The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was widely acclaimed as one of the greatest RPGs in the history of gaming. It featured one of the most free-form storylines that the gaming world had ever seen. Start with that, then throw in countless items, quests, Non-Person Characters (NPCs), and an enormous world map, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of why Morrowind won so many “RPG of the Year” and “Game of the Year” honors. And yet here we are again. The dawn of a brand new Elder Scrolls game. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion indeed has some massive shoes to fill, but the good news for all of us gamers is that Oblivion delivers with flying colors. You heard right, Oblivion has totally shattered what Morrowind did in the gaming universe. Oblivion has taken PCs and the Xbox 360 on the ultimate test drive.             There are multiple stories all interwoven within Oblivion’s majestic world, and the main story is just one piece of the puzzle. The game begins quite simply; your character is just a common prisoner in the Imperial City Dungeons. However, shortly after the game begins, a few Imperial Legion soldiers mysteriously enter your cell. They order you to stand aside as they escort, who you soon find out to be, Emperor Uriel Septim VII towards a secret passageway that leads out of Imperial City. However, before the group departs, Emperor Septim notices your character and claims that he/she is the hero of the world that he saw in a vision. He informs you that his sons have been murdered and that his time is near the end as well. He also claims that you will have a big factor in the world in the coming times and bids you to follow his path through the escape route. Of course you’ll take him up on that because if you don’t, you’ll be in jail forever! The passage turns out to be just a tutorial of the game, but is fairly long and can be somewhat difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing.             The character creation process is fairly simple but quite extensive, allowing you to fully customize every aspect of your character including race, gender, major and minor skills, birthsign, and all other aspects that the game has included. There are so many different combinations that it is nearly impossible for two different people to create two identical characters. Once the character setup process is complete, it’s time to finally make your mark in the world of Oblivion.             There is no concrete goal in Oblivion; you create your own goals based on the contents of the game. If you want to simply beat the main quest and then never touch the game again, that’s fine. You’ll have around 40 hours of game time and then you’ll be able to move on to whatever’s next for you. If you want to beat all the quests in the game though, you’ll be playing quite a bit longer than 40 hours before you finish (assuming you ever do finish). In Oblivion, you can interact with the world in any way you want. That’s the entire game in a nutshell. There’s no formula for success or anything like that; it’s basically whatever you as a player decide is success. The game is so similar to real life that it’s almost scary. You can pretty much do anything you want. The game simply provides you with different things to spend your time doing. If you decide to play the game like a regular old linear RPG, then you can. The game’s content allows for that. But you can also just push all that aside and explore the entire world to your heart’s consent. The storyline and quests are there for the taking, but Oblivion also puts the most freelance game in the world at your disposal as well.             The combat style used in Oblivion is very nice. You can use your entire arsenal of weapons and magic against your foes at any time, which allows for many different combat strategies. You can begin by attacking your foe from a distance by using a bow or spell, then switch to a melee weapon when it comes near you, or you can just charge in and lay down a hurtin’ without any stealth at all. Stealth is a major part of combat though. If you just run into a room of enemies, you will probably die very quickly. Groups of enemies are insanely difficult to handle in this game. However, if you can attack one enemy individually without being seen by the others, you can lure it into an uninhabited area and then confront it directly. There are multiple ways to go about combat and starting out simply and then progressing from there is a good way to get used to the game and your character.             As you play, your skills raise based on the things you do, and once you level up enough skills, an icon will appear telling you that your overall level is ready to increase. However, your level will never increase until you sleep. Once you have slept and awoke, you’ll get to choose 3 of your major attributes to boost by different amounts based on your use of their skills. When you level up a skill to a certain point, you’ll learn a new talent based around it. For example, when you raise your marksman skill to 50, you gain the ability to zoom in while your bow is cocked. Each skill has its own little additions and bonuses when you get in the higher levels. The way Bethesda setup the leveling system may sound very complicated, but it is easy to understand once you’ve seen how it works in the game. The gameplay engine really needs to be experienced to be understood, but it works well.             There are quite a lot of new things in Oblivion that really make the game better than its predecessors, but sadly some of them are not implemented enough to really make all that much of an impact. The Fast-Travel system is simply glorious. Gone are the frustrating hours spent running back and forth from one town to the next that Morrowind suffered from so badly. The Fast-Travel system allows you to travel instantly to any major landmark that you’ve visited before. This allows players to easily and efficiently travel from one location to the next while performing large-scale quests. It sort of minimizes the impact of the new horse feature, but the horse still comes in handy and you pretty much can’t argue with instant transportation. The Fast-Travel system really makes the game a lot more enjoyable for the player, because the novelty of riding your horse down the same road 500 times runs out very quickly. Most of the quests have fairly interesting storylines, and to force the gamer to travel for a half hour in between chapters would ruin the flow of the story. The Fast-Travel system is truly one of the nicest features of the game.             Although the Fast-Travel system makes actual player movement seem somewhat obsolete, the horse is still a nice and entertaining addition to the game, especially when exploring. To be honest it is almost unimaginable to think of playing Oblivion without the use of a horse. The game would be unbearably slow-moving and boring in comparison, so the horse is nice to have because it makes things a lot more fast-paced and exciting. Just like all the other items in Oblivion, the horse is able to be stolen, but stealing a horse doesn’t pay off that much unless you really need a quick escape and don’t own your own horse. Once you dismount from a stolen horse, it wanders off towards where it came from, so you end up losing your ride. Any horse you own, however, stays right where you leave it unless you Fast-Travel to a city (in which case it is transported to the city stable). In the end, the horse is a nice addition even with the Fast-Travel system.             