Chapotraphouse

I will admit that Oblivion was mostly my introduction to Elder Scrolls, so there is some nostalgia bias. But I feel like Oblivion was overall good and is a medium between Morrowind and Skyrim, and has some strengths of both, and I am an Oblivion defender.

There are some upsides and years ago I would have said Oblivion is better because of how slow and obtuse some of the Morrowind mechanics are if you are new to it. Especially if you just couldn't look up solutions to things on the internet (I keenly remember many hours of wasted searching just because an NPC gave wrong directions to the dungeon). These days I do think Morrowind is better because of the world building and the depth involved. It is the only one I am still replaying occasionally.

Oblivion had a lot of streamlining of the mechanics that made it a lot easier to get into the game and got rid of a lot of the drag of the games and some non-level parts of the grind. But as bad as the Oblivion main quest could get, I still remember how much of the main quest in Morrowind was getting a book for Caius Cossades and that being the impetus for me mostly ignoring Elder Scrolls main quests and just wander and dungeon delve. And even though a lot of things were getting simplified and flattened for this, Oblivion still wasn't anywhere near Skyrim's levels yet. And even if the main quest was boring, several of the side quests before Shivering Isles were good. I still think that the Dark Brotherhood questline was one of the best Bethesda questlines and even the Mages Guild setup of getting approval from every hall, which each specializes in a different school of magic, was a good choice of requiring the character to have some amount of proficiency with magic without a direct stat requirement (yes, you could just buy scrolls and staves to do everything if you were high enough level, but it is better than Skyrim's where a barbarian with a small handful of scrolls could be archmage in a week). Even though the "every hall specializes in one school of magic" conceit just reeks of a bad GM's world building, Oblivion does pull it off.

So I think that Oblivion was actually quite good, even if it wasn't at Morrowind's level. And it did introduce a lot of mechanics that were a wrong turn made more obvious after Skyrim (e.g. unkillable NPCs instead of the "persist in this doomed world" message, the entire world levels with you and gives good loot no mater the quest or area).