You take things to extremes, and your own argument falls flat on it's face. Especially considering Morrowind/oblivion/Fallout 3 werent as bland feeling as Skyrim's samey dungeons. And ALL the dungeons had the same color schemes to boot. Fallout 3 at least switched up color schemes, as did the other games. This game is all about blues and golds. EVERYWHERE.

There's nothing wrong with pitch black dungeons if you enjoy that type of thing ... and in all fairness, it would make more sense than having torches everywhere in dungeons which supposedly haven't been entered for centuries.

If Beth wanted to ... for console players at least ... add some sort of function that allowed the player to adjust dungeon brightness and inhabitant sound, e.g., the flap, flasp, flap sound that leats you know a draugur is walking around close by, I certainly wouldn't object.

As for being scared ... or at least startled or creeped out... the only moments I really had of either were in mist filled Falmer caves where one of the little buggers leapt out from nowhere. But that's okay with me. If I wanted ongoing scary, I'd play a Resident Evil type game.

I'm sure there are a number of people on this board that remember the type of 1980's game I mentioned ... back in the days before in-game maps and manual saves whenever you choose.

You entered a pitch black dungeon and tried to map it out with pen and paper as you stumbled through various malevolent creatures ... which respawned behind you as you proceeded and had to be dealt again if you tried to go back ... dead-falls, etc. and "dead" was indeed "dead" and you just had to start it all over again.. If the game was dumbed down, you might have access to a potion of "get me the heck out of here quick" otherwise, it was "challenging", to say the least.

I never found that type of "challenge" to be fun but, others did.

There's a fine line between "challenging" and "annoying" and I think it's one that rpg game developers have to be careful about ...as having to many players on the "annoyed" side of the line could have unfortunate consequences for the developer.

HAHAHA! Oblivion's main quest had wow? Seriously? Oblivion's mainquest had virtually no interesting plot twists; it was one colosal trope of typical fantasy. The ending was the only wow there is in that story. At least Skyrim had some interesting twists, like the involvement of the Elder Scrolls, Parthurnax, etc. The Gates in Oblivion were kinda neet at first, but they lost their charm VERY quickly. They were actually the opposite of what they were meant to be: they incentivized you to NOT finish the main quest so that you could loot the over-powered sigil stones to turn yourself into a god. I could argue the dragon's surved the incentive purpose better since they were at least a legit threat and actually attacked cities (I never had a single gate bring a named npc to harm in Oblivion). Skyrim's stories do have interesting twists and take you in unexpected directions; Oblivion's normally didn't (there are some exception). And I think Skyrim has a good bit of variety within its unity. The main cities are certainly more varied than Oblivion's.

I don't know, I found the dragons to be pretty intriguing. My only complaint was that the dragons didnt seem as menacing as harbingers of the end times should have been, or in other words not enough destruction. Alduin destroyed Helgen, but the daedra took out a whole city. I think they should have had something like that and have alduin attack solitude.

Dragons lost their appeal even faster than oblivion gates. I dont kknow what unexpected directions youre talking about for Skyrims main quest. That one mission with the elder scrolls was neato, yeah. I enjoyed that too. And that was the only neat part of the whole quest.

Edit: And yeah, the cities were more varied, I'll give you that.

See I found the majority of that...incredibly boring. There was nothing interesting about mastering dragon shouts, it just required you to run through dungeons and kill the same dragon 50 times. The certain spoiler with the leader of the greybeards was painfully obvious, so that wasnt a WOW moment either. and that final mission was so anti climactic that it was an embarassment and left me feeling more shallow than anything. Oblivions final act was incredible.

So Fallout 3 dungeons changing wallpapers constitutes variety? I will give you that it is somewhat a help. However, I prefer logical variety over just "let's make things different for giggles." Skyrim is set in a time period where there aren't things like wallpaper and paint would have long worn away. Unification of art and architectural themes throughout a given culture (dwemer or nordic) makes sense. It would bother me if they all looked totally different. You say "All skyrim's dungeons look alike." That is just blatantly false. Dwemer, nordic, cave, etc all look completely different. And a lot of the dungeons in Skyrim have stories to them. As a long time player of Oblivion, I remember no such intrigue in Oblivion's dungeons. Most of them were just hideouts for "x" type of monster you kill and get loot (in fact I had a dungeon in Oblivion set aside for that specific purpose ). And Oblivion NEVER switched up color schemes! Ayleid ruins were always white, caves always that sickly grey, and castles always that bland yellow-brown.

It's really down to personal preference. For example, I'll take Skyrim's MQ over Oblivion's any day of the week. The final act of Oblivion's MQ was incredibly underwhelming for me as well. I wouldn't call discovering the Greybeard's leader a WOW moment necessarily, but still, I wasn't expecting that (at least, it wasn't my first choice).

