I did the companions once when I first played just to get the achievement. Hated it. Wanted to join the silver hand and hunt werewolf’s underworld style
Right? I actually enjoyed the classes, like if we got bonuses to the relevant magic it would have been wonderful and then maybe have to pass a test of skill (like for restoration keep something alive in a hazardous environment or something)
I think in order to become the archmage you should, you know, be able to use magic. The trope of you becoming the leader of the guild at the end of the questline is dumb and overused - in this regard Skyrim does well because both the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild break that mold, College of Winterhold should have done that too College of Winterhold could have had two separate quest lines, one with the Eye of Magnus stuff and another for rising in the ranks: first graduating, the becoming a teacher (with a quest that requires you to be a master of one magic school) and the finally the arch mage (requiring that you've mastered ALL magic schools). I hope TES 6 redoes guild advancement
i constantly rewatch Patrician's take on The Companions. It truly is insulting that Bethesda thought that everyone would be okay with being forced into becoming a werewolf and they expect us to not put much thought into it.
i really like the oblivion recommendation quests that REALLY showcase one of the magic schools, like the staff one showcasing illusion/charm, or the ring in well one showcasing alteration/feather+water breathing
The thing i hate most about the companions is that one point in progression where you are forced to make a character changing decision. You have no choice if you want to complete the questline, it's yes or go do something else.
I really enjoyed being a student in Winterhold. Attend first class with Tolfdir, go to Saarthal then all of a sudden nobody gives a sht what you do after as long as you fetch crap for everyone. I wish there were quests/ranks for each of the magic school masters. I mean more than just - get to 100 in a skill and do this to get a master spell.
Pretty sure you can skip the tour in College of Winterhold by not walking into the living quarters and just walking to Toldfir instead. I haven't played Skyrim in like half a decade though so I could be wrong.
Thieves Guild is the only Skyrim's guild that has a progression, do you know that after completing a bunch of it's radiant quests you'll receive a "unique" reward in the form of the new traders in a guild den? (It's a bit disappointment tho, cause they don't have any unique items (wave ur hand to Oblivion and it's "more spech - more unique items" feature)). 'n that's the only Skyrim's guild what has that feature! Why didn't gave similar stuff to others?
Oi, and about the radiant quests! I personally not against 'em, but only if devs use them in the right way, and by the right way i mean - optional filler-quests, which exist only to give you an ability to gain more XP by using the skills that you need to upgrade in order to get promoted.
These are great, I agree with you! Radiant quests are a bummer, they really leaned into them for Skyrim which was lame. You should do a main quest comparison, oblivion’s for the most part blows Skyrim’s out of the water. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you like and don’t like from both.
I actually like the characters in the Skyrim factions. The college has the various master teachers who are all eccentric in their own way, that one apprentice that keeps botching her experiments on you, the overly cocky Khajiit that gives you terrible scrolls and Arniel, as you mentioned. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood have a lot of memorable characters too. The Companions less so, but I can still remember all of them at least. I think Bethesda were trying to go with a "quality over quantity" approach with the factions. That said, the extreme brevity of the quest lines completely undermines and contradicts those goals. You simply don't have time to get attached to the characters as much as you should. There's absolutely no sense of progression - you join a faction and 5 quests later, you're the leader. There's no even actual faction rankings. It was so cool in previous TES games where you would see your guild mates address you by your rank, and you can open your journal and see where you stand with each faction. Oblivion had already greatly trimmed down the factions coming off Morrowind. Imo, this was necessary. Morrowind had a ton of factions, with each averaging somewhere between 20 and 30 quests, but most of those were fetch quests, and there were little to no overarching stories across the faction quest lines. I still remember my disappointment the first time I became Archmagister of House Telvanni: I had expected some big, intricate quest to overthrow a corrupt leader or something, only to find that you'd just kill him and usurp his title with zero reason or provocation when you got to a high enough rank. With Oblivion, you had less overall factions (about half as many as Morrowind) and slightly less quests for each faction, BUT the quality of the quests went up immensely, the characters became more unique and memorable and every faction questline had its own overarching story. It was a delicate balance that definitely needed work (there really should have at least been an imperial cult and legion factions) but Bethesda massively over-corrected with Skyrim and ultimately created factions which were, in every way, inferior to those of both Oblivion and Morrowind. I still do think the non-faction side quests of Skyrim are the best of any TES game, the daedric quests being especially memorable, but there's no denying how disappointing the factions were.
One thing I liked about Oblivion Dark Brotherhood is that you have to consciously kill an NPC for them to contact you. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you could complete almost all the quests in the game and not even trigger Lucien's visit. In Skyrim they hand you a quest that starts the faction questline, and it's to kill a character most people would find reprehensible to begin with. It felt like they took out some of the "evilness" out of becoming an assassin cultist.
This is something I've been saying for years. The guild questlines in Skyrim were one of the weakest aspects of the game. Not only are the quests collectively just inferior in regards to story, rewards and progression but their more difficult to roleplay in because 3 of them effectively just makes you the unwitting pawn of a Daedric Prince who has your soul. College of Winterhold was the worst offender. They start off with a huge hook to reel you in and get you invested... and then almost nothing happens with the Eye of Magnus and the mcguffin mages just takes it away cause evil elf did evil elf things with it. All of that with just cheap quests and really generic rewards when you compare it to Oblivion where it opens up a whole new part of the game for you to explore and play around with and frankly, it just has a more engaging storyline.
If you do not have the unofficial patch when you turn in the necro amulet IF you have it equipped the effects become permanent in your spell sheet. This works on any item with enchants that are removed from you via scripts. Going to jail or the Sanguine nude quest can trigger it too. Its a very hard to notice bug but most mage playthroughs end up with perma necro enchants without even noticing.
