Wow…my pants are totally soaked with anticipation for this game. For those gamers who have been living in a cave on Pluto with their eyes shut and their fingers in their ears for the last 3 years, this monstrous RPG created by Bethesda is an open-ended adventure, meaning there is no real ending.

The story deals with the death of the emperor of the land of Tamriel and a demonic invasion into this world from “Oblivion.” Oblivion, in the Elder Scrolls World, is essentially hell. It’s another plane of existence where the evil gods live. So the game takes place in the land of Tamriel, the land of men and elves, and in Oblivion, the land of demons.

Players choose from five different to join, Dark Brotherhood, Arena, Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, And Thieves Guild. Each guild has their own story and you can join as many as you want to increase your skills. NPS, Non-Playable Charcters, are also in huge abundance. These characters are computer controlled and can either be your best ally or worst enemy. You will find NPC’s everywhere doing any number of things such as jobs, merchants, and bounty hunting, so don’t act in such a way to get a bounty placed on your head by one of the cities cause NPC’s are hard to kill and you won’t one after you. You can even train your own division of a guild yourself and wage war on the city guards, also known as Blades.

Let me be the first to say that most gamers who will pick this game up will not buy it with the intention of following the storylines. Your characters are completly customizable and you literally can do anything you want. If you want to go off and become the most powerful merchant in Tamriel with 6 wives and 3 houses, which are also totally customizable, slaughter baby cows, and put human heads on pikes to make you house fence with…then more power to ya cause this game can support it.

The entire game is the equivalent of 16 square miles in size, meaning that if a human being can walk a mile in say 10-15 minutes, then it would take your character in the game roughly 2 hours and 40 minutes to walk from one end of the game’s world to the other. Believe it, this game is massive.

The true storyline is to make it whatever you want it to be. The previous Elder Scrolls game, Morrowind, was about 6 square miles in size and I managed to log over 400 hours of play in it. This game is going to turn my legs into mush and make my eyes bleed because I’m never going to leave my desk.

The graphics on this game are going to be totally insane. I would totally give this game the highest marks for visual style and flare.

Here’s how it will all work. In order to play the game you will have to go to a server and log on to enter the world. This is what enables players to interact with eachother and the NPC’s. It really will be a bustling world full of players and NPC’s.

Players will have thew ability to jump between first-person and third-person perspectives whenever they want. A wide array of swords, bows and many many other types of weapons will be at your disposal assuming you can find them or kill another player who has them. You get to keep whatever you kill. If you decide to engage and kill another person, you can take whatever that player had i.e. gold, clothing, weapons etc. If you as a player happen to be killed, you simply respawn in one of the many cities at random and start again, but you will have lost everything in your inventory.

This game will most definatly be the highlight of the new year so I hope you all will check it out. Posted below is a screenshot that will link you to IGN’s Web site for more screenshots.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion comes out March 21, 2006.