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[CecilRousso]

More memorable quests is the simple answer, as others have said before. Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Vampire quests, etc.

They were quite dull to play though. Most of them just boiled down to "clear this dungeon", without any finesse or choices.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I think the scale and scope of skyrim felt a lot more epic in general, and oblivion could never replicate that kind of thing, its aged horribly. Its in the "you had to be there" category.

ALso, i actually enjoy my preferred weapon of choice in skyrim(bow and arrow) as opposed to whatever the jank mess in oblivion was

 

[UncleSporky]

I don't personally think Oblivion is better than Skyrim, but I can understand someone preferring it based on some of the differences:

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Differences_Between_Morrowind,_Oblivion,_and_Skyrim

It had actual stats that allowed for more character differentiation in that respect.

Actual hand-to-hand skill to support players who want to fight that way.

Types of equipment weren't quite as varied as Morrowind but at least it still had separate greaves and cuirass instead of just one full "armor" item.

Some verisimilitude/world details like merchants refusing service if you are carrying skooma.

Haggling and raising NPCs' disposition.

A lot more magical customization including custom spell creation and negative enchantments. Mysticism was still a spell school as well.

Essentially it's like Fallout 3 -> 4...the game became more "gamey" and a little less role-playing.

 

[Hoo-doo]

I think the scale and scope of skyrim felt a lot more epic in general, and oblivion could never replicate that kind of thing, its aged horribly.

ALso, i actually enjoy my preferred weapon of choice in skyrim(bow and arrow) as opposed to whatever the jank mess in oblivion was

The bow was the only reason I didn't shelve Skyrim within 20 minutes after starting. Combat is atrocious.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Dark Brotherhood questline really stood out for me.

 

[Vital Tundra]

Skyrims quest and setting suck ass. Also I hate the perk system and in general how they handled the statistics in Skyrim. I don't see what removing starting classes did to make the game better, as well as only having 3 primary stats, and lessening racials. Oblivion is much more of an original DnD type RPG, even if it was simplified from Morrowind.

 

[Truant]

The bow was the only reason I didn't shelve Skyrim within 20 minutes after starting. Combat is atrocious.

Skyrim played as a stealthy archer, doing mostly DB + TG stuff, is a very good game. The combat is quite fun, and most enemies go down in one hit. I can't imagine playing it as Todd intended, being a viking warrior with swords and all.

 

[buddha0991]

 

[Wulfram]

Sir Patrick Stewart.

He was pretty crap. He's generally pretty bad at voice acting. Though of course the Elder Scrolls generally doesn't offer very good voice acting

 

[CountAntonius]

The quests and the setting.

 

[Humdinger]

Well, it wasn't. Oblivion was a huge step down from Morrowind, in terms of hand-holding, the sense of being in an alien world, and variety of landscape/culture. Skyrim maintained much of this hand-holding but there was more variety in culture and landscape (Oblivion was basically just one province, very same-ish, aside from the Oblivion gates, which were not very well done) . Both graphics and combat were improved in Skyrim.

Expectations and experience with the ES series play a large role in this, I think. Oblivion was the first ES game for a lot of people, and so to them, it's the standard bearer, and they see it through rose-colored glasses, imo. If you had played Morrowind before it, though, you were as a rule disappointed with Oblivion -- found it extraordinarily dumbed down and lacking in a lot of what made Morrowind special. By the time Skyrim came out, though, you were past that, and your expectations for ES were reset -- you knew Skyrim was going to be a mainstream game, and you were okay with that; you just wanted it to be better than Oblivion. And it was.

Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion.

 

[Sgt.Pepper]

Skyrim played as a stealthy archer, doing mostly DB + TG stuff, is a very good game. The combat is quite fun, and most enemies go down in one hit. I can't imagine playing it as Todd intended, being a viking warrior with swords and all.

I used the console if I wanted to play as a viking and stuff.

