I'm Going Straight to Oblivion

I'm skipping Heaven and Hell and going straight to Oblivion. I haven't played a good fantasy RPG in ages and all the hype on Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has made me decide to pre-order from Buy.com. The screenshots on the official site for the Xbox 360 version look gorgeous. The previews on the 1UP Show, GameTrailers, and IGN 360 finally won me over. Although I'm worried this will be another one of those massive games that I play for six hours and never touch again! Kathleen Saunders at 1UP was amazed by the lifelike quality of the environments-you look off in the distance and see mountains that you can actually walk to. On a high-def screen, this should look amazing. There are eight main cities and several areas outside each of them. Unlike Morrowind, it's faster to travel from place to place. The first person sword fighting view really knocks me out. Achievements won't be cheap as there are 50 of them scattered through the various sub-quests. IGN Xbox 360 has a thorough walkthrough of a recent playtest and it seems like the 360 controller is perfect for this game. IGN's Charles Onyett did note some minor framerate slowdowns when many NPCs were gathered in one place, and low res textures in the draw distance. I hope these are minor because I really want to play this on my big screen TV. Gametrailers has an interview with Peter Hines from Bethesda, where he talks about the Guilds you can join (including the Dark Brotherhood), and you see some of the actors doing voice-overs, including Terrance Stamp and Lynda Carter. Having them both in one game makes it worth buying alone. What would happen if General Zod killed Superman and had babies with Wonder Woman? Egads! Nuff said.

External Links:
XBox 360: Elder Scrolls Oblivion--Free Shipping at Buy.com!
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion : Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides)