ambushed by 40th level Ancient Red Dragons right outside the pristine capital city, and realize the game was junk. I'm no programmer, but I'd speculate that it was simply easier to create a monster auto-generator based on your level than worry about area-specific creatures.

Of course, the ENTIRE POINT of going up levels is to be able to rip weaker opponents to shreds or simply frighten them off without a fight, features that savvy game designers started incorporating around about 1985. Bethesda's decision to turn 20+ years of collective gaming wisdom on its head is the corporate equivalent of Ford deciding it would be a good idea to make its next model of car run on a steam engine.

The fact that Oblivion also ties loot gathering to level is just an extra kick in the pants. Between the two, you've basically removed any incentive to be clever at all. Great games like Gothic, Gothic II, Divine Divinity, and, yes, Morrowind, encourage you to explore and be tricky by ensuring that if you manage to act "out of level" and steal a valuable sword or kill a higher powered monster, you will be so rewarded. You may get killed repeatedly in the attempts, but I think many folks would attest that managing to off an overpowered monster/player or raiding a castle you had no right to succeed at based on your character stats is one of the most exciting aspects of any good RPG. With Oblivion, there is no such incentive. You may as well "role-play" a penniless level 1 beggar because you have the same odds of success.

I won't waste any time talking about how great the game looks. Yes the graphics are amazing, we all know that, and anyone who has waited with anticipation has seen the videos. I will, however, say that the game isn't exaclty what I was expecting, and I feel that many will feel the same. I'll get right to the cons I have come across so far...

Combat is interesting, with the ability of having an active 'block' system. Even so, it seems rather 'clunky' and sometimes it's downright impossible to target enemies and dodge with ranged attack. This is a MAJOR problem when casting spells. I have no idea how someone with a magical class can make it through this game. You cannot assign your casting attack to a mouse button. Which means that you better hope the enemy stays in one place or that you have 3 hands to work the keys and mouse all at once to dodge counter attacks. One-on-one combat is enjoyable and can be realistic while trading hits, but any more in the mix and it becomes frustrating, which leads me to...

I dont feel that the AI is as great as it's been made out to be. It's neat, but hardly revolutionary. Sure, they have seperate lives, interact, eat, sleep and talk. But on at least 3 quests I have been on, my AI allies have either gotten stuck behind objects and were unable to continue, or they repeatedly stepped in my line of attack and took my sword blows. Sometimes they run off so fast, you can't make it to help them before the battle is over.

I realize that there will probably be many patches coming out to fix some of the small issues. Don't get me wrong, the game is vast and amazing. Back is the ability to buy houses, and you can now invest in shops. Yon can join guilds and other factions. You start out near the capital city, where your first job can be that of a gladiator in the arena. For once in TES, a working arena! You can hear the crowd cheer and jeer, as you smash your opponent. It's a good way to build some money and exp before venturing out into the world. If you dont want to fight, you can bet on fights that you actually watch from the balcony. All in all it's a solid game, but I guess with all the hype surrounding it, maybe I was expecting too much.

Although this game may be more fun to those who are not experienced with Morrowind, anyone who has spent hours upon hours exploring Morrowind will soon find that Oblivion doesn't even scratch the surface in comparison. So, in comparison, you have the ability to completely design the face of your character... age, facial shape, do you want them smiling or pouting, large eyes or small, eye color: blue, green, brown... hair color, hair style. However, with all the attention spent on face styling, what happened to body physique? Mages might not want to be in a muscular body while warriors might prefer a more muscular body. Okay, but granted, that is not what makes this game bad.

So Bethesda advertises that the other characters in the game are on a certain clock... meaning that stores close, characters sleep, they are never in the same place throughout the day. Although this seems like a cool concept, the characters still end up going through the same routine throughout the day, so you can always know where they will be at a given time... so the real time seems to lose its greatness.

Furthermore, Morrowind offered tons of factions you could join: Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild, Hlaalu, Telvaani, Temple, Imperial Guard, plus tons more. Oblivion has the mages guild, fighters guild, main quest line, and the dark brotherhood quest line. When comparing the two, Morrowind gives twenty times the game play compared with Oblivion. Furthermore, Morrowind offers more side quest lines that are a lot more interesting than the pathetic side quests in Oblivion.

All fast travel within Oblivion can be convenient and having a horse is awesome, there is no encouragement to actual walk (or ride) anywhere when you can open up your map and click where you want to go (unless of course you haven't "found" the destination yet). Morrowind makes you walk to most destinations (although the mark and recall spell comes in handy), which also brings you in contact with more mines, ruins, etc. while also being attacked by various animals. Oblivion has bears, wolves, boars, and minotaurs (once your level gets high enough), which I don't find really compare to some of the cooler animals from Morrowind.

