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So I think I'm sunk and desperately seeking an answer to a question I already know the answer to, but here's my predicament:

Currently, I'm almost 300 hours into my "100%" completion run. I just finished the Great Gate and was looking forward to going back to paradise, but I saw my Oblivion Gates Shut stat at 59/60. Needless to say, I went hunting. I happily found my last gate north of Kvatch and STUPIDLY went in before saving my game. Long story short, I don't keep a lot of saves on one character and all of my current saves are are within this plane of Oblivion. My game loads perfectly fine, but once I try to exit the Oblivion gate or remove the sigil stone the loading screen stops half-way through.

And here's the question I'm dreading to ask - is there any way around this (perhaps, confusing/working the system like previous quests?) or must I start a new game?

If a new game is the answer, I swear - my Xbox 360 is going in the closet and I'm saving up for a PC. Too unreliable! This same thing happened to me years ago around 300 hours in and apparently, I didn't learn my lesson then. Oh, well.

Oh dear. That sounds terrible! How many saves do you have? Have you tried starting from all of them?

Within this Oblivion plane, 3 and an autosave. One is reliable (loads everytime), 2 are iffy and the autosave doesn't load at all. The only other save I have is the "beginner" save right before I left the Imperial sewers.

I'm able to move around freely and go through the plane from beginning to end, but for some reason when I try to exit, the load screen that follows freezes half-way through.

I'm not sure that there's anything you can do, by the sounds of it. I'm super sorry that this happened. It's a really awful feeling.

It really is, but life goes on. Haha, it was a good run though. Hopefully soon enough I'll be able to experience the world of Oblivion on PC (MODS!).

Sounds like that cache bug that killed my game. Have certain animations stopped working (ie. fires, door swings)?

Yeah, could be the Abomb bug. 300 hours in on Xbox is impressive.

Imbalance - The animations still work great when I load the game up, but once I try to leave the plane of Oblivion I'm stuck in the loading screen that follows freezes half-way through its process.

legoless - I Googled the "Abomb glitch" and it sounds similar to what's going on with my game (minus the animation problems). Since this is my second 300-hour playthrough to crash, I'm pretty sure that's about the limit of my Xbox 360. I've read that some PCs get to 500 on a single character though. Do you know if there's any truth to this? Seriously thinking about making the switch to PC for future games!

Also, do you know if Skyrim has a similar glitch? I've probably played a total of 30 minutes in Skyrim, but I have it just sitting on the shelf waiting to pop it into my Xbox One. Thinking about giving it a solid playthrough if I won't lose 300+ hours again, haha. And one more question (seeing as how you're an admin), is there a place on UESP that explains the Skyrim leveling system? I've devoted so much time to efficient leveling in Oblivion that learning a new system seems daunting. My OCD seems to kick in with these games, needing a "perfect" character and all.

Do you have both a 360 and the Xbone? Would you be interested in conducting a little experiment?

Oblivion is BC on One. What may save your playthrough is transferring your save from one machine to the other, but I've not heard of anyone testing this. Copy your save file to the cloud, then try running it on the other system and see if the glitch persists.

If I understand the Abomb glitch, the cache error is in the save file itself, but also has to do with how the game's OS reads the cache. PC users are able to manually reset the cache error, which is why 500 hours is doable. In theory, one could transfer a console save to PC to achieve the same correction, but then why would you transfer it back to console? I'm curious if transferring the data from one console to another would trick the OS into refreshing the cache error.

I had over 400 hours on my game on 360 before the Abomb hit hard. I mistakenly believed that I had somehow managed to avoid it. Those saves are still on my console, sad as it is. I have nearly 600 hours in Skyrim and have seen nothing of the like.

I've played 5k hours of Oblivion on PC without issue, even on 500+ hour saves. I believe Abomb was patched.

The experiment was conducted, but to no avail. I was able to transfer all of my save data to my Xbox One and download the add-ons through Xbox Live, but once I tried loading one of my saves it wouldn't even make it past the loading screen. I kept getting a "missing items/some items might not load" message even though everything was transferred. Not too sure about that? I think Skyrim is calling my name until I can afford a PC for Oblivion (still working out of my college laptop).

That's good news! I'll be looking forward to the day where I once again have the willpower to jump back into Oblivion (haha, losing 300 hours really knocks the wind out of you!).

Thank you for trying. Sorry that it didn't work out.

I don't know if you're still stuck, but have you tried going back through the Oblivion gate and saving? I had troubles similar to what you described, and I have a bad habit of making very few game saves-- I have the auto-saved game, plus one named save that I keep saving over-- so I thought I was going to lose all of my progress. Then I tried going back to the Oblivion gate and exiting. I wasn't sure if it would let me through-- don't think I'd ever tried before-- but it did. I went home to dump all of my loot in a chest, then returned to the Oblivion gate, but saved my game before going through again. I still had occasional problems, but at least I had a save I could return to, and eventually I was able to close the gate successfully.

So, it's a little over two years later and I finally decided to give Oblivion another 100% play. Good news! Aside from a few areas left to explore, I've got 400+ hours on my Xbox One and no Abomb glitch. According to the Xbox representative I spoke with, they patched the Xbox One version (this could be old news, but this post came to mind since it was the last time I played). After multiple Abombs, this summer's play through has been successful!

As Champion of Cyrodiil, Grand Champion of the Arena, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Master of the Fighters Guild, Arch-Mage of the Mages Guild, the Gray Fox, Blades Knight, Knight-Errant of the White Stallion, Honorary Knight of the Thorn, Honorary Member of the Order of the Virtuous Blood, proud Pilgrim of the Nine Divines, the Divine Crusader, and most importantly as the Madgod, Sheogorath himself, I endorse The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Xbox One.

Glad it worked out for you!