Why Skyrim is mechanically superior to Oblivion. Magic is no longer linked to a single button that can be activated regardless of what is in hand, changing the use of magic from a sort of offhand peripheral akin to an eldrich grenade, to whatever one's non-arcane combat method of choice is, and turning it into a fully fleshed out alternative to melee combat, while the dual wielding system still allowed and encouraged players who favor mixing melee and magic combat to do so. Additionally, this caused the effects and use of magic systems to be more potent and diverse in execution. Melee combat has more agency for players and offers a slightly higher challenge to players and far more diverse encounters by allowing NPCs to incorporate similar systems that imply more agency, with things such as allowing a player or NPC to choose when to shield bash instead of relying on a randomization system as was the case in Oblivion. Item progression also took a turn for the better with the introduction of smithing and the removal of item degradation. No longer are certain materials or styles of equipment locked to a tier that would force a player to discard potentially aesthetically more pleasing equipment styles in favor of materials that would resist deterioration from higher level enemies, but only if that player is willing to put in the additional time and effort involved in upgrading their smithing skill to keep their equipment on par with their current level tier equipment. Furthermore, this encourages players to explore more, and for longer amounts of time, as they don't have to constantly return to town for hammers or a smith to repair their equipment for them before levels where a single repair hammer could last indefinitely. The enchanting system is more or less a straight upgrade from the system used in Oblivion, with an added risk/ reward system for learning new enchantments by destroying (potentially) more powerfully enchanted equipment than a player could make, not counting exploits. There is more than a little controversy within the TES fandom as to why items can only hold so many enchantments (pending level perks taken), or why so few enchanted items can be equipped at a time (Skyrim = 1 finger ring, Oblivion = 2, Morrowind 10 for example but this extends to the number of stacked/ liked items of clothing too), and with a little thought it actually makes sense: Fewer items equipped with fewer enchantments attached prevents one from simply loading up on low-to-moderate level enchantments that can combine to make the game far too easy early on, such as using 5 or so items with chameleon enchantments, as was popular (and ridiculously easy to accomplish) in Oblivion. The lack of an actual class system encouraged players to do more of the sort of gameplay they want, and experiment with gameplay styles early on by making it easier to level up a character by leveling a larger variety of skills, which progressively got more difficult as time went on, as more "weak" skills would have to be leveled than stronger ones as time went on, in order to continue leveling, as so one can add more points to skill trees. At the same time, this still very much allowed players of higher levels to play with and grow weaker skills with fairly little hindrance compared to previous titles with their fairly limiting attribute systems. All of this of course leads to players better being able to define their character [i]as][/i] a character as opposed to a simple avatar through whom they experience the game vicariously, allowing deeper ability to customize their personality through the choices they make in how they deal with a given encounter and the challenges involved, while also ensuring that the combat can remain a challenge for longer into the game, as long as the difficulty is kept to a reasonable setting relative to one's player/ skill levels.

Game with colours other than grey > game with colour palette consisting mostly of grey

I thought most people have that opinion

If all I had to say was that to make a -blam!-ing thread with this many replies I would have done it.

Combat wise? I'm inclined to agree. Graphics and art design? Probably. Everything else? Nope. Shivering Isles>All

Totally agreed, Bacon.

The storyline was meh in Skyrim. In Oblivion at least you have some sense of urgency with Oblivion gates popping up everywhere.

True

[i] [/i]

I actually agree Morrowind>Skyrim>Oblivion (I have not played Arena and I haven't played Daggerfall enough to fully judge it)