The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Review

Cyrodiil arrived looking like nothing else on the new hardware, with canopies swaying in real time, high dynamic range light bleeding through leaves, and a horizon you could actually walk to. Bethesda then attached two systems that fight each other. Level scaling means bandits wear glass armour once you do, so the world grows alongside you and progress stops feeling like progress, and the gates that drive the main quest drop you into the same orange rock quarry across dozens of hours.

What rescues it is the side content. The Dark Brotherhood chain, the painter's world, and the Thieves Guild are among the best writing the studio has done, and the Shivering Isles expansion is stranger than anything in the base game. Faces look boiled, the celebrated adaptive routines mostly amount to shopkeepers eating lunch, and the physics-enabled clutter is more toy than system. It is a flawed spine wrapped in genuinely excellent limbs.