Pros: Possibly the most non-linear game to date I have ever played.
Cons: Lack of additional downloadable content kills replay value.
The bottom line: Not a game for the casual player, because it will become your obsession for the next year or so, it's that in-depth. The best RPG I have ever played.
Whether you decide on buying the Game of the Year edition at once for 60 bucks, or hold off and buy the original then later the "Shivering Isles" expansion for 30 bucks each (like I did), you will still ultimately get the same content, since the PS3 version of this game comes with the "Knights of the Nine" expansion included in the game out-of-the-box.

So, what is so special about the Elder Scrolls series, some people may ask. I asked that same question only a couple of months ago, before I entered the exciting world that Bethesda has created for our gaming pleasure. Before I bought "Oblivion", the only Role-playing Game I had played was the Final Fantasy series; a great game in it's own right, but clearly-- after comparing it to this game-- not a 'true' RPG as RPGs were meant to be.

Enter, "Oblivion", the fourth game in the still surprisingly obscured Elder Scrolls series. I say that it's surprising because, despite how much praise and critical acclaim these games seem to get, hardly anyone I know has ever heard of them. But then again, most people I know don't like RPGs. Okay, so on to specifics.

In this particular entry in the epic series (and the first one I have ever really played first-hand), you begin the game in a prison cell, and are taunted by a fellow inmate. Hmmm, this doesn't seem to be very exciting yet. But wait; before long, a group of knights leading a man who is apparently an Emperor come into your cell and bust through the wall! Well, you follow them, of course, and it is here that you enter your first of many 'dungeons', as they are called. After the excitement comes to an end, you are told by the Emperor that the land is in great danger, and it is up to you to help put a stop to the evil that has infected the land (Oh, great). You are asked to deliver an amulet toa fellow ally, who can surely tell you more about what awaits you.

It was at this point that I decided to go my own way in the game, and that is where the true originality of this game shines the brightest: the incredibly non-linear gameplay.

So let's begin with how customizable your character can be: when the game first begins, you are asked to create your player, and a whole slew of options become available to you, all pertaining to what aspect of your character you want to be the strongest; you can choose to have high magical ability from the beginning, or you can choose to be more naturally gifted in combat, or you can simply mix and match to create your own custom class of character. How many standard classes are there to choose from at the start? 21. Along with that staggering amount of choices in class, there are also 10 races (including Orcs, Elves and raptor-like humanoid beings called Argonians), 13 birthsigns, 8 attributes, and 21 skills, all waiting for you to choose and develop, all helping make your character unique and relatable to only you. You can also choose the character's appearince, from the tiniest detail to the largest change, you can make your character look like anyone you want in the face, with the most indepth character creation interface I have ever seen in a game.

That was just talking about the character themselves, but now I want to give you an idea of how vast this world is in which you will carry out your adventures. First of all: the free-roam ability is the best I have ever encountered, and the top-notch graphics that the PS3 and 360 are able to dish out can compete very well with the PC version of the game. This helps you to be able to see further ahead of you than ever before as you roam the countryside, and something that is known as "draw-distance" has been pushed to the limit, so objects don't simply "pop-up" into view as you near them nearly as much as they used to, as you are able to see things long before you reach their location. This big change in graphic capability is most evident on an HDTV, in which I hardly experienced any 'pop-up' at all. Gone now are the days of invisible walls blocking the player from venturing further, and loading times are hardly an issue anymore, as the game is so powerful that I can stand in the middle of a town, spot a mountain range miles and miles away and walk all the way there without a single loading screen. That is revolutionary.

What else is new about it? Well, I don't have an exact count of all the side-quests and sub-plot available to you in this game, but let me just say that I have been playing for a couple of months straight now, have completed nearly 100 quests, and I still haven't even begun to scratch the surface; there is still so much world map left unexplored, it gets me very excited to think of all the additional fun I can still have in this world. Please also take into consideration that I still haven't started the main quest of the game, or any of the expansion packs that were included. That should hopefully give you an idea of how grand a scale this game is. Fighting and dungeon-crawling isn't the only thing you will be doing, either. You can do many things in this world from rescuing damsels in distress, to becoming a top assassin, to buying a house in any of the cities located in the game and buying accessories and funiture for it.

