It still is, but it looks deep compared to Skyrim. Just like Skyrim will look deep compared to TES VI

lol! so true, but, please don't let it be true.

will we ever get an advlt, complex and difficult true rpg/character-based game with deep, meaningful quests and dialogue in a world that evolves around our character?

I enjoyed the guild quests in Oblivion but I think I enjoyed them partially because they were fun and partially because I hated the ****ing Oblivion gates. I would do pretty much anything to avoid the main quest line. With Skyrim, I actually want to work the mainquest; its interesting. I had maybe one mage character in Oblivion and I didn't stick with him so I can't give a fair shake to the differences in magic between the 2 games. I love the combat in Skyrim; lots of fun. Someone likened Skyrim to looking like Fallout; I can't disagree more. I love the look of the game. It's what I always saw in my mind when I created my nord characters. Oblivion is a favorite of mine but I'm enjoying skyrim very much.

I guess I'm one of those rare cases that still keeps both Oblivion and Morrowind installed on my computer, along with Skyrim. In fact, I played Morrowind through for the 3rd time last summer, and Oblivion for the 4th time through during the fall right before the release of Skyrim.

Having said that, I believe that overall Oblivion does have more depth, variety and complexity than Skyrim. A few examples:
-Journal entries are FAR more detailed. It feels like a true journal written by you, and not a shopping list of "things to do."
-Spellmaking
-Alchemy allows you to use up to four different apparatuses together (mortar and pestle, alembic, calcinator, retort) to make potions.
-Five separate body armor pieces (as opposed to only 4 in Skyrim)
-Lockpicking is more tricky to understand and master (but just as annoying as Skyrim's )
-Archery requires you to actually take into consideration ballistics when aiming
-Attributes
-More skills
-A more complex leveling system (the bonus points awarded to attributes by leveling related skills)
-Racial abilities do matter A LOT
-Classes
-Specialization
-...so character creation is far more complex and detailed
-NPCs will comment on recent events, and sometimes even gossip between them about your recent adventures
-Faction quests are longer and more involving. It really feels like you have to struggle your way up the ranks.

Of course, the same can be said of Morrowing vs. Oblivion.

Still, Skyrim introduces certain elements which add greatly to it:
-Companion NPCs
-Smithing (which actually allows you to craft items)
-Blocking is more intuitive and more under your control
-Dual-wielding
-Dual-casting
-Perks (which I personally think is a two-edged sword after all)
-Shouts

And of course, Skyrim's graphics are better (IMO), better overall combat, great sound design, beautiful music (perhaps as much as Oblivion's and Morrowind's), vastly improved character and creature animations, much better NPC racial design, better and more varied voice acting.
And I'm convinced that Bethesda got dragon fights just right (despite the occasional glitches and annoyances). Dragon animations in particular are amazing.

After playing over 200 hours of Skyrim, one thing I realized that I missed in comparison with Oblivion and Morrowind (and also Fallout 3) was a sense of wonder, mystery and discovery. This may be a result of Bethesda's attempts at creating a game that is more "Low Fantasy" (closer to our own historical reality).

Finally, I think we should all be thankful that we don't have to deal with cliff racers anymore!

melquiad-

no, you aren't a rarity. there are lots of us who have kept playing morrowind since it came out. and, put in hundreds and hundreds of hours into oblivion and needed well-deserved breaks from it. same with the fallouts.

skyrim got boring for me quicker than any of those other games.

Oblivion had so much more skill wise, and quests were always fun, and the quest lines were actually satisfying when you did them, Skyrim is great, probably better, but Oblivion especially for its time, is a lot bettter in some ways.

That's nice that you're all able to love Oblivion more than Skyrim. I wish I could share your thoughts, but Oblivion wouldn't run no more than 10 minutes before crashing on me. And if it didn't crash for 30 minutes, the game is acting all weird. I couldn't enjoy that game because of its bad performance. I probably would be playing that more if it were just as stable as Skyrim, a game I get hardly no CTD.

And I've gotten use to not having them.

i agree, Oblivion with Skyrim graphics would equal pure excellence for me.

You actually LIKE having no control over how, and WHEN you level? Yikes...at least in OBV I could level when I wanted to by sleeping. In Skyrim I can't open the skills "menu" once I've leveled. And that's very annoying.

