I also feel like the Dragons arn't that sinister an enemy either

Let me start off with a huge SPOILER ALERT for the questlines.

When I first got the game, it was absolutely amazing to me. The graphics were astounding, the dragons were badass, the combat system was simply wonderful.

The more I play it though, the more I can't help but feel that a lot of it just isn't as good as it could be. I find myself, odd as it may seem, longing for Oblivion. While I still think that the combat system blows Oblivion's out of the water, many other things are arguably better at best.

Take the dragons, for example. In the very first appearance, they seem absolutely wonderful; Alduin is both seemingly invincible and destroys the entire village on his own. You're immediately terrified of dragons in general. And then you go beat your first dragon at level 4. Isn't it a bit odd that in a RPG you can beat what is supposed to be the hardest enemy in the game at level 4? At the very least they could have given some sort of indication that it was weaker than in general, call it a Dragonling or something of that sort. Instead, the first combative meeting you have with a dragon inevitably ends with you killing it, sucking out its soul, and being hailed as the all-powerful dragonborn.

Now maybe this could be okay, if it were an isolated incident. If, while you were treated with respect, you were also treated like the level four you are, it would be just fine. But instead you're sent off to be treated like the most important thing there is by the greybeards, too.

Okay, you think, lets go do some other quests. Surely they won't treat a newling as anything special in the Companions quests, right? Battle-hardened warriors surely would not give a level 4 to 6 important quests, right?

...wrong. By the time you're level 10, you're already a member of the Circle, the highest rank of the Companions. And why? Because you did something that you could barely do, finished some titanic quest that should have required 15 more levels to finish?...no, you're SPECIAL.

And this is how it is for almost EVERY GUILD in the game. Thieves guild entry requirement? Walk into a town. Dark brotherhood? Punch an old lady. Mages' College? Cast ONE SPELL. And 2 quests later you're considered a full-scale assassin/thief/mage, it just doesn't make any sense! Especially since you don't even need to bother doing anything related to the quests to succeed 9/10ths of the time.

just real quick, lets compare this to how often you kill other people in skyrim

yup, exactly the same...

and 1v1 dragonfights are fucking insane, if you dont have any help from NPCs, the dragon lands, and you have to run for your goddamn life because it can kill you in two hits, you need at least 20 to kill the dragon

unless you're playing on the highest difficulty, you cant really complain about it being too easy... the quests are designed to be realistic and to give difficulty through things that would be a problem IRL, rather than throwing hordes and hordes of enemies at you

Just real quick, let's compare to Oblivion.

OMages Guild: Travel to a mage's guild hall, start the overall quest, travel to every single town in Cyrodiil and complete a quest that may or may not be difficult. Each different quest introduced you to a different kind of magic; one of my favorites was also one of the simplest, where you just had to strip naked, cast a spell taught to you specially for that quest, and retrieve a ring...and after you got the ring, you're just told to "toss it anywhere"! It was twisty, interesting, and I loved it. And after you finished all those quests, you got, not an amazing item or gold reward, but the reward of POSSIBILITIES; A spellmaking and enchanting altar, the only ones in the game. Sure, you got a robe and a staff and stuff, but be honest, nobody really cared about those. But at the end, you feel like a real mage!

Skyrim Mages College: You cast a spell(which happens to be for sale RIGHT THERE. No, literally, right there.) and...you're in! Congrats! Time to go find the powerful magical artifact, and by the way, any chance you want to be the Arch-mage? so you're complaining about a LACK of grind???

...There's less depth in the entire questline than there was in the INTRO quests for the Oblivion mages guild.



And what about, say, the thieves guild? In Oblivion, you first had to look at a Grey Fox poster(so you even knew what the thieves guild was!) and then talk to a beggar, and then go to the garden of dareloth(it took me a long time to find that garden!) and then you had to prove that you were capable as a thief in one of the most well-guarded cities in the Empire, the Imperial City! AND you were racing against at least one other person. And then follows an epic saga of stealing things from across the continent, culminating in the most epic thievery quest I have ever played, taking you into locations that had not been entered in hundreds or thousand of years, and best of all there was a REASON why they hadn't been entered! And then in the end you not only essentially become ROBIN HOOD, you save a man's past and restore his marriage with his wife! How much better can it get?



In skyrim you walk into a city, pickpocket a ring, and fight your way through a sewer. An easy to find sewer. Once down there, poof! You're in. One decent quest and a few bad ones later, you're already one of the Nightengales, and only a few more later you're the Guild Master. Sure, you restored the guild, but it feels more like you're the thug leader of a bunch of thugs. It would make for a decent sidequestline in some bandit camp somewhere, NOT for the thieves guild. What epic things do you steal? What amazing dungeons do you have to traverse WITHOUT alerting the guards?

...none. Nothing. Blah!


It just seems like everything was perfunctory at best. If you put the graphics and combat in oblivion, as well as SOME of the uniqueness of dungeons(some were fairly unique even in oblivion, y'know!) you would have a game that's far batter than Skyrim currently is.

Thoughts/Opinions?

I mean the two games have a similiar beginning with the destruction of Kvatch in Obvilion and the destruction of Helgen in Skyrim, but I found myself in Skyrim concentrating on finding out where to go and I wasn't even that bothered about the dragon. It was cool and it but it didn't really grab my attention. Whilst in Kvatch I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, I doubt I blinked whilst I was in there and I was genuinely shitting myself about being in the midst of this mayhem.

Why is it I knew Kvatch straight away, spelling and all, and yet I had to look up Helgen which should be fresher in my memory?

just real quick, lets compare this to how often you kill other people in skyrim

yup, exactly the same...

I don't really see how this is relevant at all...

and 1v1 dragonfights are fucking insane, if you dont have any help from NPCs, the dragon lands, and you have to run for your goddamn life because it can kill you in two hits, you need at least 20 to kill the dragon

On Expert Difficulty, with no levels in smithing or enchanting, guess how I kill Dragons? I run up to them and do four power attacks. It's bloody pathetic. And that's on expert!

unless you're playing on the highest difficulty, you cant really complain about it being too easy... the quests are designed to be realistic and to give difficulty through things that would be a problem IRL, rather than throwing hordes and hordes of enemies at you.

I think that killing a dragon IRL would be a bit harder than it is in skyrim

i think you need to consider that oblivion and skyrim are two different games, and the success of skyrim is because of many of the things you see as flaws

not everyone wants to have to go to every city in the game for one quest, most people want to be able to turn the game on, play for 2-3 hours, have fun, and then go do other stuff

if it takes 10 hours to complete a quest, people just wont do it

if you think that skyrim needs to be more like oblivion, fair enough. but oblivion has flaws that skyrim doesnt, skyrim has things that make it much more of a popular release, skyrim brought RPGs into the mainstream

*interesting fact - i have a savegame in skyrim where the dragons fly backwards.