The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Some say The Elder Scrolls series gets simpler with every iteration. That may be true particularly when it comes to spells, but at least when going from Oblivion to Skyrim, I would say nothing of value was lost when something was streamlined -- even in regards to spells. I think in general Skyrim is a better game, a more polished version of Oblivion in almost every way.

Skyrim's lesser predecessor

Already when exiting Oblivion's tutorial dungeon, I got a hunch that the game wasn't going to be as great of an experience, not as well designed. At the same point in Skyrim you get a road to follow deeper into the game and to continue the story in a natural way (if you want to). But in Oblivion the main quest marker is behind your back, somewhere far beyond the other side of the Imperial City of Cyrodiil, and in front of you is just the body of water surrounding the city. Well, there is an Ayleid ruin just ahead and the city-circling road behind it but still, it wasn't as straightforward of a continuation. You can also fast travel right away to every big settlement which felt wrong.

Emperor Uriel Septim VII (played by Patrick Stewart) and his sons have just been assassinated. By happenstance it falls to you to find a missing heir (Sean Bean) to the throne. The matter appears urgent: a living member of Septim blood with the Amulet of Kings is required to keep daedric prince Mehrunes Dagon from entering Tamriel from his realm of Oblivion.

Of course this being your typical open world roleplaying game, the plot doesn't progress without you. There's not much of a reason to continue with the main quest for character power growth as you're not a chosen one like in Skyrim, not the Dragonborn who gets dragon shouts with story progression. At high character levels, progressing far enough in the story for Oblivion gates to start opening does however become worthwhile as closing them rewards you with transcendent sigil stones that allow more powerful armor enchants than what you can do with grand souls.

Over-complicated character build system

Oblivion's skill system is similar to Skyrim's but instead of any skill-up counting towards your level, only 7 skills set as major ones by your class choice do. You can alternatively make a custom class to have complete control over your set of skills and favored attributes. A level-up happens when you sleep the next time after 10 major skill increases. Instead of getting a perk point like in Skyrim, you get to increase 3 of your attributes. And this is where one aspect of Oblivion's 'leveling problem' steps in.

How much of any attribute you get to increase depends on how many skill ups you got in skills governed by that given attribute. It can be up to 5 or none at all. If at every level you spread your skill use around, you might end up in a situation you don't have your attributes maxed (100) upon reaching maximum character level, leaving you underpowered. People also say that planning your leveling and always having +5 increases will make the game a lot easier but I personally can't say it became particularly easy (but more on that later). I didn't meticulously plan my leveling either: I simply used a mod that makes the attribute bonus to always be +5 if you have leveled at least one skill governed by it.

Dungeons & Dragons influence shows in Skyrim a lot less than it does in Oblivion. I'm personally glad that Bethesda dropped a lot of it. Oblivion's attributes for instance are not very interesting, only adding  unnecessary inventory and spell clutter. Attributes can be damaged and each of them requires its own restoration potion or spell. The potions of course come in three different strengths. Thus 24 of the game's loot potions are just for restoring your attributes. At least you can make a custom spells and potions that restore more than one attribute at once.

You can boost your attributes past 100 with magic and such but because of whatever poor balancing decision, Strength and Agility affect your damage output only up to 100. I'm also not a huge fan of Oblivion having a hard carrying limit: instead of slowing you down to a crawl, you outright stop moving. Endurance you also need to prioritize if you want to have the maximum amount of health as its effect on your health gained at level up is not retroactive. I focused on Strength, Speed, and Luck first however as I calculated the around 150 health I would ultimately lose wouldn't be that important in the end. (I was right.) Instead I wanted to carry more and move faster sooner.

Luck is a special attribute, not governing any skill but instead affecting them all. It can be increased only by 1 per level meaning that maxing it takes a while even if you start with 65 thanks to custom class specialized in the attribute. It's hard for me to say how much of an effect the attribute truly had on my playthrough; maybe I should have just maxed the other ones first. If only Luck counted towards unlocking the perks that skills have at ever 25 levels.

The perks felt a huge downgrade after Skyrim. There are so few of them and way too many are simply bad. And like with attributes, the increments of power increase with skills per level don't feel tangible.

Item durability is nothing but a time waster -- I'm so glad Smithing replaced Armorer in Skyrim. Hand to hand didn't need a skill either. Speechcraft and Mercantile being separate is unnecessary and that dialogue minigame is fatuous. Security's perks don't make the lockpicking minigame any faster -- really, Oblivion's lockpicking requires way too much effort in an open world game that has locks everywhere. This kind of elaborate lockpicking suits better a game where locked containers are more meaningful like in Thief. At least you get to keep the Skeleton Key permanently in this one, though it is dumb that the auto-attempt button still has a chance to fail even though the artifact can't break.