Back to the OP, Oblivion definitely did have more variety. I miss the various creatures you'd face in the wilds and the dungeouns. Oblivion had MINOTAURS, man! Now we have just lions and spiders and bears in the wilds and just draugrs in crypts. Draugrs and more draugrs. No skeletons, no corrupted shades (I love those creepy things) and no ghosts. COME ON! How hard would it have been to do a palette swap and call it something else? Hell in Oblivion there were two kinds of zombies, just because!

Yikes. Astral vapors. *Shivers*

I loved going into old wrecked ships in Oblivion and fighting the wraiths. And I loved going into the Chapel burial chambers to fight the ghosts and skeletons. VARIETY. It's a good thing. Why call Skyrim's Sea Of Ghosts that, if you never encounter ANY ghosts in its many shipwrecks? And one last thing...why not have some super frost atronauch somewhere in the extreme north that guards some kind of valuable treasure? Wouldn't that be cool? I've randomly come across several flame atronauchs in the game for no plausible reason. It would make more sense to me that the frosties are a manifestation of Skyrim's atmosphere. They should be more randomly encountered. In my opinion.

They really need to hire more and/or better writers - add some real intrigue - and program in more choices and consequences.

I'm having a blast in Skyrim, but sometimes I just get sick and bored senseless from the dialogue options, the linearity of it all, and the superficial feel to it.

Especially tiresome, it is, to be shoved missions down my throat; I can't count the number of times I've reloaded because that mission didn't fit my character. Or then, you think it might, only to discover that no matter what dialogue option you choose, it still leads down that same deterministic road. My character is not a killer (Edit: Well everyone is, but you get my drift), so why does my quest log need to contain "Kill [Person X]" when all I wanted to do was to intervene so that no one was hurt...

Oblivion was my first TES game I discovered back in 2009. After playing it for a while on the PS3, I purchased an Xbox 360 so I could play Morrowind. And I had some of the same feelings you are having now.


Some of Morrowinds quests are even more interesting because you don't have a quest arrow, you have to follow directions from NPCs and some of the NPCs give you bad directions. But Oblivion gave you NPCs that have schedules and things to do during the day, which added a new dimension that Morrowind did not have. In Morrowind, NPCs did not move around much and vendors were at their sales stalls 24/7.


Really? I never found much of use at vendors in Oblivion, since (apart from one unique item per vendor) they do not carry enchanted gear. I found much more interesting stuff in Skyrim at vendors, but I don't enchant.


Totally agree. I am still unhappy about no spellmaking in Skyrim and the overall lack of spell effects. I think they wanted to showcase shouts and did not want the shout system to be outshined by the magic system.


I find a lot of shortcommings with Skyrim. Every game in the series seems to be simpler than the prior game in terms of the complexity of things like spells, classes, skills, differences between races, persuasion, gear degradation, etc. On the other hand, its not just the graphics that improves with every game, the AI improves as well. Right now I am having fun playing Skyrim with no HUD and just paying attention to the clues from the game world to figure out whether I am hidden or not. That type of gameplay would not have been as rewarding in Oblivion and almost compeltely non existant in Morrowind.

QUEST STARTED: You will have this quest added to your journal no matter what, and you cannot simply decline it.

• Press E or (X) to start the quest. (JK...it's been started for you whether you wanted it to or not!)

I tried to love Oblivion but eventually it never managed to captivate me as much as MW did. Having said that, I do find many aspects of Oblivion more deeper than Skyrim. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that TES is becoming shallower and shallower as time goes by.

Oblivion does implement some things better than Skyrim, and vice versa.

Morrowind does implement some things better than Oblivion, and vice versa.

Which is better is a matter of opinion. Personally I prefer Oblivion of the three, but I very much like them all. For example, I've been playing Skyrim nearly every day since it's release and I'm not yet tired of it.

I actually find this really amusing. When Oblivion came out, everyone complained that it was so poor compared to Morrowind, and now that Skyrim is out we compare it to Oblivion the same way. I guess that is the way it is though.

I never played morrowind, but probably because it was. Skyrim though takes it to a whole other level of svck.

