I think Skyrim is by far the better game. While there are things that I miss:
*Spell Making
*Being able to move faster

The vast majority is a HUGE improvement. I'll list off the biggest ones:

1. Story:

Sorry, Oblivion's story was awful. You're not even the protagonist in that story. You think you're the hero in Oblivion? Wrong, you're the hero's stooge. The beginning was promising, but the pacing of the story was so far spaced out by the need to complete menial tasks, that anything remotely epic was instead hollowed out completely by it. Oh yeh, how do you know you're not the protagonist? Think back to who actually defeated the source of all evil in that game.


2. Environment:

Cities are MUCH more unique and well crafted. This is where I believe quality >>>> quanitity. Every major city in Skyrim has a unique story and houses a different major faction, not to mention art design. Playing in each city in Skyrim feels unique.

3. Dungeons:

The scale, the design, the variety. All in all much much better. I remember this particular random dungeon one of the sidequests in Solitude sent me to. As soon as I entered into the second level, the whole dungeon opened up into a huge underground abyss with a high tower centering the landscape and a necromancer drawing energy from the entire cavern, filling the massive cavern with gleams of blue light. A spectacle! Yet there are so many like this.

4. Quests:

The main quest is better due to the fact that the story is much better this time around. Guild quests are shorter, though still very good. The biggest change is in the side quests. For one side quests take place in skyrim's dungeons, which makes them more enjoyable off the bat. Secondly, I feel that more lore is placed in skyrim's dungeons. There are also quite a few twists attached to side quests, more than in Oblivion.

5. Creature Variety.

There are more wild life variety. There are more unique monster types.

Dwemer dungeon robots.
Dragon Priests
Falmer
Dragons
Hagravens
Giants
Wisp Mother


Gonna end it here for now. Your thoughts?

I find myself playing as a thief for the first time ever, thanks to Skyrim.

• Yes
  
• yes
  
• eeh
  
• Sorta, they are TOO SHORT
  
• thats all of them rofl

oblivion imo beats skyrim in many ways. lets face it the entire spell system is better in oblivion. the enchanting in some ways is better too in how you could have effects that did area damage to people. the quests of the guilds in oblivion excluding the thieves were much better. the oblivion dark brother hood was much much funner then the skyrim dark brotherhood. the skyrim one just took itself too serious there was never any huge outrageous assasinations that were fun. i understand there is a time to be serious but trying to be super serious with poor writting really fails (the companions had the same problem)skyrim is a better game overall than oblivion or it is so far for me 96 hours in.

Oblivion wasn't even that great.

You had to heavily mod it for the leveling system and level scaling to be tolerable. IE, change it completely.

I've stopped playing Skyrim because they ruined the skills/character creation. Oh well, come january-february I'll be back.

Yaaay another VS thread. These never get old!!

I agree that Skyrim > Oblivion, but every game I eventually get bored of eventually, and need to take some time away. It happened with Morrowind, happened with Oblivion, and will happen again with Skyrim.

I also think Skyrim is a great improvement over Oblivion and it's also the most well balanced game in the series in all aspects. The new character system favors role-playing.

About quests, they are good but i wish they had improved the quest model further and make it more favorable to free-form role-playing. The way it works now is just like a classic rpg. You talk to someone, they give you a task, you complete it and collect a reward. It should be more about detective work, collecting and trading information. Pursuing your objectives whatever way you are capable of and decide to whom your information will benefit. In this regard i think Morrowind is still the best game in the series. In an rpg quests exist for the player to make decisions that affect his character, his reputation and the reputation of others in a way his moral guides him. Harvesting resources should always be a secondary objective. There has to be some sort of reputation and influence gameplay based on moral and role-playing choices.

I'm planning to make a Thief for the first time myself, with my next character. In Oblivion the atmosphere was so green and sunny and the NPCs were all so friendly that a thief or assassin-type character just never felt right to me.

In your opinion I guess...

I got bored of Skryim in 8 days haven't touched it since...

Still play Oblivion sporadically though...

Literally can't even force myself to fire up Skyrim, already moved on to other games...

