Discussion: ESIV Oblivion VS ESV: Skyrim

[Krux Mullarus]

I consider myself a gamer. RPGs are ny favorite because I love developing characters. Its really no wonder im a fan of writing and roleplaying.

So ive played both of the Elder Scrolls' most popular games and hear a lot of debate on which is better. I realize its personal opinion, but I also like discussing stuff like this, especially since I just picked up the GOTY Edition of Oblivion yesterday and cant wait to mod the crap out of it, since the only other time I have played it was on Xbox without mods. I have over 350 hours clocked on my copy of Skyrim with mods, and now its virtually unplayable since it crashes so often, even when removing every one of my ~75ish mods.

I wanna hear opinions. Which is better? Oblivion or Skyrim? Any good mod reccomendations for Oblivion?

I'll give my brief piece on the discussion: I like Skyrim better. It's better detailed, the combat feels a lot more tense and fast paced, and there are more "giant" monsters and foes to slay. Oblivion - unmodded - pit me against more human-sized enemies and monsters with the exception of the Gatekeeper in the Shivering Isles DLC. I would guess theres mods to add bigger, badder enemies to slay, so maybe ill get more of a kick out of modded Oblivion. Still, I wanna hear other opinions!

 

[Nico Ike Qarmast]

ehh they are both good in my opinion with strengths and weaknesses. Oblivion is great and has some fun adventures while Skyrim has a nice way to develop your character how you want. That being said oblivion had horse armor while skyrim has macho man dragons.

 

[Kana Truden]

Oblivion's quests + Skyrim's detail to world = Profit

They are weak alone, but together they shall would rule my computer as one.

Oblivion has a better vibe to it. I don't like the Nord stuff at all, I much more prefer the whole regular-fantasy-boring-boring-iron-armor stuff that Oblivion has. And please, give me back my awesome Thieves Guild storyline and the amazing Dark Brotherhood story. Both of these were beyond lacking in Skyrim.

It's like Skyrim was a sandbox with no story. Which quite frankly it probably was. Oblivion was more like a game with a really cool world to it.

And attributes.

And mysticism.

And a host of other things they stripped from Skyrim that I need to mod into Skyrim for some dumb reason.

Goddamnit, Bethesda, stop streamlining your games and stop appeasing the crowd that ain't my crowd!

[muttering]

EDIT: I do like Skyrim, but it's really lacking when it comes to story. The world and the detail to it is a lot better as well as the look of pretty much everything.

 

[Greifen Ren]

I thought the Skyrim story was fantastic. The Oblivion storyline, while good, was very similar to Morrowind in many respects. Skyrim's story was a little more unique and nuanced with the civil war going on, and the political/nationalist overtones that have a lot of real life parallels.

Both games are great, and I love both. However, I think Skyrim has the edge. Leaving aside story for a second, I think the streamlined gameplay of Skyrim does in fact make it a more enjoyable experience. At first I was skeptical when they took out attributes. However, the end result is actually a positive change. You can simply master what skills you want, when you want. Unlike the Elder Scrolls predecessors, you don't have to worry about constantly getting the (+5) bonuses in attributes as you level your character, if you're the min/maxing type (which I am). Additionally, some needless skills were removed, and there is no level cap anymore. All positive changes in my opinion. Also, Nords ftw and kark all you haters. Been rolling a Nord in Elder Scrolls ever since the Morrowind days. They are my favorite race.

Oblivion is a great game and one that I still love. At the time I thought it would be impossible to improve upon the system they already had. Skyrim somehow managed to do it, though. That's a pretty rare thing, and one of the reasons why I think Skyrim is possibly one of the best video games of all time.

 

[Nico Ike Qarmast]

I thought the Skyrim story was fantastic. The Oblivion storyline, while good, was very similar to Morrowind in many respects. Skyrim's story was a little more unique and nuanced with the civil war going on, and the political/nationalist overtones that have a lot of real life parallels.

I would agree with this but at times it wasn't very well done. The civil war was well one sided. It was kind of like the mage vs templars where you are supposed to see points on both sides but they made one seem to evil. The stormcloaks were just like the templars in my opinion you wanted to see their point but then they talked and said something on par with kill everything not us and... can't side with them after that.

Still play oblivion sometimes to clear out that last dungeon I might have missed or find something for a set. I am missing one of the statues still.

 

[Netherworld]

Oh. My. Did someone say Elder Scrolls? *gets out the Fan no.1 hat*

In all seriousness, though (and keeping to the actual discussion) I think I can pretty much +1 [member="Kana Truden"] on this one.

