Written by Jeff Buckland, 3/22/2007
Played on:
PS3
It's been a year since Bethesda's ground-breaking RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released on the PC and Xbox 360. Since its release, the game has racked up millions in sales and mountains of critical acclaim; the sales are really the surprising thing, since RPGs from Western countries don't often do nearly this well. And now, Bethesda has released Oblivion on Sony's powerful Playstation 3 platform. Does this port have everything the PC and 360 versions did? Can the PS3 handle the massive demands of this open-ended and beautiful RPG?
The basic story here is that you start out as a prisoner underneath the Imperial City, the capital city of both the province of Cyrodiil and the empire of Tamriel as well. Your lucky break comes when the Emperor (voiced by Star Trek's Patrick Stewart) himself comes through to escape assassins. You'll get swept up in the quest pretty quickly and will find yourself rushing to save Cyrodiil from an invasion by an evil Daedric prince, but that's just the main quest. You can pick that up, progress in it when you want, then forget it about it for a while. There are many hundreds of quests, fights, and other things to do, and the game gives you plenty of opportunities to drop what you're doing and switch to something else.
One important thing to note here is that Oblivion includes dozens of unique changes and additions to keep the game accessible for players who might not have played past Elder Scrolls games or even just RPGs at all. From an informative quest log to excellent maps and a waypoint system directing the player to their next objective in a quest, Oblivion does a fair amount of hand-holding and makes the action and RPG systems the challenging part. Rather than forcing the player to search for the next link in a quest line, the game will tell you where you need to go and give you an easy-to-see market on your compass. Want to abandon a quest and switch to something else? It's one button press away in the journal, which tracks everything you've done and need to do to finish, well, everything there is in Oblivion.
And that's a lot to do. There are probably 100 hours worth of great gameplay here when all the side quests and new things to do are put together. From your start as a forgotten prisoner in a cell beneath the Imperial City to your rise as master of magic and combat, you'll save the world and change a lot of lives. There are things for both "good" and "evil" characters to do, even though there's no real measure of how bad or good you are. You'll also find that it's quite possible to do every quest in the game so you're not really picking one side or the other.
One unique part of Oblivion that many RPGs don't have is the first person view and action-oriented gameplay. You won't be picking attacks out of a menu here: everything is in real time, and you're going to need to be quick with your controller, switching between hotkeyed spells and weapons to fight multiple threats at once. Is that a lich across the hallway? Time to put on your magic-resistant armor and jewelry and fire from a distance. Strong fighter coming your way? Put away the claymore and get out your shield and a smaller, faster weapon.
Then there is the customization. One of the best parts of Oblivion is that you can create your own character class, then take it out into Cyrodiil for a unique experience. Put on armor and weapons with magic enchantments that you have fine-tuned. You can even custom-create spells, sometimes with multiple effects, to buff yourself up or kill your enemies with. Even both simultaneously. You won't have access to all of this stuff right at the start, but Oblivion does give you a chance to do this once you get enough support together to join the Mage's Guild. You can also buy one of quite a few houses in the 9 major towns all over Tamriel's capital province of Cyrodiil, then decorate it however you want. Buy a horse to ride. Stash your loot, whether it was ill-gotten or legitimately gained, at your house. Put it on display if you want.