“They’re garbage!” Never a truer word spoken about the “Fighter’s Guild” quests in Skyrim. Why did the guild disappear in Skyrim? Not good writing in my opinion.
I didn't even mention that part in the video because I didn't want to devolve into a rant about that and nothing else for 20 minutes. I was so sad my first playthrough when I realized I had to become a werewolf to continue
skyrims companions is so bad its like imagine being a fighters guild apprentice that did one quest and then the next quest modyrn is already asking you to take down the blackwood company. Thats basically what skyrims companions is its so lazy and uninspired, no build of anything you just do one quest and then you're already asked to become a werewolf and a few quests after you're already the head of it. Garbage game I hate skyrim the so called "guilds" in it are one aspect of why I hate it so much.
Especially given the lore of the companions - Original founders of Skyrim..... now they need a nearly random person (the dragonborn, sure, but did that really come up?) to save them. And there's like, five of them? At least the fighters guild had bench strength. So lame.
I will say that I like that the Skyrim Thieves guild radiant quests contribute to rebuilding the thieves guild, unlike the other faction radiant quests which are pointless.
I'm one of those that prefers the option to kill the DB rather that play it. I install a mod for Oblivion to be able to do that. In fact the mod that does that for Oblivion is kinda cool, much better than the vanilla Skyrim option to do that. The DB is the first Pagliarulo betrayal to the lore, no matter how cool the quests are for Oblivion (and I don't think they are that good tbh) he completely butchered the original DB lore as it was intended when they added it in Tribunal, and it bastardizes the concept of Sithis as it was originally thought out for Morrowind lore. It's almost a cartoon of what could have been if the original writers were they ones in charge, instead of the clowns Todd and Emil. I never done Skyrim's DB and Companions quests, and I only done DB for Oblivion once in my original first character and never again... Lucien dies in all my playthroughs, if he shows up (because I made a mistake and killed something that I wasn't supposed to!) EDIT: I should have said, to be fair: the Oblivion DB's quests at least are more passable, because the people you kill are arguably bad people that needs to be dealt with somehow. Skyrim's ones are outright bad. I mean, who in its right mind, in the situation Skyrim's is in, will wanna go a kill the Emperor, no matter how bad an emperor he is, it's still the only thing keeping everything together for the moment.
I agree with you in some places, and disagree in others, but I mostly want to push back on a small portion of your criticism of the College of Winterhold questline. I'm *not* going to defend the plotting, because it's a mess, but specifically I think that its small cast is actually a benefit for the kind of story it's trying to tell. The College, and Winterhold in general, is introduced as being in a state of decline. The Mages' Guild is at its peak in Oblivion when you join, so it having a whole bunch of members (including the generic NPCs) really is of benefit there, but it would be just the opposite for the College. Okay that's all, bye, love your work.
It’s also just a long quest chain with interesting variability. My warrior kicks the door down and kills everyone, while a stealthy character is hiding in a crate, sneaking around, dropping a trophy on a guys head, etc. Even small choices like choosing to kill or spare the argonian make a difference. It doesn’t feel like a big deal, but having lots of little choices adds up to a more complete Roleplay experience
the comparison with morrowind is totally valid. morrowind and oblivion had greater emphasis on the roleplaying aspect, but oblivions quests required more time to make as the game was larger and had voice acting, skyrims quests were not any more complex as far as I can tell than obkivions it is simply a matter of the devs trying to remove the roleplaying aspect and put the player into the specific shoes of a nord companion becoming a werewolf because the game had to find a way to add werewolves and they for some reason couldn't find any other way, it would be like if oblivion made the entire dark brotherhood questline about becoming a vampire and how some people in the brotherhood reject their vampirism. being a member of the companions should be about going out and helping citzens of skyrim manage affairs for a fee which we really saw none of in skyrim.
Oblivion Mages Guild does a really good job making all the different guild halls unique and interesting, but has a kind of lackluster main story line (well the concept is cool but the execution is lacking). Fighters Guild has a really fantastic main story line, but does not develop the guild halls nearly enough. Even Burz gro-Khash and Azzan I feel like I know less about than any of the Mages Guild hall leaders despite spending a lot more quests with them.
I was dissatisfied with my first skyrim playthrough. Every faction followed the same progression. Do a few quests till you become the unofficial leader. do two more quests to become the leader officially (usually after a betrayal) your reward? a bedroom and a radiant go to x location and kill x amount of thing In oblivion they really wanted to show off their radiant AI and alot of thought went into the quests to show it off. In skyrim they just kinda phoned it in. And got lazy. They focused on the world design and presentation; while everything else suffered. As for morrrowind not holding up. Guild design wise i'd have to disagree. There was alot of nuance in the factions with subfactions having their own goals. Like the fighters guild being subverted into being thugs for the comona tong. The old leadership wanting to be independent from them. Or the leader of the mages guild having a vendetta against the telvanni that other mages dont want. That kinda in-house politicing is ageless. And we could use more of that tbh. I also liked that you had to actually improve attributes and skills related to the faction to attain higher rank.
