Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Admiral jimbob]

Which brings me back to an older question: What the fuck happened with Bethesda between Morrowind and Oblivion? Did a devastating and yet strangely specific plague wipe out all the imaginative and competent writers they had on staff or was Oblivion, FO3 and Skyrim written by focus group consensus?

VA budget for Patrick Stewart took the place of Michael Kirkbride's massive cocaine budget and things just didn't work out.

 

[Cadmus]

This almost deserves its own thread:

While I agree pretty much with everything the guy said, it would have made more impact if he had used a version of Morrowind that is truer to the original than that heavily modded version.

Why do they keep changing Fargoth in all these stupid mods? It's like the most memorable character and in every mod I check out he looks like an androgynous gay male model.

 

[Turjan]

Why do they keep changing Fargoth in all these stupid mods? It's like the most memorable character and in every mod I check out he looks like an androgynous gay male model.

There were a few other failures, like in the Ashlander camp, or "light bulb eye" Vivec. He completely lost that Gandhi-esque angle.

 

[Cadmus]

Anyway, the video is pretty good. The GFX mods look nice in Skyrim, not so good in Morrowind and that's mainly because Morrowind had a specific style and personality to its characters unlike the stupid fucking piece of bland shit Skyrim. Even if you remake all its characters as anime waifus, the game still looks better than vanilla and that's sad.

 

[Bahamut]

Which brings me back to an older question: What the fuck happened with Bethesda between Morrowind and Oblivion? Did a devastating and yet strangely specific plague wipe out all the imaginative and competent writers they had on staff or was Oblivion, FO3 and Skyrim written by focus group consensus?

http://www.nma-fallout.com/showthread.php?175874-Don-t-Buy-the-Hype

In a nutshell

 

[abnaxus]

Interesting excerpt in latest interview with Feargus Urquhart:

You have a formal tool for making dialogue across games?

Absolutely. New Vegas is a great example. That engine had a way that Bethesda used to write dialogues, which was different than how we did it. So what our tools programmers did was make our dialogue editor export our dialogue in a format that worked with that engine. It wasn't just a translation.

Their dialogue system, how that was input... I feel a little bit bad for the designers at Bethesda on Oblivion and Fallout 3 in that it was a very challenging way of trying to create dialogue trees. Our tool just did all that in the background, so our designers didn't have to fight the engine to make complex dialogue and dialogue responses work.

This may explain why dialogue is so banal in Bethesda games.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/460539/interviews/interview-obsidian-on-life-after-south-park/

 

[buzz]

I also thought the guild quests were times better in Oblivion than in Skyrim, especially the Dark Brotherhood one. DalekFlay is trying a bit too hard to ape Oblivion as the worst thing in existence, but it had plenty of good moments as well.

 

[garren]

- the bandit women quest

Man that quest was the biggest cocktease ever. Finally, after tredging through countless of shit quests I thought I'd actually have a choice regarding the women (join them), but no, you have to betray and kill them.

 

[Spectacle]

Interesting excerpt in latest interview with Feargus Urquhart:

You have a formal tool for making dialogue across games?

Absolutely. New Vegas is a great example. That engine had a way that Bethesda used to write dialogues, which was different than how we did it. So what our tools programmers did was make our dialogue editor export our dialogue in a format that worked with that engine. It wasn't just a translation.

Their dialogue system, how that was input... I feel a little bit bad for the designers at Bethesda on Oblivion and Fallout 3 in that it was a very challenging way of trying to create dialogue trees. Our tool just did all that in the background, so our designers didn't have to fight the engine to make complex dialogue and dialogue responses work.

This may explain why dialogue is so banal in Bethesda games.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/460539/interviews/interview-obsidian-on-life-after-south-park/

More likely, Bethesdas tools don't handle complex dialogue trees well because the writers have never needed that functionality.

 

[DalekFlay]

A key thing to remember is Oblivion and Fallout 3 were at the forefront of all-voiced NPC dialog. There was a lot of talk at the time about compression and cost and time factoring in due to the all-voiced thing. I really do think, in addition to firing some good people, Oblivion and Fallout 3 suck on the writing front because of that super early decision to go all-voiced. A lot of Oblivion's new written-down content is pretty decent, actually, and more lore friendly. While the game dialog ignores the whole Mannimarco thing the book 'Necromancer's Moon' pretty much confirmed he ascended to godhood after Daggerfall and such. It might not even be all technical limits, it might simply be that it's harder to write voice-acted dialog than simple info dumps, and their team wasn't used to it.

tl;dr I think their writers not only lacked Kirkbride's talent but struggled with the transition to all-voiced in a myriad of ways.

