The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Oblivion still holds up well 12 years later, and holds a really important place in my heart. It is a brilliant RPG and is OK for any tween who's into RPGs and hours of exploration. It has a smart main story and hundreds of side quests and is still a very graphically beautiful game. There is mild violence with a tiny bit of blood and characters and animals can be killed. Also, as every elder scrolls fans know there is alcohol/drugs like mead and skooma. This should definitely be a game that your child plays before Skyrim, because the content is much milder.

This game was originally rated T, but some pervert made a mod on the PC and so this game's rating changed to M... The sexual themes are not even bad, some people might even giggle a little bit because you can take people's armor then you can see there under wear. The only language that I saw through out the hole game was d*mn, b*sterd, and h*ll. Blood and Gore: there is some blood on your sword after you fight somebody or something. If you drink alcohol theme there is bad things that happen to you.

Oblivion is the 4th game in The Elder Scrolls game series and is an incredibly fun game. This game has almost everything you would want from an rpg. Character creation, a huge open world, tons of unique weapons and armor, even spell creation! Even though the game came out in 2006 its graphics are still pretty decent. Violence 6.5/10 - The violence in this game is incredibly tame for an rpg. You kill humans and monsters with variety of weapons including swords, axes, bows, daggers, and knives. When you hit someone and they don't die there is NO BLOOD! If they do die there will be some blood on the floor underneath them and sometimes there will be blood on your weapon. Sex 2/10 - Not much to speak of, The occasional innuendo. If you loot the armor of a dead person you can see them in there very unattractive underwear. Language 3/10 - Again, not much. The occasional damn, hell, or whore. Additional content: Another thing that will concern some parents is The Dark Brotherhood quest line where the players are payed to kill certain people. This quest line is completely optional, as with all quests in this game. So if trust your son/daughter not to do it than you should be fine. Overall Oblivion is (in my opinion) one of the best games of all time. A must play for any rpg fan old enough to play it.

I would like to say first off that this game was only rated M due to user created mods that made it extremely graphic, violent etc. The worst this game gets is some ripped up zombie critters that have gaping holes in their flesh, but to be honest it's not as bad as it sounds. The only thing else is sometimes stupid-looking blood that gets on weapons and ground etc, etc. In terms of anything else, "hell" and damn" were the only language, wine is drinkable and has negative affects, and sex is just silly. Without mods, there isn't any. This game is easily the best of the elder scrolls, even better than the follow-up, skyrim, and while many may insist skyrim is superior in every way, when really it's only technically "better" is in graphics, and even then it's not as pretty. JUST BUY THIS GAME NOW.YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.

