Wait for Skyrim or play morrowind. Morrowing IMO was a master piece. Oblivion was terrible until you got some fundamental mods which changed a lot of the core mechanics (sorry to all the console people out there best TES games should be played on PC). Then it became a damn good game.
Btw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eGtyqz4gY
IMO morrowind is the better game. That said, you can still have lot of fun with oblivion.
yeah fallout is complete garbage compared to oblivion. morrowwind was great, but at this point i just cant step back a generation for a game like that. it is simply too long to deal with the loading and graphics.
Have you tried New Vegas Lobo? IMO, a fantastic game. Big improvment over fallout 3.
Tips:
Lobo and I seem to have played this game exact opposite ways. Where as he was an evil mage I was a heroic fighter. Nice thing that this game can accommodate anyone. I'm going to give you some tips from my experience.
Becoming a vampire is pretty lame. People won't talk to you, you can't do a lot of speech options because you have the charisma of a rotting corpse and you can't do a lot of quests. You'll become pretty powerful without it and have a lot more freedom to play the game however you like while avoiding reputation hits. Also as a vampire oblivion gates will be a nightmare for you. The weakness to fire combined with he fact there's fire everywhere and at high levels those guys hit hard enough. Not to mention the bonus points it adds can't be leveled for real until you stop being a vampire. There's even equipment that vampires can't use such as the armor of the nine. Then there's the constant need to drink blood and the fact you have to avoid sunlight meaning you can't explore freely. All in all becoming a vampire is a handicap imo and if you're just starting the game you should avoid giving yourself unnecessary headaches
Lockpicking and other minor shit isn't useless at all. Before you level up make a save. When you level see what stats get bonuses (like strength times two) Reload. Use skills that aren't part of your spec (neither major nor minor) that also rely on that stat and level those before you hit the level up screen. Let's say you're a fighter type. Using longswords has leveled you and given you a X3 str modifier. You can push that up to 5X (the max) by jumping around town and getting about 3 acrobatics levels. (Acrobatics uses str). I never encountered the problem of having to run to gaurds to kill things because I had max str and endurance by level 8. This and the mother sign are especially useful for maxing out your endurance as soon as possible.
You can cast spells on your horse by using a touch or on target spell effect, then get on it and ride with bonuses. Handy spells include speed increase, endurance boost, slowfall and water walking. If you're not magically inclined you can stick these things on rings.
Do the quest for Azura's star as soon as you can. It's a reusable soul gem. Now make an enchanted weapon with some monster stats on it like lightning damage and lowers lightning resistance on target and fit soul trap on hit on there. Now every time you kill something it goes into the gem automatically. When the sword runs out of juice, you can fill it back up again and with the right enchants should be able to walk into oblivion gates at high levels with no problem. You can also summon things to fill the gem and recharge your weapon or to gather souls to enchant items with the highest value. Scrolls of "summon golden saint" are available in stores sometimes and golden saints have the highest soul value.
If you max out your skills and can't level up anymore, you can de-level your skills by doing something like pickpocketing or punching a guard in the face. When they ask if you want to pay the fine or go to jail pick go to jail and your skills will randomly decrease. Of course since enemies level up to there seems to be little point in this. Maybe you just want to max out all stats or maybe you realllly want 100 luck.
The later you go into an oblivion gate, the better the Sigil Stone at the heart of it's tower. You can get enchants more powerful than you could ever do yourself, like 12 str to items instead of ten.
