Poll: Oblivion is 11 Years Old

[BFG10K]

So I just finished replaying Oblivion and Skyrim back-to-back (no mods). This time I did the main quest along with warrior/dark brotherhood quests. I was done at about 40 hours each, which is about my limit for when it’s time to move on from a single player game. For both games my character build was a light armored one-handed sword wielder, supported by archery and basic healing/destruction magic on the side (Dark Elf in Oblivion, Redguard in Skyrim).

Skyrim (non-remastered) of course still looks gorgeous, but Oblivion holds up really well after 11 years, and I found myself frequently admiring the visuals:

Spoiler

Oblivion highlights

• Exploring towers and Ayleid ruins was enjoyable and immersive as they had really nice atmosphere and ambience.
• The cities looked completely different from each other and had really nice aesthetics. Cheydinhal and Anvil in particular had lovely architecture and textures.
• The acrobatics/speed combo created really fast movement with 100% air control, akin to oldskool FPSes like Quake. I didn’t bother with horses as I maxed out speed straight after endurance, and was zipping around everywhere.
• You can gain levels just by running around everywhere, which is how I’d play anyway.

Oblivion gripes

• The leveling system is extremely complicated to attain optimum advancement, and initial character creation can easily induce decision paralysis if you want to min/max. I didn’t bother with that and just played easier difficulty so I could make the exact character I wanted.
• Cave dungeons were a bit generic and didn’t really differentiate each other.
• Closing Oblivion gates was a little boring.
• Destruction magic (e.g. fireball) is a bit too slow in reaching targets.

Skyrim highlights

• The leveling system is very straightforward with far less grinding required, and you can’t really lock yourself into bad choices at the start.
• Combat has a certain weight and heft to it without feeling clunky or slow. Also no more stamina drain for regular weapon swings.
• The Lover’s Stone lets you level 15% faster no matter what skills you use.
• The dungeons had a lot more hand-crafting to them and felt very different to each other. Even minor things like spraying water droplets from the roof really enhanced immersion.
• Skill perks were awesome. In particular, everything in the light armor tree was fantastic.
• The flamethrower spells you start off with are extremely viable as they’re low-risk in terms of missing. Even fast dodging opponents get slowly roasted just by holding down the button.
• Using smithing to upgrade gear was great. I also liked making Elven and Glass items.
• It was nostalgic meeting the Blades again.

Skyrim gripes

• It's not initially obvious how or where to get a good supply of torches.
• It's not possible to properly bind 'A' to action. Try it. You can't pick up books, for example. I had to use 'R' instead.
• Fighting dragons was a little boring and anti-climactic.
• Most shouts were useless and/or a poor-man’s substitute for spells.
• The unwalled cities all looked the same.
• Radiant quests are stupid. At least make it obvious that they infinitely loop so I don’t waste my time on them.

Edit: I just finished Morrowind and enjoyed it overall as well, thoughts below.

Morrowind highlights

• Pleasant looking retro graphics. The water still looks good especially the ripples when raining. Back in 2002 it was groundbreaking.
• A good variety of environments (e.g. red blight storms, marshes, coastal towns, black deserts, western middle ages).
• The main quest has a good story if you take the time to read all of the written dialog. In particular, Vivec’s scrolls made for very interesting reading.
• Exploring random dungeons off the main roads for no particular quest was fun.
• I’m a fan of Dwemer mythos so it was nice to personally use the legendary Sunder/Keening/Wraithguard in much the same way Kagrenac did thousands of years ago.
• You can rest anywhere outside time to fully heal and level up, no bedrolls needed.
• Meets Vivec for the first time: “I bet I can take this guy with my Ebony shortsword”. 30 seconds later: “the game told me I’ve doomed the world by killing him”. [hits quickload button].
• Balmora was a useful city with very easy access to a lot of trainers and merchants. I also liked the game design of Ebonheart.
• The day/night cycle was cosmetic which means people were usually in exactly the same places and shops were open all hours. I think NPC cycles in Oblivion/Skyrim were usually just needless grind which added nothing to gameplay.

