Oblivion + OOO and some other mods was great ... a lot better than Skyrim is now.
Just do yourself a favor and never even start the main-quest (by visiting Kvatch).

Oblivion is still a fantastic top of the tops chart buster experiance for me. Its just different but like Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena still a highly enjoyable experiance. Its definitely interesting to see the change in art styles with Arena/Daggerfall having a oil painting art style, Morrowind a fantasy magazine look, Oblivion a clay sculpted Davey And Goliath look and Skyrim a Heavy Metal Magazine look with plenty of Simon Bisley muscle and beauty.

Leveling up is tiresome and somewhat improved upon, depending on how you look at it. The level scaling is ridiculous, soon enough every bandit is running around with glorious and shiny armor. If you don't level up a certain way, all the enemies will become way stronger than you.

So basically, unlike most RPG's where you get stronger and can sometimes one-shot enemies you encountered earlier in the game, the enemies get STRONGER as YOU level up, and its almost like you're the one getting weaker and weaker compared to everyone else.


But on the other side, everything isn't perk based like it is in Skyrim. You're as strong as your skills and attributes are. In fact, you get perks as you level up rather than choosing them from a skill tree.

Oblivion is a fantastic game and fills in a lot of the backstory for the Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind was fantastic as well. If you want a more full picture of how Morrowind ties into Skyrim, you need to play or at least read the guide. Everyone else is utterly full of it when they state that Oblivion is dated and not worth your time. Stupid children.

I would at least play Morrowind first, if not Arena and Daggerfall, before playing Oblivion. Otherwise you won't know what you're missing/ What we've lost.

I actually cant wait to do this. It will be heavily modded when I get to it (I have 40 gigs of mods). I plan to spend 500+ hours in skyrim before playing oblivion again. So in like a year

ME3 n [censored] will be thrown in the middle though. I imagine it will piss me off at first, but eventually I will like it more again.

That video is the funniest thing ive seen in a long time!!!

I personally have kept oblivion and will play it again for nostalgia and after a break playing skyrim it will still be great in my opinion.

Same sort of game really.

I picked up Oblivion back in 2010 and was introduced to the modding scene within a week, so when you throw in stuff like OOO, OBGE, Unique Landscapes, Deadly Reflex and Aesgaard, my experience with that game tops vanilla Skyrim by a pretty long shot.

Either way, once the CK comes out, I'm hoping to see some quality mods out there that bring back and surpass what the Oblivion mods brought with them.

Other than the repetitive Oblivion Gates problem I feel that Oblivion is a fine game. People keep complaining about the poor graphics but, since I am a console gamer (360) I thought they were the best on the console at the time. Morrowwind graphics are really bad in my opinion. AGAIN these are not moded graphics. I will base all opinions on the unmodded game since that is the true game. The menu system was not as bad as people make it out to be in my opinion. Sure it was a bit clunky but so is Skyrims. You can kind of find inventory easier in Skyrim because its alphabetized but, you lack the ability to organize you inventory into easy to find groupings like Oblivion. As for Oblivion being easier I don't agree at all. The sliding difficulty tool you could use in Oblivion seemed to increase the skill higher than just the 5 levels you can set in Skyrim. Both Morrowind and Oblivion are well worth playing after Skyrim though. All the games have there faults however. Just remember that your playing out dated games and enjoy the exploring. TES games have huge worlds to explore and that is the true charm to these games...NOT the main quest....The best thing about playing Morrowind or Oblivion will be that you will be able to create your own spells. I wont go into details since there are a million posts on that subject but that is the BIGGEST down side to Skyrim.

Not just the graphics, the gameplay looks horrible too.

Deadly reflexes mod makes the combat gameplay extremely similar to Skyrims and includes decapitations, skull crushes, cutting people in two and a few other goodies. Its almost certainly where Beth got the idea for Fallout 3's finishers and the ones now in Skyrim.