Oblivion definitely has stronger factions than a lot of the other games, in no small part as you mention because they feel like institutions throughout the land rather than just one place. I love the mage's guild recommendation quests since they feel the most like an actual faction and not just a quest chain. I agree that the Thieves Guild is the best made faction in Skyrim as well, but I actually disagree on the radiant quests. I like having a guild that makes you feel like you actually have a job in the guild and are doing work, and I like that they lead to something. The Companions suck because there's no point to the jobs, but the Thieves Guild unlocks new stores in the Ratway and gets you fences in other holds so it actually feels like the guild has a presence across the whole province. I disagree on memorable names, but that's mostly down to Oblivion having names that are generic sounding in general and not an actual true issue with the game. What Skyrim needed for its faction system was to lean into the themes of a province at war with itself and have each faction have two different options to join. The Companions needed to let you actually join the Silver Hand and go to war as a monster hunter. The College of Winterhold should have let you join up with the Mage's Guild and take over the College yourself. The Dark Brotherhood needed to have the destroy the dark brotherhood quest fleshed out and let you join the Penitus Oculatus as like a CIA agent to hunt down the guild. Thieves guild should let you join the Riften guard as an undercover agent to take down the Thieves Guild from within. The point of destroying the Dark Brotherhood and why I mention this is that it's a roleplaying game, and it feels weird to only have the option when playing a good character or a character that wouldn't join a guild be forced into it (this is an issue in Skyrim as well but not older titles). Frankly I think as soon as you complete one guild's main quest, if it lets you be the leader, it should lock you out of leading any other guild since that sort of consolidation of power makes zero sense. I'd especially like it to bring back skill requirements and make them larger if you are in opposed factions since I feel like mages would be even more picky if a rough and tumble fighter tried to join and vice versa if a frail mage tried to join the fighter's guild. Basically, factions are best when they feel like an actual presence in the game world and not just a contrived chain of quests. I think a radiant quest system like in Daggerfall can really work wonders but isn't developed because people act like it's a dirty word. For example, there's a temple faction quest you can get where a little girl is possessed by a Daedra and you need to exorcise it. The thing is though, this is not always an actual possession, and sometimes the kid is faking it. You have to meet the kid to figure out if it is real, talk to experts about Daedra to see if it seems legit, get a holy relic to actually exorcise the kid if it is real or prove it isn't. If it is real, you have to fight a powerful Daedra after expelling it from the kid, and if it is faked the kid and their guardian steal your holy item and you have to track them down to get it back. It's a genuinely engaging quest each time because it takes you to new places and can play out notably differently, rather than just being a generic "go kill a bear in this cave." If you expanded on this framework you could have similar quests that actually are interesting each time. The other benefit is they are how you advance in the guild and earn the higher-level services but also your guild reputation goes down over time if you don't do work for them so they help build the immersion of actually being a guild member instead of it just being something lip service is paid to.
Skyrim suffered so much because the radiant quest system took the place of the filler quests that oblivion had. A single filler quest in an oblivion guild was more enjoyable and had more soul than all the radiant quests in Skyrim combined.
Imagine Morrowind with voice acting, NPCs with daily schedules and improved UI? That would be a killer game. Sadly, there are no devs currently on the market who are willing or able to do something like this.
I like your movies but on this issue I kinda disagree with you. I get it that you like to use your spreadsheets and if I remember correctly you are a mathteacher right so you probably like to compare the numbers in a game like the amount of quests and NPCs are present in a certain faction, however it is more then a numbergame if you want to compare certain factions of totally diffrent games. Since you had your essay long version of your analyses on this matter I would like to give you my take on this matter as well, which might be just as long. Like you said it is all very subjective so my point of view will be so as well, that said I would like to add that factionwise Morrowind was probably the best game out of the three games Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Also I think it is good to add Morrowind into the discussion so you have more to work with when comparing these games. In my opinion Morrowind had it all factionwise and some aspects of it were put into Oblivion and some others into Skyrim. You see what Morrowind did very well was creating an atmosphere of factions being at odds with eachother and you could actually join a certain faction which made other factions unjoinable like for example the Great Houses which were really at odds with eachother and you were not supposed to join another Great House once you joined another one already. This is something Skyrim did actually better then Oblivion, for example with the Stormcloaks and Imperial Legion, you can only join one and not both and once you join one you will be fighting the opposing army eventually. Reminds me that Oblivon didn't even have the Imperial Legion as a joinable faction which was a missed oppertunity in my opinion. Anyway, I guess what is really missing in Oblivion is a sense of any political or military rivalry or conflict which make a game interesting roleplaying wise. In Morrowind there were a lot of these things like the skirmishes between the Thieves Guild and the Camonna Tong, The Great Houses, House Telvanni and the Mages Guild, House Telvanni and the Twin Lamps etc. The skirmishes in Oblivion felt really shallow and superficial to me. Every Guild had enemy or opposing faction X and once that was dealt with then that was that. There was no open end or continuation of conflict once the problem was solved. In the Thieves Guild once the curse of the Gray Fox is lifted you are done, in the Mages Guild once Mannimarco is dealt with you are done with the Mages Guild and with the Fighters Guild once you have dealt with the Blackwood Company there is not much to it anymore as well. I don't sense any continuation of political or military challenges anymore after that while in Skyrim after the civil war there will still be either Imperials or Stormcloaks roaming around and if you took the Imperial side the Thalmor will still be there as well, with the Dark Bortherhood if you kill the Emperor it will have a lot of consequences like who will be Emperor next and will the new Emperor still uphold the deal with the Thalmor etc. This is something which made Oblivion feel kinda empty once you are done with all the quests because you are just the boss of every main faction and you eliminated all your competition or threats to your factions. I also don't agree that the Companions, Dark Bortherhood or Thieves Guild are uninteresting just because they have less NPCs or quests. There are a lot of smaller quests which give more background to these characters, for