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[Alexander DeLarge]

But it's disingenuous. It's like the makers of those checklists where they pick out only what they want to highlight, put big green checkmarks on their product and big red x's on their opponent's product. It's not honest unless it's actually meaningful, and ranks aren't meaningful.

Like, here's a counter-example, I wouldn't actually put this forward as a real argument but I feel like this is roughly equivalent:



Heck I even forgot to put in jewelry.

Some people (I think many people) would consider crafting their own equipment and smithing it to be more powerful to be much more impactful of a role-playing choice than being assigned a rank.

But I wouldn't honestly put it forward in list form and slap a big ol' N/A on the opposite side, because that's silly.

This is ultimately what I find most frustrating about The Elder Scrolls series. There definitely are improvements being made to the series, but instead of improving and expanding on Morrowind which I think has a developed consensus of being the strongest RPG in the series... They're stripping it down while adding things that would have only improved the already great formula. Why not keep the journal and the world navigable AND add the magic compass markers for people who want it instead of designing the game around it? Why not improve archery/melee/magic AND keep spellcrafting? Why not have keep the in depth conversation system from Morrowind AND add voice acting on top of it?

People seem to act like it's one or the other but it isn't. Consoles and controllers aren't the enemy of in depth RPGs and complexity as we've seen with games like Divinity Original Sin and even something like Warframe, one of the most complex games ever made. The enemy is the idea that players need to have their hands held throughout the entire experience while also trying to appease the widest audience as humanly possible.... Which is fine as long as Bethesda realizes that even "the casuals" would appreciate having better quests/world design/mechanics like spellcrafting. None of this would take away from Skyrim, it would only add to it.

 

[FaintDeftone]

I really liked Oblivion but those boring ass Oblivion gates automatically make it worse than Skyrim.

 

[Hobbestetrician]

- Because of the central location of Cyrodiil within Tamriel, it felt like all the different regions/races had higher representation opposed to 75% of people you came across being Nords.

- When you talked to someone, I preferred how it would zoom in on them (yeah yeah ugly character models) and blocked out everything else. In Skyrim, when you talked to someone, they would still walk around awkwardly, not look at you, or some other random character would stop right in between you and just stare.

- There weren't 10 million Draugr in Oblivion.

- Shivering Isles is the best expansion to either game by a lot.

I still prefer Skyrim overall, though.

 

[120v]

Skyrim looked bad on day one. It may be technically be more impressive than Oblivion, but the visuals pop a lot more in Oblivion. Everything is so bland and drab in Skyrim... It doesn't look realistic, it doesn't look appealing. It just looks bad.

go back to 2011... i don't think anybody would say the game looked "bad"

i can understand somebody preferring the aesthetic to oblivion or whatever but skyrim blows it out of the water and then some in this regard

 

[UncleSporky]

This is ultimately what I find most frustrating about The Elder Scrolls series. There definitely are improvements being made to the series, but instead of improving and expanding on Morrowind which I think has a developed consensus of being the strongest RPG in the series... They're stripping it down while adding things that would have only improved the already great formula. Why not keep the journal and the world navigable AND add the magic compass markers for people who want it instead of designing the game around it? Why not improve archery/melee/magic AND keep spellcrafting? Why not have keep the in depth conversation system from Morrowind AND add voice acting on top of it?

People seem to act like it's one or the other but it isn't. Consoles and controllers aren't the enemy of in depth RPGs and complexity as we've seen with games like Divinity Original Sin and even something like Warframe, one of the most complex games ever made. The enemy is the idea that players need to have their hands held throughout the entire experience while also trying to appease the widest audience as humanly possible.... Which is fine as long as Bethesda realizes that even "the casuals" would appreciate having better quests/world design/mechanics like spellcrafting. None of this would take away from Skyrim, it would only add to it.

I totally agree. Oblivion had spell crafting but Skyrim had equipment crafting. Oblivion had nice crunchy stats that Skyrim lacked but Skyrim had really great scenic, interesting world design that Oblivion lacked. Skyrim removed ("streamlined") some good skills and abilities like athletics, but then added a bunch of cool perks and dragon shouts. Skyrim has less enemy variety but the enemies that were there were more varied and interesting to fight.

