It's a step sideways. The skill system is almost a completely different creature, compared to other ES games, and while I find it more interesting than Oblivion's (or Morrowind's), it could use a lot of work. To me it feels like the developers decided to throw a baseline system out there, and see how it did "in the wild" before developing it further. For starters, it'd be nice if we had more control over starting skills than race selection...

All the other stuff AFAIC is purely personal preference. Some people love the old repair mechanism - I don't. Some people want a more in-depth crafting system - but I always find crafting boring no matter how it's done. Some people see more depth in Oblivion's stories - I just see more grinding. Skyrim has hit my personal "Goldilocks" zone in terms of time spent and in-game progress made, but I won't pretend that should be true for anyone else.

Indeed. I would have much preferred a system where the player was given X amount of skill points to hand out as they saw fit as long as a skill didn't surpass level 25 (maybe 30).

That's not as bad as the other part of head tracking - where EVERYONE stares at you. Promoting that feeling that the game revolves around the player.

Oblivion NPCs did this to a point, but the range of their tracking was smaller.

I enjoyed it more than oblivion so i quess overall a step up, But it also went down on some areas

The game has some ups and some downs.

- I do like that magic casting is back to the old style of readying it to use it. The down side is that there are not that many spells and no means to create your own spells. That is a big step down.

- I do like the perk system which is big step up but at the same time we miss out on stats and a choice for major and minor skills (Character Classes) which for me is a big step down. Also I prefer to pick your Birth Sign at the beginning and not being able to change it at any time.

I can not really think of anything else at this moment, still waiting for the coffee to kick in.

I think the combat is improved for the most part. It's a lot more fluid, and it has a lot more options, from stealth mages planting magic mines, to dual weilding barbarians, to knights, just about anything you can think of is possible.

The environments are mostly improved, but the caves are a huge step backwards. They're more or less straight lines with a few side rooms. You cannot get lost in them, it's literally impossible, because all you do is go forward. The traps don't add much to the experience, as they are not hard to get past. The answer is either on the key or in the room, or in a book lying on the table in that room. As such, exploration, problem solving, and so on are nonexistent in the dungeons. The decline could be easily seen by putting up a map of an Ayleid ruin from Oblivion (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Wenyandawik) to one from Skyrim (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Alftand).

As far as the quests, they stink. Nothing you do changes anything in the world. No one likes you more or less, no faction likes or dislikes the others to the point that it hinders you joining. No guard will warn you against drawing a blade as happens in Oblivion, no one comments on quests you've done. Disposition and alignment are simply gone, and I think it makes the experience a lot less interesting. You can join everything, and no one cares. Stormcloak and an Assassin, no problem. Blade and Theif, sure, why not? Imperial Soldier in the Dark Brotherhood, and for that matter, finishing that questline as an Imperial Soldier, ummm I think there's a problem. The factions and alignments of Morrowind were much more enguaging because you had to think about what your actions would do to other factions. If you wanted to be in HOuse redoran, you had to think about which quests you did and why. In Skyrim, that's not the case, it's Seinfeld, it's about nothing, so it doesn't matter what you do.

Skyrim is a major step down. Apart from the obviously stupid questlines, the repetitive fetch quests and linear dungeons, the whole dumbed down handholding for the entitled console kid generation used to COD perks and heath-regen, the "improvements" in skyrim are just Oblivion mods ported over to a new game.

The OP wanting a vanilla to vanilla comparison of previous ES games is like asking whether you want:

1. A bare car but you can finely tune and supe it up to the hilt with aftermarket mods

or

2. A newer model car inspired by the best features of the other modded car already built-in, but instead of a stick, you're forced automatic, and plastic covers the engine and everything interesting, and with lots of flashy indicators and control systems that treat you like an idiot.

lol, games are not the only things being dumbed down nowadays are they?

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU

Step down. Sure open world is great but that's all that Skyrim has going for it. Bethesda bugs have bugs and those bugs have glitches. This game is tutorial for up and coming developers on how not to balance a game.

Side note: Its really funny that this game is rated M, for you know mature, but it seems to have been made for 12 year olds with Dora the Explorer simple puzzles and Green Eggs and Ham plot lines.