example there is a small quests which is related to Sapphire to bring a letter from her father Glover in Raven Rock which is an example of giving more background to the characters in the faction. I agree that the Dark Borhterhood quests in Oblivion were better and fun but the one in Skyrim and its questline and NPCs were still pretty interesting. I am not saying Skyrim is perfect and I think the problem with Skyrim is that it skipped a lot of roleplaying aspects and was made too easy for the younger audience of players and was dumbed down quite a lot compared to the games before it but I think storywise Skyrim is probably a better game then Oblivion and thus also with the factions. I agree that some of the quests in Oblivion were a lot of fun but, and this may just be my modest opinion but I never really felt it with Oblivion. There was actually a skipped questline in Oblivion in which the player would be able to become the new Duke of Kvatch and get to learn the Elder Council but it was skipped for some reason. This is very unfortunate because it would give a lot of knowledge of who all the members in the Elder Council are except for Ocato and what their political, activies, schemes and interests etc are. I think this is a missed oppertunity to really create an atmosphere of polical strive in Oblivion like they did with Morrowind and its Great Houses. I think what I am basically missing is political opposition in Oblivion, except for the Mythic Dawn and some other evil cults or minor characters everybody is basically in line with the Empire and everybody supports it. You got the Counts of Leyawiin and Bravil complaining about Ocato etc but nothing really happens and they only leave the Empire after the events of Oblivion so in the game itself nothing really happens, another missed oppertunity. Also the Counts themselves don't really have anyone trying to kill them or take their place like what happens in Skyrim when you can kick out a jarl and get him replaced by another jarl who is more Stormcloak/ Imperial Legion aligned. This would have made Oblivion much more interesting. So yea in conclussion, I guess you got the numbers on your side but there is more to a faction then its amount of quests or NPCs. I could debate you on each seperate faction and its NPCs and why I still think the ones in Skyrim are still a bit more interesting but I think my reply has been quite long already so I leave it at this. Anyway, again nice movies so keep it up!
Fighters guild is meh. It's better, than companions, but nothing to write home about honestly. But yeah, it's definately better than Companions slop. Mages guild: I kinda liked recomendation quests in Oblivion. Made me feel like mages guild is, well, an actual guild - starting small, learning basic things, using what you've learned, while proving yourself worthy of attention of more competent guild members. Even though I don't like that you become archmage in the end, but at least in Oblivion path to that rank feels more organic. Shame that you have to do it to acces enchanting in base game... They could've kept Morrowind's enchanting sevices mechanic for both Oblivion and Skyrim (even if it feels redundant sometimes). Oblivion thieves guild had interesting start: figuring out how to contact them and such, but overall it's quest line feels like it's not a guild of cutthroats stealing for wealth and for the sake of stealing, but goody-two-shoes robin hood alikes. In Skyrim TG feels more like a bunch of cutthroats doing all kinds of dirty jobs for money... Up until they shove Nocturnal bs down your throat. Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion is a mixed bag. On one hand you have quests like "whodunit" or "permanent retirement", also we have some optional objectives for every quest (like using mounted head rather than weapon or magic), but on the other hand you don't have much agency as a player in the second half, when you read drop-boxed notes and notice how writing is not the same. Like seriously: a member of the hand, who magickaly knows your position if you mrder some innocent bystander, doesn't have any way to contact his personal silencer? Whole second half of DB questline is just plainly dumb, and Skyrim's DB followed same line... well, at least they gave you option to deal with them for good. One of the things I also liked about Oblivion - master level trainers quest. Not all of them good, but it gives flavour and immersion: PC proves that he's worthy of trainer's time.
I played oblivion first on 12 fps with pink lava and got super into it. Played skyrim next and while even as a child 14 playing skyrim for the first time I couldn't help but think how weak the thiefs guild and dark brotherhood really were story wise as well as how weak the companions story lines was. The companions stands out as the worst and the thiefs the best. The mages guild is just highly forgetabble with how bad they made magic in skyrim. (Except enchanting). I would argue if the thief questline actually focused more on being a thief it'd actually have been better in skyrim and a way better communion with nocturnal. Every other faction stormcucks, imperials, companions, dark brotherhood, mages guild. all incredibly weak and generic/shit.
I always wipe out the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim. For one, it’s quick cash. The Dark Brotherhood is so bad in Skyrim is just so lame compared to Oblivion
i just did all the factions in skyrim once again for the achievements and they sucked. like they got no soul. no fun quests. while oblivion actually put work into their quests
Did you if you have Risen flesh or Defeated Manimarco before 3 days after deafeating Cariliah she can repsanwn infinite Necromancer amulets( I tested it on console it works)
I did the companions once when I first played just to get the achievement. Hated it. Wanted to join the silver hand and hunt werewolf’s underworld style
I am a death dealer
Same. I thought the Silver Hand would've been a little more than just bandits with silver weapons.
I hate how in college of winterhold you attend one class and then you're made the archmage. Missed opportunity for sure.
Right? I actually enjoyed the classes, like if we got bonuses to the relevant magic it would have been wonderful and then maybe have to pass a test of skill (like for restoration keep something alive in a hazardous environment or something)
I think in order to become the archmage you should, you know, be able to use magic. The trope of you becoming the leader of the guild at the end of the questline is dumb and overused - in this regard Skyrim does well because both the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild break that mold, College of Winterhold should have done that too
College of Winterhold could have had two separate quest lines, one with the Eye of Magnus stuff and another for rising in the ranks: first graduating, the becoming a teacher (with a quest that requires you to be a master of one magic school) and the finally the arch mage (requiring that you've mastered ALL magic schools). I hope TES 6 redoes guild advancement
i constantly rewatch Patrician's take on The Companions. It truly is insulting that Bethesda thought that everyone would be okay with being forced into becoming a werewolf and they expect us to not put much thought into it.
i really like the oblivion recommendation quests that REALLY showcase one of the magic schools, like the staff one showcasing illusion/charm, or the ring in well one showcasing alteration/feather+water breathing
I’ve been thinking about a comparison like this for years! Love to see it in excel like this
at some point I'll compare the DLC, but I have lots of other videos I want to make too. There's never enough time.