Surprisingly Oblivion doesn't have a separate pickpocket skill, instead using your Sneak skill for calculating success. I always thought the pickpocket skill was the most unnecessary one in Skyrim and most painful to level too. Its perk tree does have few good ones though.

One big difference between Oblivion's and Skyrim's skill leveling is that in the latter an action's difficulty affects how much it raises a skill: crafting a more expensive item or casting a more magicka-intensive spell also raises the skill more. But in Oblivion every task is equal which makes the system feel grindier and less immersive.

Infamous enemy level scaling

I went a bit overboard with mods when I initially started my run. Namely, I installed one of the popular mods to fix the game's enemy scaling, and more or less included each of the mod's optional additions too. After it took way over an hour and great difficulty (with the difficulty slider in the default middle) to clear the first Ayleid ruin mentioned, I decided that maybe I should take the scaling instead. The mod, Francesco's Creatures and Items, is probably better once you have already experienced Oblivion.

With vanilla scaling you will eventually start seeing about every bandit in full glass and every marauder in full daedric gear. (All the while guards and about every ally NPC stays in their shitty starter kit, making them easily killed off in level scaling quests.) It is a tad silly, I admit, but gameplay-wise I didn't mind it because humanoid enemies are relatively easy to kill. However, something like goblin warlords are and become even more enormous damage-sponges and are a nightmare to take on in melee. Not necessarily difficult; just immensely annoying and time consuming.

Warriors drool

Oblivion's melee combat is utter shit. Weapons have no weight to them; they swing way too fast and have very little effect per hit. Power attacks don't feel responsive and similarly deal minimal damage. They are a complete waste of stamina even with every perk unlocked. Stamina, which you're constantly out of at the start of the game.

Playing in third person isn't a thing in Oblivion. Admittedly third person hasn't been great in any of Bethesda Game Studios title I have tried but at least in Skyrim, brandishing a two-handed weapon in third person felt fun to me. In Oblivion, the camera mode is really only useful for taking screenshots and maybe traveling forward; the camera is simply too erratic for anything else. It closes in when turning with mouse -- some old game thing I think -- and your character also doesn't properly animate strafing and the camera doesn't turn with keyboard movement or something. I don't know; it's a mess.

I missed the slow-motion killcams and special execution animations the later Gamebryo/Creation Engine titles have. And I think Fallout 3 was the first to have dropped weapons be tied to their owner's corpse via which you could loot them instead of having to go eyeballing nearby foliage to find where it got yeeted. Oblivion thus doesn't have that either unfortunately.

Welcome to Stagger Town

Then there's how you are constantly being staggered. In Skyrim, when you equip yourself in full heavy armor and pick the Tower of Strength perk and Force Without Effort from Paarthurnax, getting staggered is a rare thing. In Oblivion the perks don't exist. Agility allegedly lessens the chance of being staggered but evidently not very much. It also feels really awkward that your queued melee attack stays queued through stagger and is executed after you've recovered.

Stealth isn't much of a tool for increasing your killing speed. I could one-shot mage-type enemies but on anything tougher a single backstab didn't do much. Sneaking is meant more for actual sneaking and thievery business. Due to low damage and high enemy health, stealth archery is far from being as effective as in Skyrim as well. Although you do retain sneak attack damage bonus if you're far enough from the enemy in a dark dungeon even if they are already attacking you.

Wizards rule

Magic is the way to go if you want to have the easiest and least-jankiest time in the game during a less holistic playthrough. You won't need to suffer the terrible melee combat. Once you get access to a spellmaking altar, things become even easier. For instance, crafting two identical spells with different names (so they stack with each other) that cause 100% weakness to fire and magic for few seconds and then taking turns to cast them on a target. The effects keeps multiplying and already at 4 stacks a simple 10 point fire spell will do 1440 damage. Such a chain still takes effort to cast, and a big chunk of your mere 8 available hotkeys but it sure is a lot more pleasant than being staggered constantly.

Oblivion would really need at least 3 full-size MMORPG action bars for all the things you want to hotkey! The game's big on lesser and greater powers but you never bother using them due to having to dig them up from the spell menu first every time. On action bars they would be easier to access.

You can enchant a weapon with a similar, stacking weakening effect and elemental damage. A dagger with such an enchantment will kill quicker and simpler than spell chaining -- provided you get to attack uninterrupted by staggers. The enchantment needs to be recharged often though.

You can be even more creative with custom spells, although not as creative as in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind apparently: spells like flying, levitation, and sound creation didn't get included in Oblivion. Levitation would have been amazing because every time I was there, I really wanted to jump off Frostcrag Spire and float all the way down to the Imperial City.