Skyrim, while nowhere near Morrowind in depth or quality, is a big step forward. I've been playing Oblivion's Mage's Guild questline the past few days for some reason so I have a decent direct comparison to make. Skyrim has longer, more interesting dialog, full stop. How much of that is better compression or writer's getting used to voice-acting or simply hiring better writers I don't know. To me though the quality jump is obvious and I hope there's another jump with their next game.

 

[DalekFlay]

Well it's a new day, I guess I can flog this horse some more.

Where did I say Oblivion's world design is better than Skyrim's, you dumbshit? Stop making shit up. I was only talking about dungeon design which is obviously better in Oblivion because dungeon's can't really get any worse than linear corridors of Skyrim. World design is pretty equally atrocious in both Oblivion and Skyrim.

Fair enough.

When you rant about how "banalshitboring" Skyrim is and then talk about how interesting Oblivion was in comparison I assume that extends to areas outside the specific examples you gave, I guess. I still REALLY disagree with you though. Oblivion not only has a super generic forest look to it that serious is my backyard, it also has the same architecture in ever city, the same church and castle and shop signs and such. The whole thing feels like a video game more than an immersive world, which was the best part of Morrowind, so it's a little infuriating. Skyrim on the other hand... you say it looks like Sweden but A) I've never been to Sweden, and B) it's at least diverse. There's a forest city, a city in the moors, a city on a massive coastal rock formation, a city in the arctic, basically, etc. etc. Even if they stuck to a realistic style again for sales reasons they spiced it up and added diversity I really appreciated. Oblivion is literally 6 green forest towns, a brown forest town and a darker green swamp town. All with the same buildings with different colors.

As to the writing, I and other people have pointed out a handful of well written quests in Oblivion, namely:

- the painting quest
- the water breathing ring quest
- the a la Innsmouth village quest
- the bandit women quest
- the mage dream quest
- the murders in the Nord town quest

Maybe you and I mean different things when we say "writing." The quests you point out had shitty, unmemorable dialog. What they did have was good quest design. Now if you want to say Oblivion had better quest design than Skyrim... well I'd still disagree with you, but it would be a lot closer of a competition. And yeah Skyrim probably has the same 6 or 7 truly unique quests, and you would have to play through the rest of it to experience them. All three of these "modern" Bethesda games are more about worlds than a constant string of brilliant quests. Anyway... writing is the dialog, the books, the lore, etc. There is no way in fuck Oblivion has better writing than Skyrim, nooooooo waaaaaaay innnnnnn fuuuuuuuuuck.

So, to wrap all up: considering Skyrim builds heavily on Oblivion in all regards, it has worse writing and much worse dungeons by comparison, while excelling in nothing. Clearly, Oblivion, being total shit as it is, is still a better game than Skyrim, which was my original statement.

And I still think that's insane, utterly bonkers, and you're going to have to live with that.

 

[DalekFlay]

I also thought the guild quests were times better in Oblivion than in Skyrim, especially the Dark Brotherhood one. DalekFlay is trying a bit too hard to ape Oblivion as the worst thing in existence, but it had plenty of good moments as well.

I's about priorities, surely. I loved Morrowind for the world and lore it built. Oblivion shat all over both with horrible, simplistic and boring world design and extremely poor dialog. It was a big fart where I expected a delicacy.

Skyrim, for all it's faults, made the world more interesting and the dialog better written. For that I think it is a clearly better game, full stop. Now if your priorities are combat or loot... well no, fuck that, Skyrim excels in both those things compared to Oblivion as well. You say the guild quests are better? Basically you're saying quest design was better. I think they're about equal, probably, so I won't fight you on that. In other words: it depends on your priorities, sure.

 

[Xeon]

I haven't played Oblivion so I don't know how factions work in it, In Skyrim I think every quest related to a faction beside Dark Brotherhood is a dungeon delving[?].

