Am I the only one who thinks Oblivion is better than Skyrim?

[terry309]

Oblivion had custom magic, oblivion gates, the amazing imperial city (who could forget "welcome to the arena!"?) and the best expansion, Shivering Isles. Plus the armor looked cooler and the combat was more challenging.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

Really, the only thing you can possibly say in Oblivion's defense is that its faction quests are better than Skyrim, assuming you ignore the fact that its nigh-impossible to complete them in oblivion.

Really?
I completed them all, usually on every character I did, which became silly when knights of the nine came out. I'll admit I had the guide, but didn't find any of them impossible.

[Mochan]

I actually played Oblivion again last year. It didn't capture my attention and kept me playing all day. I played Skyrim again this year, it kept me coming back over and over.

In theory Oblivion has the features we want more but in practice Skyrim was more fun to play. Go figure.

In theory Morrowind has much, much better gameplay systems compared to both Oblivion and Skyrim. The magic and casting systems were much better and the alchemy and artificing was also significantly superior. Setting is better, too. But in practice I don't play Morrowind anymore and yet here I am playing Skyrim.

[Mochan]

Originally posted by RzareCTHa:

Hah :) "watered down for the casuals." All bethesda games are made with a casual player base in mind.

That is today. You clearly weren't around when they made Daggerfall.

[Mochan]

Originally posted by raubrey:

Originally posted by afgncaap_:

Hah :) "watered down for the casuals." All bethesda games are made with a casual player base in mind.

I got a chuckle out of the comment, too. Though Morrowind has some pretty decent old(er)-school RPG features. I'm not one of those "ewww casuals" type people either. It's just funny that it happens in almost all genres of games. There are probably (self-proclaimed) hardcore and casual Bejeweled players.

So you are denying the constant downgrading of features and dumbdown of gameplay in the Elder Scrolls series?

Back in Oblivion and Prior we had an actual inventory. In Skyrim what passes for an inventory is a shopping list you scroll through with your mouse wheel. In Morrowind you could actually jump and fly. They took this out in Oblivion and obviously also in Skyrim because hardcore players were breaking the game with it. In Daggerfall a single dungeon was as big as the entire Shivering Isles. Actually I think they were bigger, then in Morrowind they shrank into a few cells linked together you could run through in a minute.

That's the kind of "watering down for the casuals" that has been happening in this series for the last three decades.

You can laugh at hardcore players all you want but it is a fact that the games have been getting dumbed down with each iteration.

[rincewind]

Originally posted by Mochan:

Originally posted by raubrey:

I got a chuckle out of the comment, too. Though Morrowind has some pretty decent old(er)-school RPG features. I'm not one of those "ewww casuals" type people either. It's just funny that it happens in almost all genres of games. There are probably (self-proclaimed) hardcore and casual Bejeweled players.

So you are denying the constant downgrading of features and dumbdown of gameplay in the Elder Scrolls series?

Back in Oblivion and Prior we had an actual inventory. In Skyrim what passes for an inventory is a shopping list you scroll through with your mouse wheel. In Morrowind you could actually jump and fly. They took this out in Oblivion and obviously also in Skyrim because hardcore players were breaking the game with it. In Daggerfall a single dungeon was as big as the entire Shivering Isles. Actually I think they were bigger, then in Morrowind they shrank into a few cells linked together you could run through in a minute.

That's the kind of "watering down for the casuals" that has been happening in this series for the last three decades.

You can laugh at hardcore players all you want but it is a fact that the games have been getting dumbed down with each iteration.

I think that you got it wrong.
It's not really watering down for the casuals.
It's just the price to pay to play it on consoles.

[SpeedFreak1972]

Yea however hardcore gamers are not a big enough audience to generate massive sales.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak1972:

Yea however hardcore gamers are not a big enough audience to generate massive sales.

Oblivion is objectively a more shallow game than Skyrim. You're being mislead by fake depth. None of those skills or attributes actually matter, because of the fundamental issues regarding character development in the game. Namely how the game hard-caps your progress.

None of the attributes do anything in Oblivion that isn't done better, with more nuance, in Skyrim. About the only thing better in Oblivion than Skyrim is Spell variety. But the actual act of using magic is completely boring.

Likewise, Fallout 4 has the most depth of any Bethesda game since Morrowind. The sheer amount of design weight that went into the workshop system (not just the building, but the entire junk economy) makes Oblivion look like Call of Duty.

[WojciechWojski]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Originally posted by SpeedFreak1972:

Yea however hardcore gamers are not a big enough audience to generate massive sales.

Oblivion is objectively a more shallow game than Skyrim. You're being mislead by fake depth. None of those skills or attributes actually matter, because of the fundamental issues regarding character development in the game. Namely how the game hard-caps your progress.

