Ways that Oblivion is superior to Skyrim

[Braedan]

I guess I only agree with you about the ui OP. No athletics makes companions seem much more useful since I can't outrun them unless I sprint. To me this is more important than speed increases. It felt broken how high I could jump some times.

also the char creator seemed comparable to me. And best of all people don't look quite as bland and homogenous.

You lost me with your quality point though. I was under the impression that you can't change settings on ps3.....

 

[Epona]

I've played all of an hour of Oblivion, but the map is the only deprovement I can think off. Skyrim's is pretty, it's difficult to debate otherwise, but I find the fact that you can alter the angle, the 3D element to it, and the moving clouds overhead make it difficult to see where your going some times.

Frankly, I think Skyrim is superior in every way save for the above, which is just a matter of preference. Adaptability, better graphics, dragons, I prefer the user interface very neat, duel wielding, dragons, improved 3rd person view, better scenery, a rather interesting sub-plot of rebellion (though I've barely played Oblivion, so that may be present as well), dragons, cooler skills menu, dragons.

Did I mention dragons? If not, dragons.


I've seen complaints about things like shield bumping being overpowered, or that X setup makes the game to easy, etc. Then by all means, DON'T USE IT THEN. If people are seriously complaining that an OPTION is not to their liking, then they should stop complaining, and just don't pick that freaking option!

Well in the same light, people didn't have to use Athletics or Acrobatics as Major Skills in previous TES games but they did and then they complain that those skills break the game. Those skills were always optional, just like every other skill. When those skills were dropped because Todd Howard didn't like choosing a class in Oblvion, all of a sudden people act like athletics and acrobatics were required major skills. Oh and before I forget:

Did I mention that Skyrim is PERFECT!

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

Hey I saw this exact same topic when Oblivion came out except it was how Morrowind was superior to Oblivion. Talk about an unpleasable fanbase

That happens when a developer takes away from the experience each sequel and instead improves on graphics. The series was seriously dumbbed down with each iteration. The only thing that allowed Oblivion rise above Morrowind in my opinion was the mods.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I have found Skyrim to be a step down from Oblivion in a few ways:

- No athletics or acrobatics. Really, I want to run faster and jump further as I progress in the game.

- The character creator is worse than the one in Oblivion (which was pretty bad too)

- The UI is ugly compared to the one in Oblivion. It looks like it just has a white/gray frame.

- The UI was designed for looks (that's a failed attempt) rather than functionality. You can't sort your inventory, you can't view your character when equipping stuff.

- Oblivion performs better at it's worst than Skyrim does at it's worst, both compared on the PS3.

Well, there are a few and I know there are more because I have read about them on the Bethesda forums. What say you?

I disagree with you on almost all of those points:

-Athletics and Acrobatics were stupid and pointless "skills" that just made the game ludicrously silly. I don't want my khajiit to be able to run faster THAN A FREAKING HORSE and be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. That's just broken and silly. Yes, in Skyrim you're constrained by the bounds of reality, but that's better IMO.

-The character creator is fine for me. At least the characters look vaguely humanoid almost no matter what you do to them, instead of ranging from uncanny playdoh to WTF? levels of strangeness.

- The UI is gorgeous IMO, that's an opinion thing, the simplistic HUD with bars that only appear when relevant works really well for me, and the overall look of the UI is very clean and pretty (espescially the skills screen).

-There's no debating the fact that the UI and menu system was clearly intended for consoles and was directly ported over to PC, and yes you can't sort things, but overall, once you get used to the UI it works without too many problems, though you do have a point about the sorting.

- I don't know what you mean by this, but playing on the PC it mostly runs pretty well, and isn't NEARLY as buggy as vanilla Oblivion ( I never played with mods) however there is occasional lag and long load screens for me, which I think will be greatly improved when I upgrade from a mid level laptop to a decent PC this winter.



Here is my list of things I think Oblivion did better than Skyrim:

- The mouse arrow feels "floaty" for lack of a better word, in the map and menu screens
- No separation of leg and torso armor, this is a small thing but it just seems strange to me.
- Everything is too interesting and keeps pulling me off of my intended task!!
- It's kind of annoying that there are now two eternal dragon skeletons in the courtyard of the college of winterhold. While not any different from oblivion, Oblivion didn't have anything nearly this big that would attack at random in a public place and leave a giant eternal corpse in the middle of the path.
-EDIT: Also those damn enemies (read: dragons) that can get instakill moves on you at 1/2 - 3/4 HP... what the fuck... Give me a chance...

 

[corysc]

I prefer skyrim over oblivion myself, but still hold Morrowind over both of them. wish they would just port morrowind to Xbox Live and PSN, PSN really needs it for those who dont use PC for gaming and are Loyal to the playstation, never owning an xbox.

Crono, what setting are you playing on? I dont have the game on the ps3 so I dont have any lag issues that i have noticed, 360 version. Reason I ask is because I get my ass royally handed to me by the dragons on the hardest setting. Could be because I use a nord warrior and refuse to train magic and ranged weapons, choosing instead to rush in with my hammer and voice. At LVL 23 and still having trouble, could just be me but thats how ive played the other two on the first go through. Just wondering.


