Poll: Oblivion Was Better

[Arnoxthe1]

Alright I'm just gonna summarize Oblivion up.

Oblivion had some great quests indeed, was more in-depth in terms of character building than Skyrim is, and made some necessary steps vital to the progression of the series, but... and this one's a fat***, the level scaling just completely BLEW. Another problem with it was the Oblivion gates. It was a boring, mandatory dungeon that was required slogging through. And it really blows that they did it that way. I don't know why they just didn't make a whole other land you could explore and the Oblivion gates that would pop up would warp you into different parts of that land. Now you'd have two awesome worlds to explore and it wouldn't be nearly as tedious. Maybe it was just too much work? Who knows. There's also a lot of small things that irked me about it but this is already getting pretty TL;DR so I'll just end it here.

And now Skyrim.

While I will agree that Skyrim suffered from some blandness in its environments, it made up for it with pretty much everything else. The character building was greatly streamlined, the AI was improved, no more in-your-face conversations, combat was done nicely, etc. And they added a lot of awesome things to it. The shouts were a great idea for one. Dual-wielding was also incredible. Perks, a feature originally in Fallout, were also incorporated to great effect. All in all, it made some massive improvements and awesome additions plus the expansion packs were also good fun.

 

[Dagda Mor]

I like how Oblivion felt so connected-- it genuinely feels like a tight-knit community. But the problem with it is that it's too samey. Which makes it all the more impressive that the areas in Skyrim manage to feel more distinct, despite the fact that Bethesda really didn't have as much to work with there. Skyrim was also a lot more 'Elder Scrolls-y' than Oblivion, which just felt like generic swords and sorcery. I don't really begrudge Skyrim for being hard to break in your favor-- that was cool in the cartoony worlds of Morrowind and Oblivion, but it really wouldn't jive with Skyrim's more serious tone.

 

[Dagda Mor]

I mean, let's be honest, Morrowind was the best one.

Sorry! I'd mention Morrowind if I'd have played it, but I'm planning on picking it up during the Steam Summer Sale if that helps.

Fair warning, Morrowind has not aged very well (both in terms of visuals and actual gameplay). I owned Morrowind when it came out but my PC was too shitty to run it well. I bought it again during a steam sale last year and have played maybe 10 minutes of it since then. I'm still waiting for the Morrowind Skyrim mod (which would be the only reason I would load Skyrim up again)

Eh. It hasn't aged well, but it's still very enjoyable.

 

[Vhite]

Oblivion was terrible besides quests which in Skyrim were awful but at least other stuff wasn't as bad.

 

[Denamic]

Actually no, that is only in skyrim. In Oblivion Altmer are tall, Bosmer are short and all that.

Actually no, both Oblivion and Skyrim have different heights for each race.

In Oblivion,
-Male Altmer are 1.1
-Male bosmer are .9

In Skyrim
-Male Altmer are 1.08
-Male Bosmer are .98

Yes, but your point of view in first person is set to 1.00, regardless of how tall or short your character is. There's mods to fix that, of course, but because of how Skyrim's made, races does not have an individual first person height variable, so a mod that sets your point of view to 1.1 will set it to 1.1 for all races, so you need to change mod if you change race.

Also, female Altmer are taller than their male counterparts.

 

[DanielBrown]

Not sure which side I stand on. I've played Oblivion for hundreds of hours, with a shitload of different characters, and always had a fairly good time. I loved Skyrim, and think it's a better game, but could only be arsed to explore the world once and speed through it a second time for trophies. That was by release... and I've tried to play it since, but haven't gotten past the first few levels before feeling bored.
Might've been different if I had a PC that could handle Skyrim. Had to play it on my PS3 and the frame rate issues(though claimed to be fixed) is part of what keeps me away from it.

 

[DRTJR]

cyrodiil should have been a lush tropical jungle, BUT NOPE it's just another generically European setting.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Everything you wrote about Skyrim and Oblivion is what I felt about Morrowind when I was playing Oblivion. The levitation spells, the jump spells, all the skills and different pieces of armor you could wear. Two rings, not this one ring nonsense.
Skyrim to me is at least an improvement over Oblivion, although I hate how much they have simplified the character creation and leveling.
For me Morrowind will always represent everything great about the Elder Scrolls, although I have played and enjoyed the others. I am sure we'll get some old timer in here talking about how awesome Daggerfall was, which I almost bought when I was a kid but skipped over. How I wish I had bought it when it was new!

