I've played Skyrim since it arrived. I've had two characters, both over 50 levels, and have done all main quests, all guilds including most daedric and many city specific.
Explored all the caves and assets I could find- which is most.

I went back and played Oblivion for two days.

I believe Bethesda has dropped lengthy guild builds and character development because the modern player is annoyed by them. The writing in Skyrim is better than the previous Elder scrolls games- more earthy, more sophisticated, darker. The graphics are better, many technical complaints resolved. But Oblivion is a better all around game than Skyrim. So is Morrowind. In Skyrim one wanders through a garden or a Zoo and samples the various attractions and exhibits, and then moves on when sated or bored. A series of non connected or loosely connected attractions.

In Skyrim the player is a tourist in an Elder Scrolls landscape that is superior.

Right now the expanding market share means each new Elder Scrolls game will be the 'best'- selling more, getting more compliments. And yet, there was something dear and risky in what Bethesda attempted in Oblivion and Morrowind. Both those game were a more connected world, ambitious and daring. For all Oblivion complaints of downgraded content and silliness, the reality is Oblivion had warmth and guts. It tried experiments like the negotiation wheel and a more involved character interaction. In Skyrim you can't interact with most npcs. That's a good thing, many think, because Oblivion was flawed. OK- but to not even try- to drop it entirely? Without a involved character build, guild quest lines, and npc interaction, what is left is a remarkable Zoo. A Fallout with sworlds and magic.

We are tourists in a land we 'never made"

To top it off, by eliminating assets many enjoyed, like acrobatics and speed, (for PS3 and Xbox) and the toggle wheel of choices, Bethesda has stopped what once was it's trademark; to give everyone what they wanted. Bethesda was never stingy, like most game companies, with abilities and assets. No more. If you select light smithing you can't utilize heavy weapons- In Oblivion if you could swing it it was yours. There used to be race attributes- gone. We are now a smorgasboard. There are only two or three choices in character builds.

Assets more narrow and rigidly defined, character builds that are much less involved and lengthy with much less choice, and the elimination of deep quest line and guild builds.

Tourism. The modern game for the modern character.

The DLC's coming may or even WILL improve Skyrim, but they won't change the foundation which the company has decided is the future of gaming. Oblivion was a labor of love. Skyrim is formula for success. Yes, it's still Elder Scrolls. Yes, I bought it. No, I don't hate it. But I'm sorry for what is missing.

Maybe they'll get better next time- the Elder Scrolls is not done.

i would say that morrowind was the labor of love, probably daggerfall as well although i cant play that game. oblivion was the first step in consolizing the game. skyrim improved in some areas like graphics (although they still dont even come close to games release 3 years ago on PC) and combat and magic with the exception of spellmaking being removed. but it took majors steps backwards when they took out armor degredation altogether instead of fixing it and having all these smithing stations around it would have been a perfect recipe for making the character repair their gear at a smithing station just like you have to do alchemy and enchanting at their respective stations.

these games just keep getting simpler and simpler and its really annoying. instead of fixing previous issues they just up and get rid of them so they dont have to deal with them.

i disagree with the acrobabics and speed though. sprinting based on stamina is a much better forumula than the silly "look ma, i can run faster than a deer and jump over people" idiocy that was in oblivion.

i finished every quest i could find about 120 hours into the game including goof around time with a couple different characters. i have another 40 hours of trying out different classes and having fun spawning armies and watching them fight etc. but now im done and ironically ive gone back to fallout NV and the STALKER games. for some reason i NEVER get bored with those games.

While the individual guilds and questlines are by no means "deep" in Skyrim, its the overall experience of all the content put together into one massive world that makes the game deep enough to be enjoyed. I will admit that Skyrim has some shallow factions and questlines, but I feel that my overall experience with Skyrim has been very satisfactory. It has its problems, but so have past editions of the ES series.


Oblivion- I find it difficult to believe how some people can find Oblivion to be a deeper game than Skyrim. Oblivion featured one of the shallowest ,most generic fantasy worlds I'd ever seen. It was a large grass field with copy-pasted abandoned forts, ruins, and caves littering the landscape. The world looked as if nobody ever ventured outside of the county towns. It wasn't "bad", but after a few hours of exploring Oblivion's world there wasn't much else "new" to see. It was all more of the same. Very few unique land features, very few unique places to visit, and very little interaction with anything or anyone that wasn't in one of the main towns.


Morrowind- Classic for its time. Great game, but had its shallow aspects as well. copy-pasted towns and buildings (Vivec), generic NPCs that offered very little in the way of personal interaction. Most NPCs were stationary "gateways" to an single encyclopedia of game information. Quests were extended not through unique content but through the need to travel long distances or face a string of monotonous "busy" work where one was required to run all around the world talking or delivering to various NPCs without much in the way of off the road exploration or gameplay.

