Four years after the critically acclaimed "Morrowind", producer Bethesda Softworks releases the fourth installment of the Elder Scrolls. It seems as if every minute was spent enriching and perfecting the award winning formula, as the flawless "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" will forever engrave its name in video-game history. The epitome of RPGs, the definition of gaming. It's enthralling, it's relentless. Prepare to throw your social life into Oblivion.
***The Story***
Characteristic to the Elder Scrolls series is the immense freedom the player is bestowed with. Fate confronts the completely user-created character with an epic quest that somehow encompasses the fate of the kingdom and/or the entire world of Cyrodill, but it is a destiny that may well be ignored. Recovering mystical artifacts, slaying vampires, assassinating royalty and shoplifting the finest stores could distract the player from delving into the evolving storyline.
It was that freedom that rendered Morrowind unapproachable to non-gamers and heavily limited its appeal to casual and non-RPG fans. It was only after a good 15 hours of play, after completing many seemingly menial tasks, that a prophecy involving ageless gods and legendary reincarnations was slowly unveiled. Cluttered logbooks and unhealthy amounts of traveling through barren lands certainly did no help in holding the player's attention and general consensus was that too much effort was needed to enjoy the otherwise great game.
One of the paramount changes in Oblivion is the immediate immersion. After the Character Creation, where you choose your avatar's name, race, birthsign and appearance, comes a cinematic monologue from Tiber Septim, the Emperor of Tamriel, informing that grim times are afoot in the center of the Elder Scrolls world and today, is the day he dies.
The game then permanently shifts to your character, whose day isn't shaping up much better: You are imprisoned in the Imperial Jail for an unspecified crime. A conversation with a creepy inmate is cut short when none other than the Emperor and his royal protectors, The Blades, enter the scene. They have no interest in prisoners but, as fate would have it, the secret passage they are looking for is placed in exactly your cell. With the royal family being eradicated with precise assassinations, the evacuation of the Emperor in a safer place is imperative and they understandably chose to use the back door.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, you seize the opportunity to escape and the game seizes *that* opportunity to teach you the controls. Moving around, running and sneaking, battling bare-handed and armed combat, lock-picking and opening chests, equipping weapons and armour, using potions and levelling up, everything is covered easily and thoroughly throughout the first few areas. Magic use is also explained, being vastly improved from Morrowind and definitely more encouraged.
If the authentic backgrounds, glorious gear and detailed actors haven't already cemented the opinion that Oblivion is a magnificent-looking game, assassins appear to banish any doubters.
These Mythic Dawn agents attack the Emperor using magical equipment, summoned and bound to them with magic. When they are dealt killing blows their equipment disappears into thin air, and it's a truly fantastic spectacle.
Depending on your playing style, a Blade tries to establish your class. You can accept this smartly concealed recommendation, choose one of the other predetermined classes, or create a new one on your own. There is little time for chit-chat however, as Tiber Septim senses both that his time is almost up and that you will have a large part to play in the following historic moments. He entrusts you with his Amulet, saying that Emperors mystically use it to keep Tamriel safe. With all the known royal family soon to be slain, he discloses that he has another son, Martin, living the life of a priest in the city of Kvatch. You are to meet with the Blades' leader Jauffre and together ensure the safety of Martin and the Amulet, lest catastrophic things happen.
On cue, an assassin succeeds in making the Emperor's premonitions come true and kills him.
You are given one last chance of changing your character's specifications and then you are free to roam the gorgeous world of Tamriel. You can go about whichever business you want and not give the fate of the world a second thought, but chances are you too will be compelled to carry out an Emperor's dying wishes and progress with the main storyline.
That will quickly have you fighting for your life in Oblivion. It is the dwellers of a "hell" of shorts that seize the opportunity to invade and destroy your world. Without the majestic use of the Amulet, they are able to open up Gates that bridge Oblivion and Cyrodill together and through them pass their relentless soldiers, spreading mayhem and chaos kingdom-wide.
Fortunately, it's a two-way ticket: Sigils kept at the top of sinister towers inside Oblivion sustain the portals and the quest-tracker smartly guides you through shutting down your first Oblivion gate. Although the dozens of Oblivion areas you'll encounter fall into a variety of categories regarding the layout and the exact procedure, they pretty much follow a certain formula that you'll be able to retract successfully after you complete your first world-saving quest.
Shutting down Oblivion gates is easily the scariest part of the game. The feeling of seclusion in such a menacing world, coupled with the power and chilling voices of its demon inhabitants, it certainly provided me with a lot more scares that I had expected coming in. As such, closing the portals leaves you with a great feeling of accomplishment, as if you've managed something truly heroic.
The storyline continues on escalating epic levels and ancestral tombs, sieges, hells and paradises keep the blood pumping all the way to the long-expected final showdown.
***The Side-Quests***
With a magical world in such turmoil, there is understandably no shortage of people that will want your help, or of artifacts to covet. There is an abundance of things to do aside from saving Cyrodill, of varying importance, gravity and humour.
You'll save damsels in distress, strike at goblins in excess, join guilds that don't exist, wipe out guilds that do, sneak around priceless treasures and much, much more.
In fact, this is where the "overwhelming" factor comes in. Even though Oblivion takes great measures to cater for the casual gamer, for those of us that are a little Obsessive Compulsive and want to do *everything*, it is an insanely taxing task. The neat and tidy quest tracking system and the "fast travel" are very helpful in managing your adventures, still I couldn't help but taking a long revitalizing break when I passed the 100-hours mark.
