Product Description

·Detailed maps for every part of the world and every major city, plus special maps for every key section of the main quest. ·Specific chapters on how to create your character and maximize your abilities and skills. ·Over 400 full-color pages packed with information on everything you need to know about the massive gameworld of Oblivion. ·Walkthroughs for every quest in the game, including the main quest, all faction quests, as well as miscellaneous and freeform quests. ·Sections on various gameplay systems including stealth, combat, magic, spellmaking and enchanting, alchemy, and more. ·Detailed bestiary chapter to help you best deal with the denizens of Tamriel and Oblivion. ·Includes new chapters on Knights of the Nine and Oblivion downloadable content.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #207412 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

Useful guide to an extraordinary game
I'm not a hardcore RPG player and I found Oblivion's depth and complexity quite terrifying. I'd played for about five hours on my own and using just the supplied manual, and decided that I needed help.

There are some excellent online resources for the game, but I wanted a printed guide, and found the OSG (usefully labelled in the store as supporting the PS3 edition). This book takes some of the pain out of learning how to play such a sophisticated RPG, without ever becoming patronising or obvious. It also manages, quite unlike other guides I've used in the past, to show you what you might like to do in a given situation without taking the joy out of playing the game.

For those more familiar with the genre I suspect the reference sections alone would justify the purchase. It's nice to have a well-presented list of characters' strengths, as I suspect trial and error would get rather tedious after the fortieth or fiftieth time.

It's added greatly to my enjoyment of am already great game. Recommended.

An excellent companion ...
A beautiful guide. Well presented and full of info. As thick as a brick but there is no page wasting here (ie. large pictures and little text which many computer guides seem to suffer from). Every page is crammed with useful information. It is written in an informal and friendly way that is a pleasure to read.

Also, the book stays open on the page you require when you place it down. Something I find very useful when trying to play and read at the same time.

It is true that the actual walkthrough section of the guide should really be ignored when playing a free roaming game such as Oblivion (unless, of course, you don't like suprises!), only to be dipped into when you find yourself stuck at certain points or unsure of how to continue.

However, the sections on creating your own character and the tips, stats and info on magic, weapons and skills are all immensely useful and are well worth the price of admission. The guide goes into much more detail then the game concerning Character skills, for example. Having more knowledge about the game helps derive more enjoyment from it.

Also, reading stats from a television screen for long periods of time can be a strain on the eyes. I much prefer to play the game proper (ie. the fighting and exploring), whilst using the book to give me a statistical breakdown of any items I may pick up or magic I may learn.

These sections account for approximately a quarter of the guide. Another quarter accounts for hints, tips and maps. Whilst approx half of the book is dedicated to giving advice on completing the games numerous missions.

The maps are numerous and also very well designed in this guide. But again, I would recommend they should be used only when really needed.

Overall, I would say this guide is not an essential purchase for Oblivion, but it makes a great companion to the game.

Excellent, only a few flaws.
I have the book and have been using it for some 30 hours now. It's the size and thickness of a telephone directory and is in colour throughout. Overall, well worth getting. Especially for people who are new to complex role-playing-games (or even to computer games in general, drawn in by the excellent Oblivion reviews).

Is the book just a giant 'plot spoiler'? Well, like any tool, if it's 'good' or 'bad' all depends on how you use it. If you just read through the whole book, then the game will be completely spoiled for you. But if you look at it "a bit at a time" and only use it cautiously (i.e.: you never look at the Main Quest pages unless you go only to the specific page you need, and then shield upcoming paragraphs with your hands) where you are really stuck somewhere in the game, then it can aid the pleasure of playing the game. Because one of the big drawbacks of playing these kinds of massive games is the hours of useless frustrated activity, running around getting dizzy looking for X or Y when it's actually somewhere else. This very comprehensive guide helps smooth out those frustrating times, and thus makes the game more enjoyable for me.

Overall, the writing and print quality is excellent, for the price. One thing I didn't like was the snide and cynical tone that kept creeping into the writing - the author often implies that "suspending one's disbelief" in a RPG game is a bit silly and purile, and keeps pointing out logical inconsistencies. We don't need to know that, we just want to know how to play the game. The Index could have been much much better. It isn't hard to auto-generate a very good and complete index using software, these days.