I noticed from a few posts that some people haven't played Oblivion yet and are interested in trying it. This is intended as a short guide of some major differences that Oblivion has from Skyrim. If anyone was thinking about playing Oblivion for the first time, this list might help you figure out if you really want to. Although many people might not think so, I personally think Oblivion was a masterpiece and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys Skyrim.


Crime

• There are not separate bounties. A bounty in one city will carry over to any city in the game. Even to guards outside of cities.
  
• Guards a much more likely to catch you committing crimes inside NPC houses

Warrior

• There are no finishing moves
  
• There is no bashing while blocking
  
• There are more options for power attack bonuses, a paralyze, knock-back and disarm are all possible depending on skill level and direction of attack
  
• Hand to Hand is a skill and focuses on damaging fatigue as well as dealing damage. A high unarmed skill means you can keep enemies constantly knocked on the ground
  
• The melee skills are blade and blunt, instead of 1 and 2 handed. Therefore you can cylce between 1 and 2 handed weapons but you have less options within those weapons.
  
• Getting knocked down is possible is your fatigue falls below 0. You will fall to the ground and be unable to attack or defend yourself for some seconds.

Mage

• You can create your own spells using known effects. You can also combine effects to create multi-use spells. For example you can make a spell that deals damage and paralyses at the same time. This also means you can create more wild and crazy spells, such as destruction spells that damage yourself.
  
• The magic animations are much less exciting. A master level fire spell looks the same as a novice level one.

Thief

• You can reverse pickpocket anything, including poisoned food and drink. As well as clothing enchanted with damage on self effects. These will all eventually kill the NPC and will not give you a bounty.

Character Creation

• There are much less options for cosmetic changes to you character.
  
• You must chose a birth-sign from the start that you cannot change. These are similar to the standing stones. Some are much better then others and this decision should not be taken lightly.
  
• You must also create a class for your character. This involves choosing an archtype, which is your “specialization”, as well as major and minor skills. Major skills contribute to a level up, minor skills do not.
  
• Unlike Skyrim, every class can eventually master every skill, since perks are unlocked automatically while increasing skills. Therefore, even though you might have been a thief at the beginning of the game, you will be a jack of all trades eventually.

Leveling Up

• Increasing your major skills by a total of 10 causes a level up. At this time, you must choose three attributes to raise. Depending on how you increases your skills, you will get a bonus to these attribute raises. This can cause the game to become very difficult if you do not level up your major skills wisely, because your attributes will be low.
  
• You must sleep to level up, you cannot do it from the menu.

Skills, Perks and Attributes.

• Unlike Skyrim, perks are unlocked automatically when increasing skills. There are 4 perks for each skill, at level 25, 50, 75 and 100 you will get a perk for that skill.
  
• There are 8 attributes. These affect the base stats of your character.

Strength - How much you can carry, and how much damage you deal with weapons, and how much fatigue you have
Endurance - How much health you gain upon leveling, and how much fatigue you have
Intelligence - How much magicka you have
Willpower - How fast you regenerate magicka, and how much fatigue you have
Speed - How fast you move
Agility - Damage dealt with bows, knockdown frequency, and fatigue
Personality - Affects everyones disposition towards you
Luck - Affects everything a little

• There is no Smithing or Enchanting skill. Enchanting is done at an altar and anyone can do it equally as well.
  
• There is a repair skill which is used to repair weapons and armor
  
• Hand to Hand is a skill. It involves damaging fatigue and health of enemies
  
• Athletics and Acrobatics are skills that involve how fast you can run and how high you can jump, as well as associated perks related to the skills.
  
• Mercantile and speechcraft are separate skills.
  
• Mysticism is a magic skill, however it contains similar spells to those in Skyrim’s alteration and Conjuration trees.

Guilds, Factions and Quests

• There is an arena faction in Oblivion. You fight battles against a single opponent, and sometimes multiple opponents, with the goal of eventually becoming the grand champion.
  
• Each faction has a ranking system that is shown in the menu. Major factions have many ranks.
  
• The Mages Guild, and Fighters Guild replace the College and the Companions. They differ greatly in goals and members but they are similar at their core.
  
• The Dark Brotherhood and Thieves guild are in Oblivion. However these two guilds despite being similar by name, are almost nothing alike their Skyrim counterparts.
  
• There are many more minor factions than in Skyrim.
  
• The bonuses, perks, and recognition for being a faction head are better in Oblivion
  
• Quests can only be tracked one at a time in oblivion and the markers are slightly more vague

NPC Interactions

• Talking to any NPC pauses the game world
  
• Each NPC has a disposition towards you that can be raised at any time by using the speechcraft skill.
  
• Merchants can be bartered with, which lowers their prices.
  
• Merchants never run out of gold.They still have a set amount of gold they can give you per item though.
  
• NPC’s are generally more responsive to your accomplishments in the world.
  
• NPC’s will almost never be rude to an accomplished character with high fame.
  
• There are significantly less immortal NPC’s.

Misc

• There are more unique items in Oblivion
  
• There is no Sprinting
  
• There is a fame and infamy stat. They are raised by doing quests in either good or evil fashions.

Or, the tl;dr:

You'll probably like Skyrim more. Overall, it's a better game, unless you're really into stats and clunky interfaces.

However, I will mention that a glitch in Oblivion allows for some crazy powerful spells...spell creation IS one thing that made Oblivion fun for me long after I had leveled up pretty high and finished the vast majority of quests.

Good summary, though I think if I even play or even think about Oblivion one more time I'm going to commit suicide...so sick of that game...

And yes, to all TeS newcomers, the crime system really was ABSOLUTELY AWFUL!

The pc interface for skyrim is a strait up let down.

If you guys think of any more I will add it to the list

My apologies, I had forgot about the PC crowd. I played Oblivion on the PS3 and Skyrim on the 360, and the menus are much more manageable with joysticks than I imagine they are with mice.

You could put how the racal powers re different. For example Redguard's racial power is very different in term of effects between skyrim and oblivion.

Number 3, under Warrior.
Aren't they the same as in Skyrim? Except you have to use points in Skyrim; the perk automatically happens in Oblivion. iirc, so i could be wrong.

On the PC for Oblivion it wasn't that bad but the worst part of Skyrim's UI is that in inventory menus or when shopping if you so much as click in the wrong place it closes the menu.

To the OP: One thing you said about Thieves is wrong. In Oblivion you can ONLY reverse PP 0 weight items.

There are Fame/Infamy stats in Oblivion and they actually determine things in the game like quest eligibility.
Also, Daedric quests are less immersive. They have static start points, static level requirements, and even fame/infamy requirements.