The first things I've felt about Oblivion:
I was blown away.

Just amazed. Unlike Kiln up above, I had no preconceptions about what to expect, and maybe that's a good thing.
I've told this story before many times over at Beth's forums, but never here.
I was bored one night: a recovering drug addict who had been into some rather heavy compassion. Those of us in 'recovery' need to keep our minds occupied; that's one of the ways we stay clean. Anyways, I'm bored, and I was also bored of all my PS and PS2 games at the time, so I started thinking about the "next gen" system.
...This was back in October 2008; I think the PS3 had only been out for a year. I said to myself that if the PS3 has any decent games (RPG-type games with adventure and magic and hand-weapons, like all the classics I grew up with) I'm gonna buy a PS3. One of the best things about quitting drugs is I had all this money saved all the sudden.

I went online to www.gamerevolution.com which is a site I've used in the past. I literally went thru the whole alphabet, reading reviews on various games at the time. I started with the letter A. Assassin's Creed was not out on PS3 (I don't think) at the time, and maybe that's a good thing, so I moved on to the letter B.
B...C...D....E...F....G...H...I....J...K..L....M....N...O....P....Q...R....S....
....NOTHING....nothing for any of those letters (not back then, anyways). Then I got to the letter T.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. What a weird title! GameRevolution gave this RPG an A or an A+, and I never finished reading the review that night. About half way through, I grabbed my keys & wallet, got in my car, and DROVE as fast as I could to my nearby GameStop, BOUGHT Oblivion AND a PS3 on the spot, drove home and hooked it all up! 10:24 PM is when I started my first character.
My first character was Lady Anne. To be honest, I don't remember much about her or my first playthrough. I was so blown away by it all! ...All the RPGs and "RPGs" I had tried beforehand railroaded the PC through invisible barriers, and offered very little exploration, if any. See that pretty path going through the bushes? Well you can't walk on it....it's just there to look pretty. That sort of thing.
Well in Oblivion, I
could walk on that pretty path. See where it goes. That blew me away just as much as seeing Cyrodiil's atmosphere for the first time!
After Lady Anne delivered the Amulet, I totally scrapped her game. I started
all over again with a brand-new character (whose name i've forgotten). I enjoyed that entire process so much (meeting the Emperor, leaving the Sewers, etc.) I started all over again, basically.
Phew.....
This post has been edited by Lady Saga: Feb 9 2013, 11:45 PM