Oblivion > Skyrim

[UKFox]

Before Skyrim came out, there was nobody more excited than me for what I thought would be the best game ever made. And when it arrived a day early I absolutely exploded with happiness. But having played it for a few months I came to realise I was getting very bored. And then sold it to a friend. Admittedly the game does have some good points like some brilliant Daedra quests and new features but I much preffered Oblivion.

1) Music. The Oblivion soundtrack is f***ing brilliant. Whether walking round a town or the hills of the Shivering Isles, the music was always 5 stars. One of my favourite gaming moments has to be coming out the sewers for the first time with Auriel's Ascension playing. Tremendous.

2) Landscape. Skyrim is a dull place overall. In Oblivion you had the mountains to the north and east, the long river in the center, forests everywhere and some lower hills. Admittedly some may prefer Skyrim's more rugged world and see Cyrodill as to generic but Skyrim is just mountain after mountain after mountain with little variety. I liked the Rift and the area to the south of the Throat of the World but hated the ice fields of the north and the DAMN MOUNTAIN IN MY WAY EVERY 5 SECONDS.

3) Bugs. I had Skyrim on PS3 so like many others fell victim to same lag which made the game unplayable once I reached level 25 or so. The game is totally broken as you progress and releasing it knowing it existed was disgusting and not 1 of the patches I downloaded fixed it.

4) Dragons. Very annoying and way to easy to kill. At least the Oblivion gates didn't follow you around.

5) Quests. Other than the DB, every quest line sucked. All of them are WAY to short and every single quest in the entire game was a fetch quest. Also in some guilds you don't do anything even relevant, for the College of Winterhold all you do is dick about in caves at least in Oblivion you dealt with the mage's affairs. Plus the Bards College is the worst excuse for a guild in history.

6) Impact on the world. In Oblivion, once you finish the main quest small touches are added to make it seem like you did something. You get a new suit of armour, the dragon statue in the Temple, people comment on your success,etc. In Skyrim nobody seems to give a damn that you saved the world or stopped the civil war WHICH EVERYONE IS ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT. Even when it's done no-one notices.

7) Look up Shamus Young's article on the Thieves Guild and enjoy. <This.

Oblivion has more Sheogorath.

Feel free to correct or challenge anything I may have forgotten.

Molag Bal's voice is the best thing in Skyrim.

[OblivionDuruza]

Molag Bal's voice is the best thing in Skyrim.

Without going too deeply into the can of worms this topic can surely become. I have to say, the voice acting for the Daedra, particularly Molag Bal, in Skyrim, is amazing. I honestly was quite impressed upon partaking in Molag Bal's quest for the first time. That laugh at the very end is priceless.

Christopher Smith is a genius of the field of voice acting. Also Andrew Morris for the voice of Cicero. Oh and now I think about it, Clavicus Vile's voice is pretty Daedra and rather noteworthy as well, kudos to Stephen Russell.

Spoiler:

Edit summary: typo fix

[DarkEastwood]

Yeah I'm going to have to disagree about the Landscape, Impact on the World, and view of Dragons. I thought Dragons were awesome, I loved how each Jarl get's replaced and all the soldiers pretty much disappear from existence other tyan camps, and I thought Landscape was a whole lot better espexially in terms of explorations. In Oblivion EVERY CAVE WAS THE SAME. So hardly any surprises when you stmble upon a new location. This is why I no longer fast travel in Skyrim, because it's beautiful and exciting.

[Trelares]

Yes Skyrim has not as much climate zones as Oblivion, but all are much better done. If you think of the reach or the rift this zones are amazing, as cowbell said already almost every dungeon feels unique this time.
And I like the fact that not everybody knows that you are the uber hero, I like the "secret" hero status. There are some people who know of your feats but not everyone, it is good as it is.
For dragons, depending on the difficulty and the style you play the game they can become quite challenging, the only thing that I miss are really different dragons all are allmost the same.
The guilds could have been better/longer, maybe even conflicts between guilds like morrowind.


But everyone can have his own opinon on the game, if you don't like it go back and play oblivion.

[UKFox]

But everyone can have his own opinon on the game, if you don't like it go back and play oblivion.

Traded it in when I got Skyrim

[OblivionDuruza]

I have to agree with Trelares and cowbell on the landscape comments. If you look at it, Skyrim has snowy mountains, pine forest lowlands (Falkreath Hold), rugged glacial coastlines (Winterhold Hold and The Pale), volcanic terrain (Eastmarch), marshes (Hjaalmarch), foothills (Solitude), craggy mountains and valleys (The Reach), rolling plains and tundra (Whiterun Hold) and deciduous fall forests (The Rift). There may not be desserts or jungles or lush ever-green forests, but there is still a lot of variety.

