Rarely does a game come along that promises so much and manages to pull it off and then some, Bethesda Softwork's Morrowind did this, it brought their Elder Scrolls series crashing into a wider audience (dare I say "mainstream"), and not just on the Windows PC - but most thought-provoking of all, onto a console, the Xbox.

There are those who stick to their guns and say RPG-ing can only by done on the PC because gamers don't want to spend hours and hours working out how to do stuff on a console, they just want to sit down and have a quick short blast. But Bethesda beautifully demonstrated games of this scope and size can be successful on a console, Morrowind's sales figures is evidence of that.

Well they're not contempt with that, just a few months ago they announced the 4th instalment in the Elder Scrolls series - Oblivion. The RPG "for the next generation" and they mean it.

The story starts off with our character in a dungeon, unknown is to him at the time the Emperor has been rushed through the dungeons by his guards to avoid an assassin, travelling through a secret passage he ends up in your cell, and you discover him fatally wounded by an assassin. And there the main quest begins.

The game itself takes place in the imperial province of Tamriel, far to the west of Morrowind. Where you are tasked with closing the gates of Oblivion, another realm filled with god-like Daedric princes and their underlings. Those who have played Morrowind no doubt encountered some lower Daedra, often possessing lost ruins, and of course Azura who guided you through the main Morrowind campaign is one of the "gods".

The game features a brand new engine, the screenshots have to be seen to be believed, this game will blow your mind. It is absolutely gorgeous.

Much improved will also be the AI, now NPCs will have daily lives, they'll perform tasks you'd expect them to perform. A welcome relief from Morrowind where the NPCs effectively stood around all day, now they'll be much more dynamic and will react with whatever surroundings they find themselves in. However with this comes new problems (for the player that is), they'll be able to steal from you, as you can from them. The game will be populated with around one thousand NPCs, a smaller number then Morrowind but still huge, all the dialogue will now be voice acted and they'll be able to have limited conversations with each other, something that will greatly add to the realism of the world.

The combat system, primarily to make it more "fun" if you cast make to Morrowind a low-level character spending 5 minutes trying to kill a mud crab with a weapon he's not very good with isn't much fun at all.

Oblivion is pencilled in for the end of 2005 on the PC, with an Xbox 2 release to follow.