I have spent every spare waking hour of the day lately playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Its an awesome game: if you like deep, open ended single player computer role playing games, then Oblivion is definitely worth a look.

Oblivion is set in the Empire of Tamriel in the world of Nirn, a world that may be familiar to people who have been playing computer games for a few years as the setting for the Elder Scrolls. The Elder Scrolls series has been around for a while, starting over a decade ago with Elder Scrolls: Arena. The last release in the series before Oblivion was Morrowind in 2002, a role playing game that was lauded for its open ended style, huge size, and depth of backround materials. It also received some knocks for its initial bugs (most of which were fixed in subsequent patches). I personally played Morrowind- it was a very good game, but I found it hard to get engaged- it was, for me, a bit *too* wide open. I couldn’t really find a plotline to hook on to. I played it for weeks, but never finished it, and have no idea to this day what “finishing it” would have looked like. That’s both good and bad- good, because I had weeks of gaming and came no where near completing the game. Bad, because I never really felt like I was “part” of the game’s main plot.

Oblivion seems to have kept all of the good features from Morrowind (open ended, massive game world, incredible depth) and ditched some of the less than positive features (lack of hooks into the main plotline, game ending bugs). Right from the start, Oblivion’s story line is pretty obvious. But you can still veer off into the open country side, read hundreds of books, go off on your own adventuring paths…and, with the help of the quest journal, find your way back to the main plot easily.

WARNING: some spoilers follow
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