This game can more closely compare to Fable. It has a small map option (I think Fable actually has a larger map). Even though they make the map look likes it really big, you can run between places pretty quickly. People have remarked about the great voices of the characters, but they aren't consistent (for example, the beggars sometimes talk with proper english), and the voices are the same for all of the characters within each race. The option of armor, weapons, and interesting items that you pick up along the way are pathetic compared to Morrowind. Also, you could probably get through the game easily without any gold (unless you need someone to repair armor/weapons, if you are not an armorer, or you decide to buy a house).

I don't know. Bethesda put some really cool ideas into this game, but they failed to follow through. To follow up a game like Morrowind, Oblivion needed to have a more to it. It's boring after a short time. Morrowind makes you want to create new characters to try different things, to explore more. Oblivion, I don't see the point in making another character. Oh, and the Arena is lame. If you want a better arena, play Fable. The arena is simple-minded, easy, and grows boring quite quickly.

If you haven't played Morrowind before, buy it over Oblivion. You may not find the graphics as appealing (it took me a bit to get into it), and when your weapon skills are low, it can be frustrating. But this game is the true epitome of role-playing games.

If you have already played Morrowind and loved it, be prepared to be let down by Oblivion. Oblivion only succeeds in graphics and scenery. Furthermore, the game consistently crashes to desktop or has other wierd wiring problems that grow frustrating. After you complete all of the guild quests and the main quest, there isn't much left to do. You'll find stuff for a while, but you'll grow bored of it much quicker than Morrowind.

Oblivion is almost universally a good game, but at the same time, it almost universally falls short of the greatness it could have reached. If you like console RPGs like recent Final Fantasy games, you should enjoy it. And if you like traditional RPGs such as Baldur's Gate, Ultima, Wizardry, Daggerfall, or even more recent titles like Neverwinter Nights or KOTOR, you will probably like it pretty well, too. It has many advantages from previous Elder Scrolls games, yet at the same time vital elements are "dumbed-down" or eliminated. Bethesda also failed to include several improvements that seemed pretty obvious based on previous games. If I had to sum Oblivion up in a phrase, it would be "fun, but too simplistic."

First the good: Bethesda has done a wonderful job with the graphics and the entire game has voice-overs. The production values are great, and the game engine is much more stable than in previous games. The world is quite large and you are still free to go anywhere and do pretty much anything at anytime. The game has a fast learning curve, while still allowing some customization. Most objects in the game can be picked up, and you can buy houses to decorate and store equipment. The face-editing system is extremely diverse, almost too much so -- if that's possible. Much of the game is unrelated to the main quest, and each guild has sort of an overall arching storyline of it's own. There are a large number of characters with which to interact (although less than previous ES games), and a few of them are developed enough that you actually might care if they live or die.

Now for the technical shortcomings: The game feels "dumbed-down" in many ways. The interface is so simplistic that it is blatently obvious that the PC was an afterthought. Even at 800x600, the interface is ridiculously oversized, and it feels bulky, unintuitive, and limited on a PC. The graphics engine is quite impressive, but lacks the ability to properly scale to -- or make the most of -- a variety of PCs without wrangling with obscure .ini settings. And many of the voiceover segments are used universally, so a character will actually change between two dissimilar voices at times. I feel like the voice-overs would have been better to use in major dialogue, but using it universally causes problems and really limits the amount of dialogue in the game. And despite extensive facial editing abilities, most characters look rather ugly, and it is even hard to make your own character look decent.

And more importantly, the gameplay shortcomings: Oblivion feels really simplistic in the area of gameplay, as well. There are quite a few less skills than in Morrowind, and WAY less than Daggerfall. Though the main quest and guild quests aren't bad, there are only four major guilds, and the unrelated side quests are few in number, usually very short, and usually uninteresting. Freedom to explore is nice, but you almost never come across anything unique to make it worthwhile. Except for quests and a half-dozen cities, everything is rather homogeneous in the world. The game really seems much shorter and smaller in this regard. And most of the quests themselves are very linear and obvious (including a big red arrow telling you exactly where to go next at all times). You are rarely given significant choices that might affect the outcome. And to top it all off, the game failed to overcome one of my biggest problems with Bethesda's previous game -- there aren't any characters that are really all that memorable.