[X086573]

I can't understand where you're coming from. I know, it's your opinion and i respect your opinion, but i couldn't disagree more.

The combat is still fun and invigorating, the dragons still present a challenge (especially while playing w/ the HUD off) and the music is still beautiful and peaceful, but lacks the repitition and drag of Oblivion's soundtrack (although, I play w/ the music off, too). The quests are still fun, i never run out of things to do, the game itself is utterly GORGEOUS, and the variey of things to do outside of the general "guidelines", so to speak, makes Skyrim the best game I've played in years, and might be the greatest game I've ever played, despite it's flaws (which I hardly ever experience).

My opinion, but I'm honestly just ranting, i know that this^ isn't changing anyone's minds. If you don't like it, you're free to not like it.

This is coming from someone who's spent, at minimum, 500 hours playing it, and still LOVING it.

[Drethen]

Oblivion was a great game I spent hundreds of hours in. There are certainly a few things about Oblivion I prefer (also things about Morrowind I prefer), although at this point in time I would much rather play Skyrim.

Interestingly not the things you mention though.. for me the world/landscape of Skyrim is one of the games strongest points. I also really like Skyrim's soundtrack.

One thing I'd say about Oblivion, each city had its mages guild/fighters guild.. it just made it feel like more was going on and more reason to visit/be in certain towns. For example, I can't remember the last time I actually spent a while in Falkreath - doesn't seem an obvious reason to go there. Infact thats the next thing I'm going to do, try to do the quest lines related to the slightly smaller places like Morthal (I've done Dawnstar, love that place).

A part of me agrees on Dragons though. Whats frustrating is when they just fly around and don't engage you. I tend to ignore them unless they land next to me.

[X086573]

Well, i just go places i want to go, so i don't really need a reason to go somewhere, i just go. Plus, falkreath has a daedric quest and a few minor sidequests, plus becoming thane of that hold, if you care about it.

The same can be said about all nine holds and their corresponding cities.

And the cities are much better than Oblivion. It's walled cities look like Skyrim's unwalled cities. And while the unwalled cities aren't exactly springing to life, it's understandable. Their unwalled. The range of creativity is limited due to constraints in hardware.

There is ONE thing i'm disappointed about with Skyrim: Not enough Khajiit and Argonian civilians.

[Drethen]

And while the unwalled cities aren't exactly springing to life, it's understandable. Their unwalled. The range of creativity is limited due to constraints in hardware.

Thats right - I think the real hardware 'constraint' was that the game was developed for xbox 360. Would have been nice if it was developed for modern PC, but thats not their market anymore.

I do like the cities (or villages rather, even the biggest towns are small) of Skyrim, but for some reason it took me a while to fall in love. They are more detailed, both visually and in the hand crafted NPCs routines, but for some reason my initial reaction was that they weren't as alive as Oblivions. Some places have a vendor, an Inn and a jarl.. its quite underwhelming. I remember when I first started playing and was looking in towns for the Mages guild.. only to be dissapointed to find out there is only one location. (then I found out the entire quest line can be done in a few short hours).

[X086573]

Well, i'm glad Bethesda's in charge. I'm a 360 user, i'm glad they're looking out for me. I prefer 360 over PC, with the exception of modding, so be happy about that.

The unwalled cities are underwhelming, but Skyrim is more "backwoodsy" than Cyrodil. You'd imagine there would be less of a population. Plus with the war and dragons, i doubt any logical person would want to love in an unwalled city anyway.

But i love the closed off cities. Very detailed, very big. Very "lived in". Windhelm feels like the city's alive, what with the controversy and all.

[Gideon Dragontongue]

No offense, but I can honestly say I disagree with every item on that list, with the exception of the questlines. All of the main guild questlines were simply not long enough.

You see how I don't list Oblivion as an ES game I played? That's because I hated it. Morrowind was an awesome game, and Oblivion lost most of what made Morrowind great. Skyrim fixed many of the these issues, but not all, and developed a few new ones of its own.

[OblivionDuruza]

And while the unwalled cities aren't exactly springing to life, it's understandable. Their unwalled. The range of creativity is limited due to constraints in hardware.

Thats right - I think the real hardware 'constraint' was that the game was developed for xbox 360. Would have been nice if it was developed for modern PC, but thats not their market anymore.

True, as Mods like Open Cities for both Oblivion and now Skyrim seem to prove. Open, unwalled cities are possible for the PC in both games.

[Trelares]

Atleast in Oblivion walled cities had the bonus that no animals or other enemies can "invade" cities, in Skyrim this isn't really a big boni because dragons can attack indoor cities aswell. You shouldn't also underestimate the benefit that with big cities in seperate cells the game is playable with weaker hardware which is also often the aim of companies to target a wider range of consuments.

