Note: Please remember this is ONLY about official TES content from Bethesda. Mods do NOT count.

Official DLCs and patches can be counted though!

Okay... So I've seen this a lot in threads... People saying Skyrim is a step down from previous TES games and people saying it's a step up... Etc... So basicly, let's have a lovely little chat about this and see who is on which side on this simple table... Okay?

As for myself; I believe Skyrim is a step UP from the previous games... Why? Well... First thing first; what does Bethesda do best in TES games? Simple! Open world and the roleplay freedom of simply going anywhere you want and doing anything you want to do. Those are the two best things that Bethesda is best at...

When you compare Skyrim's open world to the previous titles... Skyrim just wins mainly because Skyrim was hand crafted fully, instead of using random generated areas... So Todd said and I think the game itself is enough evidence... There is enough small simply little things all around the game world that was definably hand placed and from all my experience, I hadn't seen any pattern with trees, rocks, etc... Normally a random generated landscape will reveal a pattern of some sort... And the big piece of evidence... Every single interior areas, including houses and dungeons, are all completely unique... In previous titles, dungeons specifically were mostly random generated by using some 'pre-made areas' and placing them together to make a full dungeon... Skyrim? Nope! Every dungeon is unique in its own little way making every dungeon extremely awesome experience, instead of the feeling of "I've been here before" or "I know where this is.." etc... Therefore, Skyrim's world is the most fully unique one out of the all TES games thusly making that a pretty BIG step up.

The second thing I mentioned was the roleplay freedom... Firstly, Skyrim is the ONLY TES game which you have complete SAFE freedom from the start... In Arena, you have none really. Daggerfall, you are in danger of losing the MQ if ya don't start it. Morrowind, you are in danger of losing the MQ if ya lose the papers... Oblivion, you are forced to carry a "quest item"... Skyrim, no danger of failing the MQ and no forced "quest item"... You can simply 'untag' the quest and do what you please from the start... And if you do eventually want to do the MQ with that character, you have the freedom to go back and do it... And now only that but with pretty much any major quests... You have the freedom to do them or not without danger of failing at any time, mostly. (There are some selective quests in Skyrim you can technically failed though)... So, therefore you are not, so to say, handcuff'd to any quest at all which will allow you to well ignore it or do it. Up to you. You are not forced into any quests at all in Skyrim without failure so therefore, you have complete freedom over the quests you wish to do. Plus the obvious you can pick up and do whatever you want without limits, which has always been there since Daggerfall, thing adds into this... So, overall... I say this was a good step up from the previous titles...

Now, those are just two simple things that came to mind... There is still THE BIG PICTURE to look at between all Elder Scrolls games to get an idea how Skyrim truly is compared to the previous titles!First thing first... My full opinions on each main Elder Scrolls game...

Arena - Overall, it was an alright start but had way too many limits on the player and the game itself was really only good until Jagnar Tharn was dead.

Daggerfall - Was definably a HUGE step up from Arena and allowed the player to have so many freedoms and so many choices of guilds, items, skills, etc... Problem is, a lack of variety and uniqueness. Every armor, weapon, etc are all just recolors... The unique quests are part of the MQ and prolly Daedric (Never got to doing them all in DF)... So Daggerfall had a lot of freedom, but lacked a lot of variety... Plus the glitches, even after the official patches...

Morrowind - Once again, another big step up. The quests were amazing for sure, the items are all pretty unique, and the variety was pretty AWESOME... BUT Morrowind BIGGEST problem was the Luck system... I, personally, can't even play, let alone enjoy, Morrowind without modding the whole Luck system to an actual reasonable believable level... Really, I can't. That's Morrowind's biggest downfall and that's what keeps me from playing Morrowind... And let not forget the many other things that Morrowind did lacked in quite a lot, with the added annoyances on top...

Oblivion - This game was mostly a step down from Morrowind. Graphics and engine was good. They fixed up the Luck system pretty dang good to a point where I can play it without mods just fine. Problems? The game lacked depth and interesting stories in most parts... Only a few hand selected quests I can name that I enjoyed quite a lot. The rest just felt like work and annoyances to me... Oblivion, however, is still the funniest TES game we've had and did brought some good memories... Just good to have the memories and really not interested at all in going back playing it.

Skyrim - And now finally Skyrim... The point of this thread. Skyrim, overall, did a pretty good job even though Bethesda removed some things (And even brought back others)... It seems like they wanted to try a few new things (Smithing, perks, etc) which in turned was acceptable by me and even removed things that I always disliked in prev TES games (I hated Armorer with a passion)... Skyrim's biggest problem would be the major storylines were not at all great... Most of them were alright and were not annoying to replay but they were not 'memorable' awesome... And only a few selective I can name right now that was just downright filth (TG)... So to me, overall... Skyrim was pretty much a step up from prev titles and is also my favorite one to play...

And now as for specific things about Skyrim...

The very first major change that Skyrim has was the new perk/level system... Bethesda fully removed the old "str, intelligence, etc" thing and added in a new level system in its place, with perks... Personally, I like this change. It felt more reasonable to me plus the perks themselves also allowed more variety in characters, which in turn gives me more playtime. So I say this big change was a pretty good step up.

The second major change was mostly to skills themselves... Replaced Armorer with Blacksmithing, which made me happy. Enchanting is back! (Why they removed it in Oblivion is beyond me)... My only dislike was the change of "Blades/Blunts" to "1H/2H" but it doesn't bother me that much to really care.

And the last major change I wish to discuss is the magic system... Some people say the magic system made a HUGE poop... And I disagree. Ye'h, Bethesda may have removed Spellmaking but this is the first TES game where I can be a mage without making my own spells personally... They made sure the default spells are reasonable enough... Heck, due to the perks, some spells are way too overpowered... Ha. Plus, first time ever we had a variety within the destruction school... A variety. That is awesome in my eyes...

Anyways... I can go on with this but I think I've made my point by now and am done. So now, what are ye' thoughts?

Clearly a jump down. They removed spellcrafting and in general took a poo on the magic system. The character creator is a step down as it completely removed any complexity.

I have more issues but I'm too tired.

Since you said 'unmodded' Skyrim is a quantum leap up from Oblivion. Possibly a step up from Morrowind, but it's hard to say with that stink bomb laying in between them.

I think Skyrim is a step-up in many ways and at the same time a step-down in a few ways. I could probably list a lot of examples for each, but will settle for a few.

Step-up:

- Radiant quest system

- Legendary leveling system

- Amount of detail in the game world (graphics)

Step-down

- Several of the buildings in the un-walled towns/hold capitals were lacking in uniqueness; they all basically have the same model for the Jarl's home and the inn, for example.

- For the most part, the capital cities/towns were noticeably smaller than those in Oblivion (Cyrodiil)

Skyrim is clearly a step up in world design and an overall 'soul' to the game world missing from Oblivion but found in Morrowind and Skyrim however in it's process of 'streamlining' absolutely butchered certain elements of the series. But overall the flavour was good and it was a much more replayable game with more interesting NPCs and better world/dungeons than Oblivion. Character creation has been on the decline since Daggerfall. Daggerfall had just that, a CHARACTER creation, Morrowind dumbed it down and it hasn't really improved since then. But overall Skyrim did a good job with the franchise and wasn't insulting, it produced a fun world to explore that is extremely replayable and overall was a great game. It lacked dialogue/good writing and this in my opinion was the game's fundamental flaw, a bit like how Morrowind's flaw was it's combat, well for me I enjoy dialogue/writing in games more than combat so thus I put Morrowind way ahead of Skyrim.

It's better than Oblivion in most ways except for writing/quests and the magic system, the shameful Potato Head faces in TES 4 were a metaphor for the game's overall quality, but it's not the end-all, perfect, 'epic', game of the year of all years, can't be criticised game that many (cough media, cough) portray it to be. Also, Dovahkiin/Alduin were probably some of the worst and most boring pro/antagonists in RPG history.

And the writing in this game is sometimes down-right insulting, player dialogue is even worse. Seriously, Bethesda needs writers.

For me a large step up.

Both

Step down because:

• Removed ability to customise character abilities at start of game
• Number and variety of factions still poor (although a bit better than Oblivion)
• Gaping holes in some of the questline plots
• Removal completely of spellmaking, weapon degredation and attributes

Step up because:

• Bethesda get better and better at worldbuilding
• Improved experience system
• Much better level-scaling
• Crafting system overall improved (although it still has flaws like the awful perk tree for smithing)
• Player homes get better with each incarnation
• Marriege
• edit: Forgot followers who barely existed in previous TES games and were even more annoying than the ones in Skyrim

I don't have time to go into details right now (perhaps I'll come back and edit this later) but I'm just going to give an infuriating answer and say that it was both a step up and a step down in different areas.

I agree with this. I'll also say that I think that the antagonists in Skyrim were all largely lacking. It's such a shame to visit such greatly detailed places like Apocrypha, only to find out that they are inhabited by characters as uninteresting and uncompelling as Miraak.

I played Oblivion for about a month and just started Skyrim again this week after not playing since 2011... Definitely a step up in my opinion. I am soooo into it right now.

I think Skyrim is a step up from Oblivion in pretty much every regard; world crafting, gameplay, soundtrack, character art and so on. The return of Radiant Quests was nice too (Daggerfall had something more basic but similiar). The removal of the spellmaking is unfortunate though, but that's kinda it.

But it's by no means a perfect game, there are a few niggles I'm not fond of.

• The PC UI, it's clunky and that's the one thing a UI shouldn't be. The whole skill UI seem to be more focused on swooping eye candy rather than user efficiency. I really hope Bethesda Game Studios develop two different UIs for their next game, one for PC and one for consoles.
• Too many dragons. They are very cool at first, but after a while they starts to feel like the Morrowind cliffracers, and it becomes a chore to fight them, not challenging or fun.
• Too much of the dialogue writing is simply just too mean. If you ask someone what they do, they shouldn't respond "are you stupid, can't you see I'm a blacksmith/whatever!?", lots of mean kids and so on. I mean, seriously, everyone threats the player as an idiot/slave, including main quest people after the main quest, and yet the player is the damn Dragonborn. Some respect please, but not too far into the other spectrum so it turns into worshipping
• There are a fair share of quests that are painfully linear with zero player/dialogue choices, which shouldn't be in a game that is talked about as "do whatever you want". Most quests in the previous TES games have this issue too, but it really feels outdated now with a 2011 game. There are some amazing quests though, but the bad ones really stick out like a sore thumb. And if the game offer choices, it's often just between two evil ones. When I first entered Riften and heard from NPCs how bad things were in town, my first reaction was that I'm gonna do quests here and clean things up. That never happened, and after the Civil War things actually got even worse, as the most hateful NPC suddenly got in charge of the city. I feel it really should have been possible to clean up that place, and I'm a bit disappointed it isn't. Also, if one doesn't want to become a werewolf, it should have been possible to choose to join the Silver Hand faction.
• The idea of becoming the master of the guilds, and it only take a few ingame days. The player isn't an administrative desk person, but an adventurer. Folks may appreciate the errands we run for them, but have never done the sort of politicking I'd expect of a future guild leader. I thought the Imperial Cult got it just right in Morrowind when they said that further advancement would require a full-time commitment to the work of the cult--a sort of commitment not really suited to adventurous types. The guilds in Daggerfall worked sort of the same way, you never became the leader in those either.
• And just like with Oblivion, I feel it would have been nicer if the game was about 4x the size, larger landscape and larger cities that gives it an overall more larger and "epic" feel. The Forgotten Vale is large and fairly epic with the lake thing going on and the large building and the hanging bridges. It feels like the Falmer village there just have the "right" size, but that village is larger than several of the main cities, and I think that's wrong.

EDIT: Oh wait, the behind-the-scenes documentary that comes with Skyrim CE is much worse than the behind-the-scenes documentary that came with Oblivion CE

Both. Improvement in graphics, world design, item and creature design and music is pretty cool too. However the gameplay has gotten even more simple, UI even more user-violent, and stories on the whole are shallow and have a half-assed feel to them. It's as if they stopped trying after making everything look and sound pretty.

Skyrim is a difficult game to evaluate because it does not have that one single thing that stands out, and neither does it have a single clear weakness to which you cold attribute the game's un-epicness.

For example in Mass Effect 3 there is one single clear-as-day thing that made the game svck - the ending. Everything else was top notch stuff by all means, and if it had a proper ending Mass Effect would have no doubt become a Star Wars of the gaming world, but the way it is, a lot of people ditched the series then and there, including myself.

Skyrim has a myriad of things to evaluate.. Removal of spell crafting, addition of the nice perk system, half-assed quests and great OST are just details that are not game-changers where you could just draw the line and say, this is what ruins/saves it.

It's hard to list things that Skyrim specifically did right and wrong, there's too many of these things.