 

[F0rneus]

I think Oblivion is the worst of the modern Bethesda games but it has one of the best OSTs ever in gaming. I dunno. Outside the Dark Brotherhood, the game felt extremely lacking vs Morrowind. Skyrim while very streamlined vs ESIII at least had actual good gameplay, and the world wasn't generic fantasy like Oblivion's.

 

[Melon Husk]

Better quests. Varying landscape.

Endless generic boreal forests (and dragons) didn't grab me.

Melee combat is awful in both but somehow I prefer Oblivion. I think Skyrim amplifies the numbness of it because of the inconsequantial blood squirts.

 

[thelurkinghorror]

Oblivion is the first of the weakest the elder scrolls.

Daggerfall and Morrowind are both much much better games,.

 

[His Majesty]

Well, it wasn't. Oblivion was a huge step down from Morrowind, in terms of hand-holding, the sense of being in an alien world, and variety of landscape/culture. Skyrim maintained much of this hand-holding but refined it, so that it didn't feel so blunt. There was more variety in culture and landscape (though not enough for my tastes). Both graphics and combat were improved.

For me it goes Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion.

Expectations and experience with the ES series play a large role in this, I think. Oblivion was the first ES game for a lot of people, and so to them, it's the standard bearer. If you played Morrowind before it, though, you were generally disappointed with Oblivion, found it extraordinarily dumbed down and lacking in a lot of what made Morrowind special. By the time Skyrim came out (5, 6 years later), though, you had gotten past that, and your expectations for ES were reset -- you knew Skyrim was going to be a mainstream game, and you were okay with that. You just wanted it to be better than Oblivion. And it was.

Agreed. Oblivion was a very disappointing RPG. Skyrim didn't return to the Morrowind roots but at least did a much better job at embracing its gameplay loop than Oblivion did.

 

[Composer]

The guild quests and the side quests were far more intriguing and significantly longer. Also the towns were more varied and larger.

 

[Serenitynow]

They were quite dull to play though. Most of them just boiled down to "clear this dungeon", without any finesse or choices.

Really? I don't remember spending all that much time in dungeons in Oblivion. Obviously it's been a while, but in Skyrim I constantly felt like I was trudging through Nordic ruins, Dwemer ruins, and caves that all looked the same. At least there are no rotating bird, snake, whale puzzles in Oblivion.

 

[SolarMystic]

While Oblivion has some qualities better than Skyrim (and the same thing reversed), a lot of series fans find their first elder scrolls experience to be their favorite. Understandable given the type of games they are. First experience is always the most memorable.

I remember when Oblivion came out a lot of people said the same thing about Morrowind.

 

[Sotha_Sil]

Outside of the four faction questlines being significantly stronger, Oblivion was not better.

Shivering Isles is a different story entirely. Thats the best TES has been since Morrowind.

 

[Gunslinger]

I didn't like Oblivion as much as Skyrim. Reason? The Oblivion stages were ass and felt like a chore. And yes I played Oblivion on release.

 

[Drillary Clinton]

Vanilla Oblivion? Absolutely not. The only thing that it has over Skyrim is a better Dark Brotherhood quest and Thieves guild. Shivering Isles is infinitely better than Vanilla.

 

[Alpha Phoenix]

The bow was the only reason I didn't shelve Skyrim within 20 minutes after starting. Combat is atrocious.

I found archery to be surprisingly good in Skyrim as well. Was my main weapon.

 

[SatoAilDarko]

How bad was the level-scaling in Oblivion?

I'm interested in playing it but the idea that as I do more and more stuff the game gets harder for me doesn't seem personally enjoyable.

Especially as I'm the type of person to explore a lot and do a lot of side quests.

 

[SolarMystic]

Really? I don't remember spending all that much time in dungeons in Oblivion. Obviously it's been a while, but in Skyrim I constantly felt like I was trudging through Nordic ruins, Dwemer ruins, and caves that all looked the same. At least there are no rotating bird, snake, whale puzzles in Oblivion.