Morrowind gripes

• All of the fast-travel options the game offered were a poor-man’s substitute for real map-based fast travel. Also the chance of spell failure for Mark/Recall/Intervention early on caused extra irritation.
• The faction quests are almost universally poor. Vast quantities of walking simulator “go here, talk to this person, pass a speech check, etc”. I don’t build up a combat character for that nonsense.
• The game is unplayable without the Boots of Speed. Without them you still run like a turtle even if you naturally max speed.
• The journal is extremely poor. Don’t have multiple active quests or it turns into a hopeless muddle of text. Even the main quest can miss critical entries if you forget to click specific dialog hyperlinks, leaving you with no idea where to go next.
• The last Dwemer was a seriously missed opportunity. They should’ve used him in a major quest arc to find out what really happened to his race.
• The unlimited skill training system was extremely unbalanced. By mid-game it was easy to consistently have 25K-50K gold. Even with some trainer restrictions based on faction progression, three quarters of my total character levels came from spamming the training system.
• Navigating Vivec city was really tedious. It’s like they intentionally made it maze-like and confusing.
• There are far too many wild animals when you stray off the roads. Many times I literally had 3 Cliff Racers stacked above each other in a queue to fight me.

I haven’t played any other Elder Scrolls games, and have no intention to do so.

Skyrim is my favorite so far.

 

[Smoblikat]

Morrowind is clearly the best, if you say you just played it a year ago, that means there has been 15+ years of innovation between its creation and the time you played it. I played it when it first came out, so I got used to how the UI and mechanics work back when they were truly revolutionary, now that I know the quirks of the game, I can just sit back and enjoy it. It really has the most going on of all the TES games, like comparing GTA:SA to somthing like GTA:III.

Oblivion is the one I put the most hours into, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hours. It struck a nice balance of being a dummed down morrowind and being visually pleasing. The quests were fun, the world was fun, a decent amount of armor/weapons, but the magic kinda sucked.

Skyrim was cool the first time I played it, but quickly became irrelevant after that. Ive still put hundreds of hours into it, but if oblivion can be considered a dummed down morrowind, skyrim is a comatose oblivion. You get to pick 1 of 7 weapons and 1 of 7 armors and youre on your way. The game is practically unplayable without mods, especially the UI. The story was extremely forced and boring compared to the previous 2 games, and only 1 of the DLC's was decent. The graphics were nice though, but the game itself just felt really limited.

 

[BSim500]

Yeah they've been a great series of games.

Morrowind - Ground-breaking for its time given the previous games (Arena / Daggerfall) were very primitive "Eye of The Beholder" style dungeon crawlers. Probably the most technical in terms of levelling up ("Efficient Levelling", more categories of armor / weapons, etc). Great atmosphere. The buildings in different regions actually looked significantly different (eg, Vivec vs Balmora vs Tel Mora) and you were often treated in a "you don't belong here, outlander" cold-manner by the native Dunmer if you played anything other than a Dark Elf far more than playing non-Imperial in Oblivion or non-Nord in Skyrim. You weren't hand-held either. At the start of the game you were given verbal instructions (plus a journal entry) to deliver a package and that was that. No on-screen quest marker. Graphics are the oldest and yet in some areas, the UI is superior to "vanilla" Oblivion / Skyrim in how much you can fit on the screen at once vs Skyrim's consolized as hell UI. Downside : Those damn Cliff Racers, clunky melee combat (I always played as a rogue-archer to minimize that though).

Oblivion - Probably the prettiest region of all, especially with Unique Landscapes mods. 1:1 scaling (of enemies) was retarded though. Morrowind had it right in simply assigning different difficulties to different areas and if you stepped into a high-level area as a low level char early in the game, well treat it as a learning experience. From Oblivion, everything levelled with you so you were no more powerful at L60 vs L60 than L1 vs L1 and people were beating the game at L1 because of it. "Efficient Levelling" (of yourself) was based on Morrowind's in that you need to know how the multipliers work and go for an optimum 5/5/5 or 5/5/Luck to max your char. IMHO, Oblivion is over-hated +10 years on as many of the "faults" (too few NPC voice actors, psychic guards if you commit a crime, etc) are just part of the quirks in Elder Scrolls games in general. Some stuff was dumbed down, but others a much needed improvement (eg, marking stolen items in inventory as stolen). Shivering Isles DLC was the probably the most unique of all games (Mania vs Dementia bi-polar world). Downside : Horse armor DLC, and the painful 10ft optimised consolized UI that was borderline unplayable on a PC without DarnifiedUI mod which actually made menu's, inventory, etc, usable, ie, from this to this.

