Think you’re understating it, there. Skyrim’s combat system is terrible, bordering on a placeholder implementation while they worked on something better, and I can’t think of many games with worse. The “stealth” gameplay is ridiculous and immersion-breaking, and the magic consists largely of circle-strafing while line goes up - they get you between the more interesting bits, but little more. However, if you had any dreams of role-playing as some kind of Viking berserker who survives in the icy northlands by their sheer skill with an axe, then I hope you enjoy your combat choices of “bonk” or “charged bonk”, stopping occasionally to consume a few entire wheels of cheese.
Completely with you on Oblivion - rough is a fine word for it. The ‘realistic’ graphics have, ironically, aged much worse than the fantasy world of Morrowind, but the plots and characters are much more interesting than the design-by-committee that they’ve settled into.
I think the “fast travel from the start” and “points of interest visible from miles away” is what really spoils it. Doing a quest in Morrowind felt like an adventure where you had to prepare for the unknown, using all the clues that you’d picked up to your advantage, and it had a world that felt alive when you poked around in it. Frequently, you’d find even more things to do along the way. Doing a quest in Oblivion consists of clicking to get as close to the ready-highlighted destination as you can, zipping through all the meaningless dialogue as quickly as possible since there’s nothing you need to read in it, and then clicking home again to get your reward. Bethesda feeling the need to pad that out with ‘radiant’ quests is completely the wrong direction.
Think you’re understating it, there. Skyrim’s combat system is terrible, bordering on a placeholder implementation while they worked on something better, and I can’t think of many games with worse. The “stealth” gameplay is ridiculous and immersion-breaking, and the magic consists largely of circle-strafing while line goes up - they get you between the more interesting bits, but little more. However, if you had any dreams of role-playing as some kind of Viking berserker who survives in the icy northlands by their sheer skill with an axe, then I hope you enjoy your combat choices of “bonk” or “charged bonk”, stopping occasionally to consume a few entire wheels of cheese.
Completely with you on Oblivion - rough is a fine word for it. The ‘realistic’ graphics have, ironically, aged much worse than the fantasy world of Morrowind, but the plots and characters are much more interesting than the design-by-committee that they’ve settled into.
I think the “fast travel from the start” and “points of interest visible from miles away” is what really spoils it. Doing a quest in Morrowind felt like an adventure where you had to prepare for the unknown, using all the clues that you’d picked up to your advantage, and it had a world that felt alive when you poked around in it. Frequently, you’d find even more things to do along the way. Doing a quest in Oblivion consists of clicking to get as close to the ready-highlighted destination as you can, zipping through all the meaningless dialogue as quickly as possible since there’s nothing you need to read in it, and then clicking home again to get your reward. Bethesda feeling the need to pad that out with ‘radiant’ quests is completely the wrong direction.