One experience, characteristic of the amount of content available, occurred when I was returning from an undead infested cave. I stumbled upon a Gate of Oblivion and I valiantly decided to close it. A grueling hour later, all I wanted was to repair my gear and find a bed to rest. Little did I know when I visited the nearby village that all its residents had been turned invisible by a careless wizard and I was promptly asked to take care of him. Quests are thrown at you from all directions and it's pretty important to pace yourself. After all, you can't really complain about too much of a good thing, right?
Speaking of which, Oblivion takes over 100 hours to "finish" and 150 to almost completely "finish". Due to the nature of open-ended quests, with usually a couple of ways to solve and the vastly different play-style depending on your character, that amount can easily be doubled with another play through. I'll certainly have another go with an evil avatar when I eventually upgrade my computer and see how even more dazzling Imperial City is supposed to look.
The quotation marks exist as Oblivion never really ends, even in the unlikely event that you accomplish every single thing. Additional content also becomes available from the elder scrolls site, some downloadable for free and larger packs up for grabs with micropayments.
***The Mechanics***
Combat is pretty intuitive, having you lunge, parry, cast spells, back-flip and everything an action movie requires with a few simple key strokes. It looks beautiful but it can also be pretty strenuous on your computer, experiencing slowdowns. If that is the case, don't be afraid to lose some eye-candy and set the video configurations at lower settings, Oblivion looks great even with the lowest of analysis and video qualities.
Shooting arrows is impeccably presented, but lacks precise collision detection, so it makes little difference if you hit an ogre to the head or the leg. The other slight nag comes with the Artificial Intelligence of your allies. The computer fights satisfyingly smart, but your fellow soldiers seem to care little whether they get between your opponent and your attacks. Also, most of them haven't ever heard about stealth and oftentimes charge at hostiles they manage to see through solid walls and rock formations. Since you usually fight alone it's not a big issue, but it is nevertheless a fault in a pretty much flawless product.
Rather than directly determining your "stats" as in most games, classes in Oblivion simply affect your proficiency with the game's skills. The 7 Major Skills of your class will receive a starting bonus of 25 levels and will be faster to increase. Nothing stops you from raising the remaining 21, Minor, Skills up to the maximum of 100, but it's going to take a much greater effort.
Level-Ups occur for every 10 Major Skill increases. As soon as you get some sleep, you are asked to raise 3 of your 8 attributes and you wake up a stronger, wiser person. Bonus modifiers apply according to the Skills you increased during the level and Minor Skills are also taken into account here. Skills are raised through repeated usage, so a good way to raise Blunt is to bash countless goblins. More radical methods exist; a hammer-wielding foe dealt a trouncing blow that sent me flying backwards. The game kicks back to 3rd person view for these occasions and as I was watching my painful fall to the bottom of the tower, a message appeared: "You raised your skill in Acrobatics". A healing spell took care of the falling damage, but nothing could be done for my smashed ego.
The game loads exceptionally fast and Saving in particular amazed me utterly. In a game that keeps track of a nameless guard's disposition towards you and the items you've thrown around your house, how such enormous amounts of info are stored so fast in such small files is beyond me.
Also fantastic is how Tamriel comes into life in Oblivion. Unlike most games, it's difficult to shake the illusion that the world doesn't revolve around you and characters and even monsters wake up, do their tasks and go to sleep even when you are not around. They interact with each other as they would with you and citizens are always happy to spread rumours they've heard. It's a thrill when you overhear them actually talking about you and some of your more legendary accomplishments.
The fact that Oblivion is completely voiced certainly helps in that matter. Its enormous cast is handled by a healthy amount of voice-actors. Obviously not every one of the non-player characters could have sounded different, but there is a respectable variety of male and female voices. Only the beggars sound a bit strange, with their broken, weak voices when asking for alms, but ordinary for every other line.
Throughout the countless awards Oblivion has won, most remarkable probably are those for the music department. Dynamically changing according to your actions, whether you are in combat, in a town, or approaching a gate to Oblivion, the musical dressing is a true work of art that always keeps you company.
***The Other Versions***
Since in Oblivion you can interact with practically everything, as you have the ability to gather whole fields of lettuce for example, the keyboard-mouse combination is ideal. Even so, the controls are pretty solid for the Xbox 360 and (presumably) the PlayStation 3; one of these versions might actually be preferred if you don't have a buff enough computer.
They do miss out on the user-created content however, a big disadvantage as the community has created some beautiful modifications, from prettier trees and water to tavern drunk-brawls. The downloadable The Elder Scrolls Construction Set allows for much customization and can satisfy your artistic urges. On the other hand, PlayStation 3's version will come packaged with all the extra official material Bethesda has already created for Oblivion, code-named Knights of the Nine; For interested PC users, it will be an additional purchase of about 10£.
***OVERALL***
With its faults countable in one hand, Oblivion is the best game current technology could give us. It's accessible to a larger audience centering on Fantasy and Action lovers, but even if it is not your cup of tea you can't help but marvel at its techniques and execution. Huge and thrilling, effective and modifiable, it will unlikely ever miss a "Top-100 Games of All Time" list. Oblivion is also thought-provoking, as one can only wonder: If four years mark such a staggering improvement, where will we be when we inevitably get "The Elder Scrolls V"?
Throw your social life into Oblivion 