@@theoldknight85 sweet! Could compare the Daedric quests too
The thing i hate most about the companions is that one point in progression where you are forced to make a character changing decision. You have no choice if you want to complete the questline, it's yes or go do something else.
I was waiting for the Companions questline to begin
And then it ended
I really enjoyed being a student in Winterhold. Attend first class with Tolfdir, go to Saarthal then all of a sudden nobody gives a sht what you do after as long as you fetch crap for everyone. I wish there were quests/ranks for each of the magic school masters. I mean more than just - get to 100 in a skill and do this to get a master spell.
Pretty sure you can skip the tour in College of Winterhold by not walking into the living quarters and just walking to Toldfir instead. I haven't played Skyrim in like half a decade though so I could be wrong.
You can skip Ward practice if you unalive all other apprentices
@@iaminyourhouse1701 inb4 they're marked essential
@@iaminyourhouse1701 you can say kill on youtube lmfao
Yeah I have several banned accounts on multuple platform, not gonna risk even a YT account...
Thieves Guild is the only Skyrim's guild that has a progression, do you know that after completing a bunch of it's radiant quests you'll receive a "unique" reward in the form of the new traders in a guild den? (It's a bit disappointment tho, cause they don't have any unique items (wave ur hand to Oblivion and it's "more spech - more unique items" feature)). 'n that's the only Skyrim's guild what has that feature! Why didn't gave similar stuff to others?
Oi, and about the radiant quests! I personally not against 'em, but only if devs use them in the right way, and by the right way i mean - optional filler-quests, which exist only to give you an ability to gain more XP by using the skills that you need to upgrade in order to get promoted.
These are great, I agree with you! Radiant quests are a bummer, they really leaned into them for Skyrim which was lame. You should do a main quest comparison, oblivion’s for the most part blows Skyrim’s out of the water. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you like and don’t like from both.
I actually like the characters in the Skyrim factions. The college has the various master teachers who are all eccentric in their own way, that one apprentice that keeps botching her experiments on you, the overly cocky Khajiit that gives you terrible scrolls and Arniel, as you mentioned. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood have a lot of memorable characters too. The Companions less so, but I can still remember all of them at least. I think Bethesda were trying to go with a "quality over quantity" approach with the factions.
That said, the extreme brevity of the quest lines completely undermines and contradicts those goals. You simply don't have time to get attached to the characters as much as you should. There's absolutely no sense of progression - you join a faction and 5 quests later, you're the leader. There's no even actual faction rankings. It was so cool in previous TES games where you would see your guild mates address you by your rank, and you can open your journal and see where you stand with each faction.
Oblivion had already greatly trimmed down the factions coming off Morrowind. Imo, this was necessary. Morrowind had a ton of factions, with each averaging somewhere between 20 and 30 quests, but most of those were fetch quests, and there were little to no overarching stories across the faction quest lines. I still remember my disappointment the first time I became Archmagister of House Telvanni: I had expected some big, intricate quest to overthrow a corrupt leader or something, only to find that you'd just kill him and usurp his title with zero reason or provocation when you got to a high enough rank. With Oblivion, you had less overall factions (about half as many as Morrowind) and slightly less quests for each faction, BUT the quality of the quests went up immensely, the characters became more unique and memorable and every faction questline had its own overarching story. It was a delicate balance that definitely needed work (there really should have at least been an imperial cult and legion factions) but Bethesda massively over-corrected with Skyrim and ultimately created factions which were, in every way, inferior to those of both Oblivion and Morrowind. I still do think the non-faction side quests of Skyrim are the best of any TES game, the daedric quests being especially memorable, but there's no denying how disappointing the factions were.
"Payday! Let's roll" is more iconic than anything in the Companions
One thing I liked about Oblivion Dark Brotherhood is that you have to consciously kill an NPC for them to contact you. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you could complete almost all the quests in the game and not even trigger Lucien's visit.
In Skyrim they hand you a quest that starts the faction questline, and it's to kill a character most people would find reprehensible to begin with. It felt like they took out some of the "evilness" out of becoming an assassin cultist.
The last line of the video took me aback; I at first perceived a very insulting comma... 😆
This is something I've been saying for years. The guild questlines in Skyrim were one of the weakest aspects of the game. Not only are the quests collectively just inferior in regards to story, rewards and progression but their more difficult to roleplay in because 3 of them effectively just makes you the unwitting pawn of a Daedric Prince who has your soul.
College of Winterhold was the worst offender. They start off with a huge hook to reel you in and get you invested... and then almost nothing happens with the Eye of Magnus and the mcguffin mages just takes it away cause evil elf did evil elf things with it. All of that with just cheap quests and really generic rewards when you compare it to Oblivion where it opens up a whole new part of the game for you to explore and play around with and frankly, it just has a more engaging storyline.
If you do not have the unofficial patch when you turn in the necro amulet IF you have it equipped the effects become permanent in your spell sheet. This works on any item with enchants that are removed from you via scripts. Going to jail or the Sanguine nude quest can trigger it too. Its a very hard to notice bug but most mage playthroughs end up with perma necro enchants without even noticing.