As for the additional side-quests, some of them you will randomly stumble across, others will be given to you by any of the guilds you are able to join. There are a total of 14 joinable factions available to you here, and all of them have at least one quest related to them. In the case of the four main guilds you can join, you will find yourself carrying out many tasks for them, complete with it's own storyline which ends up feeling like a completely seperate game all to itself, complete with plot twists and betrayals. By the time I am finished completeling many of the longer side quests in the game, I feel like I have finished a game already, because some of them are so idepth. All of these things and more lead me to believe that this is possibly the most non-linear game I have ever played thus far.

As far as the gameplay itself is concerned, I am very happy with it. Honestly, I am having a hard time noticing that it is a PC ported game. The controls have translated very well over to the PS3 controller scheme, and I feel comfortable when in combat mode; no clunky control combos or any of that nonsense that alot of ported games require. It feels like it was made for the home console, and that's important that it does. It also shows that Bethesda really cares about how well the game plays on every format, not just the PC, and I respect them for taking so much time into making the best trip over to PS3 that they could. The combat system isn't really much of a system at all, so people hoping for an old-school-style turn-based strategy when it comes to fighting enimies may be dissapointed, but I personally have always been more of a real-time combat fan than turn-based, even though the latter is much more in the tradition RPG vein.

Okay, now that we have gone through only a small amount of reasons why this game is so good, it's time to talk about some of the problems I have with it. Yes, believe it or not, I do have some issues. First of all, and probably my biggest problem, is that the PS3 version of this game does not have additional updates and mods available for download, and the PC and 360 versions do. Now, while that may not sound like huge problem, it is, and here is why: With the additional updates and mods that are being distributed by Bethesda for this game, it allows players to get even more playability out of it. New mods means new quests and more game play time, ultimately, and for people like me who want to complete every quest that I can in a game like this, PS3 owners are out of luck. That also means that some bugs that may be present in the game will not be corrected by downloadable updates on the PS3. This can lead to fustration, as the game has been known to get 'glitchy' sometimes, often leaving the player unable to finish some quests. With the PC version, that isn't a problem, with the help of something called "The Console", which can be accessed through the computer's keyboard, but for the console versions that don't have that advantage, updates and downloadable mods are the only things that could possibly fix those issues. 360 owners can get them, PS3 owners cannot. When and if PS3 downloadable additions are made available, then I will change my opinion in this review, but until that time, it remains the biggest problem I have with it. Some aspects of the game itself does strike me as a little odd as well, such as the fact that as your character levels up, so do the enemies around you, so that the game is never really "hard". Now, I suppose that can be looked at as inventive, but it makes for a very unfair game, in my opinion. Frankly, after all the work of dungeon-crawling, mountain-climbing, combat training, magicka building, running, jumping and swimming to raise my character's level in every area to the max, I think I've earned for the game to be very easy to play at that point; I want to be able to kill bandits with ease, I don't want to run into random creatures on the road and suddenly discover that they have all conveniantly learned the same exact skills I have. It's not logical, or fun in that respect.

Another issue that I have is that sometimes a mission won't update until I have done every single step suggested to me to take by any given character, even if I already know what to do. For example: let's say that there is a certain item that is located somewhere specific in a city, and let's also assume that you already know where to go. Often times, the said item won't appear in that spot until AFTER you have spoken about it with another character and your quest updates. Also, while the invisible wall issue is taken care of in this game, I have found myself at times being stopped in my tracks as I venture out in the wildernesss and a message has popped up telling me that I can't go any further. Now, while I understand the playing field has to end somewhere, I do think Bethesda could have figured out a better way of disguising that fact instead of simply telling the player that he's at the end of the line. It's little thing like that that are suprisingly linear for such an otheriwse non-linear game.

However, I suppose if those are my only complaints, then the game has still done it's job well; it set out to be the most interactive game of it's kind so far, and I believe it has succeeded in doing that. A game like this is such a breath of fresh air when all we've been getting in terms of RPGs lately has been a tale of a spikey-haired androgynous male character accompanied by furry little companions and a child-like damsel as they go find all the crystals for the umpteenth time. Yeah, I would say that "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" has accomplished something that was only a dream five years ago. That is revolutionary in anyone's book, despite some of the game's shortcomings. And the most important thing is that I'm still playing, and enjoying it immensly!