Don't get me wrong, I'm REALLY enjoying the game right now, it's glorious and the best game of the year.

But there is one thing that's missing from Oblivion, and it was a key feature, or perhaps even the most important thing in the game.

Every quest was complex and there was a lot of ways to complete it. The game often didn't specify how to complete it, you could just think of some unusual way and most of the time it would work. Also the journal that described every step in a quest, it was great and fun to read.

Now the journal is gone and there is only a bland objective list. The arrow pointer that tells you where to go is ridiculous. I mean come on, there is a quest where a girl is missing and you have to find her corpse, and from the very beginning the damn arrow points you where the skeleton is.

I think it's pretty much similar to what Deus Ex: Human Revolution (also a great game) did. Original DX didn't tell you what to do at all, there were so many ways to complete a quest. I don't think there was any way to get the game stuck. Whatever you did, the game adapted and pushed the storyline further. Now quests in DX: HR also have multiple ways to be completed, but the game clearly tells you: you go HERE (arrow) and do this, or you can go HERE (arrow) and complete this quest the other way.

Sure quests in Skyrim aren't linear, but it's kinda schematic and instead of player working out what can be done, the game kinda gives you all the ways on a plate and lets you choose, while in Oblivion most of the ways were hidden and SO rewarding when you completed a quest in some unusual way.

In OBLIVION? Ha... no, sorry, that is nostalgia goggles right there.

did u ever think to turn quest markers off?

i have them off and i disabled the compass

so i have to just find things by directions or luck!

I agree on the Journal! I miss it a lot! Pretty much the only thing from oblivion i miss so far though, Skyrim is great in everything else, i just font get why they couldnt have the journal still there, could be something you get when clicking the objective so not everyone has to read it if they dont want to.

I know it's present in all TES games, but I played Oblivion a lot more than the other TES games, and I consider it the best.

Yeah, it's kind of a shame you can't get some descriptive text for the quests (at least from what I've seen so far). It'd be nice to be reminded some of the things the NPC said when you got it (especially considering how many millions of sidequests I seem to be building up.

But....


...in Oblivion? Eh. I don't remember very many quests at all that had choices in them. (Yeah, Fingers of the Mountain. But beyond that...... most was just "go kill this" "go find this" "go talk to ____" "go clear this")

You didn't understand me. Oblivion had no quest freedom. Maybe one or two in the whole game. Otherwise you did the same exact things everyone else did, and got the same journal entries. Even the beloved Morrowind and Daggerfall had mostly linear quest design. TES is not a series about choice and consequence really, with some exceptions. Even Bethesda's Fallout game was pretty limited in that regard compared to the original Fallout games and New Vegas.

So really you just missed the journal updates that made you FEEL like it was personalized, and that makes sense I guess.

Sadly, finding stuff by direction is nearly impossible, since there are no directions. Not a single NPC or Questlog Entry ever speaks of directions...Radiant Story as its disadvantages...makes it kinda difficult to play without Questmarkers...you are lucky if the Quest tells you the general area or city, where it takes place...when I heard about that kid trying to contact the brotherhood, I looked for him in the wrong city for hours, since it was only mentioned one time and there are three friggen cities starting with 'W'...

What I absolutely hate in Skyrim is the lack of a detailed Journal. In Oblivion, even the miscellaneous quests would've had a story background. Now it's sometimes as simple as 'Here a bounty letter' with 2 lines of text and a quest entry of 'Clear bandits from X'.

I feel like it's lacking in story.

oh yeah, well i turn off my monitor and navigate by sound. roleplaying a blind argonian who looked in the sun for too long.