Now with all wonderful the STEP guides, I couldn't resist, and I made some huge Oblivion and Skyrim installs, which I enjoy in parallel.

But as I play the Dark Brotherhood quests in both games, I can't help myself and I say: the Oblivion faction quests are simply better in every way.

Sure, I feel that Skyrim has a more fun gameplay experience, with the perks, shouts, good looking spells, great impact feel in combat, but in terms of the Faction quests, Oblivion>>Skyrim.

I think that the most important aspect is that the feeling you get while playing is different. In the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion you feel like a badass assassin, following a clear set of rules, taking instructions from other badass assassins, which you can't help yourself but respect: the great vampire, the serious shadowscale woman and her brother, the mysterious elf archer (that has a Dark Elf equivalent in Skyrim), the brutal orc (which has as equivalent the Werewolf), the dysfunctional Imperial girl, that has found a family thanks to, of course, the awesome Lucien (which has the most awesome quote when asked for Rumors: "I don't spread rumors, I create them" - so badass). In Skyrim you are just a plain misfit murderer, following instructions from a woman that is very hard to like, and later befriending a crazy clown, which is veeeery hard to respect in any way, even if you read his diary with his sad past. Instead of a great, mature, vampire, we get a kid vampire, and so on.

Regarding quests, in Oblivion all the DB quests are fun and well thought, some of them with several interesting ways to finish them, and with the bonus being always interesting ( Scales of Pitiless Justice anyone?). And by the end of the questline (which feels a lot longer compared to Skyrim), you feel part of the organization and fulfilled. You Are an Assassin of the Dark Brotherhood. In Skyrim, by the end, you are... a disappointed murderer with a clown best friend.

I'm not saying its bad, but its simply not as pleasurable to be part of the faction in Skyrim when you compare the two games directly.

And we can extend this beyond the Dark Brotherhood.

The Fighters Guild vs Companions => Fighters Guild is a serious organization, that conducts business in the whole of Cyrodiil, and quests vary from normal business activities for a mercenary, to fighting a rival company that isn't so honorable. The Companions, on the other hand, are a bunch of fighters, with only one base, focused only on the Werewolf side of things in terms of storyline. Again, you feel part of a powerful organization in Oblivion, in Skyrim you are in a fight club.

Thieves Guild Oblivion vs Thieves Guild Skyrim => In Oblivion everything is shrouded in mystery and secrecy (think only about how you join), even if you are part of the guild, which makes sense, for a thieves guild. In Skyrim everybody knows everything about the weak Thieves guild, there is no real secrecy (think about how you join again), the members are thugs, and the Questline, although longer and better than the others, in my opinion, just isn't very thief-like towards the end (think about the Nightingale armor).

And lastly, the Mage Guild vs the College=> The Mage Guild is again, spread through all of Cyrodiil, and you have to work a lot until you get to the Academy, where the real magical research is done, and where you get to the cool questline involving necromancy. In Skyrim its like you get access immediately to a stripped down Academy, with just a few people inside, that do almost no real research, and you start and finish quickly a small faction questline.

As a summary, I think the biggest problem is that in Oblivion you feel you are part of something bigger, something that was there long before you, and will be there long after you are gone, even if you become a leader. You are part of those of organizations and its great. In Skyrim, you just don't get that feeling.

I hope that in the next Elder Scrolls game, the creators will look a little at the past, and learn about what they did good in those storylines in Oblivion, and try to recreate that feeling.

I can't compare the questlines for Factions in Morrowind, because its been years since I've last played it, and I'm waiting for Open MW to be completed, and maybe some more updates for Tamriel Rebuilt.

Oh, great. Another "this game is better than that game" thread. These threads always turn into food fights.

I actually enjoyed the story of Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood more than Oblivion's. My fellow assassins felt more like people rather than characters/caricatures, which made the twist near the end all the more impactful.

Otherwise, I have to agree with you on this. The quest design in Oblivion was perhaps some of the crispest in the Elder Scrolls series, and the writing in the quests made you feel like you were really earning your position and becoming part of the group. (Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood may have told a better story imo, but Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood was more fun.) That is probably my (second? third?) biggest issue with Skyrim: None of your achievements feel earned and the game doesn't generally take the time to make you care about its inhabitants.

