Skyrim vs Oblivion, eh? Overall, Skyrim > - ∞ > Oblivion

Taken as Elder Scrolls games, Skyrim is leaps and bounds better than Oblivion. Taken as just games, both are still fun, but Skyrim is superior.
Heck, Oblivion is just a sterile game with ugly environments [i.e. nice for its time], rotten potatoe people, a counter-intuitive [i.e. turrible] level up system, bad writing, 'blah' quest design, overall awful dungeons/caves, and o.k gameplay. Didn't stop me from putting 500hrs into it though.

Modded Skyrim may even dethrone modded Morrowind once Skyrim hits its prime. Oblivion... never gunna happen...

I watched a video of Todd at e3 taking about Oblivion before release and he said the same things that he said about Skyrim. He said new hand crafted dungeons. Ya right but oblivion really has not the best dungeons but Skyrim is worse in my opinion. I hate going into them, I always feel like its the same dungeon over and over, the ones that look like they are outside are really cool though. So after watching the Oblivion video I took another look at the Skyrim E3 video and it's funny when he says Skyrim has a working economy, he says we can sabotage the wood mill. I don't see how unless you just kill the guy working there and then it just no longer is being operated. Then he goes on to talk about dynamic weather and how the snow will actually gather on the ground, you can see the towns and wilderness accumulate snow as its falling. Am I missing something because I have never seen this in my 500 hours of playing Skyrim.

Did he staight up lie or were these things taken out of the game? I don't see why he would claim all these things knowing we'd see the truth. I'm confused?!

You're Todd Howard, and you're tasked with promoting your latest game. Do you say nothing about it, since you can't guarantee that everything you say will make the final cut, or do you tell them all the awesome things that you're trying to put in, even though budget or time considerations might mean they'll never see it in-game?

I get that but two things. In the video the guy asks will these things be in the game and Todd says yes for sure. The second thing is an article came out about 2 or 3 weeks before the game and released and Todd talked more about those things and how they were such a big part of the game. The only reason I even remember these things is because the dynamic weather and economy system were a huge seller for me. When I would tell my friends about skyrim trying to make them reserve it those are the two things that sold it to them. So ya I guess your right lol, he was selling his game and it worked. It would of been nice to see those things anyways.

I do remember how great radiant AI sounded when they were talking about Oblivion before it was released. All of the features, all of the promises actually made me go out to buy a new graphics card and some RAM just so I could play Oblivion and I said to myself 'Wow, once Oblivion comes out I'll never need another video game ever, it sounds so great'.

And boy I was wrong (though I did enjoy Oblivion, I certainly don't 'hate' it like some people on here claim), and when almost the exact same things were said about Skyrim in terms of the radiant AI, the economy, etc. I said on the forums, prior to Skyrim's release, that these features would be way overblown, under-deliver, and unsatisfying. And I think I was right, and subsequently was less disappointed in Skyrim than I was with Oblivion.

I remember hearing about Skyrims enemies and how there were so many they couldn't even go through the list because interview was too short. There was so much wildlife, ya right. Ok bear, spider, deer and a few more. As for enemies there are two types and dragons. There are a few more but you rarely see them. Lies.

The first thing I wanted to do was sabatoge that mill. Well I went there and killed the guy and nothing happened. In my head I thought doing that would maybe make the store have less mechandise or something.

When I first came out of helgen I saw this tree stump with ants all over it and I thought wow they were not kidding on the details put into this world. Well soon I found out that was the only stump with ants in the whole game.

But the guilds and factions are not even finished. I don't mind that I didn't get Morrowind II, I mind that with every iteration of the series, more and more stuff is missing. the quests have very few actual consequences. I miss that. I miss having to worry that doing a quest for one guild might ruin my chances with another group. I miss having to choose my factions carefully because I probably am not going to be able to join all the guilds in a single play, and if I want to be a Redoran, i'm going to have a hard time if I'm a mage. I miss the idea of guild rules as well. Steal from a guild in older games, and you had to do something to make amends, murder all the Imperials as an Imperial in Skyrim, and no one cares.

I would have to say that Oblivion is more diverse as well, but I would also have to say I like Skyrim more than Oblivion. With each new installment in the TES series it becomes my new favorite game, and not because it's the newest but because I truly like it more. Oblivion seemed like it did have more to do than in Skyrim, but I like Skyrim more because of its atmosphere and gameplay. This all sounds really contradicting but I can't explain

I agree. I played oblivion first, then morrowind, then skyrim, and IMO skyrim lacks something really special that both its predecessors had, morrowind especially. Its still a great game, but i'm a little bored of it within 3 months, and it took me 3 years plus to get bored of oblivion :/

Well, being fair sabotage data does exist in the CK. As does a lot more stuff for the Civil War, so I'd assume that at the time of those interviews Todd was probably under the impression that those features were gonna be part of the game. Still could have done to mention it when they were removed...

Also, I do not recall him ever describing the snow beyond "dynamic". It kind of is. A shader dynamically applies a white texture according to where snow would fall onto a rock. It just does this before you actually place the rock into the game i.e. it just saves modelling time/resource space.

Funny, "go fetch" & "kill" is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of MW's quests (along with "accompany NPC x").
Oblivion gave you a bit more variation with the NPC schedules & and all that. Mod out the questmarker & you're good to go.
Imo MW mainquest was kind of predictable at a certain point, but not as bland as OB with that annoying gates.
In fact MW has the best mainquest from all these 3 TES games for me.

