Right, so. I have indeed played the crap out of Oblivion. I was psyched out of my mind that my favourite game ever got a sequel, that it would be playable on a platform that wouldn't crash on me every 3 hours and that it was actually playable on said platform (Tried Morrowind on Xbox once, it was terrible). However I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my disappointment in the game, and how I still feel like I'd be playing a lot more Morrowind if I had the PC for it (which, by the way, should be arriving this week; joy
).
Starting off I noticed that there were a lot less skills to choose from. I couldn't use any more spears, enchantment became a Mages' Guild only thing so playing a rogue mage and getting your gear boosted was out of the question (apart from sigil stones, but those limit your options). Axes were blunt weapons all of a sudden, two entire armour classes disappeared, and there was no more distinction between short and long blades (this last change does speak to logic from a weapon type point of view, but for realism's sake one could argue if wielding a dagger requires the same know-how as wielding a claymore).
After having gone through the skill cut I found out there were no more darts or throwing stars, levitation, Mark and Recall -my three favourite spells- disappeared in lieu of a fast travel system, and for some reason staves apparently became weightless because you couldn't hit someone over the head with them anymore (I'm not saying staves were particularly useful, but I kind of liked them seeing as I liked to imagine my mage could still pack a punch with a weapon that also fires bolts of lightning.
Now the staff thing is just me being a whiny dick because Bethesda took something away that I may or may not have wanted to use, like a kid who cries after his parents throw out a torn up stuffed animal he hasn't played with for over 3 years, but I'll tell you what the rest of those cuts did to my experience of Oblivion. For one, taking away Mark and Recall, the ability to travel by ship or silt strider (I assume that would be swapped with a horse and carriage in Cyrodiil) and replacing those things with fast travel made the world significantly smaller to me. Mark, Recall and the transport modes provided extensive yet limited transport, taking you to the vicinity of where you needed to be or to one single exact place you wanted to go back to, and that was it. Allowing players to practically every location (given you've been there before, fair enough) does kind of make it easy to have been there and done that a lot faster. It wasn't all bad of course. I used the fast traveling system myself because it made sure I didn't need to run halfway across the country just to get where I wanted to be right then and there. It's just a shame that it had to have such a drawback.
Cutting levitation was also one of my bigger annoyances. I used that spell as a mage to get away from creatures that would otherwise swarm me, so they couldn't touch me and I could heal and blast fireballs into their face while they just stood there helpless. It was a great advantage for mages since they're athletically and physically compromised, and it was a shame to see it go.
I could go on, but I noticed there's already a wall of text up there and if I'd continue on this path I would just end up nit-picking about stuff that's not too important. Just to wrap it up with a nice little bow: I think the OP has a point in being concerned about the direction TES V: Skyrim might be taking. From what we are hearing they are cutting skills again and advertising combat systems more than the world itself. I do welcome these changes. Morrowind was flawed in a lot of ways, and Oblivion obviously wasn't perfect either, so change is great. It's just that I'm worried they might be focusing more and more on the action rather than the story, lore and depth which got me hooked to the series in the first place.All that's left to do though is wait until the game comes out and actually see if they shifted further into action elements, and lessened their focus on lore exposition.
TL;DR: OP has a point, we just need to wait until the game comes out to see if it has merit.
