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Oblivion Rumors And Speculation Clarified

Okay, so according to the recent IGN hands-on testing with the PS3 version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion , the game looks prettier and runs faster than its Xbox 360 and PC counterparts. However, besides the "Knights of the Nine" sidequest, any other extras and downloadable content (currently available for the other two versions) won't be included in the PS3 version. Why? Well, that was subject to much debate over the past couple of days.

So, in order to clear things up, IGN decided to clear things up by going directly to the source: Pete Hines, VP of Public Relations and Marketing at Bethesda Softworks. At first, it was reported they couldn't include the content due to the "technical limitations" of the PS3's architecture, but Hines says that's simply not the case. Apparently, there were two other, very specific, reasons why the bonus content won't be included in the PS3 version of Oblivion .

First of all, the team was worried about throwing the balance of the game all out of whack. By giving players access to all that cool stuff right off the bat (like the Thieves Den and Wizard's Tower), the game takes on a bizarre setup.

"There was no good way to incorporate these features into the game as soon as it started because it didn't make sense," Hines said.

Now, the other reason is even more interesting. Apparently, the developers had dedicated the majority of their time to ensuring that the PS3 port would run without the multiple bugs and glitches that the 360 and PC versions so often suffered from. Therefore, testing how the PlayStation Network Store would operate in delivering the downloadable content wasn't really focused on, but work is continuing in that vein right now. This means we should be able to see the content arrive at some point down the road, although Hines didn't provide an estimated release window.

Then, there was the announcement that all those sweet optimizations for the PS3 version would eventually make their way to the 360 and PC via a patch of some kind. Of course, the cries of "which version is better?!" began to reverberate throughout the 'Net, but Hines helped to clarify here as well. It seems the shader functionality that re-renders the low-res textures would indeed be transported to the 360 and PC versions at some point, but at the same time, there are certain upgrades and optimizations to the PS3 version that will remain exclusive to that system.

Well, that clears things up nicely. It's always nice to get the details straight from the horse's mouth, and we remain as excited as ever about Oblivion for the PS3.

Related Game(s): Oblivion