I feel the same about Fallout 4, which sucked in a ton of ways, primarily dialogue and roleplaying, but then added in some cool stuff like piecemeal equipment, when Fallout 3 had just been single complete outfits + hats.

Why can't we just have all the good stuff and none of the bad?

 

[TheVampire]

 

[UncleSporky]

That's from a mod. The base game was actually quite flat and boring.

 

[Alexander DeLarge]

I don't think it looked horrible but the visuals certainly don't justify the performance issues and it has quite a few technical problems in regards to LOD and z-fighting on the mountains which I specifically remember having day one and still do to this day.
https://youtu.be/orcXIA3gnBg

Also waterfall textures were particularly horrible, a bit nitpicky but for a game with such high elevation where all of this is extremely visible, this is ridiculous.

I know you're supposed to take a hit when it comes to open worlds visually but Jesus... Not even going to get into Whiterun as seen in that photo (which is supposed to be the trading hub for the entire province).

 

[Earthbound64]

Much, much better setting.

 

[TheVampire]

That's from a mod. The base game was actually quite flat and boring.

Oh well some areas are lush like that

 

[UncleSporky]

I know you're supposed to take a hit when it comes to open worlds visually but Jesus... Not even going to get into Whiterun as seen in that photo (which is supposed to be the trading hub for the entire province).

Man that's weird. Dunno what graphics settings are being used there...I've been playing Skyrim again and it doesn't generally look that bad.

Non-Special Edition because I can use SKSE for the few mods I use, but none of them are graphical, just stuff like SkyComplete for tracking progress and SkyUI. I'm using the official high resolution textures though.

The fog effect covers up a lot, but the other screenshot is just completely raw. Possibly taken from the creation kit or something?

 

[Vincent Alexander]

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

I couldn't think of a good answer, but this post posted some great memories. Their questlines were indeed great.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

I totally agree. Oblivion had spell crafting but Skyrim had equipment crafting. Oblivion had nice crunchy stats that Skyrim lacked but Skyrim had really great scenic, interesting world design that Oblivion lacked. Skyrim removed ("streamlined") some good skills and abilities like athletics, but then added a bunch of cool perks and dragon shouts. Skyrim has less enemy variety but the enemies that were there were more varied and interesting to fight.

I feel the same about Fallout 4, which sucked in a ton of ways, primarily dialogue and roleplaying, but then added in some cool stuff like piecemeal equipment, when Fallout 3 had just been single complete outfits + hats.

Why can't we just have all the good stuff and none of the bad?

The main thing I want back is equipment durability. It added the ability (for the developers) to increase the difficulty for a dungeon by making it longer to try and break you down.

Imagine the extra layer being added to the last Thieves Guild quest (to get the Falmer Eyes). That quest is long as hell, but basically for no reason since you don't really burn resources over time.

 

[CanUKlehead]

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

Those are the only two bits I played through, didn't really touch the main quest when I didn't have to anymore. I didn't really like the gameplay otherwise.

Played 100 hours in Skyrim though.

 

[Estoc]

Quests weren't thrust onto me within the first minute I enter a city like I was a reviewer waiting to say "the worst thing about Skyrim is that it was just too good" in Oblivion.

There were plenty of things Oblivion did wrong, but Skyrim fixed none of that, only made other aspects worse.

 

[ActWan]

better quests
better cities

Took the words right out of my mouth.

 

[NormalFish]

Every quest was better written. While the leveling system was bunk, actually character customization in terms of the number of spell effects/poisons/etc was better, and the noncombat skills felt far more interesting to me. The major downsides are the engine was even worse and the graphics were janky (though if they could solve the former, mods solve the latter easy enough).

 

[AntraxSuicide]

A "quickie" ??

I just meant that half (at least) of the recommendation quests are straight up no different than radiant quests in Skyrim. Not the sex way

Edit: Actually, looking at that whole questline, the Mage quest in Skyrim is better than Oblivion front to back. That faction sucked in Oblivion.

 

[Cuningas de Häme]

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.

Yup. The have made the series simpler with every new sequel. It is the ages old "cater to console gamers" all over again.

UI has been absolutely horrid ever since they wanted to make PC version similar to consoles (tbh, even Morrowind has some baffling decisions in that regard).

I love to play RPGs for complex skills and skill trees, to actually develop my character to fill a niche I want it to fill. In Skyrim I just kind of mastered everything in no time and then yoloed my way through everything.