As for Morrowind, I think it excelled at giving you a wide variety and huge quantity of faction quests to choose from, but they generally (not universally, but generally) didn't have a strong story arc like Oblivion's and Skyrim's faction quests. Morrowind's focus is on making you feel like you're really part of a faction, while Oblivion and Skyrim focus more on involving you in the faction's story arc. (The reason I only think this is the case is because my Morrowind is super modded, so I'm not 100% sure what is vanilla and what isn't.)

I absolutely think that Bethesda can bring back solid faction questlines. With Skyrim, they really showed me that they're listening to their players, and even with the lackluster faction quests the game is a monumental achievement.

The only quests I felt that were universally weak between both Skyrim and Oblivion were the Magical factions. The Order of the Black Worm and Mannimarco was alright, but both sort of had a ham fisted sandwich of evil causing magical havoc all over the place, and I think in both cases they were poorly executed. I'd actually say Morrowind's was better on the whole, since it actually dealt with magical politics, positions, and actual research into the history and lore of the setting, something Skyrim dropped the ball on completely. Seriously, you go to explore Saarthaal and the Nord/Falmeri conflict, only to make it merely a postit note for the Eye plot point? Come on.

But yeah, Oblivion's quest design by in large sorta trumps Skyrim's in quite a few aspects, and I didn't particularly enjoy Oblivion in the first place. That said, the only faction quest I think Skyrim took a big step back on was the Companions, and that's less of its storyline and progression and more the horrible handling of the Lycanthropy bit. Don't want to be a Werewolf? Okay than, you'll just be locked out of progressing through the rest of the series.

I really miss having guild posts in cities in skyrim. A problem with Skyrim in my opinion is nearly all of the factions are in a ruined status before our involvment and they don't seem to be able to function on their own.

I'm going to be honest... I hated the Thieves Guild, Mages Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest-lines in Oblivion. The stories were one dimensional and boring, none of the characters were interesting (why people love Lechance is beyond me) the the only thing they really did well was the progression-curve. And even then, their poor story made it feel like a slog.

That's not to say Skyrim's were 'better'... they definitely suffer from poor pacing problems, but if they had the progression-curve of Oblivion, they would be leagues ahead of Oblivion.

It can't be a food fight. There's no food. Nothing else worth digesting, either.

Skyrim's guildes svcked balls, it was one of the few negative points about Skyrim. Boring, repetitive questlines and boring characters. Out of all Brotherhood members I only really liked Cicero. The fact it ended in a similar fashion as the Oblivion one was a huge letdown. Companions were dull and uninteresting. Probably the weakest guild in the game. The only one I really liked was the Thieves Guild.

Skyrim is an awesome game overall, a great achievement as you say (I played over 600 hours according to Steam), but as I play now the Thieves guild missions in Skyrim, I see the major differences between the guilds compared with Oblivion. In Oblivion the Thieves Guild is secretive, you don't even know all its members, and protects its interests, like the poor people in the Imperial Districts, knowing that they will protect and help the Guild in turn. In Skyrim the Thieves guild is extremely easy to infiltrate and robs even the poorest in Riften, and as a result everybody hates them (even me while doing the quests). Its not realistic that such a guild would survive, even in a fantasy game.

The same with the Dark Brotherhood. In Oblivion there are different branches will a cell structure, so even if one is destroyed, the others survive with no problems, since the members of the different branches don't know each other. I think in Skyrim the idea with the destruction of the guilds went too far, and affected the enjoyment of playing the factions.

And the time put in to develop the quests themselves is much greater in Oblivion, and it leads to much more fun: look for example at the quest Whodoneit? of the Dark Brotherhood. You have to assassinate five guests in any order you want, and their dialogue changes to reflect any choice you make. And they talk to you differently if they like you or not. There are multiple ways to finish the quest, and it took me one hour to see most of the dialogue options that were in the quest, only one quest. I don't remember any faction quest in Skyrim with that much detail put in it.

I think new vegas handles factions better than any tes game ive played. reminded me of morrowind in being organizations rather than hubs for secondary questlines. I always think both oblivion and skyrims factions suffer from being too distant from the major events of each game (e.g, mythic dawn/dagons invasion and dragons/civil war)