Skyrim's Improvements over Oblivion

[HumpinHop]

I can believe no one said it but skyrim has

Spoiler

DRAGONS

OT, but how the hell is that a spoiler? They plaster the goddamn things over every single trailer, screen shot, and add for the friggin' game.

That's like saying $MMO_FOTM has Fedex-quests is a spoiler.

It was more for effect than anything else, he didn't consider it a legitimate spoiler.

I'm genuinely surprised nobody has mentioned the difference of combat.
In Oblivion, unless you set the difficulty bar very low, will be tons of repetitive hack and slashing. Regular attacks will make you lose fatigue, and weapons have durability whereas Skyrim doesn't; you'll have to carry repair hammers around and either waste level-up stats on Strength/Endurance or lose a lot of money to blacksmiths. There's no crafting, no ability to sprint, the leveling system is a lot more complex, I think it has less 'fun' stuff in it thin Skyrim does so far. There's no crafting, Oblivion gates will suck big time, repetitive dungeons...
I could probably go on, but Skyrim is almost a completely different game in a lot of aspects. If you're unfamiliar with previous Elder Scroll games it might not be a great purchase.

 

[Elamdri]

The biggest change for the better between Oblivion and Skyrim is that you no longer need to keep track of what skills you have leveled for efficient leveling in Skyrim like you do in Oblivion. You can just level and not have to worry that you didn't accidentally nerf your character in a world where the enemies get progressively stronger.

 

[targren]

I'm genuinely surprised nobody has mentioned the difference of combat.
In Oblivion, unless you set the difficulty bar very low, will be tons of repetitive hack and slashing.

My buddy got it on the PS3, and on my test-run, I didn't find it that much different at all. It was still mostly repetitive Hacking/Slashing/Blocking.

 

[HumpinHop]

I'm genuinely surprised nobody has mentioned the difference of combat.
In Oblivion, unless you set the difficulty bar very low, will be tons of repetitive hack and slashing.

My buddy got it on the PS3, and on my test-run, I didn't find it that much different at all. It was still mostly repetitive Hacking/Slashing/Blocking.

It depends on the difficulty for Skyrim.
The 'executions' definitely change the pace when they occur, and when facing multiple people or even one guy with a two handed weapon choosing whether or not to strafe, power attack, or do a quick-jab means life or death. You can swap weapons faster which makes it more dynamic, and perks unlock additional abilities. Attacking in Oblivion was also much faster. If you go and watch someone with a one handed weapon they can get in about 7 strikes within two or three seconds but only do a sliver of damage each time. With Skyrim you can see/feel the impact of each hit more, which makes Skyrim much more dynamic at least for me.

 

[Deadyawn]

Three-Dog is in skyrim. I laugh everytime I hear his voice and it's especially funny considering we're supposed to take him seriously.

...This was the first thing that came to my head. Am I wierd?

 

[Sewer Rat]

While Skyrim is better then Oblivion, Oblivion is still a very enjoyable experience (for the most part) and is definitely worth $5, my advice? Play it for a little while, see what things you would change if you could and then try to find mods to fit your tastes. I would definitely recommend Darnified UI or Dark Darnified as a necessity, vastly improves the base UI. Now if they could just release Darnified Skyrim...

 

[Strazdas]

I don't want to derail, but is Morroblivion good? It'd interesting to tromp through Morrowind again with Oblivion's graphics and content...

Yes.

Like a friend of mine said: skyrim did to oblivion what oblivion id to morrorwind.

P.S. capcha: gooldi combustion, WTF

 

[Haxxle]

The world setting of Oblivion was largely empty with the usual trees, plants and wild life to litter the landscape with little interaction, much like a hanna barbera cartoon background. Skyrim,on the otherhand, expanded the landscape with the addition of a more vibrant flora and fauna with added interaction such as collecting insects for potions instead of just acting as a useless background add-on on Oblivion.

Graphically and aesthetically, Skyrim surpasses Oblivion's on with more than jsut polygons. skyrim offers more indepth look into individuals, palces and races by giving them a more stylized character design and the wide range of voice actors give each character a less common feel. For instance, those who have found the Redguard within Swindler's Den will notice that the Redguard dress and armed in a different manner reflect on their birthplace and homeland, and the voice difference with tthe Birthed Homeland nords has a more 'Swiss' accent comapred to other nords not born and rasied within Skyrim. All in all, Skyrim has more depth compared to Oblivion.