There is some neat quests in Skyrim, like that on wild night of drinking, or that Redguard quest for lore reasons (though they should have expanded it, I love Redguards).

But Oblivion has so, so good quests. Thieve's guild is my all time favourite questline, main quest is good apart from the bloody Oblivion gates (I used console to fly to the end always when possible). The ending was awesome. And the final OG fight was more epic than anything seen in Skyrim (and it has a civil war going on, and no big battles to be seen!).

And then it had these quirky smaller quests/-lines, that missing painter -quest, vampire hunting in IC...


I love Oblivion to bits, it just needs an UI mod, combat mod(s), I also used a mod that changed the landscape to more varies and Open Cities to make cities open. It was so great, towns were part of the actual world.

Skyrim needs quite a lot of mods too, from UI to everything else. Actually, I use pretty similar set of mods for both games. Morrowind needs mods too, but they are a little different.


Skyrim was an action game with RPG elements, while Oblivion was still a RPG, imo. Morrowind was the purest RPG of them. Next TES is probs a FPS or something...

 

[Meffer]

The Thieves Guild and Brotherhood were some of the best quests Elder Scrolls series has.

 

[Creaking]

I really liked Oblivion's subversive element. Looks like a happy "generic" fantasy setting on the surface, but there is so much sinister conduct going on beneath it all. Pretty much no town is as clean as it might seem at first.

Skyrim looked gloomy, was gloomy, full of gloomy people.

 

[ffvorax]

The Thieves Guild and Brotherhood were some of the best quests Elder Scrolls series has.

This!

But overall I think Skyrim was better packed and fun to explore.
Main quest were both bad, but Skyrim a little better... I really hated all that Obliovion gates... and also got stucked in one because of a bug... :\

 

[Nostremitus]

Couldn't tell you.

I tried to play Oblivion three times.

All three times I ended up with save files that loaded to a game crash as I approached a quest point in the beginning of the game...

So... Yeah...

 

[Skade]

Meh... Coming from Morrowind, both felt like a let down to me. So they are on par with each other.

Oblivion, had the better guilds and side quests. But looked both good and awful at the same time. Good textures (for the time), funny physics, great view distance and foliage. But those faces... This bloom... Those washed down colors... Arg... Something i really did not like was the super generic architecture. The cities layout is good, no discussion, Skingrad for life. But the design was such a let down after Morrowind. Especially since before the game got announced, Cyrodill was supposed to be a huge lush jungle with colorfull cities. Not a huge generic forest with greyish generic medieval cities.

Skyrim, had the better close combat, the looks, but lost even more gameplay depth than Oblivion. And the quests... Well... Super duper bland and boring. And even if the architecture was'nt that creative either, it was at least a welcome change from Oblivion for me. Such a shame the cities became even smaller and with such bad layouts...

So between Oblivion and Skyrim, the better game is and forever will be : Morrowind.

 

[Playsage]

It was actually colorful

 

[The ๖ۜBronx]

Max acrobatics + deer hunting with a bow + deer physics on death.

No future TES will compare unless those are brought back.

 

[JimmyRustler]

The quests were soooooo much more interesting and I did a lot incredible stuff back for it's days. Remember when you ratted out that one guard and he later came after you. Not that impressive now any more but so amazing back in 2005.

It's really one of those games where you had to be there.

 

[Eidan]

Skyrim looked bad on day one. It may be technically be more impressive than Oblivion, but the visuals pop a lot more in Oblivion. Everything is so bland and drab in Skyrim... It doesn't look realistic, it doesn't look appealing. It just looks bad.

Skyrim looked gorgeous day 1, and I honestly think anyone who prefers Oblivion's setting to Skyrim's needs to have their eyes checked.

 

[KormaChameleon]

The quests were better and it was a more memorable game.

 

[Steel]

The guild stuff was better, particularly the dark brotherhood and thieves guild.

Then there's shivering isles. Also preferred the cities. Also, there was a lot more freedom in spellmaking and enchanting. Morrowind is better than both, though.

 

[Mr. Bad Example]

It's been said repeatedly, but one of the main things Oblivion has to recommend it it that unlike Skyrim, its Thieves Guild questline isn't pants-on-head stupid.

