Oblivion is awesome ... and it sucks. There's such a split personality associated with this game that it almost feels like two titles, not one. The first is an incredibly engaging and well-designed roleplaying experience with stunning visuals and fascinating technology. The second is a frustrating and obnoxious pain that goes out of its way to constrain your actions, sacrifices gameplay to show off cool tech and includes "features" that make you feel like you're part of a secret government experiment to see how infuriated people can become before they explode.

I have two major complaints. The first is the enormous collection of little things that ruin the game experience—not bugs, but quirks and idiosyncrasies; design decisions so half-assed that they have no right being in a game this good. More on those in a minute.

The second is that no matter how hard I tried, I never felt like I was part of the world of Oblivion. I could not immerse. It felt not like a living place but like a disconnected series of questlets. And that's a serious problem, but it's also a very subjective one.​