 

[Amir Kondori]

cyrodiil should have been a lush tropical jungle, BUT NOPE it's just another generically European setting.

I know, I hate that.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I honestly can't vote in the poll, because I still don't know which one I like more.

All your points are valid. They really are. Skyrim feels quite empty and I have only played through it once.

But I simply cannot get over how much is wrong with Oblivion.
The combat mechanics are terrible, the magic is astoundingly dull, the voice acting is lame, the graphics are ugly and every cave feels exactly the same.

And yet, it's still a great sword and sorcery game. Something about it is just so charming... Like you said, the quests are FANTASTIC.

The biggest thing in favor of Skyrim for me, that tips the whole balance to be totally even is the atmosphere.
Skyrim just [i/]feels[/i] good. Everything in it feels ancient. Every moment is the game, I feel like I'm playing in the ruins AFTER the classical sword and sorcery story has finished.
Also it'd be a crime if I didn't mention Skyrim's excellent DLC. I loved both Dawnguard and Dragonborn and while Shivering Isles is up there, the same can't be said for Knights of Nine.

AND YEEEEEET.... I was brutally uninterested in Skyrim at times. To the point where I would start daydreaming about other games while playing.

Fuck, I don't even know. I'm going to go play Fallout or something.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

I'd disagree. Stealth was kinda broken in the game where, in my experience, if you had broken a law and were in a city, at some point no matter how sneaky you were getting in and out, some asshole guard would run up to you and say, "Pay up that 300,000 gold you'll never make, or kill another thirty of us guards aside that one invincible one who you can't kill 'cause they're quest locked. But you can't do the quest 'cause they're always hostile."

As well as I could enjoy walking place to place in Skyrim, I can't do that in oblivion. There's so much... nothing. I mean, maybe a wolf and a half if you were lucky. Sometimes an imp. But it was so bland that fast travel felt like the only way to get around. Sure, I missed out on a few things. But I didn't waste thirty minutes of walking through nothing.

I remember trying to be a spellcaster in Oblivion sucked as I never had any money nor could find a way to get new or other spells. The damned Mages guild would never talk to me, so, you know, whatever. Not to mention I couldn't ever cast a new spell anyways because leveling anything in Oblivion was like taking a cheese grater to your face.

I guess Skyrim did simplify a lot of things, but then again, it was far more playable and accessible. Which I won't say is a bad thing, I can see it may have negative effects down the line, but damn, you can play the game without trying to figure how shit that just isn't explained in any decency.

Oddly enough, I could pick up and play Fallout 3 at the same age as I played Oblivion and manage to play and enjoy that one so much more. I know I wandered the entire capital wasteland without getting bored, but in Oblivion I never made it too far out of town unless I had to find the place for quick travel.

Ironically: Another game that doesn't properly explain things to you is one of my all time favorites. (Dark Souls.)

And, uh, mind you, most of this opinion is when I played the game when I was like... 14 to 16, or somewhere around there, going back and trying to play the game over and over for so long a time and never making much progress.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

I liked Oblivion much more, especially on PC. Its been nearly two years (!!) and there haven't been really "amazing" mods for Skyrim, imo. Oblivion, on the other hand...

As for as vanilla games go Oblivion still wins for me, but boy oh boy was the level scaling horrible! Skyrim's great and better than most RPGs released since Oblivion, but Oblivion still wins in my books.

With that said: LONG LIVE MORROWIND!
Edit: I forgot about the spell system in Skyrim. I hate it. I never dual cast and I spend the entirety of combat playing DDR with my hot keys. Bloody annoying.

 

[Eddie the head]

I mean, let's be honest, Morrowind was the best one.

Sorry! I'd mention Morrowind if I'd have played it, but I'm planning on picking it up during the Steam Summer Sale if that helps.

Fair warning, Morrowind has not aged very well (both in terms of visuals and actual gameplay). I owned Morrowind when it came out but my PC was too shitty to run it well. I bought it again during a steam sale last year and have played maybe 10 minutes of it since then. I'm still waiting for the Morrowind Skyrim mod (which would be the only reason I would load Skyrim up again)

I am pretty sure they have that already. I think it's called SkyWind? Not sure, but I was looking around at Skyrim mods and I think I saw it.

Edit. Yep Skywind

 

[Another]

Skyrim was better for me, and there's a simple way I can tell.

In Oblivion I had to mod the hell out of the game before I found it to be fun. Particularly mods to make the landscape more unique because it's one giant grassy plain.