Skyrim was/is visually stunning. The world is big and packed with stuff to do, and there are practically no limits to what you can explore. Throw some mods and console in there, and you can sink weeks hours of your life into frolicking around the province, slaying and sightseeing to your heart's content. HOWEVER.

The main quest(s) are ridiculously boring and clichéd, in my opinion. So, you're a god's descendant on Earth Tamriel, come to save us from that one Big Bad™? Sure, it gets crazy interesting if you involve the fascinating lore behind Alduin into the story, but that was never actually done in-game. As for the Civil War storyline... let's just call that one a missed opportunity. According to some unused assets found in the game files, the quest was supposed to be much bigger and more expansive, but got cut out due to time constraints. Read moar here [x].

Some of the side-quests were pretty rad, and the DLCs weren't half bad, if a bit unbalanced. All in all, however, I'd say that Skyrim's strengths lie firmly in the gameplay and graphics arena.


Oblivion, on the other hand, has a much cooler story, and the Thieves Guild quest is possibly one of my all-time favorites. The world feels more nuanced, and the characters are diverse. Nothing will ever trump Shivering Isles DLC, because Sheogorath, but that's something deserving of its own thread. The guilds and side quests feel better crafted overall, and some of the skills/schools of magic/spells allow for more fun that has to be modded into Skyrim. HOWEVER.

The game is visually horrendous. Okay, maybe not horrendous, but it's damn close. The NPC faces are just... well, let's not. One link. 'Nuff said. The gameplay is also much more clunky, and the classes and skills put a lot of limits on the freedom of character creation that Skyrim offers instead.


Honorary mention to Morrowind at the end, because it has the best story out of all three. Sorry, Bethesda.

My one recommendation? Play them all.

 

[Julius Sedaire]

Elder Scrolls? WE DO NOT SAY THAT NAME IN THIS HOUSE..

*is found hours later, shivering in a corner holding his fabric map of Tamriel*

Yeah... Morrowind alone I sunk.... Well... Umm... An embarrassing amount of time into. That was my 'every day after school with friends' game. I can honestly say in that game we beat every story-line with every type of character possible. And I may have glitched out the conjuration ability to summon a permanently existing army of golden saints, dremora, and other 'daedra' or such.. Or a spells that killed every NPC that wasn't in a building in Balmora... Ahhh, those were the days... (Am I old now because I said that?)

Oblivion? I hated it, to be honest. The graphics were terrible to me, the controls were terrible, the story (to me at least) for the main quest did not grab my attention in any way what-so-ever. The thieves guild and dark brotherhood I enjoyed immensely in that game. But that was about it. The enchantment system to make your own items was bunk (to me), etc.. It seemed like a game they had an awesome all around frame for, and then just didn't really fine tune enough. And I went into it trying to love the game. It was Elder Scrolls, after all. All that aside, I loved Knights of the Nine (I'm a history buff, so the Templar vibe was cool). The Shivering Isle bit was fun for about 30 minutes, but then it seemed to be the same gag, but it had a certain level of camp and humor that made it something i'd do when I was bored.

Skyrim? Man... I've played me some Skyrim... I loved it at first, because it was a gorgeous game visually. And almost completely open-ended. But honestly, I think it suffered from that in the end. They tried to keep the stories and such too open. Just vague and shallow enough to give you a gentle nudge, but not enough to give you something to grip. The generic 'hero born of a god/ultimate power', etc... etc... The Civil War storyline intrigued me a lot more than the main quest (which I only just completed a few months ago actually). But it glitched out right at the end for me, after doing a ton of work doing *every* mission associated with it, and that crushed me enough I haven't been back. Traumatic really.

I have done more on Skyrim collecting houses and trinkets (and building my own house, man is that a fun diversion) than with the storylines. I liked the DLC with Miraak, quite a bit. It was unique and different. And the return to Morrowind, even if to a province, was nice. It felt like a coming home to a long-time fan of the series like me. I liked the Dawnguard add-ons, but the Vampire Lord bit did feel a bit over the top... And the fact it forced third person made it a complete turn off to me. But the story, and some of the little gear it brought in, was nice. Love me some crossbows. And an ice-troll companion along with Sera making constant zombies is pretty beast.

Full Disclosure: I don't play modded games. Whether I have them for PC or not, I just don't typically enjoy mods, and without exception, they never work as intended for me. Must be cursed or something. So if modability is a sign of a games success, I am waaaay behind the times. Or getting old finally. Probably the latter.

 

[Greifen Ren]

The stormcloaks were just like the templars in my opinion you wanted to see their point but then they talked and said something on par with kill everything not us and... can't side with them after that.

The Stormcloaks definitely didn't say that.

