Possibly one of the last greatest single player RPG's of all time is finally upon us.
Oblivion is huge, massive and epic on a grand scale unlike any other game. In fact it is so big it is impossible to write a review covering all aspects. There is enough content to fill about four regular games and I'm not exagurating. The forth game in the Elder Scrolls series takes place in the province of Cyrodill with the Imperial City playing center stage. Surrounding the city is a lavishly detailed world of forests, lakes, snow capped mountains, castles and towns to explore. After the beginning tutorial you are essentially free to do whatever you feel like and go wherever you like. It's the beauty of this game to feel like you can loose yourself in this fantasy world and play in it however you see fit.
Character creation is extremely open-ended giving you the ability to create your alter ego exactly as you want right down from the looks to what abilities they will focus on. I don't think any other game does it better than Oblivion. The game is designed to let you play any way you want. You can be a pure warrior who doesn't use any magic or be a mage who uses nothing but magic, summons, alchemy etc. Or you can be a sneaky thief or stealthy assassin or anything in between. How you create your character determines how you will exerience the game and approach it's many quests.
There is no need to be intimidated by this game's size or open-ended architecture. You may follow only the main quest if you like which is not hard because all of the quests string together in a linear fashion and clearly explain what you need to do and where to go. So you can play it like a linear adventure game or branch out and delve into hundreds of side quests, rise up the ranks of various guilds or compete in the arena.
The interface is much improved over Morrowind by giving you easy to manage quest logs and inventory management screens. You can assign weapons and abilities to 8 d-pad hotkeys which works fairly good. I wish it was a little easier to switch between all of the different screens but this is about as best they can do given the limitations of console controllers.
Combat is much more fun than Morrowind as well. When you swing a weapon at an enemy it actually hits them every time. There is no random chance. Blocking also works every time as long as you get the timing right so this helps the game feel more action based and serves the first person view much better.
The presentation values are phenominal from the dramatic opening credits to the hours of voice dialogue and life-life facial expressions on characters. Every person you talk to in the game speaks to you. No need to read pages and pages of text anymore because it all plays out like you're watching a movie only you are the star performer. The qualilty of the voice acting ranges from exceptional to mediocre. Patrick Stewart does the voice for Emperor Septum and there are a few other voice actors from fairly popular movies. There is some recycling of lines and a few cheesy ones but it is really trivial.
Oblivion also raises the bar even higher on the Xbox 360 in terms of graphic fidelity. This is by far the best looking game on the system to date and one of the best looking games every made period. It must be experienced in high definition to truly be appreciated. The detail in everything is incredible and textures look incredibly life-like. For example if you look at a door you can see wood grains, metal sheets and rivits. If you look from different angles you will notice some reflection off the metal from the light source that makes the metal actually look real and not just some flat texture. The same is true for many objects in Oblivion. They are drenched in many amazing effects that make them jump out and feel very real.
Water looks like the real thing of course but also reflects surrounding environment in real-time! As you run through the forests you'll see many huge trees with many branches and individually animated leaves blowing in the wind. Grass, flowers and weeds are also beatifully rendered to look like the real thing. Special effects like magic spells and those ominous Oblivion Gates look spectacular reminding you that this is just like a big budget Hollywood film.
NPC and your character's weapons and armor look better than I've ever seen in any previous RPG's. There is so much detail that you can even see shadows and bright spots where the light hits off of small dents and knicks in your armor plates. Even more impressive is that there are a few occasions like when you look at a stain glass church window that looks 100% photo realistic.
There are however a few areas that could have used some improvements. Framerates can drop a little too much in some outdoor areas but it does not affect gameplay and some of the NPC faces look downright ugly. I guess there is just a lot of ugly people in the old days but it's clear the lighting sometimes just doesn't work on the faces.
I never noticed any painful loading times. In fact I've timed how long it takes the game to load from the title menu and it was no more than 15 seconds. I guess many people are very impatient. I also haven't encountered this caching problem but there is an easy fix for that. The only other dissapointment, and that is a bit of an overstatement is that towns feel a bit empty. There aren't many people to be found even in the Imperial City but I suspect the reason is due to every character having full voice dialogue.
In the sound department everything is again top notch, very high quality. The orchestral music will remind you of Lord of the Rings and voices sound clear and have emotion. Sound effects from combat and using magic are superb and environmental ambient effects really help bring the game to life.
Oblivion has just set the bar incredibly high for many game genres. It is so massive, so grand in scope that it is a top quality action/adventure/RPG/fighting/dungeon crawler game all in one. There is collection quests, fighting quests, puzzles and mystery quests. You can buy a house and furnish it. You can even create your own alchemy potions and enchantments! If this was the only game you played, it would probably take you half a year to fully complete it. For most people a year or more and you will probably come back to Oblivion time and time again becuase it is just so much fun and has incredible depth and value.
No other game has ever been so ambitious and managed to excel in so many aspects all in one game the way this one does and it is a testament to how fullfilling a videogame can be compared to other forms of entertainment. This one blows them all away and is surely one of the greatest games ever made.