60 bucks for 8 days... And last 5 days was just repeating "radiant" quests which basically are the same 4 "quests" with different names and npcs involved.

Once you explore and do the guilds and main quest... There's nothing left. You can't replay the game with new "builds" since all customization was basically neutered to make this game appeal to the console crowd.

What!?? That is awesome!

@MrDingleBerry WOW WAY TO BE DIFFERENT.

Apart from having Sean Bean, I was not impressed by Oblivion.

Two words that sum up Oblivion into a general attitude `Horse Armour′.

I agree with everything, except quests. They are far too short in Skyrim and could have been better done in general. Doing them also have virtually zero impact on how NPCs will react to you, which is a shame.

I find the dungeons alot more unique and exciting than the ones in Oblivion.

Thats where you and me differ. I never replay RPGS, unless the story has drastically different endings depending your the playthrough. To this date, the only RPG ive replayed was witcher 2 and thats because most of the main story branches off pass the 1/3 mark into completely different territories/npcs/quests/endings.

With that said I plan to play Skyrim once, do all the main quests, explore everything, etc. If it isn't for the amazing city/environment/dungeon design I don't think i can sit through 100+ hours.

The world and dungeons are nice, but I find that most everything else is about on the same level as Oblivion. There are a few key areas that I feel they've went backwards in, too.

Maybe playing a modded Oblivion has spoiled me.

I prefer Skyrim to Oblivion, although I'm still doing it largely the same way--collecting free food and hoarding it and making a metric ****-ton of potions. On the other hand, I'm using some of those potions now.

The whole game environment is so much richer. It's the first word that came to mind when I started playing, actually--richer. Although at first, that was largely about NPCs. But the whole thing is. I was impressed by being able to go anywhere in Oblivion, over any square inch of land, but compared with Skyrim, its textures and plants were much less interesting. All you had were main quests and some dungeons filled with monsters for no discernable region. Run along, kill a minotaur, go off road, and oh look, yet another cave full of the same stuff... Every time I go outside in Skyrim, I have some utterly new experience. Not just another monster on the road or another pointless bandit, but things with backgrounds--camps of people slaughtered by mages or soldiers, merchants killed by the roadside, whatever.

Of course Skyrim is much better than Oblivion (without mods).
It's pointless to compare a fresh new game with an old game.
Actually, many features which players compliment in Skyrim are inspired by mods from Oblivion.
For example: Brutal finish action, companion, craft system, etc.
That's why most PC players are not STUNNED by Skyrim, while many console players think Skyrim is PERFECT.

Sorry this is a joke right? Was Frodo the hero in the Lord of the Rings? I don't know? He wasn't the king was he? Just because you're not Martin doesn't mean you aren't the Hero. The Hero is the person that does the acts, Martin didn't do much really, other then right at the very end he does 2 things... compared to all the things you did? No, you're definitely the Hero. Also at least Oblivion had epic moments, Skyrim is seemingly lacking in this area.


Another Jokes, 4 of the MAJOR cities in Skyrim use almost exactly the same Inn, Jarl's House and generic houses. The only Unique cities are Solitude, Markarth, Windhelm, Riften and I hesitantly say Whiterun as it still uses a few far too common prefabs. Falkreath, Dawnstar, Morthal and Winterhold have very little uniqueness, at least in the buildings they use. I believe even the burnt out house in Morthal is mirrored in Winterhold and Winterhold's only real unique feature is the college. I don't think there is anything really unique about either Morthal or Dawnstar at all. Oblivion's cities were more unique, larger in-size and had vastly different lay-outs. All of skyrim's cities feel small and underwhelming, in fact they don't even feel like they compare to the smallest of villages...


Skyrim does have better dungeons, however there were mistakes repeated from Oblivion, mostly around over-usage of very limited amounts of prefabs. There are new issues however as well, while the dungeon design might be impressive, mob/NPC layouts can be terrible, too many Draugr only dungeons in Skyrim at least Oblivion mixed up it's mobs/NPC more which made things more interesting. Also too many mobs are simple push-overs with only one overpowered boss at the end, not much in-between really.


