Radiant AI is an amazing accomplishment, and has few faults. It allows for the level of immersion that is needed in a roleplaying game.
Even after a four-month delay, Oblivion still has its technical issues. But with the sheer size of the game, it was bound to happen. The Xbox will crash during loading screens. The game's auto save feature is good but really shows its flaws when the game takes down the Xbox 360.
You are also not going to experience Oblivion without frame rate and geometry pop-in issues. When not in enclosed areas such as houses or caverns, you will encounter severe drops in frame rate. When on horseback it is even worse. You will also see rocks, trees, mountains, etc. pop up right before your eyes when walking or riding in the wilderness. The geometry, texture, and lighting detail in the game are through the roof, and are what can be attributed to these slow downs.
These technical problems would almost assuredly hinder any other game but Oblivion. The game world is just so stunning, and the game play is so outstanding that these otherwise show stoppers are mere irritations in the grand scheme of things.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is everything fans of the series wanted, and more. The long wait, and delay, were well worth it in the end. Oblivion is a masterpiece for the eyes and the ears, and should easily receive Game of the Year honors. Continuing Bethesda's tradition of delivering more than what is normally expected out of a game, Oblivion is an outstanding example of superior everything.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a rated M (Mature) by the ESRB for Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence. This game can also be found on: PC, Mobile Phone.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - sal m
to your point that the main quest can be complete in 30-40 hours, i can't see why anyone would want to do that. in order to do that you'd have to ignore the majority of other goings on in the game.
in about 30 hours i've yet to scratch the surface, and thanks to contracting the vampire disease, am way to engrossed by the side quests and the scenery to even touch the main quests.
i've never been one to replay a game that i finished, but i'm already looking forward to changing characters and playing the game from a different perspective...which is an dark elf assassin.
2 - Victor Plenty
Even I've been tempted to buy a 360 for this game. Notably, that would be a much cheaper way to play it than attempting to upgrade my computer. In fact, my existing computer probably can't be upgraded enough to run Oblivion very well, if at all. That would mean spending a good chunk of change to build a new system from the ground up.
The 360 is tremendously overpriced compared to other consoles on the market right now, but it's a lot cheaper than a new computer, even if I build the whole system myself.
So I'm trying to keep myself occupied with Morrowind and other things, until some prices go down somewhere.
3 - Ken Edwards
I agree. Like I said, it would be such a waste of money to do that. Sadly, there are people who will only work on the main quest. The point was that you still get a pretty standard RPG if you only do the main quest. If you do everything else though, well, that is over 200 hours.
I am a vampire now too. I got it less than 10 hours into the game. I have even completed the quest to cure it, though I do not think I will be drinking the potion any time soon.
Morrowind was the same way, I know I will play through it again. I am an Imperial Night at the moment, but will be trying either a pure Mage or Battle Mage next, and likely an Argonian.
4 - sal m
the vampire cure quest is giving me fits...i cannot find the soul gems that are supposed to be in certain dungeons...there are secret doors that are supposed to be in specific areas of these dungeons, but i cannot for the life of me find them...and i don't want to just go and buy them all...that seems too easy.
and victor, i disagree that the 360 is overpriced...if you use it as much as you should, the 360 is a bargain. it's not how much you spend, but the return on your investment that matters...between this game, ghost recon and condemned you'll get your money's worth from this console.
5 - Ken Edwards
Yes indeed. I originally thought that $400 was overpriced. But not after seeing the killer app: Xbox Live Arcade. And no, I am not kidding. Condemned, GRAW, and Oblivion are all pretty good reasons too, of course.
Sal - there are soul gems at the Arcane University first floor. Three of them for your picking. I did find some in dungeons but I ended up buying them. There is a money glitch (that will get patched) once you complete the quest. You get 1000 gp for completing the quests, which does not account for the cost of five soul gems.
But you can sell the cure potion for a pretty penny ;)
6 - Victor Plenty
XBox Live isn't a killer app for people like me who still use dialup to access the Intertron from home. If I buy this hefty-priced box any time soon, it'll be for Oblivion and not much else.
7 - Lenard
Big problem with Oblivion is that the xbox360's hard drive can get scrambled and pretty much doom the box we have all come to love so much... sad sad day---
8 - Victor Plenty
Is Cyrodill really only 16 square miles? I seem to recall reading the game world in Daggerfall was the size of Great Britain. Granted, much of that game world was computer-generated, while everything for Morrowind and Oblivion had to be built by hand. Still, it seems they'd want to make the game world bigger than 16 square miles, and judging by my experiences there so far, Morrowind has a lot more than 8 square miles to explore.
9 - Ken Edwards
I thought I said more than 16 square miles? That figure does not include all the Oblivion Gates, caves, ruins, etc. That is just the overworld. So yes, it is bigger than 16 square miles. And it is the biggest TES game yet.
Also everything in Oblivion was not built by hand. The forests are all randomly generated. The land mass is always the same size of course, but not the forests.
Lenard - I have yet to hear of any serious hard drive failure because of this game. There is a way to delete the cache (hold A while starting the system) but beyond that there have been no problems reported that are any different from playing any other 360 game.
10 - Victor Plenty
Well, "over 16 square miles" would indicate somewhere between 16 and 17 square miles, by my reading, and usually closer to 16. If it were more than 16-1/2, the usual boast would be "almost 17 square miles!"
But perhaps I've been reading too much marketing copy.
