About the game
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a 2006 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and co-published by Bethesda Softworks and 2K Games. It is the fourth installment in The Elder Scrolls series, following The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and was released for Windows and Xbox 360 in 2006, followed by PlayStation 3 in 2007. It takes place in the province of Cyrodiil, and the main story is about stopping a fanatical cult, the Mythic Dawn, that plans to open portal gates to a demonic realm called Oblivion.
The game continues the open world tradition of its predecessors: the player can travel anywhere in the game world at any time and can ignore or postpone the main story indefinitely. Players pick one of ten humanoid or animal-like races, customise their character, and choose seven major skills, with the rest being minor skills. A fast travel system adds an icon to the map for each new location visited, and the game never ends, so play can continue after the main quest is done.
The story begins with the player in a prison cell. Emperor Uriel Septim VII, voiced by Patrick Stewart and guarded by the Blades, arrives while fleeing assassins who have killed his three sons, and he escapes through a secret entrance in the cell. With no heir, the emperor's covenant is broken, the gates to Oblivion open and a Daedra invasion of Tamriel begins. The player has to find the emperor's hidden son, Martin, and relight the Dragonfires to close the gates for good.
Development began in 2002, right after Morrowind, under lead designer Ken Rolston, with a focus on a more realistic story, believable characters and meaningful quests. It uses the Havok physics engine, high dynamic range lighting, procedural tools for building terrain and Bethesda's Radiant AI, which lets non-player characters follow schedules and make their own choices. It was the first game in the series with fully voiced characters, including Patrick Stewart, Lynda Carter, Sean Bean and Terence Stamp, and Jeremy Soule wrote the music.
It was meant to launch with the Xbox 360 in late 2005, then slipped from 22 November 2005 to 20 March 2006. The PlayStation 3 version was ported by 4J Studios and released on 20 March 2007 in North America, with a Game of the Year Edition for Xbox 360 and PC in September 2007 and PS3 in October 2007. On 3 May 2006 the ESRB changed the rating from Teen to Mature, citing more detailed blood and gore than it had reviewed, and the PC version's locked out art file that could be used to make some female characters topless.
Bethesda sold small downloadable packs starting 3 April 2006 with horse armour, which many players thought was poor value for the price. The Knights of the Nine expansion followed on 21 November 2006 and the Shivering Isles expansion, which adds over 30 hours and a realm ruled by Sheogorath, on 27 March 2007. The last content pack came out on 15 October 2007.
Oblivion got universal acclaim and sold well: 1.7 million shipped by 10 April 2006, over 3 million by January 2007, and an estimated 9.5 million worldwide. Reviewers praised the graphics, the big world and the schedule driven NPCs, and criticised repetitive voice work, loading times and combat that felt imprecise. It won Game of the Year awards at the G-Phoria and Spike TV awards in 2006, and one PC magazine ranked it number one on its list of the top 100 games in 2007. It was followed by Skyrim in 2011, and a remaster came out in 2025.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 94 out of 100 (Xbox 360). Metacritic 93 out of 100 (PlayStation 3). Individual reviews: IGN 9.3/10, GameSpot 9.6/10, GameSpy 4/5, Official Xbox Magazine 9.5/10, Famitsu 38/40.
Extra content
Bethesda released small downloadable packs from April 2006 and two larger expansions, Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. The Xbox 360 Store closed on 29 July 2024, so the DLC can only be re-downloaded by people who bought it earlier. The Game of the Year Edition disc includes both expansions.
- Horse Armor Pack: Specialised armour for the player's horse
- Knights of the Nine: A quest line about Umaril and the lost crusader's relics
- Shivering Isles: A new land ruled by Sheogorath, with over 30 hours of new quests
Good to know
- The Xbox 360 list is 60 achievements for 1250 gamerscore. The 10 Shivering Isles achievements are worth 250 of that.
- Most of the list is guild ranks: the Dark Brotherhood, Arena, Thieves Guild, Mages Guild and Fighters Guild each have an achievement for joining, every rank and finishing the questline.
- The ESRB raised the rating from Teen to Mature on 3 May 2006 after the game was found to contain more blood and gore than it had reviewed.
- The Horse Armor pack, released 3 April 2006, was an early paid DLC item, and many players thought the price was too high for what it added.
- The release was pushed from 22 November 2005 to 20 March 2006, so it missed the Xbox 360 launch window.
- The PlayStation 3 version included Knights of the Nine from the start, while Xbox 360 owners downloaded it.
- Two Game of the Year Edition versions exist: the 2007 retail release and a 2011 5th Anniversary Edition.
Made by
Lead designer Ken Rolston, Producer Ashley Cheng, Programmer Guy Carver, Programmer Craig Walton, Artist Matthew Carofano, Composer Jeremy Soule.