Thief guild main quest you go to dungeons and it doesn't matter if you kill, seen or whatever. The only thing related to thieving is the radiant quests from the members. Companions, Bard, Mage, Downguards, Vampires were kinda the same. After doing a handful of quests you end up becoming the head of the guild/faction.

I haven't finished any of the quest lines in Morrowind but I liked how the faction worked in there more than in Skyrim, You are given a rank and you do several quests that are suited to your rank and level I think until you advance and given better suited quests. That felt much better than Skyrim for me.

 

[Revenant]

Oblivion not only has a super generic forest look to it that serious is my backyard, it also has the same architecture in ever city, the same church and castle and shop signs and such. The whole thing feels like a video game more than an immersive world, which was the best part of Morrowind, so it's a little infuriating. Skyrim on the other hand... you say it looks like Sweden but A) I've never been to Sweden, and B) it's at least diverse. There's a forest city, a city in the moors, a city on a massive coastal rock formation, a city in the arctic, basically, etc. etc. Even if they stuck to a realistic style again for sales reasons they spiced it up and added diversity I really appreciated. Oblivion is literally 6 green forest towns, a brown forest town and a darker green swamp town. All with the same buildings with different colors.

Skyrim is exactly as diverse as Oblivion, only with a viking theme. I found the cities of Skyrim to be even more similar than those of Oblivion precisely because the variety in buildings was almost the same and they were made even more similar due to the viking theme. Oblivion also had cosmetic variety to cities - Bravil (the sewer city) looked as different from Argonian (swamp) city as Winterhold looks different from the moor city or whatever it is called. That is, almost exactly the same with a little bit of variation in color.

Maybe you and I mean different things when we say "writing." The quests you point out had shitty, unmemorable dialog. What they did have was good quest design. Now if you want to say Oblivion had better quest design than Skyrim... well I'd still disagree with you, but it would be a lot closer of a competition.

It's exactly the opposite, "quest design" refers to mechanics of the quest while "writing" refers to its presentation, and it's exactly presentation that made Oblivion's quest somewhat float as quest design in Oblivion and Skyrim are identical, i.e. beyond shitty. They all boil down to most primitive fetch quests, so the only thing that can give them some value is writing. And sorry, but Skyrim's writing... Every single line the NPCs say when you pass them in the city is facepalm-inducing inanity. You really, really can't sink lower than that in a video game. "I heard the emperor was dead" is a pinnacle of writing compared to Skyrim's "So, you're DRAGONBOOORN :OOO"

 

[HiddenX]

Maybe this Skyrim vs. Oblivion discussion should be moved into a new thread?

 

[DalekFlay]

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Don't tell me how to arrange the furniture in my own home.

 

[felipepepe]

We should move it to the Watch.

 

[Turjan]

Maybe this Skyrim vs. Oblivion discussion should be moved into a new thread?

 

[DalekFlay]

There was actually already a Skrim vs. Oblivion thread on the front page.

Just sayin'.

 

[Infinitron]

There was actually already a Skrim vs. Oblivion thread on the front page.

Just sayin'.

I believe that's actually just "the Skyrim thread". I let it keep that name cuz it's funny.

 

[RK47]

I also thought the guild quests were times better in Oblivion than in Skyrim, especially the Dark Brotherhood one. DalekFlay is trying a bit too hard to ape Oblivion as the worst thing in existence, but it had plenty of good moments as well.

oblivion mage quest is memorably dumb, hell even the fighters guild line isnt so much better. DB n TG are the only ones decent.

 

[Carrion]

On the other hand Skyrim's Thieves Guild makes Oblivion look like Shakespeare at times. Both games have atrocious writing when it comes to creating interesting quests or questlines. Skyrim may be better than Oblivion, but that's like saying that you'd prefer to take a shotgun blast to the knee rather than the balls.