 

[Skade]

It was actually colorful

Well, yeah, in a way. But they felt weird to me. Might have been the bloom's fault but they were what ? Pastel like ? Washed out ?

Can't really find the term. But i hated them anyway.

Skyrim might have been made of shades of grey and brown with some snow but at least, that felt kinda "natural" (compared to Oblivion at least).

 

[Deja]

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

This^ Those quests were awesome in Oblivion.

Also I don't like how since Morrowind they started to take out certain skill lines. I used to love being a vampire with a crazy amount of Athletics and Acrobatics skills in Oblivion, and sailing across rooftops like how vampires are portrayed in other media.Taking those out added nothing to Skyrim imo.

Skyrim has better overall writing though, and the variety is a bit better. It really shows that all the Oblivion dungeons were designed by one guy.

 

[DustyVonEric]

Oblivion had better quests
Guilds / rewards
Crafting (gear, alchemy, etc)
Leveling
Cities / towns
Expansion area


For me, the only thing Skyrim had going for it was better graphics. But the game was just blah to me, and way dumbed down.

And lots of people say the same things going to Morrowind to Oblivion.

 

[shimon]

The quests were miles better.

And personally, I hated the bleak and desolate environments of Skyrim and much preferred the lush forests and lakes of Cyrodill.

Pretty much this.

 

[itshutton]

For me colour pallet had a lot to do with it. There was a luminescence in Oblivion that you didn't see in Skyrim and the vibrance of the world was much better.

 

[Steve.1981]

Though I do love it, I don't think Oblivion is a better game than Skyrim at all.

On playing Skyrim for the first time, there were things that I missed from Oblivion. Like spell making, for example. Or having set major and minor skills. But now when I go back to Oblivion (and I have went back recently) I find that these things don't really add a great deal to the experience. Custom spells simply break Oblivion. I can easily create God-tier spells that decimate everything in my path, whatever level I'm at. I much prefer working within Skyrim's Magic system with set limitations. And I don't need to pick major and minor skills at the start of the game, as I naturally become good at what I do in Skyrim. My robe wearing Mage will be awesome in Alteration, Conjuration and potion making because I do those things, and will remain rubbish at Smithing, or wielding a shield because I don't do those things.

Those are just examples, there are others, but the point is that the pros far outweigh the cons and in fact the cons are just little niggling things that didn't bother me after a while. For me, Skyrim is a better looking game, it plays better, it sounds better, it's bigger and deeper and even more of a time-sink than Oblivion was. It's an all-round better experience in every way that matters to me.

Shivering Isles is better than Dragonborn though.

 

[Duffk1ng]

Did anyone post this yet, re: quests.

Skyrim's fine, but it's also an example of what happens when you put too much faith in your systems over hand crafted gameplay. The great quest lines and so on elevate Bethesda's systems to greatness in Oblivion, not vice versa.

Fallout 4 takes it to the extreme and expects the systems (ie radiant quests, unimaginative "go here and kill shit" quests galore) to be enough on their own, after having already stripped all the depth out from levelling up and character building. It just turns into "shoot raiders in caves" after about 5 hours and basically never changes. "Hey, you levelled up! I mean, you don't care because all it does it let you pick a perk, most of which are arbitrarily gated off and even more of which suck and you'd never take anyway, but hey! It wouldn't matter if you could still spend ability points thus making a disappointing perk selection less of a kick in the teeth, but we took that out because reasons." I think the list of interesting quests and locations in that game is literally 2 entries long.

 

[espher]

If I could take out or dial back Oblivion Gates, I would rate Oblivion miles above Skyrim on the basis of setting, characters, story, and sidequests, and only behind based on some mechanics.

Fortunately, on PC, I more or less could.

I do think I like modded Skyrim better than modded Oblivion, but I'd love to have Tamriel et al in the Skyrim engine.

 

[aygomyownroad]

Skyrim is the better game but Oblivion was the moment the Xbox 360 generation truly began for a lot of us. Emerging from the sewers for the first time is an all time moment.

This in a nutshell.

I prefer Oblivions Guilds and quests, the cities etc but nothing comes close to that initial leaving the sewers. It was the first "Wow" Moment of that genetation.

