I came to a conclusion that Skyrim mostly uses the same formula as Oblivion did, which isn't that bad, but definetely looks like a copy-paste and gives the game less unique feeling. With all the dumbing down the game got, this makes me wonder what devs were doing for all those years.

1. Major Towns:

Closed cities with a castle where the ruler sits on his\her throne, and their advisor walks nearby. Buyable houses and stables with buyable horses in major cities. Beggar or a few on streets. Blacksmith, Alchemy store, and General Goods store are always present as well as some kind of religious building like a chapel or temple.

2. Crime mechanics:

Thieves guild members have some options to escape the authorities. Absolutely same guard behaviour (pay your fine and your stolen goods will be taken or resist arrest) and jail mechanics (serve your sentence or try to jailbreak). Stolen items work the same as before (you need a fence to sell 'em). Even fines are the same.

3. Factions:

Exactly the same guilds with some new names and exactly the same mechanics. Fighter's and Mages guild, Thieves guild and Assassin's guild + Main quest guilds of course. The other type of quests are provided by Daedras who give almost same Artifacts as rewards for their quests. Nothing new and unique at all.

4. Magic:

Even tho Combat system changed a bit (which includes spells by allowing to dual wield them) magic system is still exactly the same. Fire, Frost and Shock types of damage. Spell ranks like Novice, Apprentice, Master etc. Almost exactly the same types of spells, just with different visuals (Fear\Calm, Conjure Creature\Equipment, Heal\Turn Undead etc).

5. Containers:

The same respawning sacks\chests everywhere with the same leveled loot and a lockpicking minigame (100% copied from Fallout) if there is a lock to pick. Unlimited space inside and noway to put items in them without your items dissapearing.

6. Equipment:

Same Base Armor\Weapon materials (except for Dragon armor). Iron and Steel, Fur and Leather et cetera.

7. Dungeons:

No new dungeon types. Morrowind had Daedric and Dwemer Ruins, Oblivion had Ayleid Ruins. What about Skyrim? Dwemer ruins came straight from Morrowind. Nordic crypts full of Draugr? We already saw this in Bloodmoon. Where are your creativity Bethesda?


And those are just a few things that came to my mind. Does that mean that Skyrim don't have any new things besides new combat system (offensive magic and stealth is part of it) and crafting? This took them years to make?

Hard to argue with your points. People complain if a game is too much like it's predecessor or too different.

The only thing that matters is, was the game fun?

As for the development time, that's taken up with artwork, writing, design layout, etc.

There was the new perk tree system, and radiant quests, the improvement of NPC to NPC interaction with real dialog instead of some radiant random Bs like "hello, hi, goodbye" like Oblivion had, amongst other things.

Most of what Skyrim did new is under the hood, and hard to notice.

Perk tree system was copied from Fallout, plus it replaced Attributes and Birthsigns. Creating and balancing stats is much harder than a perk like +20% to damage. Even tho it's a great idea, perks the way they are done,are a very weak mechanic which can't be called an innovation. It took less effort to make than the original stats system.

Conversations are absolutely the same except that they cut out the annoying lines like "i saw a mudcrab yesterday". And the fact that NPC's do something while talking to you instead of staying still is just a visual tweak which can be treated as 'special effects' and have nothing to do with game mechanics.

Radiant quests are from Fallout aswell. They are randomly generated filler crap. Go to cave full of bandits\draugr isn't an innovation. I guess with Skyrim series are going back to the roots. Back to extremly buggy, randomised hack&slash.

-Fallout has no perk trees at all.

-Actually it's no different. In past ES games STR affected melee damage, and used a 1-100 scale. In Skyrim, perks affect melee damage, and there are 5 perks, one you get every 20 levels(20levels*5=100), and each perk gives you a +20% damage increase(20%damage*5=100), and 100=100=100. It's literally the exact same thing, with the exact same balancing, just lumped into larger bonuses every 20 levels, that give you significant increases, instead of spreading it out across 100 levels, making each individual rank up rather worthless.

-Actually they aren't. Oblivion's conversations worked on a radiant system, Skyrim's do not.

-Fallout has no radiant quests, really, what are you talking about?

-Skyrim was significantly less buggy then either Oblivion or Fallout 3.