11 - anon
just wanted to make a quick comment concerning the "randomly generated" forests, since this was something that I was especially interested in. Actually, the forests were not randomly generated. Bethesda worked with a team of environmental scientists to develop algorithms for forest growth, and sort of "grew" the forests based on some parameters and the topology of the land. Although not done by hand, it certainly wasn't random. Some might say it's even better than by hand.
12 - Victor Plenty
Sounds extremely cool, Anon. Can you provide any links to more information about their algorithms for generating forest environments?
13 - Ken Edwards
Well, by 'random' I meant 'not modeled by hand.' and by definition, I still call that random. Because if you play the game again (start a new game) then the forests will be generated, or grown, differently. I call that random, but that is just me.
There is no way the forests could have been hand planted. They are just too big. I know they licensed the software, but do not know from who either.
Victor - heh, marketing... anyways. I would say the amount of Oblivion Gates, caves, ruins, and all other stuff that is not part of the overworld has got to constitute another square mile or more. As for the exact number, I have no idea. I don't even think Bethesda has even taken the time to calculate it. I don't think anyone really cares that much.
When I first started playing the game, I did not think it was bigger than Morrowind, but now that I am into the game pretty far, it sure is a lot bigger, with a lot more to explore outside of just walking around the overworld.
I believe High Rock and Hammerfell in Daggerfall look to be the size of Morrowind, but didn't come close. But then it has been a long time since I played that game.
Also, I was referring to the Xbox Live Arcade as being the killer app, not Live itself. Although Live is done very well, it is nothing without the games. Of course you still need broadband to download the XBLA games ;)
You should also consider games like Condemned, GRAW, Dead or Alive 4, even Kameo as reasons other than just Oblivion for the purchase of a 360. But I don't blame ya. I bought it for Oblivion, it just happened to have a bunch of other games on it that I wanted too.
14 - Victor Plenty
According to the Elder Scrolls web site, the game world in Daggerfall is about the size of Great Britain. That's over 50,000 (yes, fifty thousand) square miles. Presumably, the playable area in Arena is even larger, because it "encompassed the entire world of Tamriel." In both of those cases, most of it is computer generated, of course.
Obviously, Morrowind and Oblivion are nowhere near that size. But I definitely got the impression they'd both be much bigger than a mere 16 or so square miles, so I wondered where that figure came from, and why it's showing up in so many online reviews. A little more poking around on the Elder Scrolls site reveals another interesting little factoid: "Morrowind is about 0.0001% the landmass of Daggerfall."
By my calculations, that makes the Morrowind game world a little over 5 square miles. So apparently the figure you've all been quoting is accurate, and the fact Morrowind feels so much bigger to me as I'm exploring its world is simply a testament to how richly it was designed.
15 - Me!
How much do the grand soul gems cost? Ive spent to much time looking, I wanna go out and buy them.
16 - Al
Ken - I don't know that Lenard is totally right. I hope not, but Oblivion most definitely scrambles the order of my saved games. It's driving me crazy. The people at Bethesda don't have a solution, either.
17 - Chad
The vampire cure quest has screwed up the whole game for me now. I got all the ingredients, returned the blood-staind dagger and the Henthral vampire ashes that the old witch, BUT what she doesn't mention in the list of topics when I speak with her is the 2 blades of bloodgrass. This is a defect/glitch..everytime I talk to her now the only options are 'Cure for the Vampire Disease' and 'Rumors'. There's nothing I can do, I keep my saves down to live 3 at a minumum and I cannot go back and try to start the cure quest thing over again. This makes me wanna stop playing now cos it sucks being a vampire.
18 - Ken Edwards
I disagree. I have played the entire game a vamp.
19 - Adam
The same has happened to me Chad and I must say it is a very annoying glitch as I dont want to be a vampire. Apart from that the game has been great so far. If anyone knows of any other way to cure myself please share but I doubt there will be.
20 - Victor Plenty
A bit of a correction is needed to one of my earlier statements. For some reason I misremembered the land area of Great Britain. In reality it's over 80,000 square miles. This means my calculation for the area of the game world in Morrowind should have come out to just over 8 square miles, making Cyrodiil roughly twice its size, just as Ken stated in the main article.
21 - PeterM
I had a similarly frustrating experience with the vampire cure. If you don't have a previous save then you either play as a vampire or restart. If you restart, make sure, when you get the disease again (and you will), that you give the witch all her ingredients in the order she requested them. I beat the vampire and informed her of my accomplishment before giving her the bloodgrass, garlic, nightshade, etc. and when it was time to collect my potion she never came out of the cellar. And, evidently, unlike the PC game, you can't get down into the cellar on the Xbox. Thank the Nine I had a bunch of previous saves.
If you want more detailed information on everything Oblivion, go to GameFaqs.
22 - Ken Edwards
I am not of the mind that being a vampire sucks. But since it is well known now how easy it is to contract, just have a cure disease potion on you at all times.
23 - Ken Edwards
And so now they have pull yet another Take 2 game because of yet another (after market) mod. How stupid.
24 - sal m
i got down into her basement in the 360 version of the game...also, if you restart the game make sure you do whatever you can to get cure disease potions before going into dungeons...you can keep yourself from getting vampirism if you take a cure disease potion as soon as you get bitten.
i didn't have a problem there, but when i went back to the castle i had to follow the dude around until he was going back up the stairs before he would ask me about the cure.
also this is where the gold glitch occurs....
25 - Eddy
I have been very frustrated with the quest. I have all ingridients an stuff, but I can't seem to find an argonian at night. Can anyone help? I can't wait because I will die, and the sun will kill me!!!