Bethesda Game Studios has announced a new add-on to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion called Fighter's Stronghold. As the sixth addition to the official plug-ins offered by Bethesda, Fighter's Stronghold adds a new quest and a new property to acquire: the Battlehorn Castle. DLC6 is expected to release by Monday next week (that's October 15) and should be ready for the PC and Xbox 360 versions. Features include:

• A fully detailed castle for you to explore
• Knights of the True Horn patrol the castle and do your bidding
• Secret treasure vault
• Upgrade the furnishings in every area of the castle
• Hire a vintner to create special wines to enhance your fighting abilities
• Hire a combat trainer to spar with
• Hire a taxidermist to craft lifelike trophies for your great hall
• Purchase an ancient Dwemer Forge that buffs your Armorer skill

Those who've beaten back the Daedric Prince Mehrunes Dagon and have been to The Shivering Isles and back may want to give this new content a go. After all, aside for being free to download in Xbox LIVE for the first week, it's also the developers' last official contribution to Oblivion content. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition will follow shortly, says Bethesda, and a PlayStation 3 solution for downloadable content is coming very soon.

Buy: [ The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC) ]
Buy: [ The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360) ]
Buy: [ The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year (PS3) ]

 

Bethesda Softworks has announced that they will be releasing the Shivering Isles expansion for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 3) at retail stores this October. Initially launched last March 27, this add-on for the console was only made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 2,400 Microsoft Points (approx: US$ 30).

This expansion gives gamers a chance to explore the land of Sheograth which is ruled by the Daedric Prince of Madness. The territory is divide in two parts, Dementia and Mania, with each one being defended by The Dark Seducers or The Golden Saints. You can choose to side with either faction, which nets you more quests, gear, allies and enemies.

If that's not enough content, the developers are also throwing in The Elder Scrolls IV: Knight of the Nine on the disc. Released as a downloadable, this aims to explain the presence and function of the Ayleid ruins found in Oblivion. In addition to this, a new faction is introduced in the game giving players a chance to create their own party of knights and search for the holy armor and weapons of The Divine Crusader.

The disk offers about 30 to 40 hours of gameplay making it well worth the money of those who haven't picked it up yet. If you want more details on this, feel free to head on over to the official Elder Scrolls site through our Read Link.

Perhaps Halo 3's lack of pull in Japan tells more of its lack of inclination for the console rather than the game. The latest console sales data from Japan show that the Xbox 360 only has a toehold taking only 1% of the market for the month of August, selling a little more than 11,000 units.

Unsurprisingly, the Wii and the DS Lite remains to be, far and away, Japan's favorite. Even the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion barely managed to make it into the hearts of Japanese gamers. It ranked 48th place out of the 50 most sold games for the month.

For the rest of the consoles this August, the DS Lite got the lion's share and represented 52.9% of all total consoles sold, with the PlayStation Portable taking only 9.8%. The Wii grabbed 22.5% of the market while the PlayStation 3 took 7.5%.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has everything good in a western RPG. The scale is overwhelming, and being open-ended brings up a lot of choices for the player on how to play the game. The Xbox 360 version ships to Japan today, said a post on the Bethesda Blog.

Much like how the Japanese gamers are generally not familiar to the RTS genre, Oblivion should be a brand new experience to most RPG fans. Even outside the conventional linear stories of enigmatic heroes saving the world from long haired villains, Bethesda believes that the game will be "a breakout hit in Japan."

Behind such confidence is the stellar score Famitsu generously dished out - a stunning 10, 9, 10, 9 (total of 38). Considering that they worked really hard to make Oblivion Japan-friendly, good sales like what Blue Dragon experienced isn't unlikely.

Here's a list of changes they made:

• Knights of the Nine is included along with the entire original game in both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
• Close to a million words were translated (including ALL the books!) and the opening and closing cutscenes were re-recorded in Japanese. The game features subtitles in Japanese, the voice remains in English.
• The text in the game is a mix of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji (approximately 1,200 characters), and the numbers are in Arabic numerals, like the English and European versions.
• Adjusted the interface so that translated strings would fit properly. While the overall interface did not change, you’ll find lots of tweaks everywhere.
• Books and scrolls read left to right, unlike written Japanese, which is read vertically, right to left.
• The persuasion wheel has been remade so that it is in Japanese.
• Included are all the optimizations and bug fixes from the 1.2 update.
•  Download content not available, for now.
  

