I am still, to this day, amazed that Bethesda could make such a HUGE game. I put in 90 hours before I even realized I had not done the main quest. I got the game last summer, and played it almost every day. You really can play it for hours and not even notice until you shut the TV off and it's dark out. The characters all feel really alive. Oblviion has these small things that all games should have. When you look at the eyes of the characters in Oblivion, they look alive, and like real people talking, they will occasionally glance away. This effect decreases if your character knows them better.
You really feel like you accomplish things when you play Oblvion. It is sort of like an MMO in that the story is huge and the scope of the game is massive, but unlike many MMOs, you aren't just level-grinding. You want to push your characters further. And your character levels up and gains skills according to what you do. The more you assassinate foes, the more the sneak skill rises. The more you use a certain weapon or magic class, the higher that stat gets. I found that with a Daedric sword, my level 31 Argonian Sorcerer hd a base damage stat of 19, while his base damage with a Daedric Axe was 9. Of course, this means nothing to you if you do not own the game yet.
Regardless of what else you do, join all 4 guilds (Fighters, Mages, Thieves, Dark Brotherhood) regardless of your class. The guild missions really flesh out the world beyond the main quest. This, and the fact that slashing through the dungeons is fun every time, kept me going back to the game. There are parts of this story that really make you feel for the characters, and while lots of games flaunt giving you situations with a "moral gray area" Oblivion really gets this right. You will have deceitful husbands and wives paying you to kill each other, while you could also leave them or report them to the city guards. You have to deal with cold assassins, madmen, and demons whose care for human life is zero, despite human appearance.
In short, this is one of my favorite games of all time. If you have ever enjoyed a video game, you will enjoy Oblivion. Even if you don't do a whole lot, you'll have played it more than you play almost any other singleplayer games.
And it's hard to disagree with this:
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/elderscrolls4oblivion?q=oblivion
All the characters feel ALIVE and act like you expect the people of a fantasy world to act. People think Mass Effect was great, but it was nothing compared to the depth of characters and story in Oblivion.
And now I sound like a fanboy or something... but seriously, buy the game, in the GOTY edition, now.
The single con of this game is that it has loading screens, even if they only last for 5-10 seconds. It doesn't interfere with gameplay. But how can you argue with a game where you look into the distance, which is rendered beautifully, and see the mountains on the horizon, and know that you can get on your horse, go to the base of that mountain, climb to the top, and then free-fall off of it?
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