The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion -- Final Opinion.

I have completed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. And I do mean completed it. My final save time was 137:03:04. That's right. One-hundred thirty-seven hours. In that time I unlocked all one-thousand Gamerpoints in the Xbox 360 version.  I completed the guild quest lines for the thieves, fighters, mages, and Dark Brotherhood. I completed the arena. I was at the one-hundred twenty hour mark before I even began the main storyline quests. As you can see the main quest took roughly seventeen hours. There is just an amazing amount of stuff to do and see in the game. I'm sure I didn't see it all. There are numerous ruins and caves I'm pretty sure I never even discovered let alone fully explored. Just a highlight of my final stats further reveal the size of the game. I passed 170 days in the game. I increased 652 skills and stole 2,624 items. I killed 865 creatures and 455 people. I picked 297 locks, and made 466 potions. I read 827 books and told 1,897 jokes. The scope of the game is just immense. I thoroughly enjoyed the game. How can this be after Morrowind made my worst games of the year list? They fixed the combat for one. It's not only fun, but it actually works. I wasn't pounding on a lowly mud crab for twenty minutes to kill it this time around. First creature I came across after escaping the sewers in the opening sequence was the mud crab. One shot and it was dead, imagine that. The combat system continued to work for me the entire game. Things remained fairly logical. Their use of first-person view and ragdoll physics went a long way towards making the combat gameplay fun. The game also has a great story considering the type of game it is within the genre. It's told in the lushness of the world itself. Each of the guild quest lines are rich with story and character. The main story is well done fantasy standards. The writing is presented in an if you want it style. You can talk to every last NPC in the game and read the hundreds of books for story. Hell, the limited edition of the game comes with a book that's over one-hundred pages of history for the game itself. There is enough there to get lost in if you so choose. If you're not of a mind to do such a thing, the game allows for you to just access the topics at hand for whatever quest. You can easily play through the game ignoring the story entirely. There aren't any FMV sequences and drawn out cutscenes you have to sit through. The whole style of the game is essentially here's the set up, a hundred plus hours of play as you see fit gameplay, and here's the ending. It's as deep or as shallow as you want it to be. The game looks great. It's just pretty. The game isn't flawless though. It's not going to get a perfect score from me. There are some technical issues with how the game loads. The load times are rather fast, the problem is they're also frequent. There are some draw in issues as well. The game has very good voice acting with a couple of big name celebrities. The three main characters are all very well done. As are the hundreds of NPCs. The problem there is, you have the three stars for the three main characters, and then you have like four good voice actors doing everyone else. Seriously Bethesda, would a couple more actors have broken the bank? The music is another area where this applies. What's there is quite good, but again it seems like there are only a few tracks. You're going to be hearing the same handful of tracks over and over again. As I said before I thoroughly enjoyed the game and I'm surprised to find myself actually eagerly awaiting The Elder Scrolls V. But they'll probably mess it all up again... I'm giving The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion a 9.0.