The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a 2006 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, and co-published by Bethesda Softworks and 2K Games. It is the fourth installment in The Elder Scrolls series, following 2002's The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in 2006, followed by PlayStation 3 in 2007. Taking place within the fictional province of Cyrodiil, the game's main story focuses on the player character's efforts to thwart a fanatical cult known as the Mythic Dawn that plans to open portal gates to a demonic realm known as Oblivion.
The game continues the open-world tradition of its predecessors by allowing the player to travel anywhere in the game world at any time and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely. A perpetual objective for players is to improve their character's skills, which are numerical representations of certain abilities. Early in the game, seven skills are selected by the player as major skills for their character, with those remaining termed as minor skills.
Development for Oblivion began in 2002, directly after the release of Morrowind, opting for tighter pacing in gameplay and greater plot focus than in past titles. To design the graphics, Bethesda used an improved Havok physics engine, high-dynamic-range lighting, procedural generation tools that allowed developers to quickly create detailed terrains, and the Radiant AI system, which enabled non-player characters (NPCs) to make choices and engage in behaviors more complex than in past titles. The game features fully voiced NPCs—a first for the series—and the music of composer Jeremy Soule.
Upon release, Oblivion was a critical and commercial success, winning a number of industry and publication awards, including several Game of the Year awards. It was praised for its impressive graphics, expansive game world, and schedule-driven NPCs, and is considered one of the greatest games ever made. Following a number of smaller content releases, Bethesda released two expansion packs for the game—Knights of the Nine (2006) and Shivering Isles (2007)—which were bundled with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition in 2007, and later re-released as a fifth-anniversary edition in 2011. Oblivion was followed by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2011. A remastered version of Oblivion was released on April 22, 2025, on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. It was later released on the Nintendo Switch 2 on August 11, 2026.
Gameplay
Oblivion is an open world role-playing game (RPG) that incorporates open-ended gameplay. The player can follow side-quests, interact with NPCs, dispatch monsters, develop their character, and travel anywhere in the province of Cyrodiil at any time while playing the game, provided that the areas are not quest-specific and otherwise inaccessible when not questing. The game never ends, and the player can continue playing after completing the main quest. The gameplay includes a fast-travel system, in which an icon appears on the game world map every time the player visits a new location. This excludes the game world's main cities which are already unlocked for fast travel from the start of the game. The player can arrive at the desired location instantaneously by selecting the icon on the map.
Character development is a primary element of Oblivion. At the beginning of the game, players select one of ten humanoid or anthropomorphic races, each of which has different natural abilities, and customize their character's appearance. A perpetual objective for players is to improve their character's skills, which are numerical representations of their ability in certain areas. Seven skills are selected early in the game as major skills, with the remainder termed minor. The players level up each time they improve their major skills by a total of ten points; this provides the opportunity to improve their attributes. Attributes are more broad character qualities, such as speed and endurance, while skills are more specific, such as armorer or athletics. Afflictions such as disease and poison can reduce the player's attributes. When players reach 25, 50, 75, or 100 points in a single skill, they unlock new abilities related to the skill.
The game's 21 skills fall evenly under the categories of combat, magic, and stealth, and many skills complement more than one area. Combat skills are used primarily for battle and incorporate armor and heavy weapons like blades, axes, maces, and hammers. Magic skills rely on the use of spells to alter the physical world, to affect the minds of others, to injure and debilitate enemies, to summon monsters to help fight, and to heal wounds. Stealth skills allow the player to crack locks, haggle for goods, use speech to manipulate people, and apply cunning in combat through the use of a bow or with a sneak attack. The spells, weapons, and other tools such that a player needs to employ and enhance these skills, such as lockpicks, can be purchased in shops, stolen from NPCs, or found as loot on the bodies of foes or in dungeons.
Oblivion can be played in either a first- or third-person view, except in the mobile phone version, in which the game can only be played in isometric projection. The player may change the level of difficulty at any time, thereby weakening opponents and increasing the chance of success for particular actions. The screen constantly presents a heads-up display, which provides information about the character's health, magicka, and fatigue, all of which can be increased by leveling up. Health can be restored by spells, potions, or resting; the loss of all health results in death. Magicka enables and is depleted by the use of spells; it is rejuvenated naturally over time, but it can be restored similarly to health. Fatigue affects the character's effectiveness in combat and general efficiency, and can be alleviated by resting, potions, and spells.