The game is MUCH, MUCH deeper than either Oblivion or Morrowind if your playstyle is to wander and explore, discover stuff.

The other two games don't hold a candle to the functioning world you wander through in Skyrim, wandering around and dungeon crawling in Oblivion and to some degree Morrowind is a total joke in comparison.

I agree that the quests are weak..but that is not what everyone plays for, and it does not make someone a 'console gamer' to enjoy that style of play, rogue-ish RPG's have been around a while!

I love how people spend 200 hours on a game, then come here and post essays about how disappointing it is, and how it signals the End Of Gaming As We Know It... what a bunch of weird, conflicted masochists you guys are.

While those burial mounds and ruins and whatnot might have some variety in layout, I'm still killing the same draugr/bandits/rouge mages, etc, over and over again. It all ends up feeling the same to me, so I can't complain about the lack of variety in Oblivion.

Skyrim's main quest, from what I've played before the quest broke, is a lot easier than the one in Oblivion. I'd rather fight an elder dragon than have to go into random Oblivion gates, especially the ones that have those lengthy caves that must be navigated just to get into the Oblivion tower.

I've been wanting to go back and play Oblivion since I've put over 300 hours into Skyrim but I don't see how I can. I would need to put in rules in order to not break the game and the way that some design choices for Oblivion were setup, I would need to game the system in order to have a great experience. Not to mention that Oblivion's dungeons are not that interesting at all in comparasion to Skyrim, Scaling is horrible in Oblivion, some of the guilds are a chore to finish, etc. Oblivion did have longer guild lines and more different choices within the game but the latter held it back and the former I can't argue against but the guilds with the exception of the Companions are better in Skyrim.

Oblivion is still a great game but Skyrim does so many things better.

I agree. The Skyrim guilds are more tied to the character and culture of the land, while some of the Oblivion ones were quite generic - the Mages and Fighters Guild especially.


You can tell Skyrim was hand-crafted. Much of Oblivion's landscape was created with random generation.
But the Shivering Isles expansion was great and clearly crafted mostly by hand.


Some of the Morrowind quests were just awful. One I remember in particular, one of the Daedric quests where you had to rebuild a statue. It involved several trips to Vivec (usually 20-30 minutes just spent navigating around that huge place each visit) and a stack of other towns just to fetch odd things. That was infuriatingly slow and dull.

Pretty good read, to each his own. Come visit the beautiful land of skyrim, tourist welcome.

What prevented Skyrim from becoming the most epic game ever made can be summed up ion one word: Consoles.

Elder Scrolls has never been about the "System" . It has always been about the experience. It's about creating a big open world, and letting you experience it how you want to. The methods of experiencing the world change with every game, but the focus has always been on living in the world. The things taken out or added to the game are done to adjust the experience. In a perfect world, you wouldn't have a character sheet, you wouldn't have a list of skills, or perks. You wouldn't need a mini game to un-lock a lock, or persuade someone. You'd just do it.

That's the thing about the Elder Scrolls series. It's never been about hardcoe role-playing. It was inspired by Ultima Underworld. Initially, it was going to be about Gladiatorial combat. The skill systems, the stats, the mini games, the interactive features, were all attempts at making an interface to experience the world. The game is not meant to be for hardcoe stat jockeys.

The game is about being there. It's a different philosophy, a different aproach to RPG's.

It seems Bethesda is becoming axe-happy, rather than taking the time to fix things. If they truly thought speed was a problem in past games, they could have just assigned a default speed for everyone, assign a race or two with a slightly higher starting speed, and have a perk or two that can raise it slightly. It's annoying trying to catch up to people running away.

That's just silly pc-elitism.

First of all, without consoles and the sales they counted on getting for Skyrim from them, they wouldn't have been able to justify the amount of time and money spent on developing this game. If this game was for PC only it would quite likely have better graphics (in a technical sense, not necessarily in an artistic sense) but far less actual content.

Just look at the sales chart for this game:
http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales-data/49112/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/

360 sales for Skyrim outpace the PC by almost 3 to 1. Even PS3 version sold more. Without consoles you'd be lucky to even be looking forward to TESVI.

I am an explorer in games by nature and Skyrim satisfies that need very well. Even if all the quests were dropped entirely, Skyrim is a worthwhile game just for the exploration aspect. The guilds... the quests... are lackluster. They are far too short and far too uninvolved to mean much. I became the Arch-Mage and then left never to return to the college. I wasn't the least bit compelled to remain. I felt no attachment. Same for every other guild.

I am a bit irked that they chose to remove magic as a thinking mans weapon. Instead just boiling down magic to whatever flashy effects they could spew forth.

With many of the cuts, there are no real differences between the races at all.

I have a very strong Love/Hate relationship with this game.