The story lines also lack any real impact because most of them are, quite frankly, rather generic. Despite some substantial static gore in the landscape of some dungeons, the designers seem to have gone to great lengths to keep the game from having any content that would add a degree of maturity to the game. While full-frontal nudity and sex from the days of Daggerfall are hardly required, it really limits the realism of the game and contributes to the feeling of genericism to make it so child-oriented. Even the evil and Machiavellian (at least in previous games) king of necromancers seems rather silly, and in-game books providing lore about the world in the previous games were either left out or censored in Oblivion. In fact, the game seems to really suffer from a complete lack of depth and lore present in previous iterations of The Elder Scrolls. My biggest complaint is the sense of immaturity and blandness.

In conclusion: Despite all it's shortcomings, Oblivion is still a fun game and decent RPG. If it hadn't have been an Elder Scrolls game, I would have been fairly impressed with it. In this day and age, there really aren't many RPGs coming out that I would even consider "decent," so it was nice to have. But for the next-generation Elder Scrolls game with this kind of production quality, I expect it to be exceptional. It fell pretty short of that expectation in many ways. But I would still recommend it as an enjoyable game as long as you don't set your expectations as high as I did.

Oblivion comes so close to perfect that its flaws stand out all the more. I have to wonder if some of the highly negative reviews are simply a result of a combination of hype and the few glaring errors.

1) To everyone complaining about bad performance. Folks, it's not exactly a secret that this requires state of the art hardware. Your "super fast Dell with Intel graphics" isn't going to cut it. My AMD64 3000, GB RAM, nVidia 6600GT can barely run it at acceptable speeds even with turning down a lot of options. It still looks really nice though.
2) For folks complaining about the level scaling, I agree to an extent, but the idea is sound. Rather than everything being roughly your level, it would be better if it was a Gaussian around your level. That way you'd run up against some trivial stuff and get lousy prizes, or get schooled badly every now and then and have to come back in a few levels. That said, if you keep going you end up uber-powerful anyway. My lvl-32 fighter/mage isn't scared of anything anymore- getting attacked by multiple top-end critters is an annoyance now. (Hint- conjuration is *vastly* underrated in every play style comment I've read. Conjur 100+ Destruction 100 = rapid enemy death)
3) "You can play the whole game at level 1!" Well, yeah. You can also solve the main Morrowind quest in something like ten minutes using alchemy exploits. (*Not* an exaggeration- look around the web for the video) When you have a game this flexible, you end up with quirks like this. I seem to recall some Bethesda guy commenting along the lines of "If you want to create a sword of uber-death and beat a $50 game in an hour, be our guest."

So what can I (legitimally) complain about?

1) The interface was clearly designed for the 360 and is awful on a PC. Most of it is fixed with mods available online, but the amount of text shown is still way, way too low.
2) It does crash from time to time, roughly once every two hours or so. I can live with that for a 1.0 release, but it would be nice to be more stable.
3) Character voices are inconsistant and a bit repetitive. The worst example I've seen is the Dark Brotherhood recruiter with the evil, forboding voice suddenly turn super-chipper when describing my winning the main quest- really, really jarring.
4) The characters are more realistic than previously and quests are overall a lot deeper than Morrowind's pile of FedEx missions, but we're still lacking real depth. I miss Planetscape Torment's characters and textual depth, where you can talk to someone for half an hour and learn tons about the world
5) The stealth part of the game could really use an overhaul. Unlike the Thief series, there's no way to tell how invisible you are or what the lighting is like, no way to alter the lighting (lots of areas are brightly lit) and no way to single-shot knockout/kill a target. On the other hand, invisibility spells and soft shoes make dash+grab really, really easy. All of these are critical for a good sneak game, and all need a serious rethink.
6) It's *waaaay* too easy to accidentally wack an ally in combat. Perhaps that's realistic, but their reactions are terrible. Guards will try to arrest you for assault, forcing you to give up possibly valuable stolen items simply because they walked in front of a spell you threw at a dremora. Ally AI in general is pretty bad- I've had numerous allies follow a target monster into lava and kill themselves.
7) Morrowind worked well for being on an island: it's really jarring to get a message in the middle of a field saying "You can't go that way, turn back"

All that said, it's still a tremendous game. The AI is stupid, but still acts smarter and speaks better than most players in MMOs like WoW. There are a bazillion things to do and they are generally easy to find (far better than Morrowind) The freedom to simply walk anywhere reminds me why I found KOTOR and other smaller RPGs frustrating- you're not on rails here, you can ignore any plotline you want, wander around and so forth. The skill/level scheme gets some grief, but where else can you design a character that does *exactly* what you want?

