Elder Scrolls Oblivion Game of the Year Edition Review PS3

I never finished the last iteration of Elder Scrolls called Morrowind, and I still have not uncovered all of Oblivion as of yet because of all the quests that side track me from the main story, but I am still pleased with what I have played. Oblivion is the story of a king who is murdered by a secret cult named the Mythic Dawn, which is opening Oblivion gates to another dimension enabling Daemons to enter the world and wreak havoc. The player is thrust into this story as a prisoner who coincidentally has a secret passage within his cell that the king uses to escape from the Mythic Dawn. The story develops around the events of the king’s encounter during his escape and the player’s role beyond the outcome. Oblivion is an open world design and as such, allows the player to explore almost anywhere straight from the beginning.

Graphic and sound:

The Elder Scrolls series have always focused on rich worlds full of places to explore and Oblivion is no exception. The environment is enormous and highly detailed. There are some loading issues at times where a certain background element will pop into view out of nowhere even though the settings are at their highest for distance. Character models look great although there are also clipping issues with hair, clothing, or weapons passing through the character body unnaturally. I am not sure if they just did not have time to prepare better collision detection or that level of error was acceptable. The soundtrack in Oblivion is excellent and immersive. The soundtrack had an epic movie feel to it much like the Lord of the Rings movies. Sound effects were well done with one exception, voiceovers. The voice acting in some cases seems robotic with no emotion, especially when conversations spouted by some NPCs truly make no sense whatsoever. There are times when a player is truly engaged in the story and an NPC is having a conversation with another NPC about the weather while the other one is talking about something else.

Gameplay and controls:

The game is a first person role playing game that can be switched to a third person camera view with different degrees of camera distance. The world is enormous and as such, the player can traverse the world through the use of the map instead of physically walking to the numerous cities. Once areas are discovered such as ruins, they will appear on the map labeled. The game has an extensive character customization palette where the player can truly make a fairly unique avatar just with the facial options variety. Character class and alignment can also be customized and changed as the player progresses through the game. I started off as a good magic user and now my character is a murderous thief. The game can be quickly finished by sticking to the main storyline, or a player can truly spend more than 200 hours playing through all of the side quests and the expansion packs included in the Game of the Year Edition, which includes Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles expansions. To truly enjoy the game, one should play through some of the side quests if not all and definitely play through the expansions. The controls are the standard fare with spell casting and weapon fighting controlled by the trigger buttons. The menus can become a bit tricky as there are a lot of menus to scroll through for inventory, maps, and options.

Overall thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed Oblivion from the dozens of hours I put it into it and have yet to reach a halfway point in the game. Sometimes the player will be distracted by the crazy NPC conversations, but the storyline and gameplay make up for this minor infraction that is caused by the limitations of hardware and AI constructs. I recommend the Game of the Year Edition as it includes both the Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles expansions which can be picked up for $19.99 new nowadays. I look forward to the next iteration of Elder Scrolls and perhaps an online version someday.