You had a few Nords in places like Ulfric's capital (forget the name) that discriminated against the Dark Elves and called them mean names and basically told them all to kark off and go back to Morrowind. But aside from that, the Stormcloaks were basically ethnic nationalists who wanted self-determination in their own homeland. Skyrim for the Nords. They never said they wanted to romp across Tamriel and genocide everybody. In actual fact, the most aggressively expansionist/genocidal faction in the game would be the Thalmor, with their policies of Elvish supremacy. And who were the Thalmor's allies, albeit reluctantly? The Empire.

The main reason given for supporting the Empire in the game was that a unified Empire could better resist the encroaching Aldmeri Dominion, the supposed justification being that if one really hates the Thalmor, the best option is to support the Empire, because a fragmented Empire embroiled in civil war is exactly what the Thalmor wants (you read this in one of the Thalmor dossiers you obtain on the main quest, where it strongly implies that the Thalmor freed Ulfric intentionally). However, a closer inspection reveals that none of these reasons are valid. Firstly, if you carefully read that same dossier, it says that the Thalmor's goal is simply to prolong the civil war indefinitely. They don't want either side to actually *win*, because then attention will be turned to them. So a Stormcloak victory in the civil war would actually be just as much of a blow to the Thalmor as an Imperial victory.

Secondly, the Empire has already by this point proven itself to be at best an impotent force and at worst completely hostile to the interests of men. The Empire was unable to completely defeat the Aldmeri Dominion in battle and had to settle for the humiliating White-Gold Concordat which outlawed the worship of Talos, something that is sacred to the religion of men and Nords in particular. Not only this, but it's been proven that it is completely possible to secede from the Empire and defeat the Dominion in battle, because the province of Hammerfell did exactly that. Hammerfell seceded from the Empire, and when the Dominion tried to invade Hammerfell, they promptly got their asses kicked. If the Redguards can do it, why can't the Nords?

And that is why the Stormcloaks are 100% right and justified and my Nord character follows a strict "kill-on-sight" policy for any Thalmor he comes across.

 

[Greifen Ren]

The main quest(s) are ridiculously boring and clichéd, in my opinion. So, you're a god's descendant on Earth Tamriel, come to save us from that one Big Bad™?

Hmm... I don't think this criticism really holds up, especially because it can be applied to Oblivion to an even greater degree. Thought the main quest in Skyrim was boring? Well I don't know how you made it through the Oblivion quests, which were far more tedious and repetitive. Get interrupted in your travels by an Oblivion Gate, do a dungeon crawl through similar-looking maps, go up the tower and colect the sigil stone. Rinse and repeat. After you've done this a handful of times, the maps start to repeat themselves and you find yourself doing the exact same dungeons multiple times. It was the definition of monotony. Worse, it couldn't really be avoided, because collecting sigil stones was necessary if you wanted to craft the best armor possible.

Bethesda recognized that this was one of the few flaws of Oblivion and took steps to fix this. If I'm not mistaken, every single dungeon in Skyrim was designed by a different person in order to avoid the "this looks too familiar..." feeling. You still get that feeling sometimes, but not nearly as much as in Oblivion.

As to the whole god's descendant on Earth trope, say what you will I suppose. It's kind of become an Elder Scrolls thing at this point. Morrowind had the Nerevarine, Skyrim had the Dragonborn. Oblivion eschewed the mold by making you just a normal dude who just helps out the main God-figure and does all the dirty work, but screw that. At least in Skyrim you got to be the one to save the world and defeat Alduin yourself, rather than simply watching Martin Septim fight Mehrunes Dagon.

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

Just wait until Skywind is finished. Then we'll have Morrowind with Skyrim graphics/gameplay. THAT will be far superior to any of the others - let's be honest, Morrowind was beyond exquisite in terms of storyline, but the playability was sub-par compared to the sequels. The new mod will let it be played the way it was meant to be experienced.

That noted, I agree with all of the above: the Civil War was something that looked superb, but then was inherently anti-climatic. The Dragon aspect was fun, but yes, it becomes tiresome being a mythical saviour-thingy out of nowhere. The gameplay was excellent, I loved the streamlining, and the magic system was great as always (but I loved the Mages Guild/University of Morrowind/Oblivion far more than in Skyrim).

Give me the gameplay of Morrowind with some of the openness of Oblivion (way more to do than in Morrowind) and with the gameplay mechanics and graphics of Skyrim...I would be a very happy customer.

 

[Krux Mullarus]

I would agree with this but at times it wasn't very well done. The civil war was well one sided. It was kind of like the mage vs templars where you are supposed to see points on both sides but they made one seem to evil. The stormcloaks were just like the templars in my opinion you wanted to see their point but then they talked and said something on par with kill everything not us and... can't side with them after that.

