I liked Oblivion, but for my money Morrowind was a much better game. Oblivion is more deserving of the 1 step forward 2 steps back award.
Oblivion made some questionable refinements to the gameplay.
The value in the series is a sense of experiencing 'my own story with my own character'. The level scaling, radar-like quest marks, and easy fast travel, robbed me of suspension of disbelief. Level scaling bakes in a degree of 'sameness' across the entire world, because everywhere you go the world reacts based off your current abilities. The quest radar makes the 'beaten path' too apparant. I never had a sense of going off the main quest in Morrowind. Going fown side quests and simple random exploration is is eactly what I did, but I never thought of it that way. For me whatever I was doing was the main quest. I had a massive sense of 'going off the main quest' in Oblivion. REALIZING I wasn't on the main quest in Oblivion is a big failure. It cheapened the (I'm sure very expensive to produce) experience of the side quests and rich environment. I always had an overriding sense of how shallow the 'current' side path was rather than the main quest. (Even if it wasn't true
... the sense of shallowness was inescapble, due to the massive cues back to the main path.) It was like the game was constantly suggesting
... why not go back to this main quest path
... that's what you should be doing.
I fully understand why Bestheda put in level scaling, radar-like quest markers, and fast travel. I just think that while it made it more palatible for a wider audience, it did so at the dire expense of the core value in the game.
// warning ... weak spoiler //
To give a concrete example: when I bought the ghost house from the guy in Anvil, I decide to follow him (this is very slow process ... and of little obvious value) but I did it and knew precisely where he went. However what could have been an awesome experience was ruined by 3 things: 1. The mainline quest jumped into my gameplay as we passed Kvaatch ... I actually lost track of him (meaning I failed to follow the guy). I went and completed the mainline quest up to kvatch and restarted the manor quest so I could follow the guy. I finally did follow him to his desination. Later when I went back to Anvil and started down the manor quest I need to talk to the guy again. Unfortunately I wasted time going to where I knew he was. 2. The quest wouldn't advance until I had completed the events that told me the information I already knew. 3. The cool experience of having followed the guy, and known something difficult to discover was not just completely wasted ... it was turned around and made me feel like a moron for going to that length. Following the quest parameters would have taken a couple of minutes max. The extended enjoyable gameplay I had done by 'following my own story' was turned into a punishment for not following the optimized quest path. What had been a truly fun experience in the game was retroactively ruined. Not since the Matix sequels was retroactive damage so complete.