You're right, but at the same time I think that this is pretty standard for Bethesda games (and many RPGs at large). The difference is that Morrowind often made you work to get information.

Skyrim: Go find this rare book. Follow the arrow to the random dungeon, slaughter a dozen people, bring the book back
Morrowind: Go find this rare book. Walk to the town's bookseller and she'll tell you that she doesn't have the book, but there's a rare bookseller in Vivec who might... go find a silt strider to Vivec ask around, get directed to 'Jobasha's Rare Books'.

i know same here i played it for like not even half a month and then stopped playing it and didn't pick it up again until last month. unlike oblivion were when i first got it i played it for 3 months straite

I got bored with vanilla Oblivion faster than any Bethesda game I've ever played. Three weeks. I wouldn't have lasted even that long, but I felt I owed it to Bethesda to give the game a chance. I didn't start playing regularly until mods made the game playable for me.

Vanilla Skyrim, on the other hand, I played for three months and enjoyed every minute. I took a break last month and plan to start another character very soon.

Yeah, but just like in real life, I can cook a better hamburger than the guys at McDonald's but a lot of times I don't want to make one or don't have the meat, so I go buy one already made. Same for spells and crafting. I'm sure lots of people in Skyrim know to do various crafts but it saves them time by buying the finished products from someone else.

did you ever watch the making of oblivion ???
tod talks about the ai and how they made it way to smart so they had to tone it down. but what i didn't get was why. cause what they were saying sounded awesome and can't figur out why they would not keep it at that. heres what he said to the best of my memory.

we had the ai at one point were we went into a house and started attacking this guy and he didn't have a wepon. so he ran out of the house and we just started looting the place. then a few mions later he had come back into the house with a sword that he stole from the next house over cause he knew he didn't have a wepon so he ran of in search of one so he could protect him self.

i mean that sounds like it would have been awesome as hell if they would have keept it like that i don't understand why they didn't.

Yes I watched the making of Oblivion, several times over in fact. I would salivate about all of the cool stuff they talked about, and how great everything sounded.

In terms of the radiant AI being toned down, I believe they needed to cut back because the radiant AI was acting unrealistically. For example, you drop a diamond on the ground and half the town literally kills each other trying to get the diamond, and the guards just watch.

The problem with radiant AI is that if you really gave NPCs the freedom of choice and action you'd also need 'radiant NPC generation'. Because then 'ol Belethor at the general goods store can be caught groping the beer wench at the tavern and while he's serving time in jail some new fellow comes along, steals his wife and shop, and then when Belethor gets out of prison they can have a throw down in the middle of the fountain in the cloud district, forcing the city guard to intervene and kill both men so that NPC 3 can come along and take over the shop, thus never inconveniencing the player while providing an interesting scenario for the player to observe or find ways to participate in.

Spells are already useless in Skyrim [Vanilla], you end up using only the latest level spell. I never saw stock spells as useless in Oblivion, I saw them as skills. Now they are just like arrows, you are just given them to use as is... it's soulless.

Oblivion never felt diverse to me after the different biomes of Morrowind, but it was better than Skyrim.

I believe they did keep it like that. On numerous occasions I have seen an unarmed NPC run away, pick up a weapon, and run back to fight. I have seen unarmed NPCs flee from homes too, presumably to find a weapon, but I don't recall any of them surviving the city watch long enough to prove that they were seeking a weapon. Maybe if I stay in the house instead of following the NPC, he'll come back with a weapon.

A common complaint with spells in Oblivion is that we cannot remove spells from our spell list. Players regularly find or craft better spells and want to delete their old, useless stock spells. As I recall, some Oblivion players asked for stock spells to grow in power as the character gains levels so that the spells remain useful. In Skyrim, possibly in response to players' requests, stock spells can and do grow in power as characters gain levels and acquire perks. Flames remains one of my level-40 mage's most frequently used spells.

An alternative solution to being unable to delete spells and getting too many at once is to add a delete spell option.

After being excited about that diverse economy and dynamic snow stuff they were putting into Skyrim, I was left sorely disappointed when the game came out. I enjoyed it, believe me, but I was expecting more. Dynamic snow! Oblivion on the other hand, I was too young to even be looking at stuff about the game or caring, I just got it because it was the early days of the PS3 and I didn't know what else to get. So I bought Oblivion and everything that was included in the game seemed so awesome because I wasn't really expecting anymore. I'm not gonna be looking at details about the next Bethesda games, because I fear it'll just leave me feeling empty.

The dynamic snow, no idea what they were on about. I thought maybe it was an automatic snow shader (it was clear pretty early it wasn't expanding/receeding/proper snowfall and it wasn't 3d) that just went in whatever area they specified as snowy, but you look in the CK and they just have a snowy and non-snowy version of everything. It's all preset. Not dynamic at all.

It does apply the snow in the CK "dynamically", i.e those two versions of the same rock share the same model, the CK paints snow onto one when you select it to do so... still, not sure "dynamic" is the right word. Resource-saving might be the best thing you could call it.

For me it goes like this
Morrowind>Skyrim>Daggerfall>oblivion>arena
Still love them all<3