The A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) system Bethesda whipped up for Oblivion is simply out of this world. It’s called Radiant A.I., and it allows every single NPC to live their own lives and make their own decisions as if they were a totally unique living person. All Bethesda did programming-wise is give each NPC a set of general objectives, and the NPCs go about completing those objectives in whatever manner they wish. The NPCs actually seem like real people, and this once again immerses the gamer even more into the world of Tamriel. Thieves can use the closing times of shops to their advantage because when a shop is closed, it is also uninhabited. This is just one example of how Radiant A.I. really makes the game stand out in comparison to anything else.             The physics engine used in Oblivion is phenomenal, but sadly not implemented as fully as Bethesda originally hinted. You can still grab things and move them around, but the amount of things that actually are able to be moved is smaller than what the demos showed. This is very disappointing, because the potential is there for a great feature of the game, but it is just too minimally used to really be appreciated. Of the items that are moveable, they all move very realistically according to their shape and weight. One major flaw in the physics that can be a pain sometimes, however, is that when picking up an item, all of the items around it move as if a large gust of wind just appeared where the item you picked up was. There are also some other minor glitches within the system, but overall it is a nice feature that sadly was not integrated into the game enough. Much like the physics engine, the new traps that the game features are not as fully integrated into dungeons as Bethesda claimed. They are also very similar in design and so blatantly obvious that they are easy to avoid. This is yet another aspect of the game that had a lot of potential but didn’t really pan out. Overall though, the gameplay features of Oblivion are fantastic but it does have its share of weak points. The combat system is great, the quests are very entertaining, and the world itself is a wonder to behold.             The control scheme used in Oblivion is wonderful on both the Xbox 360 and PC. The PC has the small advantage of ease of use because of the keyboard, but the 360 is not bad in any regards either. The only real difference is that the PC’s hotkeys can each be individually pressed, while on the Xbox 360 you are forced to hold down a button and then press another to use the hotkeys. Also, since the 360 has joysticks, some players may feel more comfortable using the 360 controller than a mouse and keyboard or vice-versa. The two setups are so similar that it pretty much comes down to personal preference. Anyone who plays Oblivion on either platform should be able to learn the controls very quickly. Bethesda did a great job with the button configuration and layout.             Need the graphics even be spoken of? They are phenomenal! Anyone who’s even seen a single screenshot knows that. The grass and trees are the most realistic that any game has put forth so far, and the textures used everywhere are gorgeous. The water looks nice as well, but in comparison to everything else in the game it doesn’t really stand out. The landscapes are where the game really shines though. The wind, lighting, and texture effects used in the landscapes are just stunning, and it will take some serious work to outdo them anytime soon. This is the best game in terms of graphic power and realism that the gaming world has ever seen.             In terms of equipment, the 360 has the advantage in the graphics department simply because it can play the game wonderfully without any upgrades or anything. No need to worry about whether your PC can run the game or anything. For example if your PC is a little on the weak side, the game will slow down substantially if you are in dense vegetation (especially when riding your horse). Thankfully both versions of the game have fully customizable graphic outputs, so if something is lugging your game down you can just lower its amount and things will run smoother. However, if you have a monster for a PC then the game will of course look better on your setup than the 360. The only problem with the 360 is that it cannot play the game with all of the settings maxed out and still get a good draw distance. If you have a supercomputer though, you can get the PC version to play the game fully maxed out in every department. So it’s sort of a tradeoff on which is better. Both can get the job done, and that’s all that really matters.             There isn’t that much musically in Oblivion, just mainly ambient tunes that are written in different styles so that they can be used in different situations. The sound quality is good, and just like with the graphics, the sound output is totally customizable. The game can sound great if you balance things out well and have a decent setup, although not having much in the sound department doesn’t really hurt the game either. The voice acting used in the game is superb. I can’t really imagine anything vocally outdoing this game ever. Just to specify how much voice acting was done, let’s just say that one half of the game’s DVD disc space is used for the voice acting. One half! That’s insane! The only downside to the huge-scale use of vocals is that since only four different people did all of the voices in the game, many characters sound similar and you may occasionally think that someone you are talking to is someone else because they have the same voice. That is truly the only downside, however, and the voice acting really adds a lot to the game overall.             Replay value is not really a factor in Oblivion, because if you ever actually completed the game totally you’d be so sick of it by then that you’d never touch the game ever again. The game is too open-ended to really consider playing again, unless of course you’d like to play it again with a different character type. Even then the chances that the game would keep your attention long enough to complete it again are quite low. Don’t think of the lack of replay as a minus, think of it as a major plus for the amount of content that this game has to offer. One thing to consider with the replay value is the addition of mods. Unfortunately for the Xbox 360, no unofficial mods are available to download, so that means that all of the mods will cost money to get. The mods range from horse armor to new quests and more, so missing out due to money issues could be a problem for Oblivion addicts. Luckily for PC players though, free unofficial mods are available from multiple sites, and those of course have even more selection than the official ones. So sadly for 360 owners, mods are not as handy as for PC owners. PC owners also get the great Construction Set for free, while 360 owners cannot even buy it. The Construction Set allows for the editing of the game’s content as well as the creation of new content, so for someone who wants to build their own house and such it is a great tool. Other than on this note, however, the two versions of the game are identical. In this instance though, the PC version gets the nod over the 360.             Overall, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is more than a breath of fresh air in the gaming world. It will undoubtedly also be the pioneer for many, many more immersive and deep games like it. Oblivion will definitely not be outdone for a very, very long time. Radiant A.I. will of course also play a big role in the future of gaming, and really if nothing else, Oblivion has really given a good image of what the future of gaming looks like. The only true problem of any importance is that both games crash on occasion, though rarely. But this is something that will no doubt be fixed through an upcoming patch for both versions. The beginning of next generation games officially starts right here, with Oblivion paving the way for many more phenomenal titles like it.