[Evil-i]

To be fair to Skyrim, it's a new game and hasn't had the time to build up a warm and fuzzy nostalgia cachet around itself yet. I'm sure when Oblivion was only a few months old there was plenty of criticism about it, about how it wasn't as good as Morrowind. Actually, that still gets said often enough today.

[HonningbrewMAX]

The soundtrack , cities and separate clothes and armour were better in Oblivion , over-all I prefer Skyrim.

[Frost Mage]

Prepare to be flamed by hundreds of people who have reached enlightenment.

[SpikeSpeigel]

In some ways i prefered to be in the oblivion gates surrounded by Daedra and looking to fight my way out as opposed to fighting dragons. But its apples and oranges.
Each of these ES games has a different core personality.
I dont really think that they are as easy to compare to each other for "improvements" as series like Halo.
That being said... I cant stop playing Skyrim to get to the other games on my shelf!

[OblivionDuruza]

Each of these ES games has a different core personality.

This. Morrowind is a far different game to Oblivion which is a far different game to Skyrim, and then you've also got Daggerfall and Arena to consider too.

Atleast in Oblivion walled cities had the bonus that no animals or other enemies can "invade" cities, in Skyrim this isn't really a big boni because dragons can attack indoor cities aswell. You shouldn't also underestimate the benefit that with big cities in seperate cells the game is playable with weaker hardware which is also often the aim of companies to target a wider range of consuments.

I quite agree. I recently had my first Dragon-in-city fight, and the damn thing wouldn't land, it was rather annoying actually, and much lengthier than a normal Dragon fight as a result . Plus, there's no real risk of damage being done by the Dragon, with many NPCs essential and no houses or buildings being capable of being destroyed. Kinda detracts from the point of defending a city form a Dragon a little, IMO.

[CreeperX]

Giving my opinions. Bear in mind that they are OPINIONS so I'm not saying you're wrong or anything.

1) Music. The Oblivion soundtrack is f***ing brilliant. Whether walking round a town or the hills of the Shivering Isles, the music was always 5 stars. One of my favourite gaming moments has to be coming out the sewers for the first time with Auriel's Ascension playing. Tremendous.

I personally prefer Skyrim's music. While Oblivion music was indeed good, I grew bored and annoyed of it rather soon and ended up downloading new music packs. I like Skyrim's music because it's somewhat... well, how would I explain this... it stays in the backround and doesn't act as a "distraction". IMO it fits so well with the world that you sometimes don't even notice it and thus the music hasn't started to annoy me. It has also to do with the fact that in Oblivion the battle music for example would play with EVERY enemy. Not the case in Skyrim.
Then there's the Dragon battle music which is brilliant and feels epic. It makes a nice contrast to the other music in game.

2) Landscape. Skyrim is a dull place overall. In Oblivion you had the mountains to the north and east, the long river in the center, forests everywhere and some lower hills. Admittedly some may prefer Skyrim's more rugged world and see Cyrodill as to generic but Skyrim is just mountain after mountain after mountain with little variety. I liked the Rift and the area to the south of the Throat of the World but hated the ice fields of the north and the DAMN MOUNTAIN IN MY WAY EVERY 5 SECONDS.

Disagreed. IMO the outside world isn't anymore dull that in Oblivion. They just have a different type of scenery because of the different climates. It comes down to personal preference which one the player likes more. The "in ur way lol" -mountains tend to get annoying though.
However, more importantly: Skyrim's dungeon's, caves and such have WAY more variety than in Oblivion. This time they actually look unique. I for example love it how in the north they are all icy and in south more traditional.

3) Bugs. I had Skyrim on PS3 so like many others fell victim to same lag which made the game unplayable once I reached level 25 or so. The game is totally broken as you progress and releasing it knowing it existed was disgusting and not 1 of the patches I downloaded fixed it.

I'm on PC and have had very few problems with both games so I don't really have an opinion of this.

4) Dragons. Very annoying and way to easy to kill. At least the Oblivion gates didn't follow you around.

I personally LOVE the dragon fights. True, they are rather easy but the atmosphere is great and the suddenness of the encounters keep them interesting. Each fight can be different depending of the type of the Dragon and the place they decide to attack.
Oblivion gates were fun at first but then they just grew tedious and annoying.

5) Quests. Other than the DB, every quest line sucked. All of them are WAY to short and every single quest in the entire game was a fetch quest. Also in some guilds you don't do anything even relevant, for the College of Winterhold all you do is dick about in caves at least in Oblivion you dealt with the mage's affairs. Plus the Bards College is the worst excuse for a guild in history.

