There’s never been an RPG like this on any PlayStation platform. The PlayStations have always had a strong selection of Japanese RPGs, but the role playing game is a very broad genre, of which Oblivion represents one extreme, and the likes of Final Fantasy the other. Final Fantasy games are all about their creators. Never has a game franchise been so self indulgent – it’s like the prog-rock of games. Not that the imagination and technical skill that goes into every single release isn’t awe inspiring, just that throughout every single one of them Square-Enix is constantly going, “Look what we can do.” Oblivion, by contrast, is all about what you can do. And you can do pretty much anything.

The first couple of hours playing Oblivion are fairly linear, but this opening section is essentially all about setting the scene, creating your character, and learning the basics of the game. Once all that’s out of the way, you’re free to go wherever you like and do whatever you like. It’s actually more like GTA than most other RPGs, although even GTA looks a little linear and restrictive next to Oblivion. The game is so huge, and so wide open, that it can difficult to know how to begin playing it, never mind how to begin reviewing it. But seeing as you’re likely to have already heard a thing or two about the 360 and PC versions of the game, we might as well start with the bits that weren’t in the original releases of either of the other versions. For your £50 you’re getting what 360 owners had to spend a total of about £67 on – that’s the main game and roughly £17 worth of downloaded extras on top. So what are these extras?

First of all, Spell Tomes. 360 owners can find one-use only spell scrolls, or permanently learn spells bought in a handful of specialist shops, but if they want to be able to find books from which spells can be learnt permanently, they have to pay for a download that adds spell tomes to the “loot lists” of the game. They also have to pay real money if they want armour for their horse, or if they want to make use of any of the four specialist dwellings available for you to make your home in. It’s nice that all of the above are included in the PS3 version, but none of them make huge differences to the game. Fortunately, two of the extras are rather more substantial.

The first is Mehrunes’ Razor, which is a single dungeon quest, but it’s about the biggest dungeon in the whole game. It’s tough going, but your reward for reaching the dungeon’s innermost depths is Mehrune’s Razor itself, which is a deadly short sword that once belonged to the Daedric Prince, Mehrunes Dagon (who it just so happens is the big baddie in the game’s main quest). Daedra, in case you’re not familiar with Elder Scrolls terminology, is more or less just another word for demons.

Finally, and most importantly, the PS3 version of Oblivion comes with The Knights Of The Nine expansion built in. This isn’t just a quest, but a whole series of quests involving new characters, items and even a new faction. On its own The Knights Of The Nine will probably keep you entertained longer than most full games. Here it’s just a bonus extra. That’s how massive Oblivion is.

The really cool thing about Knights Of The Nine is that it doesn’t feel like a lazy cash-in. In fact, it benefits from not being designed in tandem with the game as a whole, and it’s clear from the amount of detail involved in it that the dev team has enjoyed being able to focus solely on just one chunk of the game.

That said, it doesn’t start off very well. In order to prove you’re worthy of the Knights’ quest you have to go on a pilgrimage to each of the nine shrines spread throughout the Cyrodil countryside. This pilgrimage is an unfortunate showcasing of one of Oblivion’s weaknesses – that there’s sometimes an awful lot of tedious wandering about to be done. Fortunately, once the pilgrimage is out of the way things take an immediate turn for the better, and Knights Of The Nine becomes one of the most engrossing and rewarding sections of the game. Be warned though, the Knights are proper goody-goodies, and if you do anything evil while on their quest you’ll have to complete the pilgrimage again before you can continue.

If you’re not working on the Knights Of The Nine quest though, Oblivion is generally pretty lenient towards bad behaviour, which it really has to be given its open, free-wheeling nature. It is possible to get in trouble with the law (see GTA: Imperial City) but a criminal record is easily wiped clean and you’re seldom prevented from progressing because of past misdemeanors. Do be careful who you kill though. Aside from a select few key quest characters, everyone is fair game, and it is possible to put a permanent end to someone who might otherwise have been of good use to you. Assuming you’re hard enough to take them on of course. Although having said that, the way this game works, you’ll usually be just about hard enough to win. What do we mean by that?

Well, one of the more controversial design decisions made in Oblivion is that whenever you level up, most other characters and monsters in the game level up too. It’s easy to see why this decision was taken – it means you truly can go anywhere and try anything from the off without the game becoming far too easy later on – but it also has its drawbacks. First, if you choose a character who specialises in non-combat skills, the game will always be more difficult for you, no matter how much you level up. Admittedly, noncombat characters aren’t a particularly popular choice, but the freedom to make one is there, and it ought to be possible to do so without feeling penalised. Even if you are a capable combatant, this leveling up system still robs the game of some of the sense of progression, accomplishment and achievement it might otherwise have, not to mention a sense of danger and risk. It’s rare that you find yourself in a truly threatening situation that forces you to withdraw and come back later when you’re tougher. Bethesda would no doubt argue that such situations can be frustrating, which is true, but it’s also immensely rewarding to return to a previously unassailable task and overcome it. Ever lost a race on Gran Turismo only to try again with a new turbocharger installed and leave every opponent in your dust? Ever got wasted by a rival gang in GTA, then gone looking for them again after an Ammu-Nation trolley dash? Ever beaten an Ultima Weapon on a Final Fantasy game? Feels good, doesn’t it? But you never get that feeling in Oblivion, which is a shame, but there’s plenty to make up for it.