The combat animation within Skyrim has improved over Oblivion's, as expected, but it still boils down to who has the bigger stick and the strongest skin similar to Oblivion's combat mechanics.

There are less thigns to do, not including combat, in Oblivion compared to Skyrim. Skyrim offers players to create potions and enchant items, an activity which oblivion had, but Skyrim also allows the players to mine ore which can later lead to smithing items like armor and weapons, cooking with hunted game, wood cutting and grinding grain for profit.

Despite the major differences and improvements between the two games, I still suggest playing Oblivion for the sake of knowing more about the world of Tamerial and the events which happened before Skyrim.

 

[Abedeus]

You should play Oblivion. Dirt-cheap, long-ass game with thousands of mods.

One thing I disliked was (besides bugs, which are now mostly fixed with patches and mods) the level scaling. No matter what level you were, everything was as easy/hard as few hours ago. No character progress, unless your majors were some useless combat-wise things like Speech or Armorer. Then you were hurt, badly, cause your enemes grew stronger while your combat ability didn't.

 

[Rack]

1) The levelling in Skyrim isn't broken. You don't have to choose armour and weapon skills as primaries to make a mage.
2) The level scaling in Skyrim isn't broken. There are areas you just don't want to go at level 1.
3) There are fewer out and out ways to break the game, such as armour that makes you invisible or invincible or an incredibly cheap and easy spell that makes you a master of lock picking for 2 seconds.
4) You don't need to act like a loon to level efficiently, abilities are improved by using them in combat, not running around casting "fire damage 1 to self"
5) The world is vastly better designed
6) There are about 6 times as many interesting and well designed quests.
7) There are some really fun spells aside from "Make thing in front of you dead" Necromancy spells require a corpse
8) Dragon shouts make melee characters way more fun
9) Stealth is massively refined
10) Guards don't know if you've committed a crime from 2 miles away with no witnesses
11) Dungeons are way better designed and more fun
12) The interface is a lot better (Still needs some work though). You spend much less time rifling through your pack
13) NPCs are much more interesting and believable
14) No insane minigames for conversation and lockpicking, these work way more naturally.
15) The graphics are way better, without mods a lot of Oblivion looks very shaky

So yeah, Skyrim is way better. BUT! You mention steam which means PC which means mods. If you have time to spend getting the core mods you can still get some fun out of Oblivion, especially Shivering Isles.

 

[Void(null)]

Well, in Oblivion your character looked like a potato. Now we've advanced to 'angry lobster' (I'm playing a wood elf). =P

More seriously, the game is generally better, but Oblivion wasn't too bad - provided you could get past the Mr Potato Head character creation...

Clearly I've totally gotten over my annoyance at that =P

My Character in Oblivion [http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/560915998906921469/EFA4ADB2E788EEE6E8E2D864ECEE3D580193D018/] did not look like a Potato. On the other hand the current lack of sliders in Skyrim is pissing me off to no end and everyone looks the same.

 

[Eggsnham]

So, Steam has a 75% off sale ($5) for The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion GOTY Edition, and it has made me wonder: what are the differences/improvements of Skyrim over Oblivion? Of course, there are double-wielding, a more dense world, and randomly generated structures in Skyrim, but what is/was so great about Oblivion? Is Oblivion's world really as barren as people say it is?

Oblivion issues (contains a few spoilers):

- The same tiny group of (largely mediocre) voice actors were used for EVERY character in the game.

- The dungeons were often times just copy/pasted into the landscape, and the only times that going through them was worth the effort was when there was a valuable item/artifact, or if it was part of a quest.

- The physics were a little bit derpy, and there were a huge amount of game breaking/generally annoying bugs. Although, the amount of awesome glitches and exploits made up for that, at least in my opinion.

- The only really likable characters were the ones who always ended up dying. For example, the emperor, Jauffre (I just couldn't seem to keep him alive in the Battle of Bruma), and Martin. And a few other non-generic people.

- Awkward AI. Although this fact led to a good laugh more often than not. *Two people with the same voice begin a conversation* Person 1: "I saw a mudcrab the other day; disgusting creatures." Person 2: "Have you heard any news from the other provinces?" Person 1: "Word is that [insert person here] is pretty good with [insert weapon/armor/magic type here]. Maybe he/she gives lessons." Person 2: "Goodbye."