The PS3 version will be hitting Japanese shelves in a couple of months. Bethesda simply can't miss the console with a bigger user base. As indicated in the BethBlog: "The PS3 does have a larger install base in Japan, so we do have the PS3 version of Oblivion Japanese coming later this year."

Bethesda has finally sent 'round an official announcement for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. This particular expanded version of the game was earlier sighted on a GameStop listing.

The Game of the Year Edition, available for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, will include the original version of Bethesda's award-winning RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) along with the Shivering Isles expansion.

The Game of the Year Edition will also include the Knights of the Nine downloadable content. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition will be available in retail stores this September.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been out for quite some time now on the Xbox 360 and PC. And anything outside of the latest Shivering Isles expansion still hasn't been confirmed or announced yet. Today we just might get that, as WorthPlaying reveals. Now it's no secret that Oblivion has indeed been one of the movers and shakers of last year (and well into 2007, too), and in its wake, critics were left praising the game from Bethesda Softworks.

Over at online retailer Gamestop, they've put up product listing for a certain Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition for the 360 and PC. Any details regarding this version of the game is skimpy, and for all intents and purposes, it could just be a re-packaged box with the "Game of the Year" seal stamped somewhere in the front. However, this release could have certain bundled freebies included in it, whether concrete, tangible objects or in-game content.

For now, without any word from the Take-Two Interactive labs, we're going to be doing two things: 1) take out the big red Rumor stamp and 2) update you guys as soon as we hear more word.

Much hype came with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion moving to the PS3, but those who own the game are probably enjoying it despite all the arguments between platforms. Pete Hines have spoken before about the port, and his words aren't much different from Senior Producer Craig Lafferty's.

Lafferty is pretty happy about the result of their work. The graphical differences from both consoles are pretty difficult to notice, something they intended right at the start. Optimizing was a success too, effectively removing loading times and including Knights of the Nine expansion.

As for taking the MMO world, Lafferty could only say there's a possibility in that. A Wii version is less likely to happen given the specs an enormous game like Oblivion requires, but "it's something [Bethesda Softworks] would like to do."

Unfortunately, there's nothing new on Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion yet. No need to worry though, we'll keep you updated as news comes. For the full interview, click on the Read link below.

Sharing space with Bethesda in the cover for the Japan-localized version of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will be Tokyo-based Spike, which has agreed to handle co-publishing and distribution of the game in the Land of the Rising Sun, according to their PR. The PR also lists the dates and prices with which Oblivion will hit Japanese shelves:

• July 26, 2007
• ¥ 7,800.00

There's nothing in the PR about the Shivering Isles expansion pack, which does leave a couple of questions open:

• Given that Microsoft has clamped down the region-locks on Xbox Live downloadable content, when will Bethesda make available The Shivering Isles for the Japan Marketplace?
• Will this Oblivion localization also include Japanese voice casts, or just subtitling? The answer to this would have an impact on localizing The Shivering Isles.

 

We've got good news for fans of The Shivering Isles expansion for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the PC and Xbox 360. The new patch is finally out to save you the trouble of permanent death, and best of all, we've got it here for you as well.

The critical bug in question is usually termed the FormID bug. After playing for at least 50 hours, some people will notice that the world slowly moves closer to ending because vendors lose items that were originally sold to them. Eventually, the game will cease to function unless you apply the patch, either by downloading it from Bethesda's Oblivion site (or from us) or getting it through Xbox Live.

Unfortunately Direct 2 Drive users still have no way to get past this problem, so they'll have to wait a little longer (preferably without playing the game) to get everything up and running fine once more on their computers. For computer users, you can also get the fix through us below.

Download: Shivering Isles patch v1.2.0416

Good news for Oblivion: Shivering Isles fans! The final patch for the irksome Form ID problem is this coming Monday.

In an official announcement at the Bethesda Softworks forums, it was stated that the PC's final update and the Xbox360's update via Xbox Live will go live in a worldwide patch due on Monday. The announcement was naturally met with sighs of relief from those players who were not able to play due to the bug.

For those who aren't familiar with the issue, the Form ID bug affected The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion expansion, Shivering Isles. It happens when the game runs out of form IDs for items and objects and strikes after an extended period of playing. The community manager at Bethesda (named Gstaff) had a reminder about the patch's date. "Again, this is our target date, so hopefully all will go well in preparation for uploading these."

Let's hope so.