My main problem with the game so far has been the dragon attacks. I was in a cave working on a quest that i had been doing for most of the day, either dying or getting stuck. I finally got the last piece and left the cave, choosing to walk to the town that the person was in rather than fast travel because i had just gotten to lvl 20 and wanted to so if i would fair any better against a dragon or giant. I seen neither at the half way point to the city when across the screen the words QUEST FAILED popped up, and it was that damn quest i had been working on! I was so confused about what i had done that I just kept mashing the run button, only to find the city had been attacked and destroyed. So I basically wasted around 4 hours because one of the freakin levers wasnt working, and by the time I figured out another way around it, the dragon randomly killed the person who I was supposed to turn the crap I had in to. Ive read people saying the stories and quests dont seem that rushed or important, let that happen to you one time and tell me they arent rushed. Im more worried about the main story now than doing side quests and leveling up because I dont know whats going to happen if a dragon happens to kill somebody in the main story randomly. Will I be stuck at a random point in the game unable to finish it?

Another bridge not working really pissed me off, because it was the only clear way out. There were 2 levers to lower 1 bridge. I killed a draugh with unrelenting force shout and it landed in the gear, I pulled both levers, it started to move then nothing happened. Pulled them in a different order, still nothing. Then i pulled while watching the bridge, and the damn Draugh's body started twitchin. SO I can only come to the conclusion that the Draugh was holding the bridge from coming down, and unfortunately for me the game had autosaved in the time it took me to figure that out causing me to reload an older save about an hour before this happened.

Those could just be bugs, but those are my complaints with the game.

 

[Syzygy23]

Eh, I don't actually agree with any of those points at all. The one about performance issues on the PS3 might be true enough, but I have it on the 360 and have had no issues, so I wouldn't know.

Now... ways in which Oblivion is better than Skyrim...

Hm...

Oh! I thought the ending of the Dark Brotherhood storyline was a little weaker than in Oblivion. That's all I can come up with as of right now, but I'm sure I'll find more issues. I am only about 50 hours in, after all.

OP sounds like a troll the way he continues to write off dragons as the fighting the same thing as rats or wolves.

Define Troll?

Hint: Having a different opinion than you does not make me a troll.

Troll as in people have been consistently giving you evidence of Skyrims superiority and you hand wave it with the weakest arguments possible. You're either riling up the fanboys or feel the need to find a reason, any reason, to hate Skyrim.

Of course you hit a dragon with your sword just as you'd hit a bear or a wolf with a sword. In Halo you hold the right trigger down until that grunt stops moving, you hold the trigger down longer if you want a brute to stop moving.

You can boil ANY game down to the basics like that. It's not WHAT you do, it's HOW you do it. I refuse to believe you aren't smart enough to realize this, therefore you be trollin'. That said, trolling is funny.

 

[Omega07]

IMO Skyrim is really good on IMMERSION. have you people heard of this magical thing? when you shoot down a dragon with a bow, or charge a giant with 2 swords... it actually makes a part of me believe that i`m there...

Oblivion didn`t have a sprint option, which i really longed for (mind you that i`m not that very good with mods, thus try to avoid them what-so-ever). i like Skyrims` UI a bit more, because it`s in normal alphabetical order, and i myself find it more to my liking.

the dragon=giant=mammoth thing is just plainly retarded (no insult intended). dragons have a completely different behavior pattern (i had dragons that just pop up from nowhere and start flaming me, and a bunch that ignore me completely, while i try to draw their attention to me via bow-n-arrows).

Skyrim also has a lot better character animation. when you run, it looks like running, not like you`d be playing with a puppet masters` doll... and the character builder is better. yes it lacks a few sliders, but the characters actually look like semi-real people, not like dolls. and if someone would say that it`s just presets, then i`s reply to them saying:"maybe you should have checked the other char building screens as well, not just pick a preset and press done like a bloody idiot."

the war paint and scars thing also makes me imagine that my character has a backstory, and make up the reasons why has a wood elf from Valenwood decided to travel to the harsh and cold land of Skyrim.

acrobatics and athletics seem kinda redundant because if you maxed them out in oblivion, you were running like a mad man and jumping higher than some trees... never felt a need for those skills, and don`t really miss them.

conversation system`s a lot better too... no more mudcrab mono-repeat-a-logues... and the voice acting. how can you not enjoy a that a guard asks you with a thick accent to "not get in trouble". not to mention the quest related characters...

so i think that Skyrim is better that Oblivion, but lacking the gates to oblivion/hell... Oblivion`s not bad but it`s not Skyrim.

and suddenly i hear the whisper of dragon language telling me to end this and return to my destiny as Dovahkiin...

FUS-RO-DAH

 

[Vibhor]

Holy shit, its morrowind vs oblivion threads all over again.
Let me put it to you this way, the TES series is made by the same company and the games you plebs are arguing about are just the new installment in the series. Proving that X game is superior than Y sequel is not going to win anyone's heart.
On that point though, Skyrim UI is pretty terrible.

 

[Pimppeter2]

In their tongue he is Movakiin, Mudcrab-born!

