Of all the things that are worth complaining about regarding this game, I really can't think of many problems with the dungeons. Yes, they're not all totally unique, but that was asking a lot anyway. But they're still all just different enough to keep it fun - never know what I'm going to run into around the corner, or whether a dragon priest will be waiting for me at the end. I could spend all day just dungeon crawling.

Skyrim's Dungeons are better designed then Oblivion's but there are other issues at play and a few repeated mistakes.

I'd say the old issues still around are
- the overuse of certain prefabs and meshes... why do almost all inns look near identical across all of skyrim? why are there so many circular wooden stair cases in ancient nord burial chambers?
- a lack of variation in artistic design of dungeons of the same type. Apparently all dwemer like their goldish colored metal and cement tunnels, they also all hired the same architect to build their lairs with all the same doors.
- Numerous battles against the same mob type... Draugr dungeons feel even more repetitive and bland then goblin only dungeons in oblivion.

New Issues I would say are
- Mob Layouts, Oblivion mob layouts were pretty decent, but in Skyrim they seem pretty lame. I can't put my finger on the cause of that but the change in combat plays a part in it.
- Dungeons are less enjoyable, they might look pretty but more happened in oblivion's dungeons then in skyrim's.*
- How many times do we need to do the same claw puzzle! I think I've come across, what 8 or 9 claws, one claw is even used twice in the same quest!

* For example in one dungeon in Oblivion (I believe in the Thieves guild Quest line) You have these two massive blocks which turn out to be walls containing a number of undead. Sure there are rooms in Skyrim where Draugr jump out of their coffins, this however happens a lot. While the design of each dungeon in skyrim is unique, the tricks, traps, puzzles and scripted events are not, this takes away from the dungeons A LOT.

Everyone says that Oblivion's dungeons had crappy design, and I still wonder and ask : "how ?".
Not that Oblivion's dungeons were really good, but how are multiple different layouts with multiple paths and multiple levels, a worse design than a single corridor ?

I'm sorry, but how exactly are they actually different ? One is a tunnel, the other is a tunnel, a third is a tunnel and the next one is a tunnel. That's sure some awesome variety...
What I'm going to run into around the corner ? Well, another tunnel. The main problem is precisely that there is absolutely no exploration, next to no surprise and very little tactical decisions (even in Oblivion, I could circle my foes, ambush them from different positions and the like, here the only possibility is 99 % of the time a stupid frontal assault, as there is nothing but a tunnel to use as terrain...) as it's "just follow the rail" anyway.
The part that make it "next to no surprise" and not simply "no surprise" are the boss fights, which are the only moments where I actually have some fun in dungeons.

Yes I noticed he's still repeating the same things in the other thread I'm arguing with him. It's like talking to a brickwall.

Um, hello. I just went to a fort with like 5 different doors to 5 different areas within the same fort. That's a single corridor? Get your head out of the sand.

Oblivion's dungeons got extremely repetitive, and Skyrim's don't.

Also, those complaining about dungeons/inns having similar features, well no [censored]. They're built by the SAME PEOPLE in the SAME GEOGRAPHICAL AREA.

These complaints are so mindless and wrong.

There IS a maze in the Labyrinthian- you didn't find it yet I take it? I'm not trolling you, it's very well hidden.

I must be misunderstanding what you mean, then. I can't recall a single dungeon in Oblivion that wasn't linear.

I'll make an example

Veyond Cave > Follow the path to the second cell > Follow the path to the third cell > Backtrack

This was also one of the better caves in the game. It wasn't all bad, but all of the ones I've seen Skyrim in are just much better.

If you're talking about chambers and such, then sure, Oblivion has a lot of those. Skyrim does too, but mostly with the larger dungeons.

Can you tell us what dungeons you've explored in Skyrim?

Funny, I got the exact same feeling when you asked for the fifth time "how are the Oblivion dungeons less boring ?" after I had answered four times "they were not good, but at least they were not just a single corridor".
I guess you know what you're talking about when it comes to brickwall.

I you manage to misunderstand "just a tunnel that goes forward without anything to think about, to explore or to use tactically" several times in a row, I'm afraid there is nothing I can do about it and nothing I can tell which could make it clearer...

Bethesda really can't win.

Community a few months ago: "Man I really hope they don't heap a bunch of overpowered weapons in dungeons- I don't want to be handed the best sword in the game from the first dungeon I find!"

Community today: "I hate there are no unique items in dungeons, it's just the same old crap"

You're ignoring the fact that you're totally wrong. If what you said is true, why am I finding multiple paths, and forts with 5+ doors to different areas of the fort?

Just stop and give it up. You can keep typing but it'll continue to be wrong.

I think the dungeons are fine, except for one MAJOR problem. Lighting. There are candles and burning pedastals EVERYWHERE!!! I want some pitch black dungeons that require some use of torches and light spells. Most, if not all, dungeons containing undead, spiders, and non-person enemies should have no man/mer-made light sources. Even with the brightness truned way down, that candle in an "unused" secret passage is lighting up the tunnel so much that not even an ant could escape my eye.

