3. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
It wasn't easy deciding whether this or Morrowind felt like a more momentous game at the time of its release. Morrowind was among the first RPGs to create a truly immersive 3D world that you felt you could live in without feeling tied down to the main questline. Oblivion was all that stuff, but just visually stunning in a way that no RPG before it was. Much like Morrowind before it, Oblivion's greatness can be summarised in that first moment your character is truly free. In this case, it's emerging from the sewers onto the sun-kissed lake surrounding the Imperial City. Jeremy Soule's beautiful, twinkling score kicks in, and you butcher the nearest mud crab in celebration. You then choose a random direction to go in, and go off in search of adventure. Sure, the main quest is arguably the worst of the Elder Scrolls series, but you could go hundreds of hours without engaging in it, focusing instead on solo dungeon-crawling in search of loot, murdering innocent people and moving into their homes, or rising through the ranks of one of Cyrodiil's guilds. This was an open world of beauty and scale like nothing that came before, and its accessible, direct first-person combat system helped attract a new audience to the RPG genre.
Robert Zak
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Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.
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