I like your comment so much I want to have sex with it.

 

[Vibhor]

I disagree with you on almost all of those points:

-Athletics and Acrobatics were stupid and pointless "skills" that just made the game ludicrously silly. I don't want my khajiit to be able to run faster THAN A FREAKING HORSE and be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. That's just broken and silly. Yes, in Skyrim you're constrained by the bounds of reality, but that's better IMO.

Yeah this point, let me just state that both sides of the argument are retarded.
Not being able to run faster isn't realistic, its mechanical. If I walk a thousand miles then it should have SOME effect on shouldn't it?
It also stands as a gameplay thing, it rewards the player for walking to a location as opposed to fast travel.
Also, a cat person should be able to run faster than a human if not a horse.

 

[Sholtz]

from what i've read it seems OP hasn't played the game to any real length or at all perhaps...he uses the phrase "i've heard" or "i've read" many many times....i believe he has just trolled you all.

all of his problems with the game are nitpicks and/or misinformed. such as char. creation being all presets...no...there are presets yes, but you can change your character down to the size of his or her forehead depth etc.

the inventory is alphabetical if you can't understand that i can see you having problems with the interface. you do know the alphabet...don't you? A B C D E F G H I J K...yeah you get it

He whines about the game being dumbed down, and every single time i hear this all i hear is "wah, my fave game franchise has gone mainstream and has been made more intuitive and easy to understand rather then a bunch of flow charts and stats with a game experience you could get from a business meeting at Boring & Boringtons LTD"

his dismissal of monsters as being only high level and low level shows that either he is a complete imbecile who is just trolling everyone , or he's the kind of gamer that needs to be locked in cave....a cave full of low level baby pigs, and high level piranha!"

 

[kortin]

Honestly, I don't compare them. Oblivion was great in it's own way and Skyrim is great in it's own way.

 

[Ashryd]

Buckets are the best feature of Skrim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25LB4dBruEo

 

[snowy556]

Listen, I have almost 100 hours into skyrim, and I have beaten the entire campaign, and most of the side quests. The thing that really stood out to me is the simple fact that Skyrim lost the sense of humor that Oblivion had. In Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood, there were lots of fun ways to kill people, yet in this one, we have to just figure out a way to execute someone. There are no blood thirsty orcs talking about how they killed a little girl at her birthday party, only a Little girl Vampire.
However, I am often debating whether or not that skyrim had a more serious tone because the devs were trying to get across the point that in the 200 years that had passed since Oblivion, that things have not been going well, or if it was just laziness. If they were trying to make a point, they made it very well, and you really do get a sense while playing that life would probably suck living in Skyrim.

The one thing that Oblivion really has over Skyrim in my mind, is Sheogorath. I friggen love that guy. you might be able to fight dragons in Skyrim, But do you get to make it rain flaming dogs on a small village? nope.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I disagree with you on almost all of those points:

-Athletics and Acrobatics were stupid and pointless "skills" that just made the game ludicrously silly. I don't want my khajiit to be able to run faster THAN A FREAKING HORSE and be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. That's just broken and silly. Yes, in Skyrim you're constrained by the bounds of reality, but that's better IMO.

Yeah this point, let me just state that both sides of the argument are retarded.
Not being able to run faster isn't realistic, its mechanical. If I walk a thousand miles then it should have SOME effect on shouldn't it?
It also stands as a gameplay thing, it rewards the player for walking to a location as opposed to fast travel.
Also, a cat person should be able to run faster than a human if not a horse.

Not really. If you walk a thousand miles, then maybe you'd be slightly faster/more efficient, but you couldn't run faster than a horse.. Even a khajiit...

Also, skyrim rewards you for walking by the incredible vistas and varied landscapes that it offers. That alone has convinced me to travel by horse/foot a lot more often than fast travelling. Also the fact that you can't fast travel to the major cities right from the start and have to visit every location on your own at least once helps (aside from the horse carriages)

 

[spartan231490]

disagree with all your points except the last one, as I don't own a ps3. Ok, any other pointless opinions anyone wants to state? I think steak is better than roast beef.

 

[Khada]

No athletics or acrobatics. Really, I want to run faster and jump further as I progress in the game.

Fair enough, though I was just silly how high you could jump and how fast you could run in oblivion. Skyrim is keeping it more believable.

The character creator is worse than the one in Oblivion (which was pretty bad too)

Totally disagree, there is a bit less customization sure, but there is still plenty of room to move and it doesn't take 2 hours to make a decent looking character, now 15 min will give you a great one.

The UI is ugly compared to the one in Oblivion. It looks like it just has a white/gray frame.

I Enjoy it, it's clean, simple and functional.

The UI was designed for looks (that's a failed attempt) rather than functionality. You can't sort your inventory, you can't view your character when equipping stuff.

Both fair enough, I would also like the second one.

Oblivion performs better at it's worst than Skyrim does at it's worst, both compared on the PS3.

For me, Skyrim on medium-ish settings run much smoother than oblivion did (whilst looking orders of magnitude better).

All in all, it's not perfect and there are always going to be little holes (that you can fill with mods) but Skyrim is an amazing game.