The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a fantasy-themed role-playing game developed by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fourth game in the Elder Scrolls series. The story takes place shortly after the events of Morrowind but in another province. After the mysterious and untimely death of the Emperor, Uriel Septim VII, the throne of Tamriel lies empty. With the Empire ready to crumble, the gates of Oblivion are thrown open and daedra march upon the land - laying waste to everything in their path. To turn the tide of darkness, you must find the lost heir to the throne and unravel the sinister plot that threatens to destroy all of Tamriel. The main protagonist is a nameless hero who is imprisoned in the Imperial City, the capital of Cyrodiil and the Empire. By chance the cell is also an Imperial secret escape route to get out of the city in case of an emergency...

Before you begin your adventure you're allowed to create your own character. Creation of starting abilities is nicely done through a tutorial beginning, which also starts off the main story. As you progress through the opening quest, you'll get a chance to determine your character's appearance, class, and abilities. One nice thing that Oblivion does is separate these processes, so you don't have to worry about making all the important decisions at once.

All begins with selecting one of roughly ten races, each of which has its own signature skills and abilities: Imperial, Khajiit, Nord, Orc, Redguard, Wood Elf, Argonian, Breton, Dark Elf, and High Elf. Some are human, some are most definitely not. Each species can survive the game's quest, but this decision proves vital as to how a player will go through the world of Oblivion. From there, you can opt to change their appearance, or you can settle for a computer generated character, which definitely speeds things up considerably. In terms of physical aspects you have a seemingly endless set of sliders to customize almost every aspect of your character (molding the shape of a character's face, its age, hair color, gender).

About halfway through the tutorial, you're asked to choose a Class which gives you bonuses to some skills. Class is the most difficult choice overall, because it encompasses a lot of information. You can go with one of their recommended 'templates' (knight, agent, healer, and so on, though like in Morrowind, these are really just preset choices of skills) or completely build your own from 21 different skills - Acrobatics, Alteration, Alchemy, Armorer, Athletics, Blade, Block, Blunt, Conjuration, Destruction, Hand-to-Hand, Heavy Armor, Illusion, Light Armor, Marksman, Mercantile, Mysticism, Restoration, Security, Sneak, Speechcraft.

In addition, the character needs a specialization assigned to it, whether it is Mage, Combat, or Stealth. Teaming this up with a character already naturally gifted in this realm (say, a mage) increase the abilities even further. Adding even more steps to the mix, the character's birth sign can be entered. By choosing either mage, apprentice, warrior, thief, shadow, lover, ritual, tower, serpent, atronach, lady, steed, or lord as a birth sign, you extend abilities or help to slightly negate deficiencies. Basicaly, you can create and play any character you can imagine - I literally spent almost two hours tweaking my character!!

After escaping the dark underbelly of Imperial city, the bright, beautiful world of Cyrodiil blinds you with its magnificence. The graphics are amazing (as long as you have a PC that can cope - I played it on an AMD64 Athlon 3500+, 1GB RAM and a GeForce 6800 GT rig). Now, you'll start to understand just how massive Oblivion's world really is. Opportunities for new quests and stories are everywhere, and there's no pressure as to which path you should follow. You can tackle quests in any order you want, join pretty much any guild you want and kill a lot of the people you want in any particular way you want. If you want, you can continue to pursuit the main quest story line of Oblivion which can take around ~40 hours first time playing through, but the majority of the game's content is peripheral to that main quest. Yeah, there are a ton of side quests and guild quests, all which allow for a diverse range in game play style. But don't worry, it's very easy to keep track of what you're doing, what quests you're working on, and how to get back to the main story if you'd like. I have found both the side and main quests very enjoyable.