But there is that feeling when I play Skyrim, that the game was just so tragically half-assed. The game is pretty, has lots of do for hundreds of hours, but I can never get the same feeling I get from playing real RPGs like Fallout series, BioWare games, Might and Magic, so on.

Skyrim feels so empty. Everyone talks but no one has anything to say.

A step up for me, just love exploring and walking around the world. The game feels so much smoother. As much as I love strong story games, once I've played them through once, I never return to start again (Dragon Age, Mass Effects, Bioware stuff...) but Skyrim I can keep playing.

Step up:

• Character development. Now "learn by doing" method makes somewhat sense. Also ditching major/minor sklil division and adding perk system creates an actual specialization.
• Less modding required. The game is fairly good and balanced out of box.
• Improved scaling. Becoming high level character no longer removes low level enemies, etc.
• Radiant quests. Even though could use some improving, the idea is an excellent one.

Step down:

• The UI. What monkey flung this? Absolutely horrendous, unusable pile of mammoth dung.
• Legendary system. Worth of facepalming. What kind of moron thinks resetting skills is a good idea?
• Guilds and their quests. Particulary Companions is a joke of guild.
• Removal of certain features, like spellmaking. Why?

Those are some I could quickly think of.

Agree about the UI, absolute rubbish. Almost unusable for me on the PC at launch date and I had to buy the PS3 Version until the CK came out just because the UI was such rubbish on the PC. Fortunately mods fixed it later.

A massive step up IMO. Skyrim offers so much more in terms of environment, movement and interaction with the surroundings.

Anyone who can't see that is short sighted. The only thing Morrowind excelled in was the feeling / vibe of it's ambience and some of the art design and the some of the quest writing. The mechanics was nowhere near as good. People mistake this feeling for other things. Morrowind still had it's floors as did Oblivion. Especially in character designing and combat.

What I liked about Morrowind was the feeling you got from the creeky sounding Seyda Neen with the erry sounding silt rider in the background. The ambience of the areas in Morrowind seemed better. That was as much to do with sound as it was with art. They pulled of a masterpiece at the time which worked (with the exception of those pesky flying lizard things)

You'll need to remember why it was added, though. People wanted to remove level cap, so Beth gave them a completely optional feature that would allow you to level up ad inifinitum. I can't see how that is a poor feature. I don't need it so I never use it, those that want level 120 or something use it and it works well for that purpose.

My gripes with the Perk system is the linear nature of the perks, which homogenizes your characters more than they would be if you were allowed to cherry pick your perks at your leisure, and that more than a few of the perks are rather unimaginative.

I also don't understand why Mannequins don't improve your skills. Kinda makes them pointless. I also find "Learn by doing" rather unintuitive for the Armor Skills.

I challenge the notion that it works well only because it seems to take increasing a level past 81 requires reaching level 100 in a legendaried skill. I understand the need to make it take longer to level up than it did before, but that's a bit much in my opinion.

Having done personal comparisons between Oblivion and Skyrim (I was lucky enough to play them back to back), I will have to, sadly, say Skyrim is a step down.

Too many facets of the game were simplified, and this isn't something I can ignore.

The loss of spell crafting was a major blow. For me, there's no reason to play a mage. What separated Oblivion in this manner was the ability my character had to combine spells used, whereas Skyrim's major fault is I can now only "hold" two spells at a time. I can't fathom why this change was made, but it's a change I'm not fond of.

Combat has also taken a step down. A major step down. Grab a shield, and you can pretty much beat the entire game by bashing your opponents to death. Leveling in Skyrim is appalling, and this is where Oblivion did it right. It kept battles tough pretty much through the mid levels, and even included several enemies which leveled with us, ensuring we'd never truly be OP.

The ridiculous amount of potions inside dungeons, and the presence of "emergency exits", makes Skyrim hard to respect as an RPG. The entire purpose of building up a character is to match what the game throws at us, getting stronger to defeat more powerful allies. In Skyrim, by the time one hits level 30, they're a walking demigod unless the player chooses to ignore the perk system and upgrades.

However, that's also a strength of Skryim, and I won't deny it. Putting this type of control into our hands is nice, but the trade-off comes from having rudimentary skills locked behind perks, a design flaw. One either has to get used to playing with the basic vanilla setup of their character, or wade through perks they do not want just to get the one they do want. That's a problem, albeit a minor one.

Skyrim also lacks interesting stories. The best was Blood on the Ice, in my opinion, but the rest were just fetch quests, and I'm not particularly fond of a 300+ hour game having most of its time spent fetching knives, swords, or hats for people.

