This is where I try to cover some of last few details I missed earlier on. After this, it’s best that we all look to forward to the retail version of the game, which at this point, is expected to hit retail shelves on March 20th (so I hear from a little birdie). Enjoy!

Choose Your Perspective
Call me nit-picky bastard, but I like my adventure games in the third-person perspective. With all the armor and attire changes I make to my character throughout the adventure, I like to see him as envisioned him. Thankfully, I’m given the choice to use both the third-person and first-person perspective in Oblivion, as had also been in previous games in the series. However, the third-person perspective in Oblivion still feels as useless as ever in battle.

Sadly, you don’t have much accuracy due to the exclusion of lock-on targeting using the third-person POV when wielding a weapon because the dual-analog control setup isn’t as efficient in battle in the third-person perspective as it is in first-person. Many players were hoping that the third-person perspective for Oblivion would feel more like Zelda in this latest game, but it’s still far from that kind of smooth sailing melee system and I find this to be very unfortunate.

Achieving the impossible
While playing the game, only one thing was asked of us, and that was not too enter the first gate of Oblivion encountered. Bethesda wants every gamer to experience further portions of the game itself when it’s released later this spring. When asked about when the game being released, a representative from the company said that it would be officially announced in the coming weeks, but since it seems like the game was in its final form, I would think that a late March doesn’t seem too unbelievable.

So what’s my reasoning behind believing that the game is in its final form? Well, aside from the fact that we’re approaching the game’s release window, I found the ability to score some achievement points convincing enough to believe that they would only be unlocked in a near final, if not final version of the game. In total there are fifty achievements, a great number for those who want to fully indulge themselves in this epic adventure.

Originally, I had been told that Bethesda intended on having six or so achievements but after playing games like Perfect Dark Zero and Project Gotham Racing 3, two games which use achievements extensively to extend the lasting appeal of their gameplay, Bethesda was inspired to flesh our their achievements for Oblivion to the maximum point and achievement limits given to them by Microsoft.

Due to the amount of decisions a player is allowed to make at any time in the game to decide their fate, it seems like most of these achievements will not exactly be dependent on you being a good-hearted and noble hero or being a murderous thief. I only wish I could’ve brought my memory card to the event to save my progress because I’m sure as hell not looking forward to going through these four hours of Oblivion again any time soon, but I think I’ll still be able to stomach it when the time comes.

Graphics Whores ENTER
For all you graphics whores out there, I’ve come to conclusion that Oblivion is a mixed bag of pros and cons for the Xbox 360. On the brighter side of things, the amount of trees that fill the outdoor fields is absolutely jaw dropping. They seem to sprawl out over hills as far as the eye can see. Additionally, the art design is rather commendable – there were quite a few structures that I found to look as if they came straight out one of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, but with that said, it’s easy to see that the overall look and atmosphere of the game has been ripped from the LotR films. So, it’s not entirely that original.

Now, for the all the glaring nuances... while the frame rate seems to hold up well, when running across the game’s gargantuan fields, objects and areas are constantly being loaded, which causes an unpleasant stutter in gameplay. Morrowind was known to have loading issues of this sort but they seem to be even more of hassle in Oblivion than in the previous game, mostly due to the fact that while on horseback loading sections are encountered like every eight seconds. In addition to this, some of the textures on a character’s clothing weren’t that great in quality and you could really see the ugliness of it up close, and still an issue from Morrowind is the game’s unnatural animations. They just don’t seem very lifelike and it makes me think that more game developers should take note of the masterful animation work of the PS2’s Shadow of the Colossus.

Leave Me Alone Now
From what I’ve played, it seems like fans of the previous game will find much to love about Oblivion. It feels like more of the same with a nice new coat of that next-generation paint. However, I don’t think gamers who were turned away with Morrowind will somehow magically fall in love with Oblivion, but I could be wrong, since it’s foolish to generalize such things.

So, there you are. This completes my hands-on impressions with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I hope you enjoyed my impressions, or at least parts of it, even if you may not agree with my opinions in regards to certain aspects.