Skyrim - Obviously the newest and prettiest. Nice aurora's at night, 4K textures, the most advanced weather and lighting mods, etc. Change in levelling had mixed responses though it "works" acceptably. Generally well designed world and the 1:1 enemy scaling in Oblivion was improved somewhat. Downside : Even more consolized UI virtually requiring SkyUI just to be playable on a PC. Lame paid mod attempt debacle a while back. The main plot felt the weakest of the three for some reason and I also thought the Thieves Guild and some Daedric God quest-lines were weaker vs Oblivion's equivalents. Most cities / architecture didn't actually feel that different from each other.

Overall, I'd vote 1. Morrowind, 2. Oblivion, 3. Skyrim. I still replay all three though, and each is most enjoyable if you understand the game-specific quirks and don't try and play any one game exactly like the other two, ie, if you play Skyrim first then Morrowind as if it were Skyrim (2002), you'll probably get frustrated. Likewise, playing any Elder Scrolls game "vanilla" isn't recommended even on a first run. Unofficial bug fixes are a must and if stuff like Morrowind's fatigue drain while running is annoying, then that too can be removed with stuff like "Better Fatigue Usage" or "Tireless Running".

 

[Stg-Flame]

You should have added that ranged can miss until it's leveled up. That aspect I absolutely hated about Morrowind. Just because I'm not adept with archery doesn't mean I'm going to miss the Cliff Racer that's inside my damn face.

I'd say the poll should also include modded versions because out of those three I had to pick Morrowind, but if modded Oblivion was an option, I would definitely pick that. I never got around to modding Morrowind or Skyrim because my PC wasn't good enough to mod Morrowind at the time (nor did I know about mods at the time on top of dial-up internet...) and Skyrim just bored me to tears. The way Bethesda dumbed down everything about Skyrim just to appease the console crowd irritated me immensely.

 

[JSt0rm]

I mostly just wander around in these games. I do want to try this though...

 

[wanderer27]

Yea, I think Morrowind was the best overall.

Oblivion looked pretty good with the exception of the NPC being fugly . . .
The UI and leveling are horrible though.

Haven't played Skyrim yet as it came out strictly Steam, and at this point I'll just wait until it comes out on GOG as that is my preferred platform.

There is a mod for Morrowind that updates the graphics and at the time I checked it out, it looked as good or better than Oblivion.

Oblivion has various mods to improve the NPC appearance, but it could be a bit confusing picking what you wanted.


.

 

[Fenixgoon]

didn't get very far in morrowind, but beat oblivion and skyrim. skyrim was way better IMO.

 

[bystander36]

If you consider the game for their time period, Morrowind wins every time.

 

[DigDog]

i have not played morrowind. of the others (Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout 3.2, Fallout 4) i liked Oblivion the best, mostly because i think the world design was great. For the same reason, i did not like Skyrim (it's all blue and grey). I think ALL the Bethesda games are dumb and too easy and repetitive.
If i have to pick one open-world FPS/RPG, my vote would go to STALKER.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Which S.T.A.L.K.E.R? Shadow of Chernobyl? Clear Skies? Call of Pripyat?

 

[JSt0rm]

the first stalker was one of the greatest games made. The other 2 were OK but not on the level.

 

[Zenoth]

All three were good, ultimately, for their respective year of release and some time after.

I remember playing Morrowind for the first time on the original Xbox and loved it, at the time. And played Oblivion when it came out, bought it the very same week of its release and still to this day have that very same retail copy in a dark corner of a closet somewhere, probably being guarded by a giant spider at this point. I thought that Oblivion was absolutely spectacular when it came out, way more so then even Morrowind or Skyrim. What did impress me from Morrowind (back when it was new) was its grandeur, the freedom it offered and frankly the fun gameplay overall, although not quite the graphics per se (even on Xbox there was better than that). But when I first came out of the sewers in Oblivion and first saw the outdoor, facing the ruins and the mountains on the horizon... I was speechless for a moment there with my jaw dropped two floors below and I thought "But... wh- ... where do I even start?!" (due to the sheer size of its world). And Skyrim, superb game overall, and my favorite, but hasn't aged well at this point regardless of how many more bits they'll try to 'upgrade' it to, the damn thing still runs on an engine that was found in a hundred million years-old layer of rock in Greenland somewhere.