Oblivion gave us depth to its stories. I'm sorry to say this, but there's no way anyone is going to convince me the story of the Dark Brotherhood is better in Skyrim. It may be for you, but it won't fly with me. The Fighers Guild was one of the best faction quests I've seen between the two. That was a damn good story. What's the Companions give you? You get to be a werewolf in order to join them! Thanks, but I'll pass.

Oblivion had a minor few essential characters, but everyone else died. If you screwed up, you screwed up. There's no going back. Skyrim seems to have turned pretty much everyone essential, if they have a name, which seems uncharacteristic.

But the best feature of Oblivion: no smart-mouth kids telling you off.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed Bethesda is working on Oblivion 2.0 for release on next-gen consoles. I wouldn't hesitate to spend $99 on this game. It's one of the best RPGs I've ever played, following Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas.

Skryim is a nicely polished Zelda game, and that's the best way I can sum it up. Nothing wrong with that, but it certainly stepped away from its sister games to achieve this "feature".

Much better way to remove level cap would have been allowing skills to progress past 100. Why else Community Uncapper exists?

I pretty much agree with this and think that the story and writing in Oblivion was way superior to that of Skyrim. I prefer that in Oblivion that you have to repair your armour/weapons regularly (which makes sense) and a big thing for me is that the health bar fills itself up in Skyrim which requires little or no effort to remain strong. I also think enchanting is just a "free for all" in Skyrim and requires no real skill to use, which is a shame as it is extremely powerful.

Skyrim did improve on many things over past games with the likes of smithing, alchemy, perk trees and obviously the graphics but it somehow gives the impression that it has been really "dumbed down" to appeal to a wider audience.

Skyrim is a step down from Oblivion regarding the stories. Regarding everything else, it's a step up. So overall, Skyrim is a step up.

I'm not done with Morrowind yet so can't make a final comment about that.

For me it was a step down. A few steps IMO. My reasoning is as follows.

As has been stated, the gutted magic system. This has bothered me to the point that I will research the next TES game (as opposed to being surprised as is my usual way) and if it isn't improved I will likely not buy it. I am typically a mage player with most of my characters and this was a huge blow to my preferred play style.

Head tracking - or whatever you want to call it. My characters actually LOOKED at things in the other games. Now my character stands there staring off into space when having a conversation. Seem small? It is. But it's one of the things that really engaged me as a player.

Not a fan of the radiant AI as they tend to be minor tasks and mostly make no sense once you are head of a particular guild.

Forced game play. I did not find an amulet added to my inventory or some papers that you could loose bothering my game play or RP. I can ignore that. What I can't ignore is being taken to an underground hideout and being forced to turn into a werewolf or stop advancing right there. Or all of a sudden being drawn into a quest and becoming a "nightingale" with no way out. Sure I can stop the quest by simply not going further however that makes no RP sense. I need to be able to say no.

Major hand holding. It was bad enough in Oblivion. It just seems much worse in Skyrim. I'd turn the hud off but then I loose my cross hairs and as a person with a bit of an eyesight problem, I can't really loose those so *shrugs*.

Character customization took a pretty good dump, IMO.

These are just a few things off the top of my head.

*********

Things I enjoy - Cooking. I enjoy that aspect but would like to see it not affect anything such as health, stamina, etc. It doesn't need to. Just being able to cook a nice meal was a great addition. (BTW - can I please have a tent? I'd be thrilled with even a meager bedroll.)

Alchemy. I like how you couldn't carry a full lab with you but have to plan. At least if you don't count the countless potions you find everywhere you go.

The game world is beautiful.

Skyrim is a step up from a world building perspective, level scaling and maybe combat, but it's a step down in everything else. The fact that your choices, actions and deeds have no bearing at all on the world is pretty crappy.

The questlines were terribad.

The exploration was...who knows, maybe some people get a kick of the same linear corridors and templated loot.

Dialogue haha oh god dialogue.

Magic was gelded.

Crafting and gameplay were seriously unbalanced.

Skyrim is a game where you can pretend, not act. Sure, I can pretend I'm an egomaniacal jerkass, but I can't actually act on my egomaniacal jerkassery in dialogue; instead I sound like a hermit who's been chilling under a rock for the past 200 years.

Bethesda seems utterly terrified of having any sort of consequence to any of the player's actions.