"The series is known for its huge game-worlds, which results in many hours of gameplay. Can you give us a rough estimate of how many gameplay hours Oblivion will have?

This question is actually pretty irrelevant to an Elder Scrolls game. We measure our gameplay hours in the hundreds of hours, not the tens. However, the majority of gamers do not have the time to spend hundreds of hours. But they love the fact that the content is there, that they could spend hundreds of hours playing Oblivion (or any Elder Scrolls game) if they wanted to.

But we are finding that most people want to get to the end of the game. They want to know how the main storyline ends. So, we’ve focused on tightening the gameplay experience without sacrificing the open-ended content. You should always know exactly where to go and what to do to complete the next step in the main quest. You still have the option to “do anything you want,� but we’ve made adjustments to point you to the fun and to make sure you don’t have any downtime. For instance, right now we’re working on our dynamic compass that will show you how close you are to dungeons while you exploring the outside world, or where the person is you need to talk to make a quest progress."