 

[Cuningas de Häme]

I really liked Oblivion's subversive element. Looks like a happy "generic" fantasy setting on the surface, but there is so much sinister conduct going on beneath it all. Pretty much no town is as clean as it might seem at first.

Skyrim looked gloomy, was gloomy, full of gloomy people.

Ooh, this too.

So many comments how "generic High Fantasy" Oblivion is when it is actually really nuanced and did mature themes before Witcher (and then seemingly every damn fantasy game ever after Witcher).

Oblivion was ruined by afwul UI and scaling, both easily fixable via mods. TES games are PC games at heart and playing these on consoles is a disservice to you and the games.

 

[Steve.1981]

Skyrim is the better game but Oblivion was the moment the Xbox 360 generation truly began for a lot of us. Emerging from the sewers for the first time is an all time moment.

I get this, absolutely. I bought my first 360 with Oblivion. At the time, it was like my dream game come true.

I ignored the huge city behind me, swam straight across the water and went down into the first Ayleid ruin that I came across.

 

[Steve.1981]

TES games are PC games at heart and playing these on consoles is a disservice to you and the games.

Dear me.

I'm ok with being a part of this "disservice".

 

[Egida]

Oblivion was mindblowing for 2007 me. The scope of the open world was something I have never seen before or ever dreamed of. It was the first game I bought on PS3, so it was also my first HD game.

The thing is, and I think the same goes for Fallout, Bethesda games are a one trick pony. The first of a series you play is amazing, but then, the next one doesn't have that wow factor.

 

[Risev1]

Did anyone post this yet, re: quests.


Skyrim's fine, but it's also an example of what happens when you put too much faith in your systems over hand crafted gameplay. The great quest lines and so on elevate Bethesda's systems to greatness in Oblivion, not vice versa.

Fallout 4 takes it to the extreme and expects the systems (ie radiant quests, unimaginative "go here and kill shit" quests galore) to be enough on their own, after having already stripped all the depth out from levelling up and character building. It just turns into "shoot raiders in caves" after about 5 hours and basically never changes. "Hey, you levelled up! I mean, you don't care because all it does it let you pick a perk, most of which are arbitrarily gated off and even more of which suck and you'd never take anyway, but hey! It wouldn't matter if you could still spend ability points thus making a disappointing perk selection less of a kick in the teeth, but we took that out because reasons." I think the list of interesting quests and locations in that game is literally 2 entries long.

Holy shit this is so true. I can no longer play Skyrim anymore (granted I did put over 300 hours into the game) exactly because of the freaking draugr. They all were the same enemy throughout the entire game, just some had better stats, used a greatsword, or cast a spell. They were visually almost identical minus the negligble differences in appearance. Heck sometimes a female draugr would spawn in with a beard. That's how little effort was put into their appearance.

Skyrim was so happy to put every quest item at the end of a dungeon crawl, it really sucked. Even bandit lairs end in draugr that magically slept through the bandit activities, yet somehow awaken the moment you walk within 20 ft of their sight. It became unbearable after a while.

Just compare stealing an Elder Scroll in Skyrim and Oblivion. Oblivion had you go through an entire questline obtaining powerful relics. It then culminated into you sneaking into the Imperial Palace through the sewers and unlocking a hidden entrance using an key attached to an arrow. I mean holy shit doesn't that sound amazing? Better yet, you then sneak through to the guards' barracks, go through and into the chamber where the elder scrolls are being kept, and impersonate the Imperial Chancellor to fool the blind monks into giving you the scrolls. After that, you still have to escape, and using the other relics you collected throughout the previous questlines, you do so spectacularly.

Stealing an Elder Scroll in Skyrim involved you fighting your way through a bandit camp, into a dwemer ruin (which looks the same as any other dwemer ruin you already went through), and you get the scrolls at the end of yet another long dungeon crawl. Granted, this does culminate into one of the best locations in Skyrim, Blackreach, but that location itself becomes irritating when you realize half of the dwemer ruins lead back into it.

Heck, compare the same elder scroll heist in Oblivion to the finale of the Thieves guild where you steal the Falmer eye or whatever. The one in the Thieves guild involved, you guessed it, yet another dungeon crawl with no thematically appropriate stealth whatsoever. It's so lazy. They kept all the thieving to radiant quests, and those radiant quests don't hold a candle to those in Oblivion. This is why it's not silly to dismiss the radiant quests in Skyrim's guilds imo.

