Oblivion or Skyrim?

[Kyrith_Ranger_Pso]

Now that Skyrim's been out for a year, who wants to talk comparison?

[DayDreamer]

Just my honest opinion, I liked Oblivion more.
I couldnt tell you why for the life of me though.

[BIG OLAF]

I prefer the look and feel of Skyrim. Definitely a glorious, epic, high-fantasy adventure that, in my view, is completely unmatchable in this generation of gaming.

However, Oblivion still has a place in my heart. It just feels more...hmm..."homely", I think. That's the best word I can come up with, anyway. Simple, yet comfortable and easy to get lost in. Oblivion has a special, immersive feel to it, but it's much simpler and more relaxed than Skyrim.

[firefiore]

When I had heard so much about Skyrim, I was expecting quite a bit. They preached so much about how the Radient Story engine was going to be so epic, and how it would forever change the persistant mechanic in roleplaying games, that it felt truly dissapointing when it felt more like a gimic. Other things about Skyrim bother me as well, such as how unrewarding some quests are in the game. The Thieves Guild questline was only one example, the rewards sucked and becoming guild master really didn't seem nearly as epic as it was when I became the guild master in Oblivon's Thieves Guild. The Dark Brotherhood was another major dissapointment for me, and only an example of how you really didn't need to be skilled in anything specific to complete any quest line. I mean, I do like Skyrim, but it totally sucks when you MUST become a werewolf to complete their fighter's guild questline. -_-

[Sinue_v2]

Morrowind, then Skyrim, then Oblivion.

Oblivion did have the best quests out of the three, since Morrowind's were pretty much just the standard Go here/Kill that/Fetch this variety - with very little imagination or inspiration behind them. Nothing on the level of, say, that one quest where you had to enter the painting to free the artist. And I do have to say that Oblivion had a better storyline than Skyrim, though not nearly as good as Morrowind's. Oblivion and Skyrim both have better gameplay than Morrowind, though Morrowind had much *MUCH* more variety and customization options barring facial/character construction. Oblivion's character creation made everybody's face all weirdly marshmellowy - so even though it had more options, I liked Morrowind's characters/NPCs more.. and Skyrim blows them both away in that regard.

I'd say Morrowind & Skyrim both have the advantage of atmosphere, with Morrowind perhaps beating out Skyrim just a bit for it's oddly alien and unique setting. Oblivion made up for this a bit with Shivering Isles, and as awesome as Sheogorath and his realm was - it couldn't make up for the blandness and cookie cutter medieval setting. And as for the main bosses of each... Dagoth-Ur takes the cake as the most awesome, since being a reincarnation of Indoril Nerevar, you had a very personal connection to the lore and to the events, and Ur was a somewhat sympathetic villain depending on which version of the story you take as head-canon. Oblivion and Skyrim had greater threats to the world, but you were far more disconnected from them. In Oblivion, you weren't even the hero - Martin was.. and as for Skyrim, well for all the impressive talk of being a "world eater" - Alduin just turned out to be another garden variety dragon. At least you couldn't kill Dagoth-Ur or Mehrunes Dagon. Martin had to kill Dagon, and Dagoth could only be defeated once severing his connection to the heart.

So yeah... overall, Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion

[Kyrith_Ranger_Pso]

I like Oblivion over Skyrim due mostly to its quests that, as a few people have already mentioned, are a good deal more immersive than Skyrim's. Skyrim's world was a whole lot better than Oblivion's. Though I still don't think it was interesting enough for simple exploring to make up for the lack of intriguing quest lines. I also preferred the art style of Oblivion (though obviously it had a lot of technical limitations so a good number of things in the world did not hold up aesthetically). One of my major gripes about both games though is their focus on dungeon crawling. It's true that Skyrim had significantly better dungeons than Oblivion, but they're still maze-like dungeons in a game that's about having a realistic feeling to its over-world so I really wish that Skyrim would have had more quests that focused on doing things outside of dungeons, or had fewer dungeons so the dungeons could be more unique and "real". In Oblivion it wasn't as big of a deal to me (though it's still one of my larger complaints) because I was focused on solving whatever intriguing mystery there was in my current quest.
On a stranger note that I can't fully explain, I felt more like I was actually in the cities of Oblivion while in Skyrim the cities didn't immerse me at all. If a quest like the one in Oblivion about the shopkeeper getting his goods from (I guess this is technically a spoiler) grave robbers was done in Skyrim, I would not have felt at all intrigued by sneaking into the grave robbers house and collecting evidence to unveil his crime. But in Oblivion it just "works" for some reason.
I still had fun with Skyrim, but it didn't last nearly as long for me as Oblivion did.

[.Rusty.]

Oblivion felt very bland and a lot of the dungeons and oblivion gate's felt like they had been copy and pasted.

[darkante]

Oblivion for the quests and guilds.
Skyrim for the combat and the werewolf&vampire lord transformation.

Both had beautiful landscapes and immersion.
One extra point being the oblivion realm in Oblivion, that were something else.

[Blitzkommando]

Never really got into Oblivion. Certainly part of it was how the entire population had utterly creepy facial designs that were only worse when animated. It made connecting to characters rather difficult. Mods helped smooth the flesh out, but they still retained just terribly awkward animations and such. The world itself was pretty, albeit uninspired and reminiscent of renaissance fairs. It was really just a combination of it all that left me cold.

Skyrim though, I have thoroughly enjoyed. Combat was better, the gameplay flowed more naturally, the world was pretty and interesting. And, yeah, characters were much more relatable and better animated and modeled. Bethesda still has work to improve, but for the most part the creepy staring and awkward movements are gone. Mind, part of my attraction to Skyrim is that if I'm going to romanticize about a bygone culture, hand me Nordic over 'generic central European fiefdom' any day. And give me fjords and mountains over rolling green hills too. Skyrim made me want to explore its world because it was more exotic. I don't have the chance to explore fjords and cragged peaks in my daily life while I can go outside of the city (and even in parks in the city) to find green hills and deciduous forests. Skyrim truly feels like a different time and place to me, while Oblivion felt as if it wanted desperately to be that but felt far more artificial, like a renaissance fair.

I don't know, I need to go through Morrowind more thoroughly but when it comes to the trifecta as it stands I've spent more time in Skyrim than Oblivion and Morrowind combined. Morrowind though I really do want to play through after having played through Skyrim. But, poor Oblivion after having been through a mere single time, I'm just not interested in playing again. I wanted to like it, but just never could.

[Akaimizu]

Skyrim I would say, on the whole, I liked better than Oblivion. However, Oblivion has one major thing up its sleeve that could be the best Elder Scrolls experience I've ever had. Shivering Isles. I would say Shivering Isles beat out everything I played in Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim. However, outside of that, Skyrim IMO has better content than Oblivion. So by the numbers, I'd have to side with Skyrim.

On the other hand, I would never dismiss the significance of Morrowind and Oblivion in the overall story Arc. What happened in Oblivion, especially, was a major game-changer in the entire ES lore. Shivering Isles, to a degree, HAD to happen during the Oblivion tale due to the timing of the new Age. Much struggle for power occurs, on many planes of existence, when that happens.