I know what it is like to be in a cave in real life, so I know for a fact that these dungeons would be so much better without those candles and fires. I want to be forced to use a torch or light spell!

I must be disregarding it because of how ill-defined, vague, subjective, and based off my personal experience with the game, wrong, it is then.

As far as the 'single corridor' complaint goes...really?

I haven't even come close to 100 dungeons yet and I've had to backtrack, backtrack backtrack in all sorts of dungeons. There were caves with falmer with staircases everywhere- I had to kill everything, go up the stairs, find a chest hidden in a dark corner (YES I HAD TO USE MAGELIGHT! Dungeons have all SORTS of dark spaces), find a lever near the stairs, trip the lever, go down the stairs, up another set of stairs to figure out which gate was opened by the lever, etc etc. That place took almost two hours to check every stairway, every dark corner...

Forts are the worst- you walk in and are face with 3 doors. Great. Pick a door, clear everything, head back, pick another door, GAH, a stairway and ANOTHER door, leading outside where I can either walk across the walkway to another door or use the trapdoor to go up...I need a breadcrumb spell...


This is not Doom. Stop being so hyperbolic and making it out to be.

I think they're a lot better now.

There are some areas where I believe Skyrim is a stepback from Oblivion, but I do think this area is a step forward. The dungeons are a lot less generic --- at least in feel --- and most of them have something interesting going on. Even if it's only a small story one picks up from reading journals placed throughout the dungeon, these are little touches that I appreciate.

I don't know how you guys are finding the dungeons "Vastly superior" to Oblivion. These dungeons are HARDLY varied.

They're all basically the same. A bunch of corridors with the same traps and draugr, then a few catacombs with restless draugr that will awaken and try to kill you, followed by narrower corridors with restless draugr standing in the corners, waiting for you to pass, and then a big room with a casket in the middle that strong draugr will come out, and a Dragon Word wall will be right after the casket.

Woo hoo!

Yeah, you're wrong too. Apparently you've never been to Blackreach or the city under Markarth, and those are only 2 examples out of tons.

So stop being wrong. You're making my head hurt. What you just described I've seen maybe 2-3 times.

Oh sure, there are several dungeons like that. But even those have some unique features in them, like the unique items.

The biggest problem with Oblivion was that there just wasn't any point in exploring the dungeons thanks to the level-scaling.

I'm probably in the minority on this, but I actually miss the huge, sprawling dungeons of Daggerfall. One could get lost in a single dungeon for an hour or more and it would feel like a big accomplishment when finding the quest objective and then subsequently the exit. Of course some of the downsides were the repetitiveness of the textures in those dungeons and the extremely small ratio of loot and monsters to the dungeon size.

Personally I think the dungeons are one of the strongest points to the game. I can't see where you're coming from on this. The dungeons that I've been in have been unique, well designed, artistic, have excellent audio and many have a good narrative as well.

Yeah, this comment already got spanked above, but I'd just like to add: this is Skyrim. It's a province. It's not a huge place-sure it feels huge and I love how large the game world feels, but at the same time, it's basically a small country with indigenous life and indigenous people. What the heck do you expect?

Go to Italy. Go to England. Go to Egypt. Architecture tends to look the same in regions of our own world, when creating a 'realistic' fantasy world, how is that not expected?

Go into any wilderness and you will find particular types of animals over and over. Brown bears all over Northern America. Maybe some cougars or wolves if you're lucky. Bunnies, foxes, birds.

You're not going to find a wild tiger in Ohio. Why are you looking for wildly crazy, unexpected creatures in Skyrim? Because it's 'fantasy'? Come on.

I see where you are coming from; The problem was that they just became too frustrating and repetitive, and the fact that it was all randomly generated made things illogical and irritating.

The perfect balance would be to design a few, very rare, massive dungeons that the player COULD get lost in. This would require the local map to be reworked and the quest markers to be gone though.

These dungeons just don't do it for me. Get quest, run dungeon, turn quest in ... Meh. They are pretty, just no meat.

I think your post smacks of entitlement and spoiledness.

The dungeons are works of art imho. Daggerfall had "big" dungeons .... big deal, they were all featureless corridors randomly generated. Morrowind had a brown pallete (yet I see people complaining about Skyrim as "grey" even though it has an incredibly diverse bio-environment) and repetitive overall small (10 miinutes max) dungeons. Oblivion had some 20 minute dungeons or so but all mostly the same.

Skyrim's are amazing - some repitition - but many are unique - I loved the Master Vampire's tower (won't say name or where) that was a gauntlet of skeleton archers in a corkscrew formation.

Some have secret vampire lairs plus bandit areas, others have plenty of multiple paths (I've been in numerous bandit caves that have multiple ways to get to them - have you done the pirate cove near Solitude?)

Dungeons rock in Skyrim compared to any in the series yet.

There are only so many ways to dig a hole in the ground, but every single one of them is unique. I was very impressed with the effort they put into this.

In general a cave is a cave and there is only so much you can do with a rock wall especially when many of them were made by the same people in the same time period. Although many are similar there are several that will blow you away.