Oblivion is an excellent, absorbing, expansive game, that will enthrall any child (or adult) interested in a swords-and-sorcery type world. It won numerous Game-of-the-Year awards in 2006, and was one of the major games that caused people to upgrade their original Xbox to the Xbox 360. Although the graphics have aged a bit, it's still very pretty to look at, and the gameplay is still captivating. It should be noted that it was originally rated T, and I have the PC game box to prove it, as I've been playing it off and on since its original release. Bethesda later caved to parental pressure to change the rating to M based on the release of unauthorized, downloadable, third-party mods FOR THE PC VERSION ONLY, which let you play the game with topless females. The actual game content that you buy in the store (PC or console) is still a T-rated game!!! There are 5 aspects to Oblivion's rating label that I'll address: 1) Blood and Gore - if your child has seen the Indiana Jones or Lord of the Rings movies, they've seen gorier stuff than this. There will be a bit of blood on your sword after a battle that soon fades away. There are cartoonish-looking corpses and zombies strewn about some dungeons (if you want more realistic ones, look to the game's sequel, Skyrim). Nothing terribly egregious. 2) Language - VERY sparse. Of the thousands of lines of spoken dialogue in the game, "h**l" and "d**n" might get used a handful of times. Oblivion is NOT Grand Theft Auto. No f-bombs, s-bombs, or G-d's. When there is any mild cursing, it's usually contextually appropriate, related to a pretty intense occurrence in the game. 3) Sexual Themes - this is pretty laughable. You can strip dead bodies down to their drab, unflattering underwear when you loot them for armor, which might elicit a giggle or two the first time your son sees it, but it quickly becomes a non-issue. There are a few sporadic instances of double-entendre (a line of dialogue or two, and a book), but if your pre-teen understands it, then you've got other problems than what's in Oblivion. It will likely sail over their heads. 4) Use of Alcohol - another laughable one. Oblivion is no more corrupting from this standpoint than a stroll through the grocery aisle. Yes, there are alcohol bottles everywhere in the game, but it just blends in with all the other useless detritus you see on shelves and tables (e.g. bowls, spoons, flower pots, etc...). One town specializes in making wine, complete with vineyards outside the town walls, but no one is seen drinking it. All the alcohol is in plain, non-descript, brown (beer, mead, ale) or purple bottles (wine), and you derive no net benefit from drinking it, so what's the point? You can't get drunk and stagger around, and other than a temporary numerical change in your stats, you won't notice any difference in your character. There is one character in the game you might meet who does slur his words and act drunk, well, because he is; but, your quest to reunite him with his long-lost twin brother results in him changing his ways and going sober. What's so bad about that? 5) Violence - okay, yeah, it's violent, but only as much as you make it. I suppose you could wander around picking flowers for hours on end and never raise an angry hand to anything or anyone if you wanted to. Even at its most violent, it's still much less violent than any first-person shooter. And there are consequences for getting out of line and attacking innocent people. My son tried becoming the town bully...once. He soon got his comeuppance from the town guard. In short, Oblivion is pretty tame as far as mature content goes, compared to other RPG's. It's also much less dark than either its predecessor (Morrowind) or its sequel (Skyrim), and as such, is probably the most approachable of the Elder Scrolls games for kids. The warning label should really just say, "Obsessive-compulsives approach with extreme caution."

This game. THIS GAME! Amazing for anybody playing it. The game does have an 'Mature' rating from the ESRB, but it was originally 'Teen', the only reason the ESRB changed the rating was because of third party mods being accessible that rendered female characters topless. It being third party, it would be only accessible to the PC version of the game, and even on the PC, your child probably wouldn't even figure out how to install a mod. The so called 'blood and gore' descripted in the rating is just silly, because, there is little to no blood in the game. And the game being made in 2006 the little blood that IS in the game looks unrealistic. I hope this review helped you in your decision of buying this game for your child.

Although Oblivion is "M" rated, the only issues I have to be concerned about are the "violence" in the game. But unlike "Assassins Creed" or FPSs (that her friends have access to!) the violence is against mythical creatures and people, using medieval weapons and spells. No guns. Also, quite a bit of thinking and consideration goes into how best achieve an objective, using the resources at your disposal. Then thinking about how you'd like you character to progress. Two of the things that interested my girls were the detail involved in "designing" a characters face, and the clothing the characters can wear. Admittedly, in the game you can see characters stripped down to their underwear, but it's no wore than what can be seen at a beach or on a TV advert. The graphics are beautiful, and my daughter spends time roving the land just to see it. Grass, trees, mountains, sunsets. Houses can be bought and furnished, you can have companions. Just about any current PC (as of 2012) can run this program. I highly recommend this game for 10 and over.

This game is ok for an 11 year old. It has a bit of violence and a couple b****** but all of that is very mild. You have the choice to drink but it is encouraged not to. This a really great game!!

This Game is almost completely a T game. However, there are a few spots that just give it that extra little push that make it an M game. When you enter tombs/ruins, you are often confronted by zombies, which are decomposed (they have green skin and you can see inside their body a bit). There is also a fairly intense torture room at one point. If the game did not have these two things, it would be rated T.

This game is fun. Nothing else to it. Violence is optional. It is not sexual at all. There is nothing that is majorly inappropriate. I think that this game is fine 4 kids. Also, THIS GAME IS ONLY RATED M BECAUSE OF A PC MOD!!! Some perv made it so that you can make girls topless. This mod cannot work at all on a ps3 or xbox 360.