How is Skyrim not varied? Because it had mountains? So did Morrowind and especially Cyrodill, fyi. Their's just svcked compared to Skyrim's. Skyrim has tundra, craggy mountains, forests w/ snow, forests with no snow, autumn forests and plains. Morrowind has ashlands, swamps and islands/coast w/ big mushrooms. Cyrodiil had forests, snowy.. uh.. hills/mountains near Bruma. Forests.. rainy forests in the south.. forests. Oh and the gold coast. Deadlands too I guess.. but Oblivion gates were nothing but a pain in the ass, not some awesome new realm to explore. Big tower, with lava and daedra. Oh man, that just totally "wows" me! So much better than fighting a dragon on the top of massive mountain, overlooking the rest of Skyrim.

How is Oblivion's main quest so good compared to Skyrim? One could even say that the Civil War is part of the main quest.. so with that, I especially don't see how Oblivion's was so much better. Oblivion is awesome and it's main quest is fine.. but I don't see how it's much better. Find Martin, get him some stuff, kill some cultists, shut down some gates, show down a big gate, go to a paradise, kill a dude, watch Martin be a hero. Skyrim is basically kill an attacking dragon, meet the greybeards, learn whats up, find blades people, go to a party, find a wall/temple, find elder scroll, fight alduin, hold peace council, choose between blades/greybeards, capture dragon, go to sovngarde and kill alduin.

Both could have been better.. but I don't think Oblivion blows Skyrim out of the water by any means.

I will say this, that end quest would have been way better without those 3 obscure warriors, especially that annoying chick.

Yes but see, they had different color chemes for each type of dungeon. Skyrim every dungeons is blue and gold, regardless of faction. And that makes a difference. On top of Oblivion had the bright red oblivion gates. Fallout used greens, yellows, browns, blackness, blues.

And I would hardly call Oblivion's final act incredible. You got to watch I guy who sat on his [dang the censoring is strict] the whole game and did NOTHING take all your glory. And in exchange you get neat looking ebony armor 2.0, which is the same as 1.0 just with a new name and a week long wait to obtain . I would say the ending was more unexpected, but I felt Skyrim's ending was a bit more fulfilling (granted boss fights are definitely not Bethesda's forte; though Dawnguard has a pretty good one).

Did you see it coming because you read a game guide? Just wondering.. I mean I can see why you'd think it was a dragon.. but I didn't see it coming the first time I did it.

Holy spoilers. And this is massive opinion, and youre just arguing with opinions. So I don't see why you wasted your breath. And I don't feel comfortable discussing storyline in the non spoiler forum, so drop this argument.

Isn't the armour you get at the end way worse than ebony armour? I remember it being absolutely garbage, but perhaps that was just my Light Armour skill showing.

I actually thought that the dungeons weren't too bad. I appreciated the side-stories some of them had. It was a clear improvement over Oblivion. They could always have been a bit more unique, but when they insist in filling the game with over a hundred dungeons, they're going to look similar. Fortunately, I never felt the need to explore every single cave and dungeon for the simple fact that the returns were diminishing. In retrospect, this also kept them somewhat fresh.

I dont read game guides for plot points, thats stupid. It was extremely obvious it was a -spoiler-. Everybody I played with knew it as well. Such a generic "plot twist" that we KNEW they were gonna pull it. Wanna hear a good wow moment? Everything related to the DB in both games.

Good points here. I still think color variation would have helped.

Everybody knew what the player had done to help Martin. Yeah, the reward was eh, but you act as if the ending of SKyrim had a fantastic reward. And the ending here required a failure of a boss fight.

It was ebony. But I never used it. By the end I had sigil stone enhanced Amber armor that basically made me near invincible and an ebony sword that did absurd damage in all forms of magic. A perfect illustration of Oblivion's key flaw: those darn gates torpedo the roleplaying experience. I must have closed over a hundred of those dang things cause there was only incentive to keep them open. That is a sign of a poorly done mechanic when it is meant to motivate the opposite . It started to get that way with Skyrim's dragons until I realized they could storm into cities and cause real damage. That was when I realized maybe I should take care of that

Agreed. Would've been better if we had some lore on them, or better yet, if we couldfight side by side with Ysgramor and call upon him instead with a shout! Tsun and Olaf One Eye too.

Calling upon a dragon is pretty damn fantastic to me.

This isn't true at all. Just because you want to keep closing them until you become an all powerful god (which somehow runs your rolepplaying experience, which just means you have no self control), doesnt mean we all did. I would find an oblivion gate, RP myself getting back to town as quickly as possible (dropping whatever i was doing because these are of the utmost importance) equipping myself and going to close it, then going back to what I was doing, with a nifty little stone. You must have been one of the people abusing the chameleon enchantment in the game too since you have to go out of your way to do it which ruins your RP experience.

That's a copout. Opinions are "I don't like this" not "this svcks". Lol spoilers? Sorry but if you haven't played Skyrim's main quest by now you shouldn't be on a friggin Skyrim board. You're not comfortable discussing it because you have no real reason as to why Oblivion's main quest was awesome aside from the gates and Martin dying.