 

[LiQuid!]

Oblivion is the most difficult TES game for me to go back to. Even though pretty much every aspect of Morrowind's UI and combat systems are objectively inferior, I find it much easier to go back and replay. Something about Oblivion felt like an awkward half step in getting to the far more streamlined Skyrim. Oblivion was arguably the biggest step in the dumbing down of a lot of obtuse systems from the older games that I really enjoyed. Across the board skills were streamlined in ways that I still despise to this day (I will miss u forever spears and levitation). Skyrim's skill system is arguably even more dumbed down than Oblivion's, but I feel like it makes up for it with its level of polish. It's just a much easier game to play.

Sure everybody says the quest lines in Oblivion are better, and they pretty much are, but after your first time thru that content, it ceases to be a lasting factor for me personally. The value in a TES game to me comes from how fun it is to re-roll a new type of character and explore that sandbox in a new way. In this regard Morrowind and Skyrim are untouched. Even my favorite game in the franchise, Daggerfall, doesn't touch those games in that regard since that game's systems are heavily imbalanced and they favor min/maxing to a degree that there's almost no reason not to make a custom class that is great at everything important and that neglects everything that's useless.

 

[lazygecko]

Holy shit this is so true. I can no longer play Skyrim anymore (granted I did put over 300 hours into the game) exactly because of the freaking draugr. They all were the same enemy throughout the entire game, just some had better stats, used a greatsword, or cast a spell. They were visually almost identical minus the negligble differences in appearance. Heck sometimes a female draugr would spawn in with a beard. That's how little effort was put into their appearance.

Skyrim was so happy to put every quest item at the end of a dungeon crawl, it really sucked. Even bandit lairs end in draugr that magically slept through the bandit activities, yet somehow awaken the moment you walk within 20 ft of their sight. It became unbearable after a while.

Just compare stealing an Elder Scroll in Skyrim and Oblivion. Oblivion had you go through an entire questline obtaining powerful relics. It then culminated into you sneaking into the Imperial Palace through the sewers and unlocking a hidden entrance using an key attached to an arrow. I mean holy shit doesn't that sound amazing? Better yet, you then sneak through to the guards' barracks, go through and into the chamber where the elder scrolls are being kept, and impersonate the Imperial Chancellor to fool the blind monks into giving you the scrolls. After that, you still have to escape, and using the other relics you collected throughout the previous questlines, you do so spectacularly.

Stealing an Elder Scroll in Skyrim involved you fighting your way through a bandit camp, into a dwemer ruin (which looks the same as any other dwemer ruin you already went through), and you get the scrolls at the end of yet another long dungeon crawl. Granted, this does culminate into one of the best locations in Skyrim, Blackreach, but that location itself becomes irritating when you realize half of the dwemer ruins lead back into it.

Heck, compare the same elder scroll heist in Oblivion to the finale of the Thieves guild where you steal the Falmer eye or whatever. The one in the Thieves guild involved, you guessed it, yet another dungeon crawl with no thematically appropriate stealth whatsoever. It's so lazy. They kept all the thieving to radiant quests, and those radiant quests don't hold a candle to those in Oblivion. This is why it's not silly to dismiss the radiant quests in Skyrim's guilds imo.

I think the crux of the problem is that the game was rushed (remember, this was the first one to ship in time for its original release date without any delays. No doubt that comes with a steep price) and they didn't have any time to finish the actual questlines.

If you pay attention there are so many telltale signs in Skyrim of how gutted and reconfigured the questlines are. The Winterhold College questline is downright nonsensical with its vagueness surrounding the macguffin. The Companions questline doesn't even have any real named antiagonist, the Silver Hand were essentially just a glorified generic bandit faction (your follower NPCs even use the bandit-related banter when they are in Silver Hand locations), and the leader is unceremoniously killed offscreen by some unnamed nondescript character. Then there's all the little things you notice, like how dialogue lines were hastily edited with different names switched out/superimposed where you can clearly tell how artificial the edited intonation is.

The most prolific though is the civil war quest which was to be the centerpiece of the game apart from the MQ. This is where they actually have a metric shitton of additional content inside the game data. It was clearly meant to be many times bigger in scope and way more dynamic in its campaign mechanics. Most of that was actually implemented, but it was extremly buggy and unpolished, so what Bethesda did was simply disable most of the civil war content rather than remove it. There's a mod that enables it all again and tries its best to fix it into a playable state.

