Stunning. Simply stunning.

Even on my dated and ancient equipment, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of the most impressive single player RPGs I’ve seen yet. I think it could quite possibly be the best I’ve played yet. But I’ve only been playing it 10 hours so far, so thats not necessarily fact. ;-)

The introduction throws you immediately in to eye candy. The Emperor telling his story as the camera pans and flies around Imperial City before flying in your cell window to show you, locked up and alone. You can play with the items in your cell. First thing I ended up doing was picking up a bone and equipping it as a club. Then I had a sit on my chair at my little table. Chains hang from the ceiling with shackles to hold you in place.

When I went up to the cell gate, a prisoner in another cell started giving me all forms of stick and generally deriding my toon. Then the Emperor himself showed up and my cell just happened to have a secret door out of the prison in it :-)

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The game is immediately immersive. Fantastic graphics simply overwhelm you. It was like the first time I saw the graphics in Guild Wars all over again. But its more immersive than Guild Wars in that everything is fully interactive. Stand on a hill and watch the deer frolick while the grass sways around your legs and the wind moves the branches on the trees. Even before you leave your prison cell, pick up and move objects within your environment. Try to rattle the cell gate.

I don’t have a flash fancy graphics card or a late model machine. In fact, my machine only just meets the minimum requirements to play the game. This is evident in that during the opening cinematic the game becomes choppy and spends a lot of time loading stuff from the hard drive. Its not so bad once you start playing the game itself though. Mind you, I have 512meg or RAM in my machine and its painfully noticable. This game really needs a serious amount of grunt. You notice this when you look at the back of the case and it lists the ATI Radeon X1900 as being one of the supported cards. ;-) Still, anything less than 1gig of RAM and a Radeon X800, don’t complain about game performance.

Its hard to quite convey the scope of this game. I though World of Warcraft was big till Guild Wars came along. Guild Wars was big till now. The explorable area with Oblivion is simple staggering. I mean, theres no where you cannot go. If you can see it, you can explore it. And if you can’t see it, chances are you can still explore there.

But thats only the start of it. In Imperial city I now have my own little house and that means that things I buy are relatively safe. I don’t have to encumber my character too much because things I’m not going to be using can be left behind in the house.

But I can also explore everyone elses house too. Some houses are harder to get in to than others because they have better locks, but I’m sure as my game progresses and my skill at picking locks improves, that won’t be too much of an issue. But I have yet to come across a building I cannot go in and check out. Or a room I cannot attempt to get in. Some doors can only be opened with the right key, but thats okay.

Then we start to get in to factions and guilds.

Almost immediately, the first overt faction you’ll hear about is the Fighters Guild. They’re based at the arena in the Imperial City. Joining up with them means you can earn coin just from fighting in the arena. Don’t want to fight? Then bet on the fights instead.

Another pretty overt guild, but one thats a little harder to join, is the Mages Guild. Depending on your style of play, you definitely want to join this guild. It allows you to learn new spells faster and cheaper than if you buy them off the street merchants. At higher ranks within the guild you can even start to create your own spells and enchant the items you wear or use. An enchanted sword of your own making, or a cuirass that makes you silent. The possibilities are almost endless.

Character development isn’t anything at all as I expected it might be. You can have full control over your character, but during the introduction/tutorial, the game keeps track of how you play and by the end of it has come up with a suggested class for your character. You can use this class or you can select your own one. If none of the classes appeal to you, you can create a new class that is totally custom to your own method of play.

At first this might seem a little strange, but truth is it really is quite good and the class it suggested for me at the end of the introduction was pretty close to how I like to play anyway. I still made my own however. :-) I wanted to customise it a little to something that was a little more suited to my own interests. It ended up being pretty close to the suggested, but with a couple of extra tweaks.

Creating the appearance of your toon is extreme in the least. You have as much control over the facial appearance of your toon in Oblivion as you do in Second Life. I’m not over stating it. If you haven’t played SecondLife, then I guess the next closest I’m aware of would probably be Sims 2. Except you have that much control for a number of races. Not just humans. It was quite overwhelming initially, but in the end I made a toon I could stand the appearance of, even if it wasn’t the masterpiece that is David.

I really don’t quite know how to describe the game. I’ve only played it a few hours (from about 11am till 9pm) before I took off to check out Guild Wars: Factions. But I can honestly say I’m hooked already. Its very much an addictive piece of fantasy RPG and I’ve only just started working on joining the Thieves Guild ;-)

Oh… And if you get hungry, you can always go kill those deer outside the cities and get venison for your troubles. ;-) Or kill wolves to sell the pelts and buy food. :-) Or go explore the ruins and… Yeah. Anyway. :-) I think you get the picture.

The scope of this game makes even Warcraft feel a little restrictive. But then, thats not really a fair comparison given that this game is completely open ended 1 player, where as Warcraft is a totally different type and genre of game. Oblivion is getting back to real RPG. I’d call it the closest to pen and paper I’ve played yet.

I’ve not said that of a game since Baldurs Gate 2.