None of the attributes do anything in Oblivion that isn't done better, with more nuance, in Skyrim. About the only thing better in Oblivion than Skyrim is Spell variety. But the actual act of using magic is completely boring.

Likewise, Fallout 4 has the most depth of any Bethesda game since Morrowind. The sheer amount of design weight that went into the workshop system (not just the building, but the entire junk economy) makes Oblivion look like Call of Duty.

If only Fallout 4 had half-enjoyable combat system and more than handfull of interesting sidequests.

The workshop feature was rather nice but still felt hamfisted and heavy handed at times, numerous mods had to be created in order to make it worthwhile. Even with all that I can't help feeling that it was created more as a filler to extend the gameplay. Since you could go through the main quest during one day and side quests were mainly going to a place and killing everything, they had to occupy us with something (collecting all the junk and weapons we found on adventures, decorating our "house", dressing settlers and such) and honestly during my playthrough I've spend almost as much time building setlments as actuslly playing the game, so at least the succeded with that part.

[deuceyd]

Ah the good ole boomer reply "Well for ME it was X" as if they had a special copy of the game nobody else had, free of all bugs and bad design.

Alexander regardless of how much you enjoyed the game and look back with all the nostalgia of your youthful 80's or 90's the game still has all the flaws.

There were so many problems with radiant AI killing off NPCs making questing unstartable or unfinishable, level scaling was autism itself and made an already boring combat system a chore by turning all enemies into damage sponges...

The game didn't age well

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by DEUCEY D:

Alexander regardless of how much you enjoyed the game and look back with all the nostalgia of your youthful 80's or 90's the game still has all the flaws.

I never said it didn't, I merely said the quests were better than skyrim's quests, and that made the game more enjoyable.

I never once said it didn't have flaws, anyone who played recognised the flaws, like when you try to fight on a bridge and fall through it, or the NPCs walking off stairs that weren't there.

LTR

[WojciechWojski]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Originally posted by DEUCEY D:

Alexander regardless of how much you enjoyed the game and look back with all the nostalgia of your youthful 80's or 90's the game still has all the flaws.

I never said it didn't, I merely said the quests were better than skyrim's quests, and that made the game more enjoyable.

I never once said it didn't have flaws, anyone who played recognised the flaws, like when you try to fight on a bridge and fall through it, or the NPCs walking off stairs that weren't there.

LTR

I wouldn't say that the NPC dialogue system in Oblivion was good(it's one of biggest memes) but hearing the exact same dialogue play out for the 50th time while going through town in Skyrm quickly turned from boring to annoying.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by WojciechWojski:

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

I never said it didn't, I merely said the quests were better than skyrim's quests, and that made the game more enjoyable.

I never once said it didn't have flaws, anyone who played recognised the flaws, like when you try to fight on a bridge and fall through it, or the NPCs walking off stairs that weren't there.

LTR

I wouldn't say that the NPC dialogue system in Oblivion was good(it's one of biggest memes) but hearing the exact same dialogue play out for the 50th time while going through town in Skyrm quickly turned from boring to annoying.

But that's something they haven't changed much in Skyrim, all that happens is NPCs say one of three lines to you, still annoying.

The whole point of the Oblivion Dialogue system was that they were meant to recognise that you had done stuff, and reference it. Unfortunately the NPCs forgot after a while, reverting back to their "who are you again" lines.

The bits in skyrim where they comment on your skills, like "keep your hands to yourself sneak thief" is derived from the Oblivion dialogue system. Only they scaled it back... a lot, I doubt they could actually get it t work how they originally wanted to, so they settled for a smaller scale.

[WojciechWojski]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Originally posted by WojciechWojski:

I wouldn't say that the NPC dialogue system in Oblivion was good(it's one of biggest memes) but hearing the exact same dialogue play out for the 50th time while going through town in Skyrm quickly turned from boring to annoying.

But that's something they haven't changed much in Skyrim, all that happens is NPCs say one of three lines to you, still annoying.

The whole point of the Oblivion Dialogue system was that they were meant to recognise that you had done stuff, and reference it. Unfortunately the NPCs forgot after a while, reverting back to their "who are you again" lines.

The bits in skyrim where they comment on your skills, like "keep your hands to yourself sneak thief" is derived from the Oblivion dialogue system. Only they scaled it back... a lot, I doubt they could actually get it t work how they originally wanted to, so they settled for a smaller scale.

So thay took a meme a made it worse, at least before it was funny in some way, a guard saying
"I don't know you and I don't care to know you" to everyone in the town, in Skyrim it just became meh. Guess that it's better that they tried to make it look more serious, always something.

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