I really can't stand Oblivion, it stands as once of the worst gaming experiences I ever had, the broken leveling system, the recycled environments, the scaled enemies, weapons that degraded so quickly I went unarmed, etc. It was bad enough that I almost didn't buy Skyrim and wouldn't have if the leveling system and level scaling hadn't been reworked.

I like Skyrim (though I have to say, I think the Witcher 2 and Arkham City were better games this year), the graphics are about as good as you'll see from a console port, the land has been well fleshed out and the writting is better than previous entries (though there is still room for improvement). There are still some things I don't like (combat still feels clunky, I prefer the leveling system in Fallout to the Elder Scrolls model, crafting is more powerful than it should be to the point of making found items useless and destruction magic doesn't scale well with difficulty level), but the game is such an improvement over Oblivion it's hard to consider the games part of the same series.

The writing is no where better than in previous games. In fact, its taken a huge leap back in maturity, and sophistication. Go read in game books from Daggerfall and Morrowind, now Skyrim exclusive books. Its like night and day.

As for the 'appetizer sampler' that you talk about, I agree. Its like they made the game for the newbs, casuals, unreceptive, and dabblers. Not a fan of that.

agreed but I don't see this depth in Oblivion either to be honest, and of the Two, Skyrim wins out everytime, I'm talking Vanilla versions now, since my Skyrim apart from some tweaks and self edits is still "vanilla" so in my eyes Vanilla Skyrim > Vanilla Oblivion.

Now to be fair I don't feel like that is true as a whole. There is a lot of depth with how the game is presented artistically and lore wise for example. However a lot of how they implemented some of the cool new gameplay features and RPG mechanics does hold true to that statement - there's a ton of things thrown at you that look cool and are cool to use at first, but theres no real depth to it beyond that.

I'm not a huge in-game book reader, but one that did stand out to me was "Immortal Blood" - a very very well written and cool in-game novel. I'm pretty sure Skyrim had it first.

I love Immortal Blood, but that one goes back at least to Oblivion. It's the first book you find, if you run to Vilverin (the dungeon across the water from the sewer exit).

I don't think thats what he meant by it, he probably meant more so technology wise since if the consoles were up to pc standards in the amount of content they can handle skyrim could have been 100000000000x better.