As far as the dungeon design goes (a continuation to the thread that apparently went to Retardo Land), Morrowind beats Oblivion any given day. Oblivion has larger dungeons, but there's absolutely nothing unique about any of them. There's more to a good dungeon than just the layout, and adding a branch to a brown mess of shit doesn't automatically make it any less shit. You enter a troll cave or a zombie cave or a bandit cave, and it's all just a similar mess of same-looking rooms with no logic or actual structure. I mean, who built the things and for what purpose? Daggerfall's dungeons made about as much sense, but they at least had some variety when it came to the enemy types. All Ayleid ruins are the same, similar rooms connected by similar corridors just in a slightly different way. This isn't helped by the fact that there's no worthwhile loot to be found in any of them, so there's no point to exploring them or spending any more time in them than absolutely necessary. Save for a few specific quest dungeons, you never run into a room that looks different from all the rest or is full of interesting loot. I can't remember a single dungeon from the game because when you've seen one, you've seen pretty much all of them.

Morrowind does have many small caves and tombs, but it also has several multi-level dungeons that have unique elements to them, valuable artifacts or books or whatever (like the scarab plans in the picture that was posted earlier, which alone seems like a good reason to explore that dungeon). Even the smallest caves often have some little unique touch to them, like an underwater passage or a bridge or a sorcerer with enchanted gear. There's lots of variety overall, and some effort obviously went into actually designing the dungeons so that they make sense. Personally I would've maybe cut down the number of dungeons a bit, made the average dungeon a bit bigger and put some more content on the overworld map instead (why do all bandits have to be in some cave anyway?) but overall I like the way Morrowind handled things.

Skyrim is a bit of a mixed bag. The dungeons are too repetitive ("not draugr again"), have nowhere near enough enemy variety and are mostly mind-numbingly linear, but for example some of the Dwemer ruins are pretty cool and more open, like the one under Markarth if I recall correctly. Some smaller dungeons also have nice gimmicks that make them stand out from the rest, like one cave that was basically just one big room with a huge "staircase" in the center leading to the loot on top. Didn't perhaps make that much sense but was still somewhat memorable and different. There's just enough interesting stuff in the dungeons to make you want to check out the next dungeon, even if you'll usually be disappointed in them. Definitely better than Oblivion in any case.

A key thing to remember is Oblivion and Fallout 3 were at the forefront of all-voiced NPC dialog. There was a lot of talk at the time about compression and cost and time factoring in due to the all-voiced thing. I really do think, in addition to firing some good people, Oblivion and Fallout 3 suck on the writing front because of that super early decision to go all-voiced.

I think you're being way, way too forgiving here considering the huge leaps in logic and simply completely fucking stupid ideas that are present everywhere in those games. I agree that voice acting obviously greatly limited the amount of dialogue in Oblivion, but compared to Outcast (which is an early example of an all-voiced open world game, although one with much less dialogue and smaller scope than Oblivion) or New Vegas (which is a recent example of an all-voiced game with TES-like scope) Oblivion, FO3 and Skyrim all do a terrible job when it comes to dialogue. In Skyrim they at least stopped trying to create some kind of "Morrowind lite" wiki dialogue for every single character in the game world, which helped things a lot, but the quality still ranges from passable to outright godawful. I'd say that Bethesda's writers couldn't write their way out of a wet paper bag, but they'd probably fill it with plot holes in no time.

 

[DalekFlay]

Oblivion and Skyrim are both flawed in a variety of ways, let's be honest. At some point we're arguing which obese chick has the best ass. I just get a weird shiver up the back of my neck when seeing Oblivion's writing or world design being called "interesting," even if that's in comparison to Skyrim alone. In the end though we're beating dead horses with lead fucking bats here, really.

I've been playing Oblivion a bit the last few days, mostly the mage and fighter's guilds, and some of those dungeons really are decent. Others are shit. It's a mixed bag. I'll admit the dungeons are probably a highlight of the game, relatively speaking.

 

[RK47]

On the other hand Skyrim's Thieves Guild makes Oblivion look like Shakespeare at times.

Nope. Not seeing it at all.
People trying to hate Skyrim Thieves guild quest is a bit much. Considering it just did it without a single painstaking attempt at 'you are the chosen one' that is typical in most questline that I hated in Sykrim. In fact, I believe it was Thieves Guild that took the player further. That nice trip to that dwemer dungeon and deep down into falmer territory was quite fun to undertake and a worthy finale.
Mages guild being the worst offender, followed by 'This warrior who walked into Fighter Guild is the dude I saw in my dreams'
Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood is let down by set piece encounters executed poorly. It was just too damn easy to pull off the assassinations.