The last time I played Morrowind on PC was... well I don't remember the year but it must have been many years ago, and already then it felt very archaic and way past its time. The last time I played Oblivion was around the time when Fallout 3 came out. I remember never managing to actually finish the main quest due to my incontrollable obsession to always veer off course and do little things left and right. That, and I also apparently only cared about modding at some point and spent more time doing that than actually playing it. The whole "I just want the best mods!" period actually burnt me and turned me off from it completely. I remember eventually going on YouTube to watch the last couple of main quests leading to the ending and calling it a night; never touched it since and I don't miss it. And Skyrim, it's still very much playable today and has probably the biggest modding community on PC in existence by now (if it's not it has to be pretty damn close to that mark). Like its two predecessors though, the best thing to do with Skyrim is to mod it.

Seen in retrospect, not taking in consideration the context of their respective year of release and the standards of the industry then, I'd say that:

- Morrowind, today, is absolute garbage to play, even modded. It's too slow, clunky and buggy to bother.
- Oblivion, today, is borderline acceptable, but well-modded it can hold its ground only if one of those mods includes a complete leveling system overhaul.
- Skyrim, today, is the second best Bethesda game in my opinion (first being Fallout 4) without mods. In other words, as a complete vanilla experience I'd go with Skyrim over the two others any time of the day (and of course if I had to go with a vanilla Skyrim I'd go with the 64-bit version). And due to its impossibly-large-to-a-cosmic-level modding community it's virtually impossible to run out of stuff to try and see even 5+ years after its release (and there's a ton of actually good quality mods that regularly put the dev team's work to shame in comparison).

So, yeah Skyrim is the best of the three, but they were all very good for some time when they were fresh and new. I never 'hated' any of them anyway, always liked more in them than the things that irked me, ultimately. They just don't age well at all, and they age very fast too (except Skyrim to some extent, but I think that today you'd have to be extremely tolerant to play it on a regular basis, but to each their own). I'll conclude by saying that I'm curious as to where the franchise will go next. If I'm not mistaken Bethesda did mention that they'll "of course" do another single player Elder Scrolls (6) eventually. Well, gut feeling says it won't be here for another 4 or 5 years from now, but I'll be there to check it out whenever it comes out. Because, to be honest, there's no such thing as "too much" Elder Scrolls in my book, but it is a good thing that we don't get too many in a row and are being spaced-out by multiple years each time.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I never played Morrowind sadly, and I don't think I could enjoy it today because of the graphics. I know lots of people here will say graphics don't matter much, but then I wonder why everyone has GTX 1080 Ti or GTX 1070 and such in their systems if that's the case. Now if it ever gets a remaster I'll be all over it since I love Bethesda games.

I loved Oblivion, but I thought Skyrim improved hugely on it. The combat felt better. You could play it in third person and it looked good while 3rd person looked terrible in Oblivion. There was so much less mindless grinding. I liked the leveling system better. But what I truly loved about Skyrim was the setting and atmosphere. Exploring Skyrim felt like hiking around the Tetons. I loved seeing aurora in the night sky. I loved the little things like how when you went to a pub you'd here someone singing about the dragonborn. The soundtrack was just unbelievable in that game. I mean I love hardcore RPGs like Fallout 2, but Skyrim just felt like a place you could get lost in for hours and it was a perfect 10/10 game for me. I loved the game so much the only other game I played for a year after getting it was NBA 2k11 despite having a pretty solid backlog of games I already owned at the time.

 

[AdamK47]

I'm still playing through the same game of Oblivion I started in 2006. Every two or three years I'll have a spurt of Oblivion playing. I've played through the main game and DLCs. Finished the main game in 2012. Slowly working my way through Shivering Isles. Should have that completed in a couple of years. My play time is well over 200 hours. I don't use mods either. All vanilla gameplay with vanilla graphics.

 

[bystander36]

I do like the level system a lot more in Skyrim than Oblivion and Morrowind. I have also noted that those who have a poor memory of Oblivion when it was released, played it on a console. I'm guessing they hadn't figured out good console UI for RPG's yet, and at that time, there was a much bigger difference in quality between PC and console when it comes to graphics.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I played all three at release and would rate them
1. Morrowind
2. Skyrim
3. Oblivion

Morrowind had the most freedom, especially with magic. The setting was also interesting. Skyrim was good fun also, and again, I liked the setting, Oblivion was more generic fantasy but still a decent game.

By the way, don't overlook Elder Scrolls Online which is perfectly playable solo and has a reasonably decent story imo.

 

[kn51]

Hard to top the Thief's quest in Oblivion.