Still play oblivion sometimes to clear out that last dungeon I might have missed or find something for a set. I am missing one of the statues still.

Ooo, see...not necessarily true. I prefer siding with the Stormcloaks because I feel the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion have no right to take away their right to worship Talos.

I know, let them kill off the Empire and the Elves will come in and kill them. I know, 'Ulfric is a racist'. It's a game, I don't like the Empire for bending over for the Elves, I like how the Stormcloaks feel like freedom fighters. Sue me.

As for the Mages and Templars in Dragon Age, I personally just cant stand either. Lol

 

[Julius Sedaire]

[member="Tirdarius"] - What sorcery of which do you speak..

 

[Jsc]

Skyrim + Mods = YesPlzWinErrything

That said. I modded both and have over 200 hours on both games. So if I say: Skyrim wins. It might just be by +0.001% of preference. Yeah. That's about it. Even modded with 40+ esps I think there are still somethings I want to see in Skyrim that were strangely absent from release. Things like,

• Imperial Fail: - I think Skyrim did the Imperials wrong via costume design. Why all this red Roman inspiration? What was wrong with chipped iron full plate and silver swords? Dumb.
• Mages Fail: - I think Skyrim's take on Mages was really boring. A college of boring people in a boring place with a boring story about boring subject matter. And only two High Elves in Nordic fashions? Who thinks of the ES setting and gives the magic college only two High Elves in Nordic robes? That's ridiculous. Show some culture plz. Even those Synod guys were dressed like morons. Epic fail.

Now. About setting. Yeah. After 200 hours in Oblivion, I was ready for Skyrim's Nords. I'll admit that. I loved the change of setting, pace, and culture. I was really really refreshing and felt new. Even after so much time spent down south. However, I hated how Skyrim had so few influences from the outside world that made Oblivion so great. I never felt there was anywhere I could go in Skyrim to get that old Oblivion feel again. So after 200 hours in Skyrim. Man. I'm ready to go back to Oblivion.

Weird eh? But still. Fun ride. Would do both again, anytime.

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

Look here

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Of the two of them, Oblivion had a more compelling story...in about two questlines, and one DLC. Overall I'd say Skyrim is the winner, since it won the DLC war, and several of the base game's questlines are quite memorable. Gameplay, it isn't even a debate. Each new TES game brings improvements to the system. Skyrim is categorically better than Oblivion at being a playable, balanced game, especially at higher levels. Oblivion became unplayable after level 20 if you didn't do advanced algebra to make sure your character was growing at the same rate as the monsters.

As previously mentioned, Morrowind had the best story. I want Skywind to be a finished product so badly I can taste it. Get thee back to Vvardenfell, unwashed heathens.

 

[Julius Sedaire]

[member="Tirdarius"] - I... I... It's... It's so beautiful... MUST HAVE NAO!!!!

This may be the first and only time I truly pursue and devote time to a mod of a game.

 

[Netherworld]

Yesssssss. Skywind is love, is lyfe.

Thay said;
[member="Greifen Ren"]

I think you missed my point a bit. I wasn't talking about the graphical/gameplay aspect of the main quest (though I get where you're coming from), I meant the plotline itself. It could've been done much better, in my opinion, and avoided some of the classical pitfalls of the Hero story.

That being said... yes, TES has always been about you, the Hero. Hell, you're a time-bending anomaly in every freaking game.

Spoiler

Oblivion has you mantle Sheogorath, for kark's sake.

Don't get me wrong though, I've played both games to death. Probably logged some 800+ hours in Skyrim, and not a lot less in Oblivion. I love them all, lol.

Except for TESO. We don't speak of that disgusting multiplayer... thing. *shudders*

 

[Julius Sedaire]

[member="Netherworld"] - The TESO should be all copies and computers with those copies collected and thrown into an active super-volcano. Those who have played it should be mind-wiped. Dedicated fans of it must be sarcificed for the greater good of the fandom...

Or we just all collectively agree to never talk of it again... Either or...

 

[Selena Halcyon]

You fail because based Morrowind is based.

 

[Lief]

Oblivion. I immersed myself so deeply into the story which n playing it and it was the very first RPG I properly played and fell in love with. I'd even go so far as to blame it for eveyrthiny which followed, including my passion for writing. The story was more well thought out, the main story and many of the side quests had more significance and I preferred the DBH and the way the fighters and mages guilds worked. Don't get me wrong I loved Skyrim, I just didn't feel it held a candle to Oblivion. Then again I suppose it depends which you play first. Skyrim is beautiful and Oblivion was fugly.