In Skyrim all i added was a graphics mod. That's it. I added over 50 mods to oblivion and only one to Skyrim. That should indicate how much better i felt Skyrim was.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

I liked both equally.
I liked both of them a lot better than Morrowind.
Partially because they were fully voiced and didn't have a random chance to "miss" if you swing your sword straight at your enemy.

Skyrim just felt more like a place where you could have an epic adventure.
The only thing that's too bad about all of them is that you can make a tour between all of the cities and villages on the map without fast travel to the other in less than a real life day.
That should at least take a week, maybe even a month. Or longer.
That's the only bad thing I've got to say about them.
It's just like you're always within walking distance of a city.
I wish they'd be big enough to actually carry around a tent or even just a bedroll and set up camp.
I wish there were a reason to sleep and suffering caused by lack of sleep. Same for actually eating and drinking, instead of drip feeding myself healthpotions. (Seriously, might as well strap a barrel of health potion to my back and litteraly do that.)
In fact, it might even be good if huge amounts of health potions had negative effects.
Even if it were just because your stomach is too full to eat real food, causing you to lack any actual nutrition.
Or even attracting enemies that love the smell of health potions and the tasted of your health potion drenched flesh.

And wow, I wrote a lot more than I originally planned on...

 

[hawkeye52]

Preferred Oblivion by a long margin. I played Oblivion and felt like I wanted to do everything in it. Even the quests that just involved you trawling through "different" dungeons. In fact one of the most interesting dungeon I came across out of both games an oblivion one where it turned from underwater dungeon into normal dungeon into an ayleid ruin.

Skyrim just felt empty by comparison. Although it's mechanics had been turned up and tuned thoroughly. Although I am one of the few people apparently who like the Oblivion leveling system more. Also I miss the difference between blunt and sword. Also the hand to hand skill (useless as it was most of the time).

I miss the arena, miss the awesome quests and the two big things in each game (Dragons for skyrim and Oblivion for Oblivion). Well oblivion was so much better then dragons. Even if I did get bored of the oblivion gates in the end they were not forced. Whereas the dragons in the game became a "OH FFS. I can't be bothered to deal with you now. Please go away. FINE" dead. Unless you were a vampire then it was more. "OH GOD IT's a dragon. Wait it's an ice dragon. lol"

Vampires and the lycanthropy both being things which i hated in Skyrim and preferred in Oblivion. Even the vampire overhaul mod and the Hircine curses mod did it a lot better in both.

Skyrim was more polished then oblivion but it felt like a polished dull rock as opposed to the diamond in the rough that oblivion was.

 

[Tono Makt]

I've played through Skyrim 2+ times. I've started to play Oblivion 3+ times and decided "This game sucks arse." each time. I couldn't get through the mechanics of Oblivion - it was more work than fun each and every time. The only reason I gave Skyrim a chance is that Mrs. Makt wanted it, bought it for me for Christmas (a self gift if there ever was one!) and played the crap out of it for a few months while I watched on and off, getting a feel for it. Then I started playing it, already having seen how it works and it wasn't nearly as annoying as Oblivion.

 

[rofltehcat]

Overall, Skyrim was better.
For some guilds, their Oblivion stories were better.
The Sheogorath addon was great, too.
The whole oblivion gate thing while interesting in theory became boring and un-fun quite quickly and the mob-leveling system was utterly broken. Those are my main two gripes for Oblivion. My main gripe with Skyrim is that some areas/towns feel a little bit insubstantial and I'd have prefered more town quests.
But overall, Skyrim is still better.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I enjoyed Oblivion a lot when i first played it and gave it about 3 full playthroughs before i gave up on it and moved elsewhere. Skyrim on the other hand was just a boring game with a broken levelling system that took no imagination to destroy and barely held me to the end. Although both games are very similar, it's the timing that was important. Oblivion was pretty much a 360 release game and was innovative and pretty to look at. Skyrim is just a looker with poor gameplay and broken mechanics. Oblivion gets away with it because it is older, Skyrim is a remade fuck-up

 

[SajuukKhar]

Yes, but your point of view in first person is set to 1.00, regardless of how tall or short your character is. There's mods to fix that, of course, but because of how Skyrim's made, races does not have an individual first person height variable, so a mod that sets your point of view to 1.1 will set it to 1.1 for all races, so you need to change mod if you change race.

Also, female Altmer are taller than their male counterparts.

That is how it was in every game.

Actually, female BOSMER are taller then their male counterparts. Altmer are the same height regardless of gender.