Sleepless in Cyrodiil

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has finally arrived on the PS3, and even a year late, it's still one of the biggest sinkholes of time you can buy.
Author: Sam Bishop
Published: April 14, 2007
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The rest of the game is as it was a year prior, however, and while it's by no means dated looking, the overall aesthetic wasn't exactly something I was digging. The people, in particular, just looked... off. They're more or less the only blight on the visuals, since the countryside has been SpeedTreed to hell and back and is rife with grass and shrubs, and the undulating, meandering terrain of caves or the awe-inspiring detail in the various castles and churches is something to behold, but because you do so much conversing, it's hard to ignore.


Don't get me wrong, the game is absolutely beautiful, particularly in moments where the architecture pairs with the lighting and all the little bump-mapped nooks and crannies of surfaces to give you something that looks genuinely atmospheric and next-gen. Things like a framerate that even at standard-def resolutions can wobble all over the place (normally, though, it holds steady at a relatively smooth clip) and some odd textures here and there try to drag things down, but they're fleeting distractions at best.

The audio, too, is phenomenal stuff; the grunts, growls, shouts and cries from enemies -- monster and human(oid) alike -- are pumped out as nice, discrete 5.1 surround, and more than a few times I actually jumped while skulking my way through a cave only to have a warped voice seething with evil blare from the back channels. Swinging around and launching into a huge fight only meant more thumps from shock spells and clangs from sword hitting armor.

And then of course there's Jeremy Soule's soundtrack, every bit as epic and sweeping as any of the vistas you'll take in while exploring Cyrodiil. This probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who has heard his work in other fantasy games like Icewind Dale, Dungeon Siege and, more appropriately Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, but that doesn't mean it's any less impressive. In fact, the soundtrack has more than a few Soule trademarks; the whole mess sounds like it was ripped from the Lord of the Rings movies, and rather than sounding like Soule bit the style off Howard Shore, it actually gives the game a proper Hollywood feel in nearly every bit of the score.

It's not just in the score, though. Culling a handful of Hollywood folks without trumpeting them as part of some "epic all-star cast" means that actors like Sean Bean, Patrick Stewart and even Lynda Carter mean there was some established big screen talent, but they actually fold perfectly into the voice work from the rest of the actors. Not all of it is perfect, and yes, being a fantasy game, there are moments where even the scope of the world can't save some pure cheese bits.

Oblivion isn't perfect. As big as the world is, there are set pieces that are recycled near-ad nauseum, the music can cut in and out abruptly, the... um... look, it doesn't matter. This is as good as Western RPGs get on consoles, plain and simple. The fact that most PlayStation gamers haven't had a good WRPG in... well, ever, shouldn't detract from the fact that even a year after the original release, Oblivion is every bit as addictive and expansive as any game you'll drop $60. And oh how you should.
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The Verdict
9.0

Here's the bottom line: this is the closest thing we've got right now to an offline MMORPG. That means a stupid huge amount of gameplay for the money, and with a huge story and hundreds of hours of exploration to be had, good luck finding a better value.

8.5Graphics:

Yes, everything is bump mapped and ultra-textured to hell and back, and the world is beyond expansive, but little bits like a slightly choppy framerate.

9.0Sound:

A Hollywood-level score, solid voice acting, great sound effects. Aside from some minor wonkiness in getting it all to flow like an actual movie, there's little here aurally that you wouldn't hear in an actual movie.

8.5Control:

For a game that that ropes casting spells, dueling with manual combat, conversing with folks, and traipsing across a vast countryside, things work surprisingly well. It should be noted that it's a little too easy to accidentally steal something, however.

9.0Gameplay:

A huge world with an almost limitless amount of stuff to do, combat that's satisfying, characters that you start to care about, and a massive amount of character growth add up to pure addiction.