Basically, I got a release Xbox 360 and Oblivion back in '06. Being in grad school at the time, I didn't have a ton of video gaming time. I probably played about 15 hours of Oblivion before setting it aside. Haven't touched it since mid-'06.

Well, i bought Skyrim at release, and have played about 140 hours of it so far, and can't believe that I had given up on Oblivion so quick. So Im picking Oblivion back up tonight. What can I expect? What are some of the major differences between the games that I should look for. Is anything going to be vastly different, or can I expect a similar play, just with lesser graphics and a different story?

I should also note, I remember almost nothing about Oblivion, so it will be a pretty fresh replay.

The graphics will REALLY stand out as being inferior. I had always thought Oblivion was really great graphically, and played it for many hours. Got Skyrim and played it for a week. Then my brother came into town and I showed Skyrim to him, then for comparison showed him Oblivion - and I was stunned at how primitive it looked. The area around Bruma looked like it was half-finished graphically, and the valley around Lake Rumare had ridiculously vivid colors. I mean, the sky was so blue and the grass so green I thought I had stepped through a portal into the world of Super Mario Brothers or something.

I honestly thought Oblivion was too...Complex? Personally I couldnt really get into it, it was cool and all, but I just never really got into it. Shivering Isles was pretty awesome I thought though, That part I got into and finished. I never even beat Oblivions MQ.

The only bad thing about oblivion in my opinion was the scaled leveling which honestly didnt bother me too much when I played it but the quest's and story were way more enjoyable than skyrims in my opinion, as for your question both games have different leveling systems and skyrims gameplay does play better than oblivion.

I had to make a excel spreadsheet to level my character efficiently. The leveling system is much more complex than Skyrim.

Translation: the leveling system is horrible, and designed to be gamed and calculated. That's Oblivion's big flaw: the character system seems designed for you to play the game system, rather than just doing the things you want to do, and playing the game.

Haha wow really? Any quick tips, or should I just dive in?

Don't compare the two, see Oblivion as it's own game, the same as Skyrim.

Oblivion has bad graphics compared to Skyrim.

Oblivion has probably the worst level scaling system ever conceived.

Oblivions copy and pasted world is underwhelming.

Oblivion has a much better magic system with more effects and spell creation.

Oblivion has far less bugs than Skyrim.

I prefer Oblivion over Skyrim for the magic system and its not as buggy.

http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling

So you can understand it better.

Really? Less bugs? Ive seen 1 major bug in my Skyrim, Esbern was broken and wouldnt talk, thats it. Then again...I did buy a BETHESDA game for PC, Shocking right? (That was sarcastic if you couldnt tell)

Honestly I jumped in oblivion without understanding the leveling system and my chars ended up just fine.

I thought mine did too, I had some decent gear, and a huge hammer, Until a Dremora put me in my place

Tbh I did get owned a few times by scamps during the kvatch siege but i was at a really low level lol

I love Oblivion's enviornment. It's so intensely beautiful instead of Skyrim's realistic approach. Yes, play the crap out of Oblivion. BUT, you HAVE to do Shivering Isles expansion. Shivering Isles > Oblivion

Well I did that because I wanted a PERFECT character....as in a god

You don't have to be that meticulous about your leveling to have fun though.

My advice is, make the skills you use the MOST minor skills, and make skills that you hardly use major ones. That way you can control your leveling

Something else to remember: Skyrim is still a fresh new game. It isn't "finished" yet.

Oblivion is a complete game with a sense of warmth and humanlike qualities that I fell in love with.

I guess I am in the minority that actually liked that >_<

After just starting...its a shocking contrast in how far graphics have come. I'm not saying Oblivion is bad. They were awesome for 2006. In my memory though, the two games were very close to similar in graphics. That isn't the case at all.

Yeah it is. Now Oblivion with Skyrim Graphics? that would be awesome.

Imagine Shivering Isles in the new graphics O_O

Well, the difference are huge. I personally prefer Oblivion over Skyrim. But all in all, I think they are equal, here's why I think this (all my opinion of course):

Both have short uninspiring main story lines
Both have clunky combat, though Morrowind was the worst looking, Skyrim just added finishing move animations, which are cool, I like them.


