To me, Oblivion was a DISASTER. I don't know if calling it a "Bad Game" is fair, but it's certainly overhyped. I think it was just a good game for it's time, but I suppose I can give the Bethesda team some advice.
1. Get Better Voice Acting! - This was a big deal for me. Whenever I heard a character talk, I did not hear a humanoid talking cheetah barmaid, I heard a female pulled off the street, told to do some lines with no training, no practice, and on a day she had a cold, and then put through Garage Band to change its pitch. I don't think this will be a problem in 5, as Fallout 3 had excellent voice acting, and I think Bethesda has learned from it.
2. More Engaging Story! - The Oblivion story was bland, to put it nicely. An emperor is dead, you must find his son and help him stop some demon force from destroying the world. Honestly, I could think up a better plot than this (And have, being an amateur writer!), and because the story was a so unengaging, and combined with the lame voice work, it kept me from wanting to complete the story. So much so that it took me three heaving tries before I got to a steady pace to finish the story. Again, Fallout 3 did much better in this regard, so I hope they learned from that.
3. Better Character Animations! - I don't mean graphics, because I'm sure those will be fine. I mean the movements the character models made. In Oblivion, I'm sure it was impressive for the time, but today they all look like marionette puppets. Especially in combat, their flailing limbs can really wear on your nerves quickly. This also means combat animations, so that they don't look like the same fight happening about 10,000 times.
4. More Engaging World! - Once again, Fallout 3 pulled this off wonderfully, so I hope this improves because of this, but Oblivion's world was boring. As Yahtzee said, it was like they took a square kilometer of forest, added a few wolves, and copy-pasted it until they had a small country. The world had no variety, and very few interesting locals that you would want to explore. Part of this was because there weren't really any friendly NPCs anywhere to give you a sense of population and life, just a bunch of enemies anywhere there isn't a town.
5. Friendly AI that can tie its own friggin' shoes! - The friendly AI in Oblivion was laughable, if you didn't have to rely on them. The biggest problem was trying to fight with your friendly AI. So often you would accidentally slay someone you were fighting with or escorting because they would jump in your way, and you're so much more powerful than them. This can really be a problem in a mission like the final mission in the Knights of Nine expansion. My first time through, two of my knights jumped in front of me like morons, got killed by me by accident, which the game called two evil acts, stripping me of my armor and weapons. Of course, this was BS, and seeing as how I brought literally no other armor with me, I was screwed and had to restart.
I think the most common problem with people was the quest Allies for Bruma. You go to Cheydinhal, where you learn that there's not only an Oblivion Gate, but the Ruler of Cheydinhal's son went into the portal to seal it with his "Knights of the Thorn" to try and seal it themselves. When you go in, you find only two of them left, and these idiots, of course, glue themselves to you instead of staying put. On the bridge ahead, I can't tell you how many times this stupid Prince NPC fell off the bridge to his death. No problem, right? Just explain what happened to the ruler, right? Wrong. You need to get a ring of the Price's body if he died. If he fell off the bridge, there is no way to get the ring outside of a console command unavailable on the 360 version. Worse, if sir Thorns-For-Brain jumps in front of your sword and dies, you fail the mission because you killed him.
Honestly, just put some work into the AI! It can't be THAT difficult to commit a small team to making sure the ally AI at least doesn't impede your completion of quests.
6. BETTER COMBAT!!! - The combat in this game was a huge disappointment. Really, it was "Block, Attack, Block, Attack, Block, Attack", repeat until dead. This made combat so boring that side quests like the Dark Brotherhood that had you stealth killing people was a breath of fresh air. Yeah, there were spells and Bows, which were a bit better, but the game made you feel like if you weren't using melee primarily, you were doing it wrong, which was a shame, because the melee was awful. Make it more varied and less repetitive.
What did I like about the game, though? Well, while there wasn't much of it, a few of the songs were pretty decent in the game, and I felt the Side Quests were imaginative, varied, and a lot of fun, especially the Guild Missions. However, if Bethesda can't improve on my 6 points above, TES: V won't even be worth a glance.
