Oshkinowe 1

William Oshkinowe

Clair Willden

English 120

2 March 2021

Oblivion Vs Skyrim

Oblivion and Skyrim are two sides of the same coin. Both games are Action RPGs, a

video game genre that attempts to simulate a table top experience. Both of these games try to

build a world that the player can explore and interact with. However, the main difference while

playing through these two games, is how the developers decided to do this. In any RPG, the main

point of the game is that the player can explore the game however they see fit. If someone wants

to be a thief, and try to rob their way to victory, they can. And if someone wants to be the white

knight, and save the entire world, they can. But, while playing through these two games, it

becomes clear that one does this much better than the other. Skyrim offers a bigger and longer

storyline then Oblivion, but it severely under performs in the actual meat and potatoes of the role

playing experience. Oblivion does this much better, because it not only supports a wider variety

of playing styles, but it builds a more realistic world that the player can explore and interact with.

Oblivion is an older game then Skyrim. It was the first game in The Elder Scrolls

franchise, to include a fully voiced world. It also included many issues that could have been

fixed in Skyrim, but unfortunately were not. One example of this is the dreaded ‘Speech Wheel’,

where the player can try to persuade the NPC to change their opinion towards them (in other

words, make them like you more), and depending on your character's speech level, it can

influence whether an NPC tells you something important or just tells you to screw off. It sounds

like an interesting idea, but it was performed terribly, and really was just a dice roll disguised as
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a skill game. However, they had a chance to improve it in Skyrim, but instead they just decided

to remove it entirely. Now, no matter what you say or do to Skyrim’s NPCs, they will like you

just as much as before. This makes the NPCs feel as if they have no ability to form opinions, as if

you can do anything to them, like steal every item in their house, and still end up being on their

good side. In Oblivion, an NPC might attack you on sight, because of their strongly negative

opinion of you, or they might allow you to take some cheaper items in their house, if they like

you enough. This is a good thing to have in an RPG, because it means that your actions have real

consequences on other ‘people’. This greatly affects how the world feels, and how the player will

approach new things, as the NPCs react to the players actions. In Skyrim, the player can get

away with much more heinous things, because the NPC’s are designed to overlook them, and

that ruins the all important immersion that these games need to have.

Controversial decisions are a key part of any RPG, and the player in Skyrim makes many

more controversial decisions than in Oblivion. This seems like it would be a good thing for

Skyrim, but it is really not. The decisions that you make in Skyrim have almost no real effect on

the world. Sure the storyline will move along just fine, but the NPCs simply do not acknowledge

the things that you have done. Some of the most controversial decisions you can make in Skyrim

include; slaying the dragon that helps you save the world, swaying political ideals that influence

a civil war, and assassinating the emperor of an entire province. And when you are required to

make those decisions, the people of Skyrim really do not care. To them, it is just another day in

Tamriel. When you finish Skyrim’s main storyline, and talk to the NPCs, the most you will get

from them is the occasional guard noticing that you are ‘dragon born’ (literally meaning that you

have killed at least one dragon). While in Oblivion, when you finish a non essential quest line,

like the ‘Arena’ questline, people will acknowledge that, and you even get an annoying fan that
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will gawk at you like you are a national hero. In a YouTube video criticizing Skyrim, a reviewer

made a particularly interesting remark, saying that “Even when big things happen, such as

becoming the Guild Master of the Thieves Guild, people still treat you like the first day you

walked in” (The Cantina, 6:32). The reviewer then showed an ingame clip where another

member of the Thieves Guild, still had the original dialog before the change in leadership, and

inferred that the old Guild Master still existed. It is for this reason that the world of Skyrim feels

almost static, like no matter what the player does, their decisions will not have any effect on the

world.

One of the most important features of any RPG, is the Classes and Races that a player can

choose to play. In both Oblivion and Skyrim, you can play as a mage, a warrior, a thief, an elf, a

cat like thing, and everything in between, however in Skyrim, all of these choices begin to blend

together in one giant mixing pot. There is no real advantage of choosing one class and race over

the other, because they all provide an identical playing experience. One of the best things that

Oblivion had was its simple class system. that focused primarily on the major skills of separate

classes. If you choose a mage, you would be naturally better at magic, and weaker in armed

combat. If you choose to be a Khajiit, you would be faster, and better at sneaking. While Skyrim

does have different races, there are no different classes, and the separate races that it does have

are dumbed down. The skills and attributes dedicated to what remaining class system exists are

meaningless, because the player can stack random perks into random skill sets, and still have an

unbeatable character. An article over on Joyscribe, claimed that “It’s almost impossible to put

stat points into the wrong place, but as a result the choices don’t really have a lot of overall

impact.” (Joyscribe). In contrast to Oblivion’s classes system, each time you level up, you can

choose what skill to boost, and over time your decisions may have very negative or positive
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effects on your character. This class system greatly impacted not only how you played, but how

your character felt. It was more satisfying to plan your character's direction in Oblivion’s

leveling system, than it was to wildly guess with Skyrim's system.

While Skyrim and Oblivion try to pull the character into different worlds, Oblivion is

superior in doing this, because it is able to replicate what you would see on a real tabletop RPG

much better than what Skyrim can. This is not saying that Skyrim is a bad game in any way, it is

just not what an RPG should be. The major features that pull players into Oblivion’s world and

lore are just missing in its successor, where you would expect to see an improvement in such.

The RPG elements are dumbed down in Skyrim, so much so, that they are pretty much

meaningless. And even if you find a way to add meaning to them, the world it is trying to craft is

still more visually oriented, then it is RPG oriented. While there are still many issues that can

pull a players opinion toward Skyrim, like its visuals and overall presentation, Oblivion is more

commonly enjoyed by RPG enthusiasts despite its age and flaws. At the end of the day, the

overall opinions towards these two RPG games are nearly identical to that of a coin toss, but it is

a coin that lands more in favor of Oblivion, than it does for Skyrim.
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Works Cited Page

Why Is Elder Scrolls Oblivion Better than Skyrim? 24 Oct. 2017,

joyscribe.com/why-is-elder-scrolls-oblivion-better-than-skyrim/.

Livingston, Christopher. “Celebrate Skyrim's Fifth Birthday with Five Reasons Oblivion Was

Better.” Pcgamer, PC Gamer, 11 Nov. 2016,

pcgamer.com/celebrate-skyrims-fifth-birthday-with-five-reasons-oblivion-was-better

5 Things Oblivion Did Better Than Skyrim. Youtube, uploaded by The Cantina, 9 Sep, 2017,

youtube.com/watch?v=IP7ThsiHgjQ