I imagine the Xbox stories I’ve been sharing on recently in the run-up to the brand’s 25th anniversary probably seem a little ridiculous or even a bit crazy now – like how I got to be one of the first people to ever play through Halo 2 while playing in a storage closet at Bungie
– but I promise you, it was all pretty normal back then. Today I have another one of those stories for you, and it’s one of my favorite gaming memories of all time. It’s about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.If you were a gamer back when the Xbox 360 first came out, you’ll remember how big a deal it was that the Xbox 360 was the first console of the “HD Era,” as the entire history of video games up to that point (at least on the console side – respect to my fellow PC gamers who’d been 1024x768’ing it for years by then). Finally we were moving from 640x480 (interlaced, to boot) to 1280x720. It sounds quaint now, but it was a huge leap at the time. The 360 had gotten off to a fast start in November of 2005 thanks to the likes of Call of Duty 2, Project Gotham Racing 3, and then a couple months later, the .
jaw-dropping
delayed
I explored, I fought, I snuck, I stole, I joined the Dark Brotherhood, I closed a whole bunch of Oblivion Gates, and yes, I made sure to complete the main story questline. I even found, tamed, and rode a unicorn in the forest. The worst part of all of this was twofold: one, having to stop. And two, having to start over once the final retail copies of the game arrived. But as a testament to how incredible that game was (and thankfully still is, thanks to last year’s great remaster
), I put another 125-plus hours into it at home in March, soaking in every DLC and expansion that dropped after launch. (I gave Oblivion a 9.5 out of 10 in OXM, if you’re curious.)
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