How does Oblivion compare to Skyrim?

As someone who just last year finally had my first experience (and enjoyed it very much) with the Elder Scrolls series in Skyrim I'm curious of how Oblivion compares to the more recent game. I'm strongly considering getting the game probably sometime next year and wanted to know how people who've played both games rate them in comparison to each other.

I assume since Skyrim is the more recent game that it has much better graphics but is there anything that Oblivion did better than Skyrim? I don't care which game has better mods since I can't use them on PS3. I've heard from others online that Skyrim has a much better levelling-up system and enemies scale better than they did in Oblivion. I've heard others say that in Oblivion you have to rest or something similar before levelling up.

Is the dlc from Oblivion as good as the dlc from Skyrim?

Anything else you can add would be appreciated, thanks.

Originally posted by eThneoLgrRnae
As someone who just last year finally had my first experience (and enjoyed it very much) with the Elder Scrolls series in Skyrim I'm curious of how Oblivion compares to the more recent game. I'm strongly considering getting the game probably sometime next year and wanted to know how people who've played both games rate them in comparison to each other.

I assume since Skyrim is the more recent game that it has much better graphics but is there anything that Oblivion did better than Skyrim? I don't care which game has better mods since I can't use them on PS3. I've heard from others online that Skyrim has a much better levelling-up system and enemies scale better than they did in Oblivion. I've heard others say that in Oblivion you have to rest or something similar before levelling up.

Is the dlc from Oblivion as good as the dlc from Skyrim?

Anything else you can add would be appreciated, thanks.

Also, the game knows how to make fun of itself, everything in Skyrim felt so serious, also the Shivering Isles is better then both Dawnguard and Dragonborn.

The leveling up itself and enemy scaling is better yes, but you can develop your character better in Oblivion, you have to choose a class but you can still level up other skills, they just won't count towards your overall level, but that still gives a lot of freedom over Skyrim, because the more effort you put into being "balanced", thats all you'll ever be, because the only time you'll be able to add perks is when you level up, you can respec or legendary, but thats only putting perks into another skill, and when you decide to go back to that skill, and if you wanna be the best at everything, you'll have to keep leveling up, and you don't have to do that in Oblivion.

Combat in Oblivion is a lot more fast-paced then in Skyrim, Skyrim's combat is slow but you get kill animations and shit, plus in Oblivion there seems to be a lot more "role-playing" and the game and its world seem to take your personal role-playing more seriously then it does in Skyrim, you can't just mindlessly kill everyone in the Dark Brotherhood, they have to be assassinations, and you usually have to get away without being caught.

Also, Skyrim really ****ing needed an Arena, that Arena was awesome and Skyrim took it and neutered it, and you think there'd be one somewhere what with Skyrim being the home of the Nords, big beefed up warriors for the most part.

Also, Oblivion's world is bigger and almost all of it's cities have more buildings then Skyrim's cities.

Now, Dragons being in Skyrim was a godsend, but because of that you encounter far less Dremora and to be completely honest, Mehrunes Dagon seemed WAY more threatening then Alduin.

Giant Demon Lord vs Small-Ass Dragon, regardless of how powerful he's "hailed" to be through-out lore, he still just overall isn't that intimidating, even compared to other Dragons you face through-out your journey.

I could get into more but thats the most important bits out of the way.

Originally posted by Jmanghan
Oblivion's quests, NPC's, and skills seemed a bit better to me, the quests a lot moreso.

Also, the game knows how to make fun of itself, everything in Skyrim felt so serious, also the Shivering Isles is better then both Dawnguard and Dragonborn.

The leveling up itself and enemy scaling is better yes, but you can develop your character better in Oblivion, you have to choose a class but you can still level up other skills, they just won't count towards your overall level, but that still gives a lot of freedom over Skyrim, because the more effort you put into being "balanced", thats all you'll ever be, because the only time you'll be able to add perks is when you level up, you can respec or legendary, but thats only putting perks into another skill, and when you decide to go back to that skill, and if you wanna be the best at everything, you'll have to keep leveling up, and you don't have to do that in Oblivion.

Combat in Oblivion is a lot more fast-paced then in Skyrim, Skyrim's combat is slow but you get kill animations and shit, plus in Oblivion there seems to be a lot more "role-playing" and the game and its world seem to take your personal role-playing more seriously then it does in Skyrim, you can't just mindlessly kill everyone in the Dark Brotherhood, they have to be assassinations, and you usually have to get away without being caught.

