Product Description

Oblivion is the quintessential role-playing game for the next generation and another leap forward in gaming. Step inside the most richly detailed and vibrant game-world ever created. Oblivion is the latest chapter in the epic and highly successful Elder Scrolls saga and utilizes next-generation video game hardware to fully immerse you into the experience. With a powerful combination of freeform gameplay and unprecedented graphics, you can unravel the main quest at your own pace or explore the vast world and find your own challenges.

• Create and play any character you can imagine, from the noble warrior to the sinister assassin to the wizened sorcerer
• Full support for high definition televisions
• First Person Melee and Magic
• Groundbreaking AI system gives Oblivion's characters full 24/7 schedules and the ability to make their own choices based on the world around them
• Non-player characters eat, sleep, and complete goals all on their own
• Features over 1,000 non-player characters who come to life like never before with facial animations, lip-synching, and full speech
• Characters can even engage in unscripted conversations with each other and you
• Open-ended game play and short challenges.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1721 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Bethesda
• Released on: 2007-09-21
• Platform: Xbox 360

Customer Reviews

Immensely Satisfying
Whether people express love or hatred for Oblivion, they usually focus on the same feature: its sheer size. This version collects the original game together with its expansions, and to put things in context, to play even one of them (The Shivering Isles) will take over thirty hours, making one of the extras here about as long as the longer first-person shooters available in the current generation. There are over two hundred hours' worth of gameplay in the main game, resulting in a package that - for those who relish the challenge - represents outstanding value for money.

Most game developers these days boast about the freedom available to players, but in most cases it is a very precisely-defined freedom. In Oblivion, you are literally free to do as you please once the Prologue is complete. You could buy a bow and go hunting deer if you wanted: put in the hours, sell the venison, buy yourself a cheap house in one of the dingier towns, retire. You could answer the call of destiny and take on the Main Quest ... but you could just as easily ignore that completely and work your way up through the Thieves' Guild. If you want to fight, there's the pit-fighting, or maybe the slightly more respectable Fighters' Guild. If you want to kill, there's even an organisation that can employ those skills. Or you could drift from town to town helping people. Or you could concentrate on looting ruins, forts and mines for treasure. The game enables all of this, and there's no ending screen to aim for. Like any RPG, there's admittedly an in-built focus on fighting things, but you could even become a professional alchemist and live an entirely peaceful life hunting for nirnroots. At times the thought of all the uncompleted tasks in one's journal can be quite dizzying.

Graphically, this game is also impressive. Since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time it is something of a cliché to speak of beautiful sunsets and sunrises in a game, but this is actually an environment where it's worth taking a few minutes to climb to a decent vantage point and gaze out upon the enormous game-world. If that doesn't sound like something that you would personally do, don't worry: you can get your own aesthetic fix with the dungeon architecture and the lovely character models. The ability to conjure enemies such as the Skeleton or Shambles to fight for you is made even better when you can use it as an opportunity to see the care that went into their design. While there are games that surpass Oblivion on pure visuals - Bioshock, to name one - it's unusual to get this eye-candy in a genre that emerged from the muddy top-down RPGs of the past.

Bethesda has had several game generations to work on the lore element of the Elder Scrolls world, and the depth here is well beyond skin deep. While Oblivion is perhaps not as satisfying as Morrowind in evoking the mythology and history of its world, the number of readable books alone in the Oblivion world should enable players to immerse themselves as fully as they could want in it. As with every element of the game, this side of things can be ignored completely, but for those who want to explore the "official" religion of Tamriel or its Daedric counterpart, there are substantial quest series including the Knights of the Nine expansion.

Respected games magazine Edge recently placed Oblivion as number 19 in its recent list of the best games ever. Personally, I'd put it higher than that, but this is at least indication that when the publisher lays claim to having produced the Game of the Year, it isn't exaggerating.

Endless Playability!!
I bought this game after it was recommended by a colleague. I wasn't too sure if it would be my kind of thing, as I usually play more traditional turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy, but decided to give it a go. I've now been playing on and off in between other games for a couple of years and have to say that its sheer depth is amazing.

There are so many different ways to play, giving it a huge lifespan and preventing it from ever becoming boring or tedious. Hack and slash your way through the main quest as a Nord, climb the ranks of the mages guild as a High Elf or sneak your way through countless dungeons and make your fortune as a Khajit - it's entirely up to you. The game offers all these possibilities and just about everything in between, allowing you to play over and over again but gain a totally different experience every time.

The combat system is simple to use and offers greater variety and perks as your character grows stronger. I am by no means gamer of the year but managed to pick it up fairly quickly. The game also allows you to adjust the difficulty at any time, saving you from hours of trying to complete frustrating missions on maximum difficulty as with some games and also offering you greater challenge if and when needed. The ability to switch between first and third person view at any time is also particularly useful when confronting enemies.

There are a few minor glitches in the game, such as enemies occasionally becoming stuck behind objects or characters' voices changing (especially in relation to the Knights of the Nine expansion) but as the rest of the game is so perfectly crafted I have come to view these with a sort of affectionate amusement. Definitely nothing serious enough to make me give this fantastic game less than 5 stars. Oblivion has something for everyone and then some and is well worth the money you will spend on it.

Justify the purchasing of an extended edition.
Ok, first of this is great. Second The extras are all available via xbox live. So how do you justify the purchase? simple, if you do not have xbox live it is simple, if you do but have not already bought the add ons this is the cheaper option. The shivering isles is a great add on for oblivion, the design is genuinely different from the main game giving it a unique feel. New spells and armours etc certainly help too. Knights of the nine while not as strong is still a worthy addition. Trade in oblivion and get the game of the year edition. it is worth it.
Also Oblivion is still the best game on 360 and ps3 hands down.