Throughout the world are a variety of enemies, including standard fantasy monsters such as imps and goblins, and animals such as bears and wolves. Enemies become stronger, and looted weapons and armor more effective as the player levels up. This game mechanic of level-scaling was incorporated to maintain a constant and moderate aspect of difficulty and progression. However, level-scaling combined with the leveling system has received criticism, as it has the potential to unbalance the game; characters with major skills that increase on an involuntary basis, such as athletics or armor, can find that they level too quickly, making the enemies disproportionately harder than intended.
Synopsis Setting Oblivion is set during the Third Era, six years after the events of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, although it is not a direct sequel to Morrowind or any other game in the series. The game is set in Cyrodiil—a province of Tamriel, the continent on which all the games in the series have so far taken place.
Cyrodiil has been the capital of three human empires throughout Tamriel's history. In the distant past, the original empire, known as the Alessian Empire, was founded when a human slave named St. Alessia led an uprising against the Ayleids, an elven faction that at one point held dominion over Tamriel. The Ayleids were devout worshipers of the Daedra, magical creatures from Oblivion, a dangerous realm that is in another dimension. The Daedra are largely sadistic and selfish beings that desire to manipulate and cause chaos throughout Tamriel, and are the antithesis of the Nine Divines, Tamriel's religious pantheon of deities. Blessed by the Divines, Alessia was given the power to drive back the Ayleids and sever their connection to the Daedra by forging a covenant that kept the Daedra out of Tamriel via a mystical barrier. So long as a being of royal blood sat on the throne, the covenant would remain and the Empire would prosper.
In the centuries after Alessia's rule, two different incarnations of the Empire would arise that would continue to follow this covenant, with rulers handpicked by the Divines taking the throne in order to maintain it. Alessia's successor, the Reman Dynasty, rose to power in the aftermath of a war between the Empire and a feudal hegemony from the neighboring continent of Akavir. The Reman Dynasty would pave the way for Tiber Septim, a human warrior, to rise to power and unite the other races and provinces of Tamriel under a single banner. The Septim Dynasty, ruling over the Empire's third and current incarnation, has produced a number of heirs to the throne since Tiber Septim's death and ascension into the hero-god Talos.
Plot The story begins with the player imprisoned in a cell for an unknown crime. Emperor Uriel Septim VII (voiced by Patrick Stewart), accompanied by Imperial bodyguards known as the Blades, arrives in the prison when fleeing from assassins who have murdered the emperor's three sons and are now targeting him. The emperor and the Blades reveal that the player's jail cell contains a secret entrance to a part of the city's sewer that functions as an escape route. Pardoned by the emperor, the player follows the group into the sewer where they come under attack by assassins. The Blades' captain is cut down during the fighting that ensues. Knowing he is destined to die by the hands of the assassins, Uriel Septim entrusts the player with the Amulet of Kings, worn by the Septim emperors of Tamriel, and orders the player to take it to Jauffre (voiced by Ralph Cosham), the grandmaster of the Blades. Immediately afterward, one of the assassins kills the emperor. The player escapes the sewer and heads out into the open world of Cyrodiil.
The lack of an heir for Uriel Septim has broken St. Alessia's covenant, allowing the Daedra to access Tamriel from Oblivion. Multiple gates to Oblivion open and an invasion of Tamriel begins by the Daedra killing and destroying anything in their path. Jauffre tells the player the only way to close the gates permanently is to find someone of the royal bloodline to retake the throne and relight the Dragonfires—with the Amulet of Kings—in the Imperial City. There is an illegitimate son named Martin (voiced by Sean Bean) who is a priest in the city of Kvatch. Upon arriving at Kvatch, the player finds that the Daedra have destroyed the city with very few surviving. A massive Oblivion Gate is obstructing the main city entrance and the player must venture through the gate into the Deadlands—one of the planes of Oblivion—in order to close it from the inside and allow access to the city. After closing the gate, the player enters Kvatch and takes it back from the Daedra with the assistance of surviving guardsmen. Martin has survived, and the player persuades him to come to Weynon Priory.