Also, Skyrim really ****ing needed an Arena, that Arena was awesome and Skyrim took it and neutered it, and you think there'd be one somewhere what with Skyrim being the home of the Nords, big beefed up warriors for the most part.

Also, Oblivion's world is bigger and almost all of it's cities have more buildings then Skyrim's cities.

Now, Dragons being in Skyrim was a godsend, but because of that you encounter far less Dremora and to be completely honest, Mehrunes Dagon seemed WAY more threatening then Alduin.

Giant Demon Lord vs Small-Ass Dragon, regardless of how powerful he's "hailed" to be through-out lore, he still just overall isn't that intimidating, even compared to other Dragons you face through-out your journey.

I could get into more but thats the most important bits out of the way.

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply.

When you say the NPC's are better I assume you mean they have more personality and depth rather than looking better. Is that correct?

I had no problem with "how serious" Skyrim took itself. I greatly enjoyed the game. Considering civil war engulfed the land and the dragons had returned it would make more sense , imo, for it to have a serious tone to it.

That's good to hear about the increased roleplaying. The more roleplaying in the game the better, imo. Love to roleplay so look forward to it.

Have no complaints about the physical combat in Skyrim but I look forward to seeing how Oblivion's is different. Magic, otoh, is another story entirely. I specialized in destruction magic at first in my skyrim playthru (was a High Elf/Altmer) and it was kind of underwhelming to what I was expecting it to be. Hopefully, magic in Oblivion is more satisfying. Does Oblivion have 5 difficulty levels as Skyrim does? It was my first playthru of the game so I was only playing on 'Normal' difficulty-- the default level. Thinking about starting on Expert level in my first game of Oblivion because combat in Skyrim got way too easy on the higher levels playing only on 'Normal'.

More buildings in cities means more times I have to go thru all of those damn long loading screens if I plan to search all the buildings (which I always do). Long loading screens was one of the few things I hated about Skyrim.

Yeah, no doubt I'm going to miss fighting all of those dragons I did in Skyrim even though , at the time I was playing, they started to become more of a nuisance after a while.

Another thing I really enjoyed about Skyrim was reading all of the lore-related books. I particulary enjoyed, for example, reading "The Wolf Queen" series and "The Biography of Barenziah." I assume Oblivion is also filled with many similar books to read related to the lore of the game?

Skyrim is an upgrade in every way.

Only rp nerdy nerds who think Fallout 2 was the best thing ever and larp in real life complain about it. No one else is gonna notice a scripted event at an inn, vs characters organically chatting whether you're there or not.

For guys who like just randomly exploring, messing around with giants, and sight seeing, it's a lot of fun.

Originally posted by cdtm
Skyrim is an upgrade in every way.

Only rp nerdy nerds who think Fallout 2 was the best thing ever and larp in real life complain about it. No one else is gonna notice a scripted event at an inn, vs characters organically chatting whether you're there or not.

For guys who like just randomly exploring, messing around with giants, and sight seeing, it's a lot of fun.

Originally posted by NemeBro
^ This guy is aggressively stupid.

Pfft. I just know what's fun.

Quite a few youtuber's make pretty entertaining arguments about why, say, Fallout New Vegas is better then Fallout 3. But it usually comes down to things I just don't care about, and I doubt many except a small niche of gamers really would.

"Fallout 3 doesn't let you roleplay your character. There are no branching ways to begin the game. You play as a scripted guy, and not as the guy you want to play as."

These are the arguments of someone who enjoys actual roleplaying with dice, pen, paper, and character sheets. Which is fine.. I just find that kind of thing incredibly boring. I've had my experiences with that crowd, and prefer good old fashioned escapism and entertaining gameplay, to a bazillion choices you can only see on multiple play throughs, and a ton of subtle stats that also require multiple play throughs. And, of course, quests. **** quests. I don't think I ever finished a GTA's "quests", and spent all my time just messing around, killing pedestrians and doing what I wanted, until I got bored. Like most people.

The common denominator, is multiple play throughs. I don't do that, anymore. Not enough time in a day for 200 hours of gameplay with roughly 10-15% variations among more of the same.

Originally posted by cdtm
Skyrim is an upgrade in every way.