Dora the Explorer, love it!

I completely lost it with that. All I could think of was...

Dova the Explorer

Problem is that Oblivion wasn't a 'bare car' it was a straight up wreck.

Morrowind I played without mods for a long time, and for the most part the modding community seemed to focus on adding content; new areas to explore, new caves and ruins; new stuff.

Oblivion without mods was a disaster; start out and have an epic battle with a wolf, then level up so you can have the exact same epic battle with a boar, level up some more so you can have the same epic battle with a mountain lion. Magic system that required constant casting, which led to power leveling just walking around. You can see the difference in the modding community, which immediately dug in to change the gameplay, not add content. They got around to adding content, but without major gameplay overhauls like OOO or Frans and LAME no amount of content could salvage Oblivion.

Which brings us to Skyrim. Not perfect I can imagine modders adding elaborate caves and ruins. Adding content like they did with Morrowind. I see people complain about details, like 'this perk tree should go this way not that way'. Obviously, like all multi-platform games a UI mod is highly desirable. But the game, straight from the box, is playable.

Step Down:

-Storylines. I mean, seriously? Modders can make better storylines than Bethesda ever did.

-Guards saying that there are treasures in so-and-so cave or shipwreck. If I wanted to find treasure, don't you think I would've done it by now?

-Most people are one-dimensional. "Horses, all day long!"

-Less complex dungeons.

-No attributes, repair system or spellmaking.

-The cities are just really big villages.

-I'm disappointed that you hardly see any influence from other provinces close to their respective borders. Except for the Hammerfell clothes, that is.

Step Up:

-World building is better in the wilderness. In Morrowind and Oblivion, we hardly had any cliffs - mainly textured heightmap.

-I feel that I don't need 120+ plug-ins so I can like the game. Sure, I like modded Oblivion but it's so unstable at the moment.

-Marriage system (though it is unrealistic that everyone is bisixual - I think it should be that only certain people would want to marry someone of the same gender).

-The snowy weather is far more realistic than anything I got in Oblivion. Plus, Oblivion had no snowstorms.

Step up: Exploration, animation, art design & atmosphere (vs Oblivion)

Step down: story, roleplaying options, magic, consequences

There's a difference between freedom from and freedom to. Freedom to do what you want doesn't require freedom from the consequences of those actions. This is one of those issues where people can't agree or find a middle ground. I want the world to react to and change according to (at least some of) my decisions. And I don't care if I lose quests because of that. That just improves replayability, while making the world more alive.

I actually think Character customization was a step up... Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind were pretty limited... Oblivion's was just annoying to use and extremely broken... Skyrim though isn't broken and gave much much more variety of good useful options.

Just my opinion though... And I'm talking about the actual character creation part... You know, face and all that.

Overall, it's a clear step up.

Then we should ask which requires more elaborate techniques to get to a useable state. Using the Construction Set (1st party tool) to unlevel everything for Oblivion OR using a hexeditor to hack into the binary to get something like SkyUI which btw also depends on third party libraries. Not to mention all the hexediting required to fix the most simple of stuff like MFG, infinite loading screen, setracemenu, etc. And all the bugs that cause large mods like Open Cities for Skyrim to be abandoned.

Skyrim was a huge leap in terms of making people look human, rather than pillsbury.

But the face customization options were more advanced in Oblivion, though you still often ended up with bizarre results unless you created a face in facegen and imported it into the game. There's an excellent pair of Skyrim mods, RaceMenu & Chargen, that when used together allow you to do much more sophisticated customization (eye size, tilt, nose width, multiple scars and tattoos, etc.). I hope we see something like this, i.e. a combination of the Skyrim models and Oblivion tools, in future games.

Step Down totally.

Oblivion gave me the feeling " I'm a meansixy psycho girl, if you play with me you might have a great time and probably suffer a lot too!". Skyrim gave me the feeling " LoL, someone will mod this, why bother,enjoy the mountains"

Skyrim is better in various stuff that got better with passing of time (machines better,graphics better etc). But it's much worse in everything that makes a game good.

Imagine an Oblivion made in 2011. It would be leaps and bounds better that Schwarzeneggerlivion.

