Ah, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. A game that can easily eat away hours of your life without you noticing or caring all that much. It may make you cold to family, ignore friends, and even forget to feed your pets but you can never stop loving it. Why is this? Is it because it's not only full of fantasy elements but also adventure, mystery, romance, horror, heroism, fear, and vengeance? Is it because you can customize your character, choose how good, evil or neutral they'll be and dress them in a vast array of outfits, armour or none at all?
Whatever the reasons are, they are all good, for this is Oblivion, and Oblivion is good.
But seriously, this game is really addicting. And unless you have a strong enough will to pull yourself away you may end up engrossed in all the sub-plots, side-missions, and random Daedric god statues that talk to you. Oblivion's massive open-world leaves the story entirely up to you, you can choose to complete the main story arc first or do pieces of it here and there while going off to discover ruins, caves, and settlements.
This kind of game design is a smart one because it doesn't force the player to do one thing at a time. You could have at least ten different active missions and none of them have to be done in the order you engaged them at. Even when NPCs tell you to hurry, there really isn't a need to hurry because everything is pretty much dependent on you being there. Oblivion allows you to make your own Elder Scrolls story any way you like, with any available race you like.
The scenery is pretty amazing (especially if you have an HD TV) and you could easily spend an hour or more just walking around, encountering random wildlife (including a single unicorn, hint, if you kill it keep the horn- you'll need it later for a mission!) or people, and just taking it all in.
The programmers obviously had a sense of humour because you'll also find lots of little 'easter eggs' and silly things that will make you smile. One such thing is a troll just north of Leyawiin along the Panther River under a bridge. You'll find him floating face down in the water below surrounded by bottles of liqour, and if you check it pockets there will be a note scribbled by the troll about how he's the worst troll ever and doesn't scare people.
Little things like a skull labeled "mother's head" (a nod to Friday the 13th) or the footwear called blue suede shoes helps make up for the voice acting. Either Bethesda was lazy and didn't feel up to hiring a bunch of different voice actors or they didn't have the time, or whatever the case, nothing good can be said about it other than Patrick Stewart's brief cameo as King Uriel right in the beginning of the game.
There appears to be only about six or seven (give or take) different voices in Oblivion and oftentimes you will find two NPCs talking to eachother who sound exactly the same, as if they were having a conversation with themselves rather than someone completely different. The only thing different about the voices is when it comes to race. Each race has its own set of voices it cycles through, so at least you won't hear the same voice from a dark elf coming from a Khajiit, though small mercies like that can only go so far.
Despite that, Oblivion is really enjoyable and has definite replay value. If you shell out the money for the Shivering Isles expansion pack, you'll have even more fun once you get to interact with the Daedric god of madness, Sheogorath, who is probably my number one favourite character in the game. Shivering Isles adds a whole new level to the Oblivion experience as you travel the Daedric land of madness encountering whole new (and odd) creatures, enemies, and people who appear normal at first glance but are really quite insane.
There are also plenty of DLCs to flesh out more story for you or just so you can own a pirate ship and have your shipmates plunder gold for you every week. However you like to spend your time and money, Oblivion has a 99.99% of meeting or exceeding your expectations (save for the whole voice acting thing).
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