Only rp nerdy nerds who think Fallout 2 was the best thing ever and larp in real life complain about it. No one else is gonna notice a scripted event at an inn, vs characters organically chatting whether you're there or not.

For guys who like just randomly exploring, messing around with giants, and sight seeing, it's a lot of fun.

So, in your opinion, it's not worth getting Oblivion if you already have Skyrim then?

For the record (pertaining to your later post), I did love the old D&D tabletop rpg with the character sheets and all the funny-looking dice even though I was usually always stuck being the DM lol.

Oh, and I enjoyed FNV sooo much more than I did F3 despite the fact that F3 ran much better on my console than FNV did. That's not to say I didn't also greatly enjoy F3. Point Lookout dlc was especially enjoyable. The fact that FNV had a hardcore mode while F3 didn't played a big part in why I enjoyed it more but there were many other reasons as well.

I greatly preferred the faction system in NV over the karma system in F3; not that NV didn't also use karma but it had very little actual impact on the game. NV also had a much wider variety of weapons and the NPC's had more depth, imo, particularly the npc companions. The combat was better and more balanced, imo. VATS was way overpowered in F3. They nerfed it in NV to make it more challenging and I'm glad they did.

There was also way more crafting options in FNV.

Only thing I really did like much better on F3 was the setting (and the fact it didn't freeze up nearly as much as FNV). The capital wasteland was much more interesting than the mojave wasteland, imo. Oh, and I also enjoyed the radio dj "Three Dog" more than I did "Mr. New Vegas." Other than those few things, I'd take FNV over F3 any day of the week.

If that's your interests, it sounds like you'd get a lot out of Oblivion, to be honest. I say go for it, it's a cheap buy now.

And now I'm wondering if I should play my 360 GOTY edition of Vegas with all the dlc, or stick to the pc version, if it's so laggy. Maybe they fixed it with patch's?

Originally posted by cdtm
If that's your interests, it sounds like you'd get a lot out of Oblivion, to be honest. I say go for it, it's a cheap buy now.

And now I'm wondering if I should play my 360 GOTY edition of Vegas with all the dlc, or stick to the pc version, if it's so laggy. Maybe they fixed it with patch's?

Unfortunately, no... the game still lags frequently and freeezes up a lot in certain areas after your save file starts getting too big. At least it does on PS3. 360 version probably has similar problems. I usually try to cut down on my file size by only doing half (two) of the dlc adventures. In my last playthru I finished a few weeks ago I played all of them except "Honest Hearts."

Oblivion had terrible level scaling. You could be uber powerful and you'd encounter bandits on the road wearing top of the line armor, wielding high quality weapons lol. WHY are they bandits then? It makes no sense.

Skyrim is better in this regard. And Skyrim gets rid of a lot of stats. No acrobatics, etc. No increasing strength or intelligence or willpower.

And magic is kinda nerfed. You will need mods to make it better.

But Skyrim is a better game. Period.

Skyrim is overall the better game, but saying it is an upgrade in every way and then saying oh the things it made worse I don't care about so they don't count is both disingenuous and extremely stupid.

When at home I'll give a more detailed post on what Oblivion does better.

Is it an upgrade in every way? No. I mean, these people haven't had an upgrade in every way since Morrowind.

Morrowind made you work for shit. Made you earn it. You can't become arch mage without having at least one magic skill at 90.

You keeping an eye on Skywind?

Skyrim does have a more interesting world to explore, I gotta admit, but I prefer having more buildings to explore, the wayyy better and non-cliched storyline, the far better sidequests (and I do mean far better), all of the guilds in Oblivion are also actually distinctive instead of feeling samey, Skyrim didn't take enough risks with it's story, Oblivion did.

I do have to say, even if Skyrim's combat is pretty bad, shouts were a FAN-****INGTASTIC add to the newest entry in the ES series at the time, even today it's fun to use em, however I will have to say, a lot of em are useless, I can't remember the last time I killed anyone with fire breath and frost breath, for example. Shouting people and things off cliffs were awesome, I enjoyed some of the spells they added in Dawnguard.

There also seems to just be more to do in Oblivion, even if Skyrim has more interesting things to see. Like what happened to poisoning random people's food? I remember loving that they added that to Kingdom Come and thinking they obviously took a cue from Oblivion when adding that bit.

