I love having the NPC talk to you in Skyrim and ESO, not read everything from tiny letters in the chatbox as in most other games.

Long story short:

I played ESO beta -> cool, especially the world, easy controls and voice over

Bought Skyrim (hate Steam, but seems the only way) -> love it (feels like ARMAII or III in medieval) -> seemless switch between 1st and 3rd person view -> found the no helmet mod (only played ~4 hours ingame and just got this cool two handed sword with extra cold damage from the skeleton mage in a tomb)

To get a better understanding of the lore, I thought about first playing Oblivion. When it first came out, I bought the DVD and tested it on back then XP, but cannot remember much. There was a village of fisherman I think and everything was very confusing... so I dropped it straight away. Since then I moved a couple of times and grew older, the DVD is gone anyway.

A few questions, which are not answered anywhere:

Is there as much voice over in Oblivion as in Skyrim?

I play Skyrim in German with German voice over, will this be the same in Oblivion (some games have only English VO and German text)?

It has 1st/ 3rd person view and there is a no helmet mod, which I already found out.

Thanks!

Its different. I found going from Oblivion to Skyrim was brilliant visually, cac from a story, playability, size, moddability and the much more linear quest. I've used this anology before but Skyrim is like a box all done up with bows and ribbons and expensive looking paper but when you open the box its a pair of shoes that soon wear out. Oblivion looks rougher, a bit more dated, but when you open the box you get a huge set of lego.

If you want visuals, stick with Skyrim or get Oblivion and mod its arxx off. Then it will look, sound and feel a lot better than the vanilla. I would personally play the vanilla Oblivion version with Shivering Isles and have a really good poke around for a few hundred hours. Getting used to the controls and the feel of it will take time. You absolutely have to stick with it for a while, get past the initial 'well it isnt Skyrim' and enjoy it for its own sake. Then get the mods and make it what you want it to be. You'll soon find out that you can go from jungle, to tundra, to desert, to pine forests, to palm oasis and so on, which Skyrim simply can't possibly compete with (not on the same scale anyway, yet).

I'm not knocking Skyrim. I play it occasionally but Oblivion has more beyond the horizon whereas Skyrim feels like a really big back yard.

This actually sounds more like Morrowind to me. Is it possible you bought Morrowind back then?

Anyway, to answer your question, yes, Oblivion is similar to Skyrim. I would say Oblivion resembles Skyrim and ESO more than it resembles Morrowind or Daggerfall.

It you're concerned about voice acting and 1st/3rd person POVs, it has those. A word of caution though: 3rd person in this game is the worst out of the last three games. 3rd person players are forced to switch to 1st person before we activate anything in the game in order to know if it is owned. As a dedicated 3rd person player, this is one of my major gripes with the game. Fortunately they came up with a better system in Skyrim.

But other than that, I think if you liked ESO and Skyrim you should like Oblivion as well. There are many interesting features in Oblivion that you won't find in Skyrim, such as Attributes and Spellmaking. It is a very good game and it is well worth every penny, in my opinion.

I really need to clear up and organise my pile of DVDs.

Thanks for the insight you both, I just got that 'Game of the year' edition and now cannot wait to get home...