I would really like to see you do daedric quests comparison, because thats one thing skyrim actually tops oblivion on a few occasions
“They’re garbage!” Never a truer word spoken about the “Fighter’s Guild” quests in Skyrim. Why did the guild disappear in Skyrim? Not good writing in my opinion.
And it forces you to be a werewolf too, I only ever do their quests so I can abuse the follower/trainer thing
@@youngmonkey2504I forgot about that. Good point.
I didn't even mention that part in the video because I didn't want to devolve into a rant about that and nothing else for 20 minutes. I was so sad my first playthrough when I realized I had to become a werewolf to continue
skyrims companions is so bad its like imagine being a fighters guild apprentice that did one quest and then the next quest modyrn is already asking you to take down the blackwood company. Thats basically what skyrims companions is its so lazy and uninspired, no build of anything you just do one quest and then you're already asked to become a werewolf and a few quests after you're already the head of it. Garbage game I hate skyrim the so called "guilds" in it are one aspect of why I hate it so much.
Especially given the lore of the companions - Original founders of Skyrim..... now they need a nearly random person (the dragonborn, sure, but did that really come up?) to save them. And there's like, five of them? At least the fighters guild had bench strength. So lame.
I will say that I like that the Skyrim Thieves guild radiant quests contribute to rebuilding the thieves guild, unlike the other faction radiant quests which are pointless.
Real quick, you can skip the CoW tour if you just go straight to Tolfdir to do the ward thing.
I'm one of those that prefers the option to kill the DB rather that play it. I install a mod for Oblivion to be able to do that. In fact the mod that does that for Oblivion is kinda cool, much better than the vanilla Skyrim option to do that.
The DB is the first Pagliarulo betrayal to the lore, no matter how cool the quests are for Oblivion (and I don't think they are that good tbh) he completely butchered the original DB lore as it was intended when they added it in Tribunal, and it bastardizes the concept of Sithis as it was originally thought out for Morrowind lore. It's almost a cartoon of what could have been if the original writers were they ones in charge, instead of the clowns Todd and Emil.
I never done Skyrim's DB and Companions quests, and I only done DB for Oblivion once in my original first character and never again... Lucien dies in all my playthroughs, if he shows up (because I made a mistake and killed something that I wasn't supposed to!)
EDIT: I should have said, to be fair: the Oblivion DB's quests at least are more passable, because the people you kill are arguably bad people that needs to be dealt with somehow. Skyrim's ones are outright bad. I mean, who in its right mind, in the situation Skyrim's is in, will wanna go a kill the Emperor, no matter how bad an emperor he is, it's still the only thing keeping everything together for the moment.
I agree with you in some places, and disagree in others, but I mostly want to push back on a small portion of your criticism of the College of Winterhold questline. I'm *not* going to defend the plotting, because it's a mess, but specifically I think that its small cast is actually a benefit for the kind of story it's trying to tell. The College, and Winterhold in general, is introduced as being in a state of decline. The Mages' Guild is at its peak in Oblivion when you join, so it having a whole bunch of members (including the generic NPCs) really is of benefit there, but it would be just the opposite for the College.
Okay that's all, bye, love your work.
Oblivion is GOATED in most things for sure. Especially it's Guilds. Though I was always let down by the reward for doing the thieves guild. 😅
Narfi is a very interesting character
I agree, the twist with the traitor in oblivion for dark brotherhood is way better than the skyrim one. Not to mention a lot of other cool things :3
It’s also just a long quest chain with interesting variability. My warrior kicks the door down and kills everyone, while a stealthy character is hiding in a crate, sneaking around, dropping a trophy on a guys head, etc.
Even small choices like choosing to kill or spare the argonian make a difference. It doesn’t feel like a big deal, but having lots of little choices adds up to a more complete Roleplay experience
the comparison with morrowind is totally valid. morrowind and oblivion had greater emphasis on the roleplaying aspect, but oblivions quests required more time to make as the game was larger and had voice acting, skyrims quests were not any more complex as far as I can tell than obkivions it is simply a matter of the devs trying to remove the roleplaying aspect and put the player into the specific shoes of a nord companion becoming a werewolf because the game had to find a way to add werewolves and they for some reason couldn't find any other way, it would be like if oblivion made the entire dark brotherhood questline about becoming a vampire and how some people in the brotherhood reject their vampirism. being a member of the companions should be about going out and helping citzens of skyrim manage affairs for a fee which we really saw none of in skyrim.
Oblivion Mages Guild does a really good job making all the different guild halls unique and interesting, but has a kind of lackluster main story line (well the concept is cool but the execution is lacking). Fighters Guild has a really fantastic main story line, but does not develop the guild halls nearly enough. Even Burz gro-Khash and Azzan I feel like I know less about than any of the Mages Guild hall leaders despite spending a lot more quests with them.
I was dissatisfied with my first skyrim playthrough.
Every faction followed the same progression. Do a few quests till you become the unofficial leader. do two more quests to become the leader officially (usually after a betrayal) your reward? a bedroom and a radiant go to x location and kill x amount of thing
In oblivion they really wanted to show off their radiant AI and alot of thought went into the quests to show it off.
In skyrim they just kinda phoned it in. And got lazy. They focused on the world design and presentation; while everything else suffered.
As for morrrowind not holding up. Guild design wise i'd have to disagree. There was alot of nuance in the factions with subfactions having their own goals. Like the fighters guild being subverted into being thugs for the comona tong. The old leadership wanting to be independent from them. Or the leader of the mages guild having a vendetta against the telvanni that other mages dont want.
That kinda in-house politicing is ageless. And we could use more of that tbh.
I also liked that you had to actually improve attributes and skills related to the faction to attain higher rank.
