Skyrim Is Skyrim better than Oblivion?

I think I may be on the prowl for a new RPG and have yet to take the Skyrim plunge... but, before I shell out the money, could i get some opinions on whether or not this latest TES installment is better than Oblivion's dull world that had me quit after 20 hours?

Better quests? Hand-placed items? Better dungeon lore? Non-stilted voice acting?

Yes, it is much better in my opinion. It's not even really close. Skyrim has a much improved story, a much more interesting setting, better (and much less repetitive) dialog (writing, acting, and response-wise - you actually get to choose what your character says rather than selecting a general topic), improved graphics (if this is important to you - though not as much of a step forward as Oblivion's were), is actually playable from third person perspective (if this is important to you), and most importantly, an over-hauled leveling system. It's still not perfect, but it's definitely a step in the right direction, and you can sink an unbelievable amount of time into it.

As for hand-placed items, they exist in Skyrim, but not as much as I would have liked to see. There is some scattered throughout the world, but most of the items you will use will come through various quests. It would have been nice if they would have hand-placed some loot in hidden areas to reward exploration (like a Sword of the Ancestral Ages on top of a mountain peak or Boots of Tippytom-Toetim behind a waterfall), but I haven't really seen much evidence of this. Still, even the side quests are typically very interesting, which is surprising coming from a game with such massive scale.

I think Skyrim does a good job of bridging the gap between what was good with Oblivion and what was good with Morrowind, and it adds in some new elements that are usually very good as well. There's still some annoying scaling, but it's handled much better. You won't feel weaker, and you won't run into bandits wearing ebony armor. You will find things like super strong bandit chiefs (usually accompanied by a band of weenie bandits) when you reach higher levels that did not exist in the world before, but that's a pretty small quibble.

All in all, I'd say it would be money well spent. And you won't have to wait for mods to make your experience worthwhile. I can see myself playing through the main quest and then some without becoming disgusted with the game, whereas in Oblivion the level-scaling eventually made the game unbearable to me (then again, when I first started I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, so we'll see).

Drithius said:

Better quests?

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Hell yes! Mostly because of the much improved NPCs. I actually remember guild members names!

Hand-placed items?

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More than in Oblivion, less than in Morrowind. Jarl's palace are actually worth visiting as a thief at least. So are the various guild "hall".

You can also find stuff by exploring, but they are mostly leveled chest...

Better quests? Yes, the quests are quite good and engaging. Even the small fetch tasks are fun.

Hand placed items? Yes, but not as many as Morrowind. The loot is level scaled to an extent. You can still find good stuff in chests, but it doesn't seem like you'll find the Excalibur in a random cave without first taking the quest for it. I would have liked to see some more hand placed epic items to reward exploration a bit more, but the loot system is still good.

Better dungeon lore? Not sure what this means. The dungeons are excellent though, and they all tell a story. You will feel like every dungeon you explore is completely unique and has an interesting story to tell. That's the best way I can explain it.

Voice acting? It's great, I don't have a problem with it at all, and 75 hours in I'm still hearing new voices. You will hear the same voice twice, but it's not a big deal, and the NPCs who share the same voices are usually far enough apart. It's good.

It's a corker - if you buy it and don't like it, I'll personally refund your money**

**I won't really, but I'll be very surprised if you don't like it.

Drithius said:

Better quests?

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Yeah, but not exceptionally so. There are some C&C, but general quest design is one of the weaker aspects of Skyrim in my opinion.
Radiant quests are by their nature shallow, main quest lacks intrigue, guild questlines with one exception lack sense of guild-y progression.
Some of the bigger side quests, like city intrigues or daedric quests are good.
Some quests are triggered via books and there are some treasure maps too - nice touches.
Writing is somewhat improved and some quests quite heavily utilize existing lore and there are some pretty neat ties to previous games.
Journal is often unhelpful and quite a few quests (not only the radiant ones) are pretty much impossible to complete without quest markers.

Drithius said:

Hand-placed items?

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As in loot? Not really. There are some, but majority is tied to quests.
Random exploration will mostly net random loot.
I think that most hand placing was done for books .
Shouts help a bit here though since some can enhance player´s combat portfolio significantly.