I actually agree though I wouldn't say they sucked and there's some great quests as well. However, the guilds especially would do with some major improvements. Thieves Guild was my personal favorite but in general they all felt too short and weren't as engaging as in Oblivion. There wasn't proper build up and the like since I often didn't even feel like I was part of an organization. Not to mention the reward when you complete the guild. I pretty much never felt like I earned the position of the guildmaster.
Oblivion's guilds weren't perfect either and had some same problems but I still enjoyed them more.

6) Impact on the world. In Oblivion, once you finish the main quest small touches are added to make it seem like you did something. You get a new suit of armour, the dragon statue in the Temple, people comment on your success,etc. In Skyrim nobody seems to give a damn that you saved the world or stopped the civil war WHICH EVERYONE IS ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT. Even when it's done no-one notices.

Agreed. This was one thing I was expecting them to improve over but was disappointed with the results. It mostly feels like there's no consequences because of your actions. Not that this was done perfectly in Oblivion either but I at least thought that this would be improved which it really wasn't. It rather feels like they took a step back. The lack of disposition and reputation in Skyrim is a letdown. I had hoped that the NPCs would be more aware and react to different things (one would think a full daedric armor and a criminal record would get a reaction) and that you could make friends/enemies.
However, in Oblivion it sometimes felt too much like everything revolved around you. I like it that Skyrim has some things going on where nobody cares about your opinion. While I would like some things to have more consequences, I think it's more realistic that not everyone knows you. They really should try to achieve some sort of balance with this. Like... you could be more well known in cities where you have a house etc.


I personally prefer Skyrim over Oblivion. True, there are things that were actually done worse this time and Oblivion has its' own kind of magic (which ensures I'll still play it) but in general I give my vote to Skyrim.
The most important reason? They got rid of the retarded leveling system of Oblivion! This time around you can encounter enemies who one-shot kill you, this time you can actually feel your character grow stronger. Gives a really great feeling when you first get your butt handed to you by a Dungeon boss but later come back and sweep the floor with him. That I LIKE! The world feels more dangerous and realistic this time. I never fled from an enemy in Oblivion. In Skyrim I have.

[Mattbott]

i don't think it's fair to judge Skyrim against Oblivion until we've all had the same amount of time playing TESV and it's DLC as we had playing Oblivion, which would put us into 2016/2017

on a side note, i've noticed a lot more 'i love Oblivion' threads popping up now Skyrim is out, as has been mentioned above, there was little love for Ob when we were comparing it to Mw

we are so fickle, it is not funny

to remind you, we hated oblivion cos the graphics were too chocolate boxy, it was a dumbed down shadow of the flawless glory that is morrowind, fast travel forced us to teleport everywhere and almost every quest had a green arrow pointing you on the to the next task, at high level all bandits had glass/daedric armour but you still could only sell a few hundreds' worth of loot in the shops, quests were broken, many of us suffered nervous breakdowns trying to efficiently level, many others had nervous breakdowns fighting against the harsh levelling system which made the game too easy or too difficult, and the adoring fan

to name a few

[CreeperX]

^

Indeed. The way the fans work is funny.
This reminds me of Prince of Persia series. When the second game came out, people complained how it was too dark, how Prince sounded like a smoker, how the rock music didn't fit and yadda yadda.
The third game went back into its' roots and then suddenly the fans thought the second game was the best thing since sliced bread. Now it was too family-friendly, prince sounded like a whiny teenager and the music sucked.
Funny.

Though I too personally thought PoP3 was a disappointment but that was for entirely different reasons than mentioned here =P

[Gideon Dragontongue]

I think that's why in a few years, we'll have all calmed down and admit how much we frankly love Skyrim, especially because by then we'll have all of our delicious DLC and a complete set of patches.

[OblivionDuruza]

i don't think it's fair to judge Skyrim against Oblivion until we've all had the same amount of time playing TESV and it's DLC as we had playing Oblivion, which would put us into 2016/2017

on a side note, i've noticed a lot more 'i love Oblivion' threads popping up now Skyrim is out, as has been mentioned above, there was little love for Ob when we were comparing it to Mw

we are so fickle, it is not funny

This is the crux of the issue in a nutshell. So very true, we are a fickle bunch of fans, and very hard to please.

[MathiasFlynnias]

Actually leveling up. That is what I like best about Oblivion. How only select skills would level you up and you would have to sleep to do so. I much preferred that. I don't want to pick locks or pickpocket and level up if I am a warrior, in fact, I try my best to stay below Lvl. 10 as long as possible, but I never succeed.

And then if I just don't level up when I come to leveling up it forces me to do about 15 all at once. Which is why I preferred sleeping to level (and it was good for role play and awesome messages).

But don't get me wrong, I am loving the perks.