I don't agree, I'd say the story this time around is worse, it maybe better written but it's poorly executed mainly from the fact it's too short and too easy. As for guild quests, they don't feel like guilds so it's not even good, let alone "very good". Skyrim does have undeniably better side-quests, but they've come at too much of a cost to the main quest and guild quest lines. And no, saying you should go do other things doesn't count... for a very good reasons which is that I did go and do other things, but when ever I return to the main quest and guilds, there was still too little substance to them.


There is, but you'll still end out fighting more draugr then anything else. Second place goes to Falmer. Oblivion mixed it's dungeons up a lot more, you had Lich, Wraiths, Skeletons, Zombies, Necromancers and ghosts all in the same dungeon or you got Conjurers, Atronach, Deadra, Skeletons and Mages. In Skyrim you get Draugr or you get Falmer, Chaurus and Automatons or even worse, you just get conjurers and Atronach... Skyrim has more mobs but it does not use them as well as Oblivion used it's slightly more limited set of mobs.

God. I hated Oblivions main quest. Especially that one quest with the Great Welkynd Stone..or whatever.

And then Dagon comes in, and you basicly watched in awe - as Martin kill steal'd you.

I'll take the points listed in the OP and give my own opinion:

1. Story:

Both games have fairly mediocre main storylines in my opinion, but I preferred Oblivion's. The whole dragonborn thing didn't appeal to me at all... and to be honest, I actually liked Oblivion's approach in making Martin Septim the "special one" instead of the player-character. In a game which thrives on giving the player a lot of freedom over who their character is, this to me seems like a great method of involving the character in the story (even if Bethesda could've done a lot better in Oblivion).


2. Environment:

Agreed. Skyrim has a much more interesting and hand-crafted gameworld. However I prefer Cyrodiil as a setting, and with mods, Oblivion's gameworld greatly surpasses Skyrim's for me.


3. Dungeons:

Skyrim has better dungeons than Oblivion, but I still wasn't blown away by them. Most of them are short, linear, and devoid of atmosphere. And level-scaled loot pretty much puts me off exploring them outside of quests.


4. Quests:

Oblivion's quests are a lot better. I was incredibly disappointed with how short and underwhelming most of the questlines are in Skyrim. Having an infinite number of generic fetch / kill / dungeon quests doesn't make up for that whatsoever.


5. Creature variety:

Both games seem rather lacking in this area.


...

Overall i'd say the vanilla games are fairly close, each with their own pros and cons.... but modded Oblivion is a much better game. Maybe the gap will be closed in a few years time when there are some great mods out for Skyrim.

the one reason i cant stand the oblivion story line is because it never once showed significant towards the world. i mean the only time people complain about the gates is when you enter Kvatch. after that its all downhill
oblivion gates in general are a stupid concept, they pop up in random places where people never visit, they hold no major reward inside nor for closing them, and again it dont affect the world. you could not enter a single gate after kvatch and complete the game

with Skyrim the story feels more alive to the world. Dragons mainly regardless of how easy or hard they can be are a very good design choice. the story fits in and affects the world, people talk about dragons, when you kill and absorb one they stand and watch if a dragon flies into town people run and flee and guards attack. but thats only half of it. Dragons themselves not only remind the player of the main quest at hand, but reward the player for killing one, which involves the player directly, they fly in you kill, absorb soul, gain shout, go find another shout repeat.

TLDR i prefer dragons that affect the world and give rewards,and have no choice to fight, over a non world changing non rewarding gate that i never have to enter

Wha? People constantly are complaining about the gates in Oblivion! And they're all very happy when you close the gates that are near the cities.


Actually the sigil stones had the best enchantments in the game on them, other then modding of course. So to get the best gear in the game you had to do the gates, the problem of course is the sigil stones were leveled so you didn't get the good sigil stones til like level 26 or 30... I can't remember the exact level. Dragons don't really drop anything really rewarding either, just bones and scales, which ironically don't really create all that good stuff, the best you can get is dragonscale armor but some of the unique sets like dark brotherhood or nightingale armour means you probably won't use it and as for heavy armor, the best is deadric, not dragon... so...