Drithius said:

Better dungeon lore?

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Definitely. Telling mini-stories via level design/item placement is one of the highlights of the game. Majority of dungeons have something unique to "tell" and some contain great "interior vistas".
Dungeons are rather monotone in terms of player´s progress though - they´re very linear, few more labyrinthine would certainly not hurt. I feel like it´s all dungeon delving and not dungeon crawling and after a while there are not many surprises in how the dungeons are structured.
Some are a bit too long for their own good and some are underutilized story/quest-wise while being some of the best locations in the game visually at the same time.
Occasional puzzles help the pacing, but there´s not really a great variety of these.
Still, much better than Oblivion.

Drithius said:

Non-stilted voice acting?

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Not stiltedness-free or exceptional, but more varied and generally better than in Oblivion.

Drithius said:

better than Oblivion's dull world

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That would be a resounding yes.
The world design is amazing (z-axis and raggedness ftw, etc.), art direction is great (hopefully it won´t sound too over the top when I say it´s classy), weather effects are beautiful, lore isn´t taken "lightly", there´s an abundance of "little touches" all over the place (these are really not to be underestimated, they enhance the experience significantly), cities feel quite lively Gothic-style and their design mostly makes sense. There´s, as usual, still far more bandits and such than normal citizens in the game world though . One major conflict (not strictly main quest related) adds a good deal of tension to the world and, along with few local conflicts, works well as a setting "enlivener".
Getting to some locations may sometimes result in an environmental puzzle even with quest markers on and there´s a set of mini-quests (treasure maps) which employ this literally.


To cut the rest short, enemy level scaling is a lot better (there are issues - some tougher opponents seem just like renamed weaker ones without much further distinction besides damage they dish and some major questlines seem to scale quite rabidly, but weakest opponents never leave the picture and at least wild life feels scaled just about perfectly, aka not scaled at all), character development is a bit more interesting overall (perks, shouts, no attribute multpliers) and it allows for a good variety of distinct play styles and masters of all trades are not possible, but it is shakily balanced (useless skills, "exploitability" - but that´s not really new in TES games, and I don´t think removing attributes and spellmaking was really all that good move), dragons are an impressive feature and tend to cause some emergent scenarios, faces are a lot better, random dialogues as well (even bandits and such have some), loot is unfortunately just about on par with Oblivion´s.


Overall, to me Skyrim feels a lot more like a work of enthusiasts and less like a "product", compared to Oblivion. Despite the myriad of flaws I see in it, as a sum of its parts and given it was made by an AAA+ developer, I can´t help but consider it an admirable
effort . Top 1 game for me this year.

I won't go into depth as others already have but imo everything in skyrim is improved over oblivion. I've already logged more hours in skyrim than I did in numerous attempts in oblivion.

The worst part of skyrim imo is the combat and it's still an improvement over oblivion. If you dual wield magic or use a bow it can be quite fun but the rest while slightly improved over oblivion still feels like oblivion. Which imo is a bad thing. If the would have included some kind of dodge and an ability to lock on to enemies it would have been much better I think.

Although I was able to stealth kill an entire fort of enemies without being detected with one shot bow kills and dagger sneak backstabs. That I must say was very cool.

I think it's been pretty well covered so far, so I'll just say yes. They actually took the time to build a world this time instead of just slapping something generic together, and the attention to detail really shows.

DeepO said:

There are some C&C, but general quest design is one of the weaker aspects of Skyrim in my opinion.

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Very few C&C I think. Most of the possible choices lead to either the same consequence or to a delay, this is a bit boring, but anyway, Skyrim is TEh GREEAAATist rpecK EVAR!

As for weather effects: Really beautiful, but you can enter a building while it's raining, then immediately leave it and you're on a sunny day.

Sounds like it has potential. Alright, I've been convinced... I'll warily pick it up Thanks!