The only really sad part is we'll have to wait to 2010 for the next installment...

There's just something about Oblivion that is lacking. I don't know if it's the leveled loot, leveled monsters, lack of NPCs dialoge, mentallychallenged AI, lack of choice in quests or lack of dialoge options (you often times get one choice in answering questions and a similar amount of choices solving a quest). There's just too much lacking in this game. It is the game that was dumbed down, to a huge extent. For all that Bethesda was boasting about pre-release, graphics and music seem to be the only thing they really managed to deliver on it.

For those of you who played Morrowind here's a list of what was improved on:
1)Combat. Combat is way better than Morrowind, no more repeatedly clicking, if you don't learn to block or step out of the way you might actually die.
2)Graphics. But what do you expect? It's like four years later.
3)Music. eerie in dungeons, a nice feel.
4)Magic, by far the most improved, you really can play a mage, so long as you're smart enough to know how to use your powers to handle the situation. Magic is actually fun.
5)Better dungeons. The best part of Oblivion is actually roaming through dungeons.

Now for the bad stuff.
1)Lack of dialoge. Here's a typical NPCs list of things you can talk to them about: 1.Imperial City, 2.rumors. Not only that but when it comes to rumors everyone pretty much says the same thing. So you basically have one unique question you can ask any NPC. And that's not the half of it. Try undertaking some of the quests and you typically have one choice in how to answer and react.

2)Lack of choice. Everyone raves about the choice in Oblivion, but the choice basically amounts to 1.do the quest 2.don't do the quest. wow. what choice. You tend to have one way to solve any given quest, if you're lucky you might have two but that's pretty rare. The other choices you have don't really amount to squat since any race becomes as powerful as any other given time, and only birthsigns that fortify magic tend to matter since all others become useless by level 20 or so (exception might be the theif because luck is so darn hard to increase).

3)Main quest. No depth. Morrowind had tons of lore, tons of history, tons of political intrigue. Morrowind was deep. You felt like you were a part of its history. Oblivion elicits no feeling. Oblivion is stale. Gates to Oblivion open up all over the place and people keep talking abouthow scary mudcrabs are, and no one tries to close any of the gates, and the invading hordes behind these gates just wait around for you to show up. Some invasion. The main quest tends to consist of go here, kill this, fetch that, close some gates. blah.

4)Dumbed down. And I mean waaaaay down. Any time you do anything in a quest a little popup screen appears telling you exactly what to do. This includes quests where your character needs to read a book in order to learn what to do. Before you can even read it (as soon as you open it) there's the popup saying, the book told me to do x, i should go do x. This goes to the point of absurdity. Often times before you even know what has happened in the game the popup will appear explaining it to you, because apparently you would've been too stupid to figure it out on your own. It ruins the surprise, the realism, and the chance to actually have to think and problem solve. This game was made for idiots.

5) Tons of problems modders have fixed. Some that haven't been. This game was obviously a port from the xbox to the PC, as can be seen by the lack of hotkeys (you only get 8 hotkeys where your keyboard could obviously give you many more, meanwhile a mage gets 100s of spells, many quite useable) and the terrible UI. A great mod has fixed the giant, oversized menu print of the UI. Why Bethesda couldn't be bothered to do this beats me.

6)No soul. This game just doesn't have a soul. I have played plenty of games that can last months, that provide tons of fun and replay value. Morrowind kept surprising me, gave me a good 9 months of enjoyment. Oblivion is already boring, already stale. It's depressing. The game had so much potential, but too many things kill it. The voice acting cause limited (as I've mentioned) dialoge trees and thus limited oportunities for solving quests. The leveled loot, and general lack of variations of weapons and armor types, hurts the game (by level 20 all the bandits run around wearing glass and daedric armor), as do the leveled monsters where all of a sudden every creature in Obivion is a Xivali. Where did all the scamps go? Did the xivalis eat them? Not to mention the worthless skills. Secruity doesn't matter because using the lockpicking minigame means you can pick a veryhard lock with only 10 skill. I've done it. why take mercantile, speechcraft, acrobatics, athletics or multiple weapons types (there are a total of 3 anyway)?

Overall this game will give you a good months enjoyment, decide whether or not that's worth the cost. It's a fun hack and slash game with very mild RPG elements. It's a disapointment and I hope this isn't the way RPGs are going because Oblivion has so much squandered potential. It's really sad.