People aren't even sure if the dragon's dead and people that fled mere seconds ago run up to the very thing they were afraid of. In Oblivion people didn't go near the gates because they were afraid of the things. Dragons interactions with cities at first seem quaint, after the 3rd time it's just annoying since you can't even go city to city without getting "you can not fast travel when there are enemies near by". On my second character I'm pretty much avoiding dragons because they're just boring, not really challenging and mainly just annoying.


As I've said the gates are less annoying then dragons, dragons get very annoying, more so then seeing an oblivion gate. Mehrunes Dagon's realm did have some real issues of course with it only really using x number of recycled designs, I think it was 4... but dragons in Skyrim only really have 2 types, Fire and Frost, else wise the only difference is the amount of damage they do and the amount of damage that they can take.

Agreed.
With QTP3 + All Natural + OBGE Water installed, Oblivion's gameworld greatly surpasses Skyrim's.
However, Skyrim has better distant LOD scenes.

Since there are FCOM and OWCND, it's not a problem for Oblivion.

I miss attributes and spell crafting and I will argue to my deathbed that Shivering Isles was the pinnacle of elder scrolls world building and is the best game dlc ever released, but other than those I agree that Skyrim is vastly superior to Oblivion in almost every way. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that 200 hours into Oblivion I still wasn't even halfway through the boring main quest, but I've been actually been making good progress on Skyrim's. Not that Skyrim's main quest is incredible or anything, but it's at least equally as good as as the guild quests and other side quests are.

Some random little changes in Skyrim I like are:

1) No more item durability - it was tedious, illogical (how does hammering fur armor and bows fix them? how are you fixing gear without using any materials or requiring a forge or workbench?) and items decayed so fast that armorer was almost a required skill for any class build that used weapons and armor.

2) No more acrobatics or athletics - athletics was kind of a pointless skill, it was impossible to avoid running around so every class was guaranteed to level it up whether they wanted to or not. And rewarding people for jumping just encouraged silly behavior like bunnyhopping every where you go for easy skill points.

3) Better leveling system - Oblivion's leveling system was unbelievably counter-intuitive, if you wanted to get the maximum attribute bonuses you had to purposely avoid using your primary skills until you'd power leveled your secondary skills enough. It mad no sense and punished casual players who didn't plan out their every skill point increase to min-max their next level up.

4) Improved alchemy - giving the player every alchemy effect regardless of skill level but hiding them all initially makes experimenting with alchemy to discover new potions much more fun. And it's a lot more realistic to have to find a alchemy bench instead of lugging around 20 pounds of fragile glass equipment with you everywhere (it would be nice if the alchemy benches had different qualities and could be upgraded though). Splitting food and ingredients into separate item categories is also an improvement, it stops silly behavior like being able to make magical apple juice and bread smoothies restore fatigue potions out of apples and bread.

5) Time doesn't freeze when you talk to people! I cannot overstate how much this simple change improves immersion.

6) A more believable world - Skyrim actually has unique climates and culture and architecture. Sure it's mostly based off of real life Scandinavia with a dash of ancient Egypt, but it's much more interesting than Oblivion's cookie-cutter generic medieval high-fantasy world. What was up with that anyway? I thought Cyrodiil was supposed to be a jungle.

7) More crafting - Enchanting is back! And now you can smith! and cook too, though that's kind of shallow and pointless, but I'm sure modders will fix it.

8) Better level scaling - The monsters still level with you in Skyrim, but it's much more subtle and you'll actually find monsters much stronger and much weaker than you every now and then. Sure beats constantly being mugged for 100 gold by bandits wearing 10,000 gold worth of equipment in Oblivion. Only the dragons are obviously leveled to match you.

9) Better combat - Dual wielding is kind of meh but two-handed weapons are slower and beefier, bows are much stronger and more tactical now (no running backwards while rapid-firing arrows like in Oblivion) and there are actual differences between axes, maces and swords. Magic is also far deep with being able to dual wield spells, combine them and having tons spells with unique, different effects rather then the 3 basic spells types (on self, target and touch) with different numbers that Oblivion did.