While it’s true that the sense of accomplishment might be somewhat dampened in Oblivion, it’s an immensely rewarding game in other ways. Conversations about it in the Play office (and there are many) fall into two main categories: A) We talk about things that we’ve found, and B) We talk about our characters and what they can do. It’s rare that any two of us has the same tale to tell, and that’s what we meant earlier when we said that Oblivion is all about you. You carve your own unique way through it and the deeper you get, the more individual, and the more “you” the game becomes. This is what makes leveling up your Oblivion character worthwhile. It’s not really about becoming more powerful, it’s about becoming more distinctive and more developed. “Character development” in games all too often refers simply to a linear leveling up of stats, but the term genuinely applies in Oblivion. Your character doesn’t just get better as you play, he/she become more… complete. It’s difficult to put into words how satisfying, just in itself, developing an Oblivion character can be.

The game’s other main source of satisfaction is that it offers so very much to be discovered. As we pointed out above, it can sometimes be a bit of a drag wandering around such a huge game-world, and if you don’t have the patience for it, you can just use the “quick travel” option to jump from location to location. This is useful when you just want to get on with something, but if you only ever traveled around in this way you’d be missing out on an awful lot. There are dungeons, caves, forts and all manner of other interesting locations worth exploring dotted all over the map. Apart from the material rewards that can be gained from exploring certain areas, it’s actually worth exploring just to see and appreciate just how much effort has gone into building some of the scenery and architecture. It’s not just about the quality of the graphics (although generally they are excellent), but the way in which Bethesda has clearly gone to great lengths to breath life into this world. Every location feels like it somehow has a real history and purpose to it, thanks to an obsessive attention to detail and an absolute refusal to resort to generic templates. Sneak into a house while no one’s at home and you can build up a detailed picture of who lives there just by rifling through their belongings (Lloyd Grossman would have a field day). Go out into the countryside and find a waterfall and the whole scene seems so natural that you’d swear that if you stared at it long enough you’d see the rocks below being eroded away. Of course, this won’t happen, but Bethesda has woven a remarkably powerful illusion of life into Cyrodil, and this makes it a fascinating, and sometimes incredibly believable, place to explore.

Unfortunately, Oblivion does have a habit of breaking its own illusion from time to time, particularly when it comes to NPCs. Remember the house we mentioned sneaking into in the last paragraph? Well, the unfortunate truth is that an NPC is often more convincingly portrayed by evidence found in their personal space than by the actual NPC itself. Were your Through The Keyhole session to be interrupted by the unexpected return of the homeowner, you might be disappointed that they’re not as interesting and fully-rounded as their home may have made them seem. Chances are they’re likely to repeat the exact same inconsequential opinions using the exact same monotonous voice as most of their neighbours. This is a downside to the game, but it’s important to remember that it’s only because the rest of the game is so rich and detailed that the NPCs seem so stale and flat. Compare them to those of similar games and it’s actually pretty impressive that none of them are absolutely identical, even if they can be a tad samey.

Oblivion’s spell is also sometimes badly undone by various glitches, bugs and sharp drops in frame rate. It does run noticeably smoother on the PS3 than on the 360, but it still has more than its fair share of WTF moments. These problems are usually to do with the physics engine, which is very good, but apparently not quite as good as it sometimes tries to be. Witnessing an enemy inexplicably launched 20 feet into the air when all you did was half-heartedly stab it with a rusty dagger might be funny, but it does tend to drag your imagination out of Cyrodil and plonk it unceremoniously back into your living room. The totally nonsensical things that NPCs occasionally do and say have much the same effect. But none of these things cripple the game, merely give it hiccups from time to time. And the fact is that the bigger, more ambitious and more open-ended the game, the harder it is to iron out bugs and glitches, and this is one big, ambitious, open-ended game. We could complain that Bethesda didn’t bug test it for five more years, but we’d rather have it now with a few (Okay, more than a few) minor anomalies than wait any longer. We’ve already had to wait a year.

And that, of course, is Oblivion’s other most obvious drawback: it’s a year old. While it’s true that the PS3 version is a better deal than the 360 version was when it was released, you can pick up a new copy of Oblivion for the 360 for about £30 now. When you look at it like that the extras included in this release are more like satisfactory compensation than generous added bonuses. But when you stand Oblivion next to the rest of the PS3 launch line-up (much of which is as old or even older) it’s still difficult to pick out a game that represents better value for money, and the fact that the PS3 version is marginally superior to any other does give credence to the old (and much used in reference to the PS3) adage that the best things come to those who wait. And this isn’t really a game for the impatient anyway.

Chances are if you’ve had the patience to wait for its PS3 release then you’ll have the patience for Oblivion. Not that it tries your patience with a steep learning curve or frustrating obstacles. It’s just a fairly slowpaced experience that requires substantial input from you if you’re to get the most out of it. Even if you’re not really into RPGs, it’s still worth checking out, as despite its vast scale and complexity, it’s actually one of the most accessible examples of the genre ever made. If you choose to specialize in Athleticism, Acrobatics and Destruction, you could pretty much play it like an FPS, if that’s your cup of tea. And that’s the great thing about Oblivion – it’s flexible enough that you can really make it your own. In that sense it’s about the closest thing there is to a singleplayer MMO. Of course, such open-ended play isn’t for everyone, and many players will quickly become disillusioned with Oblivion’s lack of structure. But to us, and to thousands of other Oblivion fanatics who’ve already racked up 200-odd in-game hours, the absence of structure is what makes Oblivion an essential purchase. After all, you can’t put a price on freedom.

Gavin Mackenzie