Oh, yes!
Lets just make it a PC exsclusive and get rid of more than 50% of the customers.
Lets face it, if it wasn't for consoles TES would have been long dead since Morrowind was released.

The best thing about this comment is that it has worked for any couple of consecutive TES games since Daggerfall.

Daggerfall fans said that Morrowind was dumbed down. Morrowind fans said that Oblivion was dumbed down. And now, Oblivion fans say that Skyrim was dumbed down. And I dare say that Skyrim fans will say the same about the next TES.

Personally, and I speak as a person who has extensively played and even modded oblivion, I find Skyrim miles better than its predecessor. To each their own I guess...

Skyrim is much better than Oblivion, it's almost impossible to say otherwise.

There are very few things that Oblivion did better. I can list them all here without having to write a novel:

1. The questlines were better designed and lengthier for the guilds, from a gameplay standpoint.

2. The pacing and amount of quests in general was much more balanced

3. The RPG mechanics were much much better implemented.

Everything else is pretty much worse. Writing, lore, world design, level design, art direction (or rather, lack of it), the feel of the action, the level of polish, etc.

There are some things that Skyrim never improved on from Oblivion though - leveled loot for instance is implemented poorly just like in Oblivion, except here it almost feels worse because there is much MORE usless [censored] thrown at you at every corner (as if Beth is afraid of players who get bored in 2 minutes getting bored), while Oblivion had only the occasional useless [censored] thrown at you in leveled dungions.

No they dont have to do that, not exclusive. I think what people are saying is the game would have been better had it been made on a pc, designed on it, to really run on it, the works then port it over to consoles after its been shined up on the pc.

I miss the longer guilds.

Yes, we would be lucky. Insanely lucky.

Having never played Morrowind I can't compare that game or the ones before it, but there is a lot to like about this game. However I agree with the personal(your character) RPG aspects of Skyrim falling short when compared to Oblivion and from the looks of it, the previous ones. The story that they are trying to tell in the guild quests are better in Skyrim, but seem to have more depth to what they are trying to do with the Oblivion ones.(if that makes any sense)

I'd also rather you be able to select some type of class to help identify your character, along with unique perks that go along with it(even if it's one of warrior, mage, rogue). When you have a set class(even one that you create yourself), there are inherent weaknesses that your chosen class has(generic mage lacking armor, warrior can't heal, etc) so you make choices that actually matter.

As for the console numbers, they are a bit inflated as many who have a PC that could probably run it(not ultra but medium-high) but chose the console for the ease of use. So you can't just take away ALL of those console sale numbers(but yes, sales would definately suffer). And like was mentioned, Oblivion was created on the PC and ported to the console but didn't seem to suffer any sales. Same would be for Skyrim.

I think the improvement in graphics and language- conversations mostly- have at first impression led many to believe this is a deep place. But I also have over 300 hours in, probably more like 400, and I'm bored.

Character development is everything in these games, and Bethesda has removed too much. Character development by pursuing interconnected quests and guild lines leads to involvement and fun. Shorten guild lines, and generalize the characters and you have a tremendous first impression game that does not wear as well as earlier games.

One poster thought the 'consoles' did the Elder Scrolls in- but the consoles had Oblivion and Morrowind, both more ambitious with character development.

I hate to say this because leveling was so hated by so many- but having to pay attention to how you were leveling up, as in Oblivion, made for involvement. Don't like the leveling problems? Fix them and keep the player involved in the game.

btw- some people dont' like jumping fantastic distances- some did not like Chameleon; Bethesda used to give people what they wanted. Now they are taking things away. The game is not better because of it.

A solution to the anti acrobatics/chameleon/high speed group would be to allow players to choose the perimeters at start of game and have those elements they wanted for the duration. But to chop them out?

Depth & breadth are worlds apart, and that is exactly what (I'm betting) the OP was about. Skyrim is a smorgasboard of delicacies that you can taste but never indulge in. It's all surface luster.

Thats it; it's very appealing, and one keeps looking, but does not find.

Bethesda decided the modern gamer wanted to be delighted and move on. He's viewing displays at the zoo. This is Fallout with swords. We are tourists.

This is a great game. Bethesda does not 'need' to make any other. They can repeat this and make money. There will be fans, more than before.

The difference between Skyrim and earlier Elder Scrolls games is how often I will play it, start a new character. I don't play Fallout very often. I've seen it, done that.

I'm still enjoying Skyrim and have put a ton'o hours into it but..... I can't say Skyrim is a better game than the previous TESs, but it is more "modern" with graphics. I have to say I miss more than I like when it comes to stuff that has changed.

Elder Dragons are no big deal. Now Ancient Dragons are almost impossible without an appropriate shout. They will not land and my 94 hit bow does almost nothing to them.

KIlled an invisible named Dragon the other day, Viinturuth was his name. Anyone done him? Is that right or a glitch on my part?