Holy crap, this is like the thread that won't die.
Kashif Omer said:
There are plenty of series with installments that have their own fanboys, TES is one but the biggest offender is probably final fantasy. You cannot like ff6 without hating 7, you cannot like ff7 without hating 8, and you cannot like anything before ff5 without hating everything after ff5 with the exception of ff9.
TES is also really bad, the single worst example i've seen was when a daggerfall fanboy complained that Bathesda had no ambition because oblivion was not as big as daggerfall. And i'm sorry but saying that oblivion was not ambitious is not a legitimate complaint.
I like FF6, 7, and 8. Liked them all the moment I played them. I think alot of people were just crying about 8 not having materia. I never heard of anyone not like 7 when it came out other than people who just didn't like JRPGs.
I don't think Oblivion was ambitious as they didn't change or improve on much of anything. The leveling system had the same flaws as its predecessor. The story actually got worse to be more "streamlined" despite the fact it wasn't multiplayer enabled. The terrain was copy/pasted instead of hand crafted. The dialogue was improved but used a number of voice actors that at best can be considered half-assed. Combat was streamlined to be as entertaining as combat on minecraft. (X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X etc. is not good combat mechanics.) Auto-leveling had apparent bugs with it that should have been caught on the drawing board by anyone who knows even a little about game balancing.
There is a long list as to why I would say that Oblivion was not ambitious. I think that Skyrim sounds ambitious but all game developers promote their game as ambitious. We will see when it comes out how ambitious it was. In alot of cases they are legally bound to through contracts. This is a overlap with the marketing department of the publisher. I am not saying the developers didn't have any ambition. I am saying that it was not an ambitious project.