- If you're the type of person who likes a serious game and likes to do things without having the game hold your hand, you may be disappointed with Oblivion which takes your hand, and grasps it with an iron grip and won't let go. Until you really need the help, then the whole iron grip thing is magically sleeping or something.

- The game wasn't THAT devoid of life that it was barren and whatnot, at least not from my point of view; but there was a good amount of empty space that was only inhabited by trees and rocks.

That having been said, it's a great game that I spent easily a thousand hours on (give or take a couple hundred) and is a steal at only $5.

And last time I checked, the computer version has a bunch of mods and player made patches that fix a huge amount of problems in the game.

Not to mention the builder set you get with the PC version of the game, and the mods available for the game.

I'd definitely buy it if I were you.

On the other hand, if you can manage it, Skyrim is an awesome game so far, and I'm loving every minute of it.

 

[Xman490]

That having been said, it's a great game that I spent easily a thousand hours on (give or take a couple hundred) and is a steal at only $5.

And last time I checked, the computer version has a bunch of mods and player made patches that fix a huge amount of problems in the game.

Not to mention the builder set you get with the PC version of the game, and the mods available for the game.

I'd definitely buy it if I were you.

On the other hand, if you can manage it, Skyrim is an awesome game so far, and I'm loving every minute of it.

So from what I read, Oblivion is worth $5, even though seemingly every aspect was improved in Skyrim. I'm not sure if modding really works on that version, but...

Unfortunately, it's only on Windows XP and 2000. I'm not going to make the same mistake I made with GTA IV on PC, since I only have 7 as an extra OS on my Macbook Pro and Vista on my slow desktop.

 

[godofallu]

That having been said, it's a great game that I spent easily a thousand hours on (give or take a couple hundred) and is a steal at only $5.

And last time I checked, the computer version has a bunch of mods and player made patches that fix a huge amount of problems in the game.

Not to mention the builder set you get with the PC version of the game, and the mods available for the game.

I'd definitely buy it if I were you.

On the other hand, if you can manage it, Skyrim is an awesome game so far, and I'm loving every minute of it.

So from what I read, Oblivion is worth $5, even though seemingly every aspect was improved in Skyrim. I'm not sure if modding really works on that version, but...

Unfortunately, it's only on Windows XP and 2000. I'm not going to make the same mistake I made with GTA IV on PC, since I only have 7 as an extra OS on my Macbook Pro and Vista on my slow desktop.

I have both and they are very very similar. The items are basically the same, the worlds are basically the same size. Combat is almost the same, with the same 3 tiers of professions. Graphically once modded they look similar. They both have the same 3 guilds, with similar quest chain concepts.

If I hadn't played Oblivion yet, I would pay the 6.50 and start with that. Come back to skyrim in a year or two. They are so close to the same game you won't miss anything.

 

[Darren Grey]

So from what I read, Oblivion is worth $5, even though seemingly every aspect was improved in Skyrim. I'm not sure if modding really works on that version, but...

Unfortunately, it's only on Windows XP and 2000. I'm not going to make the same mistake I made with GTA IV on PC, since I only have 7 as an extra OS on my Macbook Pro and Vista on my slow desktop.

Oblivion runs fine on Windows 7. From what I've heard even just the Shivering Isles expansion that comes with it is worth the price. The levelling system is a bloody horrible thing though. I wonder if anyone will do a Skyrim-style levelling mod for Oblivion?

 

[Eggsnham]

That having been said, it's a great game that I spent easily a thousand hours on (give or take a couple hundred) and is a steal at only $5.

And last time I checked, the computer version has a bunch of mods and player made patches that fix a huge amount of problems in the game.

Not to mention the builder set you get with the PC version of the game, and the mods available for the game.

I'd definitely buy it if I were you.

On the other hand, if you can manage it, Skyrim is an awesome game so far, and I'm loving every minute of it.

So from what I read, Oblivion is worth $5, even though seemingly every aspect was improved in Skyrim. I'm not sure if modding really works on that version, but...

Unfortunately, it's only on Windows XP and 2000. I'm not going to make the same mistake I made with GTA IV on PC, since I only have 7 as an extra OS on my Macbook Pro and Vista on my slow desktop.

Yeah, that just about sums it up.

However, The Elder Scrolls games pretty much all have a different feel to them; to match the diversity of the different pieces of the empire.

So Oblivion, while technically inferior to Skyrim, still has a different feel than Skyrim.

But if you can't play it, you can't play it.