Edit: made->makes.

It was very important for Oblivion to support easier modding...because without modding it was pretty much headed for the shelf. I got it when it was brand new and in the first year I had it I played about ten hours. Then I spent a hundred hours downloading, installing, testing, compatibility patching, etc. Then I had a playable game. Every time I get a better computer I go through the same process and end up with an even better game, or at least more stable. I'm fully willing to say I do not enjoy modding. Modded Oblivion can be a great game, but the process of getting there just irritates me no end.

As I said...Skyrim straight from the box is playable...requiring no 'techniques' at all to be usable. It can be improved and I'm willing to install a couple mods to improve it, but it isn't hopelessly broken.

Step up.

The world in Skyrim feels a lot more natural than the previous two, and especially Oblivion, where interactions with NPCs are very quest-centric. In Skyrim, even after you finish quests, you still feel that you're in a "living" world, because of:

- followers with personality (and marriage, as previously mentioned),

- continuing radiant quests,

- continuing world interactions.

The one step back for me were the questlines, which seem to be getting simpler since Morrowind (didn't play the ones before that).

Step up because beards

Seriously though Skyrim is indeed a big step up and not just in graphics but generally overall it's an improvement to previous titles. Sure they stripped some stuff we're all displeased with and simplified things a bit but they also took away the rigidity of certain aspects and left it more free for the player...not exactly in the best method but it is a step forward/up from Oblivion and before.

You should watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEI4yS7sFEw...it's a very thoughtful and insightful vid that was made by a fan since Morrowind to counter the Morrowind die hard guy who made the opposite vid knocking the series stepping down since then.

People say TES is becoming Call of Duty because it always changes and they feel the changes are catered to CoD casuals yet if they were a series like CoD then they wouldn't change at all with every installment except for graphics and weapons.

If people actually *gasp* watched that (Jingles) guys other videos they would know his favourite Elder Scrolls game was Morrowind and his least favourite recent TES game was Oblivion. He along with Gopher have some of the best Let's Plays and it's kind of hilarious that the guy all the Morrowind dis-creditors turn to for the classic youtube support actually likes Morrowind better than Skyrim. He also said he preferred Fallout New Vegas to Skyrim (but not as much as he liked Morrowind) in one of his mailboxes. He also hates the very idea of TESO and won't be playing it.

Shame people don't check out his other content.

Well if you think dealing with the vanilla skyrim UI isn't as game breaking if not more so than the level scaling in oblivion, I have nothing more to say.

At least with the level scaling, it isn't obvious until you're a few hours into the game straight out of the box as you say, but the skyrim UI is in your face from the start... straight out of the box.

Beautiful world with great attention to detail, nice atmosphere and lovely music.

Combat is better.

Character system is a bit banol. The game wants each character to be a jack of all trades and the races don't really feel different, particularly when it comes to dialogue. Quests have superficial choices at best. Dialogue and story writing are truly dire. Just awful. Like they asked a bunch of 14 year olds to write it.

One thing I don't understand is why they take an open world where it's great that the open terrain has an unpredictable element, but make it insanely repetitive on repeat playthroughs. Arrive at Riften for the 1st time at 3 in the morning. Maul is bothering you with some irrelevant waffle about what turns out to be a non character after a lot of build up. Sapphire and that guy having their conversation. That priest of Mara in the pub.Pestered into joining the Thieves Guild. What Bethesda really need to do is realise the player is not a brain dead moron and let them find stuff for themselves and choose what they want to do instead of constantly railroading them and forcing stuff into their quest log.

It's overall a great game, but Bethesda have been increasingly developing a trend towards making their fabulous open worlds as linear and repetitive as possible.

And it's just lazy and predictable that the player ends up being boss of all guilds after five minutes. They need to let the player make choices about how things turn out.

It DEMANDS mods. It's kinda tragic that somebody did a far better writing job in their spare time with Interesting NPCs than Bethesda's team could manage.

There's an opposite video about the dumbing down of TES, which the above mentioned is a response to.

The difference between COD and Skyrim is that COD began dumb and stayed dumb. Skyrim on the other hand jumps on the dumb bandwagon and declines to its level.