I tried to like Oblivion, and parts of it I did, but I couldn't finish it as it bored the shit out of me. my problems with it
the first part in the sewer after the lord dies, I exited and went straight to the town, the first person I spoke to asked about his death, how the fuck did he already know?
I stole shit from inside a house, when I came out the house "STOP THIEF!" did they have video surveillance? no fucking clue how they know immediately I stole something. This is annoying and very unrealistic, yet I encountered exactly this many times
I killed a fish and it gave me a lock pick, a wolf gave me some coins - I guess that's part of the RPG "random" logic, but wtf?
I felt no sense of urgency ever, I mean I'm supposed to be saving the world from certain doom, yet if I choose to I can take on side quests where I help a weird old lady figure out what's killing the rats in her basement. I understand this is the open endedness of a sandbox game. But it takes away from the feeling "the end is near"
to go with the last point, even in the Oblivion Gates, I never really felt panic, I played maybe 40% of the game and always felt like I could take my time and fuck around
I encountered hundreds of NPC's, which wasn't even a fraction of everyone in the game I'm sure. And wow I heard like 3 voice actors, and I don't think I remember even hearing attempts to sound different, it's like they found 3 people and told them to use their standard voice to voice every character. I don't expect every character to have it's own voice actor, but at least get a Dana Carvy type who can do a hundred different impressions.