Fast travel is back in Oblivion. As long as you've visited somewhere, you can click it on your map and get there instantaneously - at least from your perspective. In-game, time will still pass as if you'd traveled the distance manually. If you choose to walk / run there yourself, use the red flag on your compass to indicate the direction you need to go. Remember also that not every location is available to your with fast travel, often you must first find it yourself before you can warp there. . Dotted around the landscape are also Oblivion gates - portals that lead to a hellish plane filled with a variety of extremely deadly monsters. They are randomly generated, so there's no telling what you'll find inside. However, the Oblivion gates are a little repetitive, with several variations to them - the goal of each trip is the same - find the power sphere that keeps that gate open and remove it.

The world of the Elder Scrolls is entirely non-linear. Oblivion features a groundbreaking new AI system, called Radiant AI, which gives non-player characters (NPCs) the ability to make their own choices based on the world around them. Rather than following pre-scripted paths, every NPC is given a set of general goals they'd like to achieve, but the details of fulfilling that goal is entirely up to them. If a citizen is hungry, they'll look for a way to get food. They might buy food, hunt it, or steal it, then find a place to sit to eat and so on. This means that every one of the game's NPCs follows a full 24/7 schedule that continues whether or not the player is there to witness it. They'll sleep, go to church, and even steal items, all based on their individual characteristics.

You gain experience in skills from level 0 through level 100. At level 0-24 you are considered a novice, from 25-39 you are an apprentice, from 50-74 you are a journeyman, from 75-99 you are an expert, at and 100 you are a master. To raise a character's overall level (everyone starts at Level 1), you need to increase major skills associated with the class chosen at the beginning. Raising a combination of your major skills at least ten points enables you to move up to the next overall skill level, which is done by going to sleep as soon as the moon icon appears on screen.

For instance, take armorsmith, it helps you to repair your own armor and weapons. When you're a novice, your repair hammers may break a lot, once you're an apprentice, things get better, but you still cannot repair magical items. Once you become journeyman, you can repair magical items. As an expert, you can repair the items beyond their max conditions, which means more damage for your weapons and more armor rating for your armors. As a master, you can repair your items with one single repair hammer and it would never break.

The enemy attributes are also dynamically adjusted to your level, so an Ogre bumped into by a level-24 character will also have level-24 attributes. The difficulty scaling keeps combat challenging, but it diminishes your sense of accomplishment since you never feel more powerful than your foes. So don't think you'll be able to go back to that Ogre that once gave you a ton of trouble and annihilate them because you'll be facing a much stronger opponent next time you go back!

Oblivion brings a newer combat system similar to action RPGs such as Fable with one button for attack and another for block - you'll have to use your shield to thwart incoming strikes and use your weapon and try to land a blow on your enemies. Inventory space is easily managed, equipping items is quick and simple, and setting hotkeys is also easy, useful, and also necessary. In addition to physical combat, there is a rather hearty magic system in place for doing battle as well. There are six schools of magic in the game - conjuration, illusion, destruction, restoration, mysticism, and alteration. Each school has a list of spells (which can be bought from characters and earned during quests), and each ties into its overall theme. You can still summon creatures, armor, do damage, cause weakness to certain elements, and so on. The only spell really missing is the levitation spell. There's no "magic mode" to switch to in order to cast magic. Weapons and magic can be used at the same time.

Overall, this is a great game and probably the best single player RPG out there right now, but it could be better, for example, having more factions to join and side quests. It would be great if the game allows you to choose your path in the main quest, so you would have different ending depending on how you accomplish the main quest, etc.

Now do I recommend that you go out and buy Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion? If you have the proper PC (don't forget to check out supported video chipsets) to run this game, by all means, definitely go out and buy this game!

Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP, 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor, 512MB System RAM, 128MB Direct3D Compatible Video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver, 8x DVD-ROM Drive, DirectX 8.1 Compatible Sound Card, 4.6 GB free hard disk space, DirectX 9.0c (included), Keyboard, Mouse

Recommended System Requirements: 3.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor, 1 GB System RAM, ATI X800 series, Nvidia GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

Supported Video Card Chipsets: 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.