Role Playing Game > PC > The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)
Release Date: March 3rd, 2006
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Genre: Role Playing Game

Last Updated : August 13th, 2006

Rating: Average rating: 4.599999999998 5 Ratings 5 4 3 2 1

Version @ Time Of Post: v1.1.425 On-Site Links Bug Report Patch Information My Potions Money Glitch Duplicate Glitch

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Off-Site Links GameFAQs Entry GameSpot Entry Official Oblivion Website Oblivion Source Oblivion Equipment Database

Oblivion is the long awaited fourth game in the elder scroll series. It was originally going to be released in November of 2005, but was delayed to March of 2006. I decided to make a page for this game before I actually beat it, since I don't assume I will beat this game (fully). There is just too many side quests keeping me going right now. But before I talk about the new quest system, I want to tell you that this is by far the most addicting game i've ever played. The funny thing about this is that this game is not even an MMORPG, it isn't online at all, yet it is still addicting to advance your character and get good items and equipment anyway. In fact, this is the most addicted i've been in the Elder Scroll series since Daggerfall (a game which I still play every once and awhile).

I started out thinking that just because my computer past all the requirements of running this game I could run everything on maximum with no problems. I was sadly mistaken. I think this is why the Xbox 360 version got a better score on some sites than the PC version. The Xbox version runs mostly perfect with the high settings. The Xbox version isn't on the maximum settings, but it is very close to the maximum. Recently I had to change my resolution to 800x600 and completely remove the grass from the game just so I can keep things like distant landscape and HDR lighting. It's all about sacrifice when tweaking the graphics in this game.

The quest system is close to perfect in this game. It was fairly decent in Morrowind, but in Oblivion they really pushed the quality in the quests. It isn't so much the quests themselves but the whole system including the mapping system. Although many people find the quest system too easy now because it basically plots out all the points for you, there is still some quests which you have to work hard on to figure out because they don't give you points. Although Oblivion may seem like a whole new experience all it is really a new engine, new game systems and some new stories over Morrowind. But for some reason, it still works, a lot better than Morrowind did. One thing that they did to really push this game away from it's predecessors is make every single NPC in the game have audio spoken dialog. Even though most of it is repeated a lot, even though most the NPCs use the same voice actor, and even though some of the NPC's dialog changes voice actors depending on the choice of speech it is 100% better than having to read everything or having no spoken audio at all.

Personally, I was expecting a lot less bugs than the amount that I found plaguing this game. I thought that the delay was maybe to fix a lot of the bugs. It might have been, but there is still a lot. I don't know what it is with Bethesda but their games always have a lot of bugs in their finished products. I could speculate that this is because the worlds they create are so vast, so huge and so complex that some things go unnoticed or unrealized in the grand scheme of things, even to the bug testers. I have faith that Bethesda will be releasing many patches in the years to come though. To help Bethesda along, I have been keeping a bug journal of every bug I personally have encounter which can be found on my Bug Report page.

This game really hasn't been out very long at all, and there is already thousands of mods out for it. An excellent place I found to get some modifications are at The Elder Scrolls Source File Database website. I'm not really a fan of any of the huge modifications that change game fundamentals but there is a couple modifications that I did download. One of the mods I downloaded was the autoFloraHarvest which allows you to automatically harvest any ingredients if you are with in range from it, and it also makes them disappear (harvested) until they grow again. It saves a lot of time, and it very nice to see the plants disappear instead of trying to pick already harvested ones.

All in all this is perhaps the strongest games in the whole Elder Scroll Series even though it isn't much more than a fancy Morrowind. One thing for sure, if you computer can handle this epic adventure you will be playing this game until Oblivion (I love puns).