And when TES VII comes out...

Oblivion is the best game ever created and a very important part of my life.

Skyrim can't be beaten as far as graphics and atmosphere. That's about it. Oblivion, Morrowind, and even Daggerfall are far superior from a pure enjoyment level, IMO. And I still haven't found a game that comes close to OB. Most fun I ever had playing an RPG, ever.

I think people are calling Skyrim old because they are always getting this "seen it before" feeling, because a number of the core mechanics are more or less identical to Oblivion.

- The combat, aside from a couple minor new features and kill moves, is exactly the same: bash 'em til they die.

- There are no new (or returning) weapon types whatsoever, in fact less than Oblivion (lost Shortswords).

- Horses received nothing, they were cut-n'-pasted from Oblivion.

- NPCs feel the same, rigid and lifeless, only this time not because of them spouting the same random conversations about Mudcrabs, they just keep saying the exact same one-liners over and over. ("I work for Belethor at the General Goods store." "Do you get to the Cloud district very often? Oh, what am I saying, of course you don't.")

- NPC AI, particularly in combat, is still horrendously dumb.

- Skyrim nuisance creatures: bears and wolves. Oblivion nuisance creatures: bears and wolves. Boars are now Sabrecats, but that's about it.

I attribute all the "Skyrim feels old" comments as being a symptom of deja vu. In fact, when I showed my 10-year-old niece the game for the first time, his first comment was "That looks a lot like Oblivion."

I take that as a clue that not enough changed between the games, and that's why Skyrim is losing people's interest so quickly.

A very good explanation as to why people say Skyrim feels old, it resembles Oblivion too much. Thanks

And the things not identical to Oblivion, are identical to Fallout 3. They even copy and pasted the punk rock haircuts, not to mention the quest update sound and fonts. The textures for the rocks, especially mountains, look exactly like those in the western edge of FO3's map. The kill cams are just V.A.T.S. Lite, and so on. I still keep expecting to see a Deathclaw or BOS Paladin behind the next corner in Skyrim, and wonder where my Fat Man went.

Yeah Skyrim has next to nothing on the innovation side and is just an upgrade from Oblivion in my opinion. I still believe Skyrim to be a great game, but some things are pretty meh.

No wonder they Bethesda kept hyping dragons up in every interview as they were the biggest innovation the game had to offer. I'd like to see a few things switched up or majorly improved in future entries as the same old may make things a bit stale.

Heh, I'd just be happy to see them restore a few things from Oblivion that they axed in Skyrim. Spellmaking, for one, and shortswords. And more than two kinds of trees.

I'm actually not too sure that much care actually went into Skyrim. So far, there have been several mods that have come out fixing egregious flaws in the game, like code inefficiencies that probably would not have been touched otherwise, and another that has brought to light the flat-out lazy texture-mapping for the game's static models (one case in particular managed to get the quality of the texture doubled simply by adjusting the model's UV-mapping). And then most of the major gameplay elements are cut-n-pasted from either Oblivion and Fallout 3. Then we have the Guilds, where the developers decided to give them actual story quests at the very end of development and gave us a bunch of obviously rushed questlines, confirming to me that they were cutting even more corners with the quests trying to make as many of them computer-generated as possible. And, in true Bethesda style, it's buggy as can be.

Blurry textures may have been forgivable back in 2006 when the tech was new, but not today, not on the tail-end of the current console generation. Quality wise, as I said before, it stands equal to Oblivion, because Oblivion cut just as many corners as Skyrim did (generic computer-generated scenery, horrible level scaling, lots of recycled architecture, bare-bones dungeons, and so on).

Moral of the story? Stop trying to make computers do the work for you, Bethesda! It didn't work for Oblivion, and it didn't work for Skyrim, either. No more "Radiant" novelty features, just concentrate on making the damn game.

Just as Daggerfall players said Morrowind's MQ was piss poor. It's a never ending cycle it seems.

I would still say Skyrim's main quest was a lot better than Oblivion's, but in almost every other aspect Oblivion is better than Skyrim.

How did you find out they only put the guild stories in near the very end? Nevertheless that was an absolutely ridiculous idea, can you imagine the factions with computer generated fetch quests?

I agree with your points though, lots of things to improve on down to even the most basic things.

It was implied in interviews, where Bethesda stated that previously they intended for the Guilds to be only generated quests, but found that this was too boring. I then inferred all of the obviously poorly written (and I mean much worse than normal Bethesda standards) and extremely short storylines, and that tells me that they came to this conclusion fairly late into Skyrim's development, and they didn't have enough time to correct the mistake.

Oh, and on that note, we have to remember that Skyrim's release date also played a part in how the final product turned out. Something we need to expect nowadays now that game production is done more and more to appease the accountants.

And with that out of the way, back to Oblivion now.

I prefer Oblivions NPCs to Skyrim's. Cyrodiil's residents have more personality, while most of Skyrims are forgettable.

I just popped Oblivion back in my xbox tonight, Started a new character.

Ranger:

Stealth

Agility
Personality

Alchemy
Athletics
Blade
Marksman
Secruity
Speechcraft
Stealth.

So fun. yeah the combat isn't the best, but that graphics are better than what i remember them to be. And the NPC's are ten times better than Skyrim's. Can't wait to start the thieves guild quest. Great to be back in Cyrodil!

Save that the NPCs look horrible in this game. First time Bethesda tried out FaceGen software, and they didn't really impress for Oblivion, most of the NPCs look like orangutans. With splotchy uber-low-res textures.

But you can't deny they have more personality than in Skyrim. Maybe it might have something to do with NPCs have readily defined Disposition that affects their dialogue? Or Mudcrabs? Or maybe this being the part where you fall down and bleed to death? Or STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!!!

And Skyrim? Arrows in knees. Doesn't really compare.

I'm playing through knights of the nine again and i'm pretty stunned by how bad/cheesy the voice acting is. Skyrim made a definite improvement in this area.

...but yes, i'm also a huge lover of the epic dynamic conversations, it is tragic that they were removed in Skyrim (just about anyway).

I played Oblivion a little the other day and the only things that were a turn off for me were the lack of NPCs or anything on the roads and the awkward movements. Besides those two things, excluding no werewolves, Oblivion is better than Skyrim; for the most part I feel Skyrim is a downgrade from Oblivion.

Oblivion is extremely fun. Give Oblivion the enhanced melee combat and archery from Skyrim and better character models and i'd be set for another 5 years. On console might i add.

Wow I thought about that the other day and said the same thing, except I like Oblivion's archery better it was more realistic with how the arrows went at an arch.

Thats true I'm even liking the old hot key system on the controller. Like how it doesn't completely stop gameplay. But yeah the sheathing and unsheathing of the sword is the only thing that really bugs me haha. I missed Haggling with shopkeepers too

Wow, not me. A mod to get rid of Haggling is one of my "must-have" mods.

Eh, oh well. It's just an extra fun thing to do while buying or selling

Not for me, I don′t really bother with it anyway. Far more important is not having to fight regular animals, imhpo.

Oh my God.. Oblivion's main questline seems DEEP if you play Skyrim first?

I am never getting Skyrim.

That's a matter of opinion.