 

[BFG10K]

I reached 100 Smithing in Skyrim and made myself all Dragon equipment. It’s totally awesome and badass:

Spoiler

Likewise, playing any Elder Scrolls game "vanilla" isn't recommended even on a first run. Unofficial bug fixes are a must and if stuff like Morrowind's fatigue drain while running is annoying, then that too can be removed with stuff like "Better Fatigue Usage" or "Tireless Running".

I generally avoid mods or altering games, except where absolutely necessary for them to correctly function. I prefer the authentic feel of playing games as originally designed and intended.

In the case of stock Bethesda/Gamebryo games, I’ve never had major issues with them.

 

[Ancalagon44]

I reached 100 Smithing in Skyrim and made myself all Dragon equipment. It’s totally awesome and badass:

Spoiler

I generally avoid mods or altering games, except where absolutely necessary for them to correctly function. I prefer the authentic feel of playing games as originally designed and intended.

In the case of stock Bethesda/Gamebryo games, I’ve never had major issues with them.

I'm also a fan of authenticity. I'll install mods that fix bugs or things like that, but not bugs that introduce new quests, weapons or armor.

 

[bystander36]

I reached 100 Smithing in Skyrim and made myself all Dragon equipment. It’s totally awesome and badass:

Spoiler

I generally avoid mods or altering games, except where absolutely necessary for them to correctly function. I prefer the authentic feel of playing games as originally designed and intended.

In the case of stock Bethesda/Gamebryo games, I’ve never had major issues with them.

I feel the same way, except for Elder Scrolls games. They tend to be very generic, but I will play through a couple times before I add mods to them. I do make sure not to introduce mods which overpower my character in that one.

Be careful with blacksmithing, it is one of the built in game breaking skills, especially when paired up with alchemy.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I reached 100 Smithing in Skyrim and made myself all Dragon equipment. It’s totally awesome and badass:
I generally avoid mods or altering games, except where absolutely necessary for them to correctly function. I prefer the authentic feel of playing games as originally designed and intended.

In the case of stock Bethesda/Gamebryo games, I’ve never had major issues with them.

I'm usually a fan of mods in general, but I understand the inclination with playing vanilla at least once through... ES games I make an exception for though, unless i'm playing it day 1. There's almost ALWAYS some goofy thing that Bethesda chose to do which flubs up the game for PC gamers enough to drive me up the wall until fixed. See: UI system for all 3 ES games, and all 3 FO games (thanks to controllers), mandatory low-res textures (thanks to consoles).

 

[Stg-Flame]

I would say it's best to play through once completely unmodded for all Bethesda games with one exception: removal of leveled enemies in Oblivion. I can't explain how infuriating it was to one-shot a rat at level 1 with a wooden bow, then watch a mudcrab take four swipes of my Daedric Warhammer at level 36.

 

[Red Storm]

I generally avoid mods or altering games, except where absolutely necessary for them to correctly function. I prefer the authentic feel of playing games as originally designed and intended.

In the case of stock Bethesda/Gamebryo games, I’ve never had major issues with them.

I can respect that, but for the Elder Scrolls series... that is crazy. You have missed out on a world of new content and features that absolutely enhance the game way beyond it's limited vanilla reach. Do yourself a favor and get some mods. I can't imagine re-playing a vanilla Elder Scrolls game. The first time sure, but for subsequent playthroughs the mods are the game!

 

[mooncancook]

I generally avoid mods or altering games, except where absolutely necessary for them to correctly function. I prefer the authentic feel of playing games as originally designed and intended.

In the case of stock Bethesda/Gamebryo games, I’ve never had major issues with them.

I heard a lot about playing a game as original designed and intended. The truth about software development in general is that the released product may not be how the designer originally intended it to be. Game designers usually have bigger ambition at the beginning, then has to make compromises due to budget and deadline constrain. The designers probably don't mind more armors and weapons in the game, better graphic details, better NPC AI, etc., but they are always limited by time and budget, and also limited by the computer power at that time.

Therefore I don't think modding a game breaks how it was intended to play, as long as the mods stick to the lore and does not drastically alter gameplay. The main problem with modding Bethesda games is that you may end up spending more time modding than actually playing the game.

 

[bystander36]

The main problem with modding Bethesda games is that you may end up spending more time modding than actually playing the game.

I main rule of thumb with any game, is to play the game until I am bored with it, then mod. Elder Scrolls will often get me modding a little earlier than that, but still after playing it the way it was shipped a few times first.