Wait, you're complaining that the towns have item shops and castles? What should they have done, instead?

1) walled cities are used to lessen load times and reduce load on the system. besides, that is pretty much how ever city of note was in the dark ages.


2) actually, the Guard AI is quite different then it was in Oblivion. if they saw you in Oblivion they would track you down endlessly. in Skyrim you can actually hide from them in the City, and can even walk around the city without them noticing it is you on occassion (on like Oblivion where if they saw you they knew it was you). plus they added that fact every hold has its own Crime gold, unlike Oblivion where all Counties shared it.


3) no, the factions are Unique.
The Companions have an entirely Different Mentality them Cyrodiils Fighters Guild. the FG was an Honorable group, who would cast out members who commit crimes. The Companions are a group of Mercs thatb have no sense of honor (I mean, they have quests where you just beat people up)

The College of Winterhold is a different Institution then the Mages Guild (Mages guild no longer exists post oblivion crisis)

Skyrims Thieves Guild are basically lawless Bandits, with Oblivions were more of a "robin hood" type group

Ill give you the DB though, not much different there..


4) have you tried playing a Mage? with the exception of no more Spell Making, Skyrims was a drastic improvement. and we have those Damages types because they are the ones that have existed in lore from the beginning.


5) And I see nothing wrong with that. if containers didn't respawn, there would be no reason to go to a Dungeon twice, or rob a house more then opnce. which in the long run would hurt the game (as it would limit the gold you could aquire per playthrough, and also limit how high you can level)


6) Yes, because those are common materials in every Western RPG


7) once again, ruins that existed in Lore. Even before Skyrim was in development, lore on the province still existed. so they when they built it they had to keep true to that lore.

I feel I have to agree with most points here, they are all very similar in design. When you compare the differences between Morrowind and Oblivion + Skyrim there are many more noticeable differences in these categories you mentioned, excluding combat because that's a whole different beast to me.

Really, if its not broke, yaknow?

I think the places they could use work/innovation is the combat/magic system, which has changed every game, not so much the button mashing combat unfortunately, and the dialogue system. I wouldn't mind seeing some variation in the guilds, maybe some more interesting things like vampire groups. I don't think it's fair to simply call the Companions a fighters guild though as it supports its own unique story versus the fighters guild serving as a hired mercenary group.

I think the innovation in the guilds is fair personally, I do enjoy the stories behind each guild, rather than them just being groups that people hire members for. I can't speak for the thieves or dark brotherhood because I've yet to complete them.

Edit: Another big part for me is the unique dungeons you can find. I think that the dungeon models are a load more unique than what you could find in Oblivion. Not all are of course, you have your basic nordic ruins and burial chambers but then you have the wide open caves that can just throw you. I enjoy exploring Skyirm far more than I did Oblivion.

While the innovation isn't quite so apparent, I feel what is there led to a deeper and richer experience, even if everything is new.

-It's just a lil' different because there are stat requirements like 'get 6 charisma to pick this perk'

-How about Speed? Chance to stagger you (Agility), Magicka regen and resist (Willpower), Personality (disposition isn't present in Skyrim at all), Luck etc

-Erm, it's the same Radiant AI, or whatever the tweaked version is called now. Still the same thing, NPC's move along each other, stop, and start chatting.

-My mistake, i meant the random encounters. It had the NPC's running to you in the wilderness and put the player in lot of different situations. The Radiant Quests like go to the random cave and wipe it out isn't present yeah. Which is good.

-Lolwat? Skyrim almost achieved the place of the most buggy game in series along Daggerfall. Oblivion had buggy NPC AI packages and quests but nothing too critical. Skyrim on the other hand was absolutely unplayable with all the memory leaks. Minor bugs are ridiculous too, like Giants who launch you into space. And patches only added more problems. Hell, i'll remember the dragons flying backwards for a long time.

I dont see how. Oblivion was all forest, Skyrim has mountain passes and vast fields. Oblivion seemed more civilized, where Skyrim being way up North has that Viking frontier feel.

Skyrim did away with the repair system(thank the Nine) and the guards from each town don't have telepathy and know that you committed a crime somewhere else.

They seem a lot different to me. Of course somethings are the same like shops in each town. But even those things are different like Oblivion having Inns and Skyrim having taverns.