See I'm one of those people who loved Morrowind and then equally liked Oblivion. For me I felt the changes of Oblivion were good changes. Most people will not agree with me. Most people will disagree with me. But I liked the changed. But I do not like Skyrim. Skyrim is to linear and is to focused on linearity. To focused on streamlining. I miss Oblivion and even Morrowinds journal. I liked the idea that my character took time to write in his journal. It felt like a right proper adventure. Now we have Skyrim that just says do this quest and you cannot get rid of this quest no matter how much you'd like to. I personally like Oblivion and even Morrowind with the points to level my character up. I play games like Kingdoms of Amular and Fable, who still use points to level your character up. I liked the idea of after a long journey that I need to rest. Now in Skyrim my character runs around endlessly not sleeping.

needs better loot, i want items that enchanting and smithing cannot match, once ur rockin a full set of daedric or master robes then there isn't anything more to do gear wise, i want items that are unique and better than anything u coudl make

I have found that I am bored with Skyrim and I am not sure why. Is it the quests or just me?

I found the same thing.
I tried again today after about a month and a half off and its just... meh. I've done all the quests and seen just about everything worthwhile. I couldn't bring myself to do the daedric quests. The writing through out the game is so borderline and the rewards for quests so mundane I couldn't see the point.
If the story isn't going to captivate me and the reward is going to be so sub par as to be nigh useless. Then what other reason is there to play the game?

I played Oblivion first, then Morrowind about a year later.
After being so familiar with Oblivion, it was tough to get used to all the clunkiness of Morrowind. For example:

-Having to equip a lockpick to pick locks.
-Some chests and doors are trapped, so you have to disable those magical traps first.
-Finding *some* locations, even with all the detailed directions in the journal, can be VERY time consuming and tedious, even frustrating.
-Fatigue decreases when you run.
-Low "Luck" and skill levels? You will be hitting nothing but air with your longsword, even when standing right in front of your opponent.
-Advancing in factions has skill level requisites.
-Enchanting can be extremely tricky at early levels (but immensely rewarding later on)
-Switching between spell casting and weapons is slow and cumbersome.
-Cliff racers know everything. They know where you are and they will pursue you to the end of the world... forever... ever.
-Not too many music tracks, so you will be hearing the same music over and over too frequently.

And yet, once you get past the learning curve and the issues, bugs, glitches and aged graphics, Morrowind offers a vibrant world filled with mysterious places having fascinating names, truly epic quests that will require you to travel extensively and meet people all over the place; so much depth when it comes to apparel, enchanting, spells, variety of weapons.
Think about this: In Morrowind you can equip 8 individual pieces of body armor (compared to 4 in Skyrim), plus a shield, plus a shirt, and pants, plus a necklace, a belt and two rings.
And each can be enchanted individually. And there are far more enchanting effects available in the game.

There are also less "go fetch" or "go and kill the rats" quests, and more substance in the quests overall.
Factions are interconnected and your standing in one faction can affect your standing in another. And the resolution of the main quest has so much effect in the world; it truly changes it and changes history, and the people of Morrowind will recognize you for doing so.

And truly legendary artifacts are plenty and quite awesome to look for. In Skyrim, besides the Priest Masks, there is hardly any artifact that is worth using over highly-enchanted and improved generic armor and weapons:
Chillrend? Hardly better than a high-end daedric sword.
Ebony Mail? Hardly better than your choice of enchanted armor.
Even in Oblivion the Ebony Blade was pretty awesome, especially when used in combination with a custom "Weakness to Fire/Weakness to Magicka" spell.

For people like me, who appreciate complex game mechanics, rich lore and worlds filled with High-Fantasy awe and wonder, all of the things that Morrowind and Oblivion offer supersede all the dragons and shouts you can put in a game.

The one thing that I think Skyrim absolutely does better than either of its predecessors is sheer and unimpeded exploration: the beauty of the world, the variety in the terrain, flora and fauna, the organic way the landscape is shaped and geographical locations scattered throughout, the unexpected random (or radiant) encounters.

I agree completely.

On your last point, the world aesthetics. That can only hold interest for so long.

Since I'm playing on console of like to see more meat added to the existing game instead of new places, dlc speaking. If I was a pc gamer I'd want new places, I'd let the modding add the meat. Well I'm not a pc gamer(plan to) so really I'd love to see just more and more added to Skyrim I want it bigger as far as content goes.

Me too. First thing I would like to see is an immersive HUD option and a darker dungeon option on consoles. I'd rather see stuff like that that than any new content. Kill cams are way way down on my list of stuff I would like to see, and even then they should be optional feature.

when i see dlc topics i cringe, cry and laugh, so to speak, lol.

i can't believe people want more quests and locations.

i want customization, options and 'hardcoe' toggles.