Here's where Skyrim does better:

Graphics, better looking more realistic world and nice aesthetics.
Better and more varied underground layouts.
Better dialogue and voice acting.
Better overall story, though too short.
Better combat mechanics (though still similar to Oblivion)

Here's where Oblivion does better:

Better magic system and it has spellmaking.
Better UI, and it looks the part with the lore and style.
More varied creatures that change as you progress with levels.
More NPCs
Being held to being evil or good.
Better music by far. Don't get me wrong Skyrim's score is great, it is that there are too few tracks and most if the music sounds too similar.
No easy and fast leveling up all and any skill you please without having to play thousands of hours. Skyrim makes leveling all skills too easy and fast.
Caves, ruins, etc regenerate enemies after clearing them.
Playing different styles and classes is more balanced.

Having listed the difference in favor of Oblvion, I still think Skyrim is on par because of the good dialogue and better mehcanics

Yes really less bugs.

My Skyrim bugs.

1. Enemies do not respawn in front of dungeons ever.

2. Alchemy ingredients do not respawn threw out the game world I will walk and some ingredients have respawned while others have not. Then there is clusters of non regrown plants around.

3. Ash piles litter the ground everywhere, I know 1.4 is supposed to address this issue, I have my fingers crossed for that.

4. Weapons and arrows litter the ground never to clean up unless I track them down which is what I am doing mind you.

5. There is a save file glitch that if my save files trail off the screen they disappear and if I delete some of the extra files sometimes they reappear. Also if I try to overwrite one file sometimes it overwrites another file.

6. The exploding item bug is just irritating and makes it borderline impossible to decorate your house.

7. I cannot even begin Blood on the Ice, and numerous quest bugs abound in this game.

In Oblivion I ran into two annoying bugs.

1. Weapons fell the ground rarely after an enemy dropped them.

2. Not all weapons and armor would properly display when stored in a container.

The whole system argument you play on for whatever reason is irrelevant and childish, to try to start argument about I never get involved with those you see. I play on 360 for now but plan to get ne a monster rig that will eat Skyrim and its mods for dinner.

The guilds are far better in oblivion and so are most the quests.

Which doesn't always mean "better". Oblivion's leveling system was the same as Morrowind's for example, but totally messed up in comparison. Basically, you either had to micromanage every level, up to level 50 which killed all the immersion attempts, or you had to play on low difficulty cause casual players would get overrun by a wolf once they would reach a decently high level, because they didn't get all 3x5/2x5+luck bonuses to attributes. Having to shoot a wolf 20 times with an arow is not fun. Also the fact that once you've leveled above certain treshold every [censored] hill billy wears a full arsenal of daedric equipment, be it a count, or a poor bandit in the wildlerness that makes money by shaking down 20 gold pieces from a traveler fearing for his life in the process killed all the immersion that might have left after micromanaging. I'm not even going to get into being punished for doing a quest too early in level by getting an armor that was supposed to have an armor rating of say 100, but you didn't do it before reaching levrl 40 so you're stuck with a piece of crap with an armor rating of 30, or having a blade that does 10 damage but after grinding a bit magically increases to 50.

Not to get the wrong idea, I'm not hating on the game. I've spent quite some time with good 4-5 characters over level 70-100+, it's just how I feel about this part of the game.

(well ok, I'm lying, I also found it lame that each character can join every single guild in a single playthrough, MQ story was totally lame and uncreative, as well as unrewarding, I mean we do all the hard work, Martin basically just reads comics in his hidden castle, but he does all the speeches and rarely, if at all, credits us for killing half of oblivion plane, lack of at least a voice actor per race, instead we got stuck with one guy doing ALL elves, one guy doing nords, orcs, argonians and khajiits [which I wouldn't mind if it wouldn't be so painfully obvious that it's the same guy] and so on. I was also more irritated than not by graphics that made Cyrodiil looking like legoland for me, and I was expecting to see 7 dwarves, snow white and a unicorn [which eventually lead to a 2 minute facepalm after I actually found one]).

I loved the combat system, and I really really loved some of the awesomely written quests (one of the example of a quest that I loved teh concept of was the quest of infiltration into the blackwood company, where you had to drink a potion to fortify your "combat skills" and wipe out a village of goblins). Out of those two however, Oblivion has nothing on Skyrim combat-wise.


This is, of course, all just an opinion so I hope no one will get his ears up in madness.