This added content comes in the form of the Knights of the Nine expansion pack. While PC and X360 owners had to pay extra for this added campaign, PS3 gamers get it for free, as a way of compensating for the long wait. The KotN expansion adds another 15 hours of gameplay to the original game (in itself already totalling in excess of 150 hours). The second expansion pack, Shivering Isles, unfortunately, hasn't made it into the package (but it will be included in the GOTY edition, which will be released later this year). Also not included are the (ridiculously expensive) downloadable plug-ins, such as the infamous horse armour or Wizard's Tower. As of now, it's still not certain if and when to expect that DLC.

You still start out by creating your own character. You first have to choose a gender and race (and if you want, you can fully customize his/her appearance). After you've cleared the first dungeon (it's actually a tutorial level in disguise), you will also have to pick a class (warrior, thief, mage and more exotic classes like acrobat, battlemage, nightblade or spellsword -there are 20 in all-) and a birthsign (offers benefits to certain classes). As if that wasn't enough, you can even create a custom class and edit it exactly to your liking. Because the gameplay can differ greatly, depending whether you choose a melee, magic or stealth character, I strongly recommend spending quite some time on character creation. You won't regret it later on.

Nevertheless, it's perfectly possible to turn your avatar in a melee fighter, by letting him swing hammers and wear heavy armour, despite him/her having a strong affiliation for magic attacks. It'll just take a lot longer before your stats and skills increase. The keyword in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is freedom, be it in character creation, earning experience, or simply choosing which quests you undertake and in which order you do them. Speaking of quests: there are literally dozens of them. The goal of the main story (which takes about 50 hours to complete) is to close the gates of Oblivion, from which numerous monsters are flooding the idyllic world of Tamriel. Of course, before you do so, the story will have made numerous surprising plot twists. Besides, the main quest, you can also do guild quests, arena fights, go item hunting, kill some monsters to increase your stats, assassinate someone, simply explore the massive world and countless other things. Summing everything up there is to do in Tamriel and Oblivion would take us too far.

The game's graphics have been upgraded over the older -and already fabulous looking- Xbox 360 version. The textures look a bit more detailed and the drawing distance has been significantly improved. This makes TES4 feel even more vast when walking outdoors. The hundreds of characters look breathtaking, whether they're wearing shining armour or rags of cloth. Same goes for the monsters and their high-res skin textures. The animations are lifelike and NPC's are always busy something. The attention to detail makes Tamriel's fantasy world credible. Tamriel's also a very diverse world, despite its huge scale. There are dense forests, lively cities, gloomy dungeons, remote priories, smaller-scale villages, open plains, rivers filled with gorgeous looking water etc. The framerate drops that plagued the X360 game have also been taken care of. Oblivion now plays very smooth, even in hectic fights with lots of spells flying. The loading times are also a bit shorter, but not much. Still, the shorter, the better, right?

The gameplay mechanics are still as solid as ever. Oblivion is a first-person RPG (though you can also opt for a third-person view), which gives you a spectacular view of the action. Casting a spell, slashing your sword or shooting an arrow is actually as easy as pressing a button, but there is so much more depth to the combat. Take a sword for example: epending on how hard you press the button, you'll deliver quick slashes or a hard strike. You can also carry a shield with you to protect yourself or you can choose to use your sword to block enemy attacks. Magic characters, on the other hand, can use ranged spells and cast protective magic to prevent damage. Stronger characters will also be able to wear heavy armour, but that will slow them down. It's also cool to see that your skills can improve in various ways. In other games, gaining experience equals killing fiends, but not so in Oblivion. If you use stealth, you'll gain experience by sneaking past enemies, picking locks and sticking to the shadows. To improve your sword skill, on the other hand, you'll have to skewer lots of monsters. The way Oblivion always stays challenging is also noteworthy. As your character becomes stronger, so will the fiends that you'll come across. That may seem normal -in fact, it is-, but the fact that monsters from previous dungeons will also have grown stronger if you revisit them isn't. Still, this causes you to stay alert the entire time. The AI poses a challenge, but it hardly ever feels like it's cheating. However, if you just can't get through a certain area of the game, you can dynamically lower the difficulty by using the slider in the options menu.

Oblivion not only excels with its graphics, the game's sound is also superb. Every single character in Tamriel is voiced by proficient actors, though it's clear many NPC's share the same voice. Still, we can easily forgive Bethesda for this, as it would have been a nigh impossible task to use a different actor for every single man, woman, child and creep in the game. The game even features some celebrity voicework, with Patrick Stewart (Star Trek, X-Men) as Emperor Uriel Septim VII and Sean Bean (GoldenEye, The Lord of the Rings) as his brother. Next to the great voicework, Oblivion also features a wonderful symphonic soundtrack and very convincing sound effects. Spells, swords, horses and what have you all sound great.