You know I have Oblivion right here on this system. All this talk of it is making we want to fire it up again, but I keep remembering how bad the loading issues were with it and its habit of stuttering badly when transitioning cells which killed immersion.

I think I might in a day or two just do that though. Fire it up and start anew with the best 30-40 mods I can find.

You must no be looking hard enough... the difference in the races is very apparent, obviously more so in the elven races.

Ah, Morrowind. I remember you well. I played you the first time with Tribunal loaded. I remember not being able to set foot inside Vivec without every single guard chasing me because I'd found this nice suit of medium armor somewhere that just happened to look exactly like the guards. And they never forgot. What a way to level up. Run out of town, hop on the silt strider to Balmora, then make the mad dash to the thieves guild. Then I discovered Daedric Armor. Then I got Bloodmoon and the Daedric Armor got ripped to shreds.

1 bit of advice:

When playing an older Elder Scrolls game, don't expect something familiar. If you go into morrowind or oblivion expecting a Skyrim, you'll hate it.
Each game is different from one another, is all I'm saying. If you embrace that fact, you'll enjoy yourself.

I didn't really enjoy Oblivion unmodded. With mods it became one of my all time favorites. Hard to explain that but there are some truely spectacular mods for Oblivion. And I don't mean ones that allow you to cheat and be overpowered. There are so many good ones I had a hard time picking the ones I wanted to run all the time since there was limited space for them. And the magic in Oblivion was way more fun even though I would miss the two handed casting. But I truely felt powerful by the end of my time in Oblivion. My spells in Skyrim make me feel like I'm trying to kill the enemies with sparklers.

This is absolutely true

everything looks so washed out and cartoony the world feels and looks completly unnatural and unbelievable the gameplay is clunky and everyone looks like creepy rubber dolls. and lets not forget the scaling. and the lack of the precious combat mechanic known as the shield bash.

..rofl, there is no way you are being serious right now as that statement is just ludicrous.

@OP if you can get immersed in a game with weaker combat elements, inferior graphics but lore that is just as excellent as Skyrim's give it a shot. Morrowind/Oblivion both have great lore/story, though I prefer Morrowind's quite a bit more.

If weaker combat and inferior graphics are a game-changer, then you might as well skip Morrowind/Oblivion.


Lol. I know that guy is nuts.

Last I checked, finishing moves only make up ~1% of Skyrim's combat. I feel that this statement is highly inaccurate as there's no way in hell that Deadly Reflexes makes the combat "extremely similar" to Skyrim's combat. They both have finishers. That's where the similarities end. The end.

Oblivion itself. Old, cliched. I did stop playing Skyrim to finish the main quest in Nehrim a few weeks after it Skyrim came out though, which really left me thinking 'wow, bethesda really lags behind when it comes to making quests'.

http://images.uesp.net/f/f6/SR-npc-Cedran.jpg

http://images.uesp.net/5/59/SR-npc-Captain_Wayfinder.jpg

Both nords. They look completely different.

http://images.uesp.net/3/39/OB-npc-Tolgan.jpg

http://images.uesp.net/f/ff/OB-npc-Hafid_Hollowleg.jpg

Again, both nords. Yet they look very similar, and have the same voice.

The diversity in Skyrim is a obviously good thing, but it does mean races are more difficult to distinguish than in Oblivion. That's just common sense.

You can actually tell the difference between an Nord, Imperial, and Breton in Skyrim? I seriously can't; they all look the same to me. In Oblivion, I could tell instantly who was a Nord without having to check height differences.

Skyrim's better, but really revamp Morrowind's graphic and magic system, and it would (to my opinion) would be the better game, but that's probably just nostalgia talkin'

nah, a halo-like revamp of morrowind would, imo, not only be unbelievably great, but, rake in the cash, as well.

i think the point that you could easily distinguish the races in oblivion is correct because the graphics were so poor when compared to skyrim's.