Even with the spellmaking, Oblivion's magic system is simplistic. I wonder if any this kind of first person action RPG has ever done a D&D type magic. Like, if you literally copied Baldur's Gate 2's spells. You could have incredible mage duels with spells like Mirror Image, Stoneskin, Spell Trigger, Contingency, Breach, Spell Trap, Simulacrum, Time Stop etc. I reckon a game like that would be amazing.

Built-in cheat mode

If you truly want to break Oblivion -- in a legitimate way, no less -- there's the chameleon effect. Chameleon's purpose is to give you concealment to be able to sneak in lit areas. But when you have 100% of it, it becomes a total non-existence effect that doesn't break. You can smack enemies to death unopposed; they don't pay any attention to you. Reaching 100% chameleon isn't even particularly challenging. It seems too obvious to be an oversight; Bethesda must have simply left it for you to decide if you want to completely negate any challenge there is.

Traps and other environmental hazards can still be dangerous with chameleon though. Like the bouncing betties and turret towers inside Oblivion gates. Negating them completely is rather easy too though as there's no 85% cap on resistances like in Skyrim. Magic resistance can go up to 100% after which you don't need any other elemental resistances. A bit too easy to immunize yourself to everything, I think.

A massive world with random loot and pretty vistas

Since I did everything there was in Oblivion, in my usual completionist style, my playthrough turned out an extremely lengthy one: at 340 hours it went easily past my previous record with Fallout 4. Not maxing Athletics by avoiding fast-travel and horse riding would have probably cut few hours off that.

I would say that Oblivion has more content than Skyrim but it is of lower quality. Dungeons similarly have few different themes but unlike in Skyrim, they lack genius loci. Very rarely have they any unique features; they're just the same pieces arranged differently. They don't feel handcrafted; there's nothing special to find, no word walls for dragon shouts. They tend to be really dark too; you actually have to carry a torch or use magic to see properly.

You can find great random loot though. And there is quite an impressive number of different magic items too as I got very few copies of any same item. In Skyrim, all found and rewarded gear is pretty much trash thanks to the crafting skill trio; you can make so much better items by yourself. In Oblivion looted gear is often useful although with quest rewards you kind of want to check up at which level they max their scaling. Some items are much better gotten later on. I almost feel unique items should actively scale with your level instead of being fixed to the time they are created. The Knights of the Nine DLC armor set you can actually upgrade to higher level by placing it on its stand.

Oblivion definitely looks like it was released in 2006: it has all them sharp edges and low level of detail. However, it can also be beautiful. Especially during sunsets scenery gets picturesque. I did have few modest textures mods to enhance things too. At one point I realized I should turn on anti-aliasing from Nvidia control panel (since the in-game option is disabled with HDR on) as well as anisotrophic filtering which made a huge difference on how roads look like -- I had been staring them for a while already.

The game became highly crash-prone shortly after though and turning off the settings didn't help. I took an educated guess based on my experience with modding Fallout 3 and New Vegas and deactivated Stutter Remover mod. That fixed the problem but it also brought back the game's stutters -- Oblivion never ran smooth after that, FPS being all over the place. You can probably make the mod more stable by tweaking its settings but I couldn't be bothered (this time either).

Vanilla NPC faces are horrendous, and that is only amplified with how the game zooms on them in dialogue mode -- I'm glad Bethesda stopped doing that in their later titles too. Oblivion Character Overhaul mod largely beautifies the faces, though the mod being rather expansive, it comes with few bugs that need other mods to get fixed. One of the bugs for example breaks a script for the NPC that should give you the ill-famed DLC horse armor.

And speaking of bugs, the Unofficial Oblivion Patch is a must-have. It fixes a stupid number of broken quests and their rewards. Some interface modding is also preferable, including Darnified UI or the newer NorthernUI that imitates SkyUI from Skyrim. I tried the latter but it looks off, enough like an off-brand SkyUI that I decided to go with Darnified which retains the original interface style.

I have read plenty of praise for Oblivion's big expansion, Shivering Isles, which has its own separate map like the Dragonborn DLC in Skyrim. I personally didn't find it the best thing ever. It was just more Oblivion albeit the Shivering Isles main quest does offer quite a bit of variation and the expansion does have new dungeon themes and monsters. Music is the same old though, which was a disappointment: the realm of mad god Sheogorath would have deserved its own demented music even if I'm not a huge fan of the god himself.

In general, despite all the mentions I have seen of Oblivion's great side quests, I didn't enjoy them as much as Skyrim's. I think it's because the characters in the latter are more lifelike, have better voice acting. Skyrim doesn't have unique voice for every NPC either but I didn't feel like I was talking to the same set of people over and over like in Oblivion.

After getting bored of Skyrim, I reckon a better option than Oblivion might be the Enderal: Forgotten Stories total conversion mod I've heard so much about. It is basically a whole new game running on Skyrim's engine. It even has its own page on Steam and a version for Skyrim Special Edition was just released too.