The sameness of the dungeon design in Oblivion was a major complaint at the time.

 

[Risev1]

As others have said, it's mostly the quests being of a much higher quality in Oblivion compared to Skyrim. Fuck Radiant Quests. Those ruined questing in both Skyrim and in Fallout 4. The goal of Radiant Quests were supposed to create quests that felt like they were written by the actual designers. They succeeded in that both in Skyrim and in Fallout 4. However, that success came about because of all the wrong reasons. Radiant Quests weren't as good as hand-crafted quests because they were of exceptional quality, it's that the actual hand-crafted quest-lines were as terrible as radiant quests.

Oblivion, on the other hand, had some of the best quests ever in a Western RPG. The entirety of the Dark Brotherhood, with bonus rewards based on how you tackle each objective and a story twist that is presented to the player on a mechanical level. The Thieves Guild questline in which you gather powerful relics in memorable quests, and then use said relics yourself in the final quest to steal one of the most powerful items in the lore of the universe. Heck even the fighters guild and the arena had characters that you cared about and quests I can still remember to this day.

The main quest in Oblivion was much more interesting than Skyrim's, which was completely terrible. The problem with Oblivion's main quest were the Oblivion gates, but I don't think they were much worse than Skyrim's dungeon crawls which had you go through dungeons that looked almost identical in the end as those in the beginning, with the same looking enemies that just hit harder. Dragons also because a chore to fight through, although the later expansions did well to alleviate that.

Combat feels better in Skyrim, but magic was much better in Oblivion. Archery is hands down best in Skyrim though. Exploration music was better in Oblivion imo, but Skyrim had a better combat ost.

However, I think people underestimate how good The Shivering Isles was. That was one of the best pieces of content ever presented in a game.

 

[Unaha-Closp]

The levelling system was obtuse and broken but otherwise I loved Oblivion. Much better quests and guilds. The cities were great too. It's all rose coloured glasses at this point of course. Crafting your own spells was great too lol

 

[Absoludacrous]

I'm fairly positive the amount of people who prefer Oblivion to Skyrim is completely dwarfed by the amount of people who prefer Morrowind to Oblivion

 

[JaffeLion]

lol in every single way.

 

[BigDug13]

adding the ability to dual wield spells and making you equip spells to your main hand made the combat more clunky. If you were a spellsword type player you had to CONSTANTLY switch your hands out between spells and items in Skyrim where Oblivion allowed you to equip a wheel of spells and use a separate button to cast spells external to your main equipped combat weapons.

Skyrim primary and secondary hand item management is complete trash.

 

[entremet]

Oblivion guild quests were so good!

 

[Alpha Phoenix]

How bad was the level-scaling in Oblivion?

I'm interested in playing it but the idea that as I do more and more stuff the game gets harder for me doesn't seem personally enjoyable.

Especially as I'm the type of person to explore a lot and do a lot of side quests.

I don't remember much about Oblivion to give you a valid answer regarding the scaling, but the game has unfortunately aged terribly. I think even with mods it looks and feels super clunky to play by today's standards. Though, if you can get past that, there's good fun to be had in that game.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

I'm fairly positive the amount of people who prefer Oblivion to Skyrim is completely dwarfed by the amount of people who prefer Morrowind to Oblivion

Pretty much. In my (and a lot of other Those Kinds Of Fans') opinion, the "modern" TES ranking is pretty clearly Morrowind > Oblivion > Skyrim. That's not to absolve Oblivion of any of its issues; it's still ugly as sin, full of rock-dumb AI and bad combat, and a massive retcon, but it's still better than Skyrim. It has some legitimately great questlines, the variation in cities is cool, and while the skill system is not great it's at least more in-depth than Skyrim's.

They all have their ups and downs but I'd definitely rank Skyrim lowest.