I do agree Dragon's so far have been the coolest thing to fight in an ES game thus far, and I'm glad focus was taken off the gods of the ES for a little while and that they took a seat in the sidequests while Alduin (Who ik is also a god).

I don't hate Alduin, it's just that he isn't exactly the most intimidating villain.

You wanna make a dragon look intimidating, I'm sorry, but there's no other way to go then Dragon's Dogma, when you first see Grigori's wingspan atop the mountain, towering over it, fire and death staring down at you, it was so atmospheric, the fireball he spit there explodes sending the soldiers with you flying, thats how you introduce a villainous dragon. Alduin also didn't have much physical villain presence, and as much as they hyped up Alduin it never sucked me in, Alduin the world-eater, who's the size of every other dragon in the game, hell, this may be just me but I felt Odahviing looked and sounded more scary then he did, and unique as well, Alduin looked generic and I always felt like he wasn't that scary.

Besides his size and appearance, there's also the fact that we see these 3 dudes in the past that are just ****ing him up, then me and my companion also **** him up, and Paarthurnax starts fighting on par with him... sorry what?

Then there's no big climax, we travel to Sovngarde, everything's cool, whoopie.

In Oblivion the final battle was crazy, the sky turns red, fire everywhere, Mehrunes Dagon comes out but here comes Martin Septim turning into ****ing Akatosh holy shit this is cool.

Meanwhile in Skyrim we're teaming up with these random assholes, sup Hakon One-Eye, and whatever the two others were named, Skyrim's one of the few games I've been playing lately and I cannot for the life of me figure out their names without looking them up, big climactic battle indeed, and to ruin the fun of going to Sovngarde, there's no other cool-ass people there, why? We could've seen Talin, and the Hero of Daggerfall, among others, all these legendary people, but we don't and it's disappointing to be completely honest. You could say "well we don't know if they were necessarily Nords", and yeah thats true, but gimme something, instead

Spoiler:
I get to summon Hakon One-Eye, for beating the game, thanks.

I think the only thing Skyrim really does better is Graphics, Music, World, and Combat. The combat only because there's shouts in Skyrim, but the swordplay in Oblivion felt better to me. There's some other small things that I'll bring up later.

The frost breath and fire breath shouts were two of my most used shouts. I loved them. I know most people probably preferred the force shout (forgot what it's called; not whirlwind but the other one) that sends enemies flying. Honestly though, the only times imo it was better to use that one rather than one of the two I mentioned above was when your enemies were on the edge of a cliff or something similar.

Once you get the frost breath fully upgraded you could encase your enemies in ice just as you could with the ice form shout but unlike the latter you could attack them while they were incapacitated in ice and the ice wouldn't immediately break. I actually felt like it was OP and made game too easy so usually preferred to use fire breath instead or even one of the other multitude of shouts at your disposal. Of course you need to know beforehand which enemies are resistant to fire and which are resistant to frost and make sure to use the opposite shout.

A fully upgraded fire breath shout was usually always the preferred shout of when facing vampires and trolls.

The level and equipment scaling in oblivion just killed it for me. I haven't played in a long time, but if i remember right, the second you got better equipment every bandit got it too. Like: Oh hey, a glass sword, sweet! What? now every bandit I come across has glass weapons? The f***? Cool, I leveled! But so did every enemy in the game! To me, I just remember feeling like the leveling and equipment upgrades were almost pointless because I never felt like I was growing in power in comparison to enemies. Just my two cents from what I remember from all those years ago when it first came out.

Originally posted by NemeBro
You keeping an eye on Skywind?

Yep. It's coming along nicely.

Originally posted by NemeBro
^ This guy is aggressively stupid.

So it's true the enemy level-scaling is as bad as I'd heard it was. Might not bother with the game after all. I know many of the enemies in Skyrim scaled with the player as well but after I had gotten really high in level my character was so powerful that pretty much all of them still became a joke. It started to get boring after a while but I still prefer to have the feeling that all that levelling-up was actually making my chartacter increasingly more powerful.

I've still got enough games to keep me entertained until the PS5 comes out which'll hopefully be within the next year or two so I may very well pass on Oblivion.

It's been some time since I've played either, but I preferred Oblivion to Skyrim. The Shivering Isles left by far the strongest impression of any TES DLC I've played, too.