From the little i played it i think it is as bad as Oblivion , storylines are too short , level scaling equally bad , fewer skills , no attributes , forced quests , combat isn't any better, magic is broken , some skills are worthless , reduced enemy variety , no spellmaking , reduced content , atrocious respawning . If you like exploring the only reason to do is to collect shouts , you can smith / enchant much better gear than the scaled you find (even daedric quest related items are scaled lol).
It has much better dungeons and slightly better graphics , developers use to make games like DF and MW but then they took an arrow to their brains.

Storylines are much longer than in Oblivion.

The level scaling is vastly better. Seriously Tragos, did you even play the game?

Fewer skills and no attributes is because they redid the whole level advancement scheme which was one of the worst things about Oblivion. The new one is not perfect but it is miles beyond what Oblivion had.

Reduced content? Ok, I give up.

Tragos said:

From the little i played it i think it is as bad as Oblivion , storylines are too short , level scaling equally bad , fewer skills , no attributes , forced quests , combat isn't any better, magic is broken , some skills are worthless , reduced enemy variety , no spellmaking , reduced content , atrocious respawning . If you like exploring the only reason to do is to collect shouts , you can smith / enchant much better gear than the scaled you find (even daedric quest related items are scaled lol).
It has much better dungeons and slightly better graphics , developers use to make games like DF and MW but then they took an arrow to their brains.

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Are you sure you're talking about Skyrim? The Elder Scrolls V?

Really?

What you're describing sounds absolutely Greek to me

BillSeurer said:

Storylines are much longer than in Oblivion.

The level scaling is vastly better. Seriously Tragos, did you even play the game?

Fewer skills and no attributes is because they redid the whole level advancement scheme which was one of the worst things about Oblivion. The new one is not perfect but it is miles beyond what Oblivion had.

Reduced content? Ok, I give up.

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You didn't scent the Troll before finishing the first sentence? Tragos has long been a Bethesda basher. There is no logic to it, he's just a poor, destitute Greek Troll. They're much weaker than Ice Trolls, but smell much worse

I'm quite pleased they didn't plant good loot in the world where a crappy level 1 toon could just run and snatch it up. In the days that we live in now, where nothing is worked for and it's all handed to the whining masses, gimme a long involved quest with a decent reward at the end!! Call me old fashioned, but I like a challenge in a game when I've laid out some $$$ for it. The best items I've seen in Skyrim were either made by my toon, or granted at the end of a very involved quest.

Skyrim > Oblivion by far.


-Carn

I already have Skyrim but I'm not playing it. Too many problems with quests breaking for one reason or another. I'm a patient gamer so I've shelved Skyrim for now until at least a good majority of quest-breaking problems are fixed.

For me, the sheer number of quests makes the quest-breaking bearable. If I end up not being able to finish the game, I may change my mind. I've probably broken a few with my random wanderings, but oh well

Yes, the choices and consequences (or lack thereof) is definitely a weak point of the game I didn't really go into detail about. However, this didn't really exist in Oblivion either, and there is at least a little more options on how you go about doing certain things in Skyrim. However, Bethesda games are all about experiencing all the content possible with one character, they never want to lock players out of seeing certain things because of a decision the player made. I didn't expect much different here, but I hope they do provide a good amount of C&C in their next Fallout game (Obsidian's New Vegas did this quite well, so maybe they learned something from them).

Carnifex said:

I'm quite pleased they didn't plant good loot in the world where a crappy level 1 toon could just run and snatch it up. In the days that we live in now, where nothing is worked for and it's all handed to the whining masses, gimme a long involved quest with a decent reward at the end!! Call me old fashioned, but I like a challenge in a game when I've laid out some $$$ for it. The best items I've seen in Skyrim were either made by my toon, or granted at the end of a very involved quest.

Skyrim > Oblivion by far.


-Carn

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See, for me, ideally there would be great loot hidden somewhere worth exploring, but it might also be infested with higher level enemies. That way some lvl 1 idiot isn't just going to stumble upon it, but a lvl 1 player who is patient and stealthy may find his way to get to it.

The problem with this, is that person would post a youtube video of his success and then every gamer would have this item at level one. So does Bethesda try to balance the game with that in mind, or just leave the uber item only for an uber character....