The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and the Take-Two Interactive subsidiary, 2K Games. It is the fourth installment in The Elder Scrolls action fantasy video game series, following The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and preceding The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Oblivion was first released in March 2006 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360. A mobile phone version of the game was released in May 2006, and a PlayStation 3 version was shipped in March 2007. After a number of smaller content releases, a major expansion pack, Shivering Isles, was distributed. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition (a package including both Shivering Isles and the official expansion pack Knights of the Nine) was released in 2007 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. A fifth-anniversary edition was shipped in 2011.

Oblivion ’​s main story revolves around the player character’s efforts to thwart a fanatical cult known as the “Mythic Dawn” that plans to open the gates to a realm called “Oblivion”. The game continues the open world tradition of its predecessors by allowing the player to travel anywhere in the game world at any time and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely. A perpetual objective for players is to improve their character’s skills, which are numerical representations of certain abilities. Seven skills are selected early in the game as major skills, with the remainder termed minor. Developers opted for tighter pacing in gameplay and greater plot focus than in past titles.

Development for Oblivion began in 2002, directly after the release of Morrowind. To design the graphics, Bethesda used an improved Havok physics engine, high dynamic range lighting, procedural content generation tools that allowed developers to quickly create detailed terrains, and the Radiant A.I. system, which enabled non-player characters (NPCs) to make choices and engage in behaviors more complex than in past titles. The game features fully voiced NPCs—a first for the series—and the music of award-winning composer Jeremy Soule. Overall, Oblivion was well received by critics, and has won a number of industry and publication awards. It was praised for its impressive graphics, expansive game world and schedule-driven NPCs. Within a month, the game had shipped over 1.7 million copies, and by November 2011, sold over 3.5 million. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, a market research firm, estimates that the game has sold 9.5 million copies worldwide.