 

[Neuromancer]

They're both great games, but Oblivion did one thing I really appreciated. Before you left the sewer in Oblivion, you were allowed to change your entire character before stepping out into the world. If you made a save at that point you could load that save and start a new character whenever you wanted. In Skyrim there is no such option and every time you want to start a new character, you had to sit through the wagon ride and the entire tutorial cave again.

 

[Thorrgal]

Didn't eat my save...

 

[CloudWolf]

Oblivion and Skyrim have many of the same issues, but Oblivion has way better side quests: Dark Brotherhood being the standout. Also, Shivering Isles was amazing, way better than any of the expansions of Skyrim.

 

[2blackcats]

Sunshine

 

[ckohler]

Spell creation and item enchanting was superior in Oblivion.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The imperial city and a lot of the cities were better in my opinion. The imperial city in particular is still so awesome to see fully realized.

I would say that Oblivion is clearly the better game, with better environments and quests (why did they have to drop Speedtree?), but seeing most of low rate bandits now sport Daedric Armor and have super enhanced stats always pissed me off.

 

[Capitan]

the sidequests have been mentioned, but shoutout to those. the dark brotherhood quests were awesome, giving you the invincible shadowmere and poison apples, not to mention the intrigue/

Spoiler

conspiracy stuff

, and the mansion quest.
the thieves guild making you

Spoiler

the gray fox, feeling like a supervillain, committing crimes with no threat to your real identity

the systems were a bit more complex, too. I remember the spell creation and enchantment systems allowed you to do some pretty crazy stuff- making a spell that paralyzed everyone in a radius, enchanting a ring of fire damage and giving it a name like "AAAAA" so that npcs equip it - they equip stuff based on alphabetization, (they burn to death, no crime to you if you don't get caught pickpocketing them)
not to mention poison apples- knocking everything off a table in front of an NPC about to eat and putting an apple in front of them so they eat it, dying in a few seconds. again, no "crime" committed, even with witnesses.
and of course, you could break the game by enchanting a combination of gear with 100% chameleon so no one could ever see you.

 

[Verder]

The quest lines man .

The dark brotherhood made me lose my lil shit with the twist

 

[Cranster]

Oblivion had a better soundtrack.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

I liked stealth, stealing, and other thief like stuff better in Oblivion.

 

[Alchemy]

Oblivion was unplayable with the level scaling so I really disagree with this tbh, I judge the games unmodded. Morrowind is still my favorite :x

 

[Izuna]

Imo, Oblivion was like a childhood memory of mine whereas Skyrim was all snow.

I wish Oblivion had the VR update instead.

 

[Vital Tundra]

I liked stealth, stealing, and other thief like stuff better in Oblivion.

It helps that you can actually be an effective thief right at the start with racials + birthsign + class creation. Can't really be any class in Skyrim effectively till many levels in. Skyrims biggest sin.

 

[You Pay This Much]

The dark brotherhood and thieves's guild quest lines were way better. The main story was a lot worse.

Great first response.
On top of this the inability to make your own spells in Skyrim really disappointed me. I miss acrobatics being a skill... so exploitable. Plus being able to have a sword and shield while casting magic as well in oblivion was quite nice.

 

[Transistor]

Oblivion was a lot more memorable that Skyrim as far as the main quest, and the side quests were so much better.

And I think we can all agree that Morrowind is better than them both

 

[SpiceMelange]

I remember really disliking oblivion. After the honeymoon phase of the new combat, new graphics, VA and messing around with physics I found the game to be shallow and boring compared to Morrowind. Also I really really fucking hated how the level scaling worked, I felt weaker each level instead of stronger how fucked up is that. I quite like Skyrim though.

 

[thefatness16]

Skyrim improved the aimless wondering portion of Bethesda's previous games due to better art, more dungeon assets, etc. but I've never cared about that stuff. I just like going into towns and doing cool quests, and Oblivion blows Skyrim out of the water in that aspect.