 

[Steel]

Holy shit this is so true. I can no longer play Skyrim anymore (granted I did put over 300 hours into the game) exactly because of the freaking draugr. They all were the same enemy throughout the entire game, just some had better stats, used a greatsword, or cast a spell. They were visually almost identical minus the negligble differences in appearance. Heck sometimes a female draugr would spawn in with a beard. That's how little effort was put into their appearance.

Skyrim was so happy to put every quest item at the end of a dungeon crawl, it really sucked. Even bandit lairs end in draugr that magically slept through the bandit activities, yet somehow awaken the moment you walk within 20 ft of their sight. It became unbearable after a while.

Just compare stealing an Elder Scroll in Skyrim and Oblivion. Oblivion had you go through an entire questline obtaining powerful relics. It then culminated into you sneaking into the Imperial Palace through the sewers and unlocking a hidden entrance using an key attached to an arrow. I mean holy shit doesn't that sound amazing? Better yet, you then sneak through to the guards' barracks, go through and into the chamber where the elder scrolls are being kept, and impersonate the Imperial Chancellor to fool the blind monks into giving you the scrolls. After that, you still have to escape, and using the other relics you collected throughout the previous questlines, you do so spectacularly.

Stealing an Elder Scroll in Skyrim involved you fighting your way through a bandit camp, into a dwemer ruin (which looks the same as any other dwemer ruin you already went through), and you get the scrolls at the end of yet another long dungeon crawl. Granted, this does culminate into one of the best locations in Skyrim, Blackreach, but that location itself becomes irritating when you realize half of the dwemer ruins lead back into it.

Heck, compare the same elder scroll heist in Oblivion to the finale of the Thieves guild where you steal the Falmer eye or whatever. The one in the Thieves guild involved, you guessed it, yet another dungeon crawl with no thematically appropriate stealth whatsoever. It's so lazy. They kept all the thieving to radiant quests, and those radiant quests don't hold a candle to those in Oblivion. This is why it's not silly to dismiss the radiant quests in Skyrim's guilds imo.

This is the real truth.

 

[UncleSporky]

Just compare stealing an Elder Scroll in Skyrim and Oblivion.

But if you want to talk significant plot points, you could just as easily compare the death of the emperor in Oblivion to Skyrim...which had most of the Dark Brotherhood quest line devoted to it, involved multiple stages of planning and setup, deception, betrayal, near-destruction of the guild, some really horrific scenes, the ultimate confrontation and a satisfying denouement.

And the only dungeon involved is a short duck into one to meet the client. After that you're assassinating someone in broad daylight at a wedding, getting a guy's schedule as he patrols Skyrim and ambushing him wherever convenient, killing a chef within a keep and hunting down the world famous Gourmet at the inn he's staying at, infiltrating the Emperor's dining room, and finally his ship. A strictly urban and personal series of missions.

It's always six of one, half a dozen of the other. Anything one does well, the other has a near equal example of doing well, and often the edge goes to Skyrim.

 

[Steel]

But if you want to talk significant plot points, you could just as easily compare the death of the emperor in Oblivion to Skyrim...which had most of the Dark Brotherhood quest line devoted to it, involved multiple stages of planning and setup, deception, betrayal, near-destruction of the guild, some really horrific scenes, the ultimate confrontation and a satisfying denouement.

And the only dungeon involved is a short duck into one to meet the client. After that you're assassinating someone in broad daylight at a wedding, getting a guy's schedule as he patrols Skyrim and ambushing him wherever convenient, killing a chef within a keep and hunting down the world famous Gourmet at the inn he's staying at, infiltrating the Emperor's dining room, and finally his ship. A strictly urban and personal series of missions.

It's always six of one, half a dozen of the other. Anything one does well, the other has a near equal example of doing well, and often the edge goes to Skyrim.

I mean, you're comparing thieves guild in oblivion to dark brotherhood in Skyrim. You really ought to compare dark brotherhood in oblivion to dark brotherhood in Skyrim. The Dark brotherhood in Oblivion is still top notch and arguably the best designed quests in Oblivion with multiple interesting solutions.