Oblivion definitely has stronger factions than a lot of the other games, in no small part as you mention because they feel like institutions throughout the land rather than just one place. I love the mage's guild recommendation quests since they feel the most like an actual faction and not just a quest chain. I agree that the Thieves Guild is the best made faction in Skyrim as well, but I actually disagree on the radiant quests. I like having a guild that makes you feel like you actually have a job in the guild and are doing work, and I like that they lead to something. The Companions suck because there's no point to the jobs, but the Thieves Guild unlocks new stores in the Ratway and gets you fences in other holds so it actually feels like the guild has a presence across the whole province.
I disagree on memorable names, but that's mostly down to Oblivion having names that are generic sounding in general and not an actual true issue with the game.
What Skyrim needed for its faction system was to lean into the themes of a province at war with itself and have each faction have two different options to join. The Companions needed to let you actually join the Silver Hand and go to war as a monster hunter. The College of Winterhold should have let you join up with the Mage's Guild and take over the College yourself. The Dark Brotherhood needed to have the destroy the dark brotherhood quest fleshed out and let you join the Penitus Oculatus as like a CIA agent to hunt down the guild. Thieves guild should let you join the Riften guard as an undercover agent to take down the Thieves Guild from within.
The point of destroying the Dark Brotherhood and why I mention this is that it's a roleplaying game, and it feels weird to only have the option when playing a good character or a character that wouldn't join a guild be forced into it (this is an issue in Skyrim as well but not older titles). Frankly I think as soon as you complete one guild's main quest, if it lets you be the leader, it should lock you out of leading any other guild since that sort of consolidation of power makes zero sense. I'd especially like it to bring back skill requirements and make them larger if you are in opposed factions since I feel like mages would be even more picky if a rough and tumble fighter tried to join and vice versa if a frail mage tried to join the fighter's guild. Basically, factions are best when they feel like an actual presence in the game world and not just a contrived chain of quests.
I think a radiant quest system like in Daggerfall can really work wonders but isn't developed because people act like it's a dirty word. For example, there's a temple faction quest you can get where a little girl is possessed by a Daedra and you need to exorcise it. The thing is though, this is not always an actual possession, and sometimes the kid is faking it. You have to meet the kid to figure out if it is real, talk to experts about Daedra to see if it seems legit, get a holy relic to actually exorcise the kid if it is real or prove it isn't. If it is real, you have to fight a powerful Daedra after expelling it from the kid, and if it is faked the kid and their guardian steal your holy item and you have to track them down to get it back. It's a genuinely engaging quest each time because it takes you to new places and can play out notably differently, rather than just being a generic "go kill a bear in this cave." If you expanded on this framework you could have similar quests that actually are interesting each time. The other benefit is they are how you advance in the guild and earn the higher-level services but also your guild reputation goes down over time if you don't do work for them so they help build the immersion of actually being a guild member instead of it just being something lip service is paid to.
Oblivion > skyrim ( the game just survive this long thanks to the mod community. Otherwise, the game is boring n blank)
Periodt
Full stop
End of story
Why did you end the video by calling me that... I thought we were friends 😢
Skyrim suffered so much because the radiant quest system took the place of the filler quests that oblivion had. A single filler quest in an oblivion guild was more enjoyable and had more soul than all the radiant quests in Skyrim combined.
Imagine Morrowind with voice acting, NPCs with daily schedules and improved UI?
That would be a killer game. Sadly, there are no devs currently on the market who are willing or able to do something like this.
The Skywind mod is being made
@cyberninjazero5659 that is still just a mod for Skyrim, at the end of the day.
Hell yeah. My type of video.
My man just casually said that Morrowind doesn't hold up today,you really do live on the edge hu?
the hate fuels me
I like your movies but on this issue I kinda disagree with you. I get it that you like to use your spreadsheets and if I remember correctly you are a mathteacher right so you probably like to compare the numbers in a game like the amount of quests and NPCs are present in a certain faction, however it is more then a numbergame if you want to compare certain factions of totally diffrent games. Since you had your essay long version of your analyses on this matter I would like to give you my take on this matter as well, which might be just as long.
Like you said it is all very subjective so my point of view will be so as well, that said I would like to add that factionwise Morrowind was probably the best game out of the three games Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Also I think it is good to add Morrowind into the discussion so you have more to work with when comparing these games. In my opinion Morrowind had it all factionwise and some aspects of it were put into Oblivion and some others into Skyrim.
You see what Morrowind did very well was creating an atmosphere of factions being at odds with eachother and you could actually join a certain faction which made other factions unjoinable like for example the Great Houses which were really at odds with eachother and you were not supposed to join another Great House once you joined another one already. This is something Skyrim did actually better then Oblivion, for example with the Stormcloaks and Imperial Legion, you can only join one and not both and once you join one you will be fighting the opposing army eventually. Reminds me that Oblivon didn't even have the Imperial Legion as a joinable faction which was a missed oppertunity in my opinion. Anyway, I guess what is really missing in Oblivion is a sense of any political or military rivalry or conflict which make a game interesting roleplaying wise. In Morrowind there were a lot of these things like the skirmishes between the Thieves Guild and the Camonna Tong, The Great Houses, House Telvanni and the Mages Guild, House Telvanni and the Twin Lamps etc. The skirmishes in Oblivion felt really shallow and superficial to me. Every Guild had enemy or opposing faction X and once that was dealt with then that was that. There was no open end or continuation of conflict once the problem was solved. In the Thieves Guild once the curse of the Gray Fox is lifted you are done, in the Mages Guild once Mannimarco is dealt with you are done with the Mages Guild and with the Fighters Guild once you have dealt with the Blackwood Company there is not much to it anymore as well. I don't sense any continuation of political or military challenges anymore after that while in Skyrim after the civil war there will still be either Imperials or Stormcloaks roaming around and if you took the Imperial side the Thalmor will still be there as well, with the Dark Bortherhood if you kill the Emperor it will have a lot of consequences like who will be Emperor next and will the new Emperor still uphold the deal with the Thalmor etc. This is something which made Oblivion feel kinda empty once you are done with all the quests because you are just the boss of every main faction and you eliminated all your competition or threats to your factions.
I also don't agree that the Companions, Dark Bortherhood or Thieves Guild are uninteresting just because they have less NPCs or quests. There are a lot of smaller quests which give more background to these characters, for example there is a small quests which is related to Sapphire to bring a letter from her father Glover in Raven Rock which is an example of giving more background to the characters in the faction. I agree that the Dark Borhterhood quests in Oblivion were better and fun but the one in Skyrim and its questline and NPCs were still pretty interesting.
I am not saying Skyrim is perfect and I think the problem with Skyrim is that it skipped a lot of roleplaying aspects and was made too easy for the younger audience of players and was dumbed down quite a lot compared to the games before it but I think storywise Skyrim is probably a better game then Oblivion and thus also with the factions. I agree that some of the quests in Oblivion were a lot of fun but, and this may just be my modest opinion but I never really felt it with Oblivion.
There was actually a skipped questline in Oblivion in which the player would be able to become the new Duke of Kvatch and get to learn the Elder Council but it was skipped for some reason. This is very unfortunate because it would give a lot of knowledge of who all the members in the Elder Council are except for Ocato and what their political, activies, schemes and interests etc are. I think this is a missed oppertunity to really create an atmosphere of polical strive in Oblivion like they did with Morrowind and its Great Houses.
I think what I am basically missing is political opposition in Oblivion, except for the Mythic Dawn and some other evil cults or minor characters everybody is basically in line with the Empire and everybody supports it. You got the Counts of Leyawiin and Bravil complaining about Ocato etc but nothing really happens and they only leave the Empire after the events of Oblivion so in the game itself nothing really happens, another missed oppertunity. Also the Counts themselves don't really have anyone trying to kill them or take their place like what happens in Skyrim when you can kick out a jarl and get him replaced by another jarl who is more Stormcloak/ Imperial Legion aligned. This would have made Oblivion much more interesting.
So yea in conclussion, I guess you got the numbers on your side but there is more to a faction then its amount of quests or NPCs. I could debate you on each seperate faction and its NPCs and why I still think the ones in Skyrim are still a bit more interesting but I think my reply has been quite long already so I leave it at this.
Anyway, again nice movies so keep it up!
Fighters guild is meh. It's better, than companions, but nothing to write home about honestly. But yeah, it's definately better than Companions slop.
Mages guild: I kinda liked recomendation quests in Oblivion. Made me feel like mages guild is, well, an actual guild - starting small, learning basic things, using what you've learned, while proving yourself worthy of attention of more competent guild members. Even though I don't like that you become archmage in the end, but at least in Oblivion path to that rank feels more organic. Shame that you have to do it to acces enchanting in base game... They could've kept Morrowind's enchanting sevices mechanic for both Oblivion and Skyrim (even if it feels redundant sometimes).
Oblivion thieves guild had interesting start: figuring out how to contact them and such, but overall it's quest line feels like it's not a guild of cutthroats stealing for wealth and for the sake of stealing, but goody-two-shoes robin hood alikes. In Skyrim TG feels more like a bunch of cutthroats doing all kinds of dirty jobs for money... Up until they shove Nocturnal bs down your throat.
Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion is a mixed bag. On one hand you have quests like "whodunit" or "permanent retirement", also we have some optional objectives for every quest (like using mounted head rather than weapon or magic), but on the other hand you don't have much agency as a player in the second half, when you read drop-boxed notes and notice how writing is not the same. Like seriously: a member of the hand, who magickaly knows your position if you mrder some innocent bystander, doesn't have any way to contact his personal silencer? Whole second half of DB questline is just plainly dumb, and Skyrim's DB followed same line... well, at least they gave you option to deal with them for good.
One of the things I also liked about Oblivion - master level trainers quest. Not all of them good, but it gives flavour and immersion: PC proves that he's worthy of trainer's time.
What’s your opinion on drugs?
How dare you call a 23 year old game old, I was 2 when Morrowind came out
I played oblivion first on 12 fps with pink lava and got super into it. Played skyrim next and while even as a child 14 playing skyrim for the first time I couldn't help but think how weak the thiefs guild and dark brotherhood really were story wise as well as how weak the companions story lines was. The companions stands out as the worst and the thiefs the best. The mages guild is just highly forgetabble with how bad they made magic in skyrim. (Except enchanting). I would argue if the thief questline actually focused more on being a thief it'd actually have been better in skyrim and a way better communion with nocturnal. Every other faction stormcucks, imperials, companions, dark brotherhood, mages guild. all incredibly weak and generic/shit.
I always wipe out the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim.
For one, it’s quick cash.
The Dark Brotherhood is so bad in Skyrim is just so lame compared to Oblivion
i just did all the factions in skyrim once again for the achievements and they sucked. like they got no soul. no fun quests. while oblivion actually put work into their quests
The oblivion dark brotherhood is peak elder scrolls.
Did you if you have Risen flesh or Defeated Manimarco before 3 days after deafeating Cariliah she can repsanwn infinite Necromancer amulets( I tested it on console it works)