There was not a single procedurally generated dungeon in Oblivion but keep repeating that Hines's (who is dumb ololo) crap about "every dungeon in Skyrim is handcrafted" like they weren't in previous Beth games.
Technically true.
Emphasis on "technically".
A simple test:
After having played both games
take a look at pretty much random screenshot of a dungeon or over the shoulder of a person playing.
In Skyrim you'll usually be able to instantly identify the place, in Oblivion, with few exceptions, you'll only be able to tell dungeon's type.
The reason for that is simple - Skyrim dungeons are often kitbashes, feature more organic, non-standard angles between elements as well as other off-grid arrangements (thanks to masking components covering the seams and intersections) and generally less cookie-cutter approach. In this regard they allowed a good bit of the kind of freeform design that was the norm in the times of BSP based geometry rather than prefabricated 3D tiles.
Oblivion's dungeons, OTOH were generally assembled out of pre-arranged chunks of architecture and clutter, while strictly following tileset identity, grid alignment, even lighting conventions. Basically, other than a small handful of one-shot quest dungeons there are about 5 dungeons in Oblivion, each repeated dozens of times in somewhat rearranged fashion.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Joel.../Skyrims_Modular_Approach_to_Level_Design.php
So yeah, Oblivion's dungeons are handmade - in the same sense as Chinese consumer electronics.
Also Daggerfall's dungeons are (somewhat) randomly generated.
At least in Daggerfall they were smart enough to have a machine put them together for them. Also at least in Daggerfall they were big and actually nonlinear, so while dull as fuck they offered some meaningful gameplay.
Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood quest has almost no dungeons, the Civil War and Thieves quests are relatively light on dungeons as well and the secondary quests of most other factions rarely involve much dungeoning. Skyrim's quests aren't brilliant but they aren't quite as dungeon focused as you make them sound. Also are you truly pretending that 'generic altmer that is supposed to be the uber-Mythical necromancer that somehow frightens everyone despite being totally retarded' and 'hurr- necromancers aren't 100% evil except they are, durr- we all juggle multiple idiot balls' is in any way better than 'mysterious orb of doom is mysterious and various power hungry mages battle for it'. Sure Skyrim ain't Shakespeare but at least the writers started to recognize their limitations and make small improvements here and there (except for the Thieves Guild quest- the Skyrim TG questline is seriously retarded).
It just occurred to me, Skyrim's CoW questline would be almost completely repaired (shortness and pacing aside) just by removing the early Psjjjic appearance.
At the cost of downplaying PSJJJ's near- omniscience and omnipotence (but upping their general competence) you'd have a logical sequence of events where they would be reacting to the appearance of big glowy orb of doom in the CoW, rather than retardedly wasting an opportunity to preempt it.
Neither game has good quest design.
Shit, even Morrowind probably doesn't (though it gave every quest great context in the world).
No TES has well designed individual quests.
The difference is between simplistic ones that can be approached from almost any angle, and rigidly scripted derpcoasters.
Another difference is between combat centric crawls and quests centered around less game'y stuff, but pretty much only Morrowind had any success here - the value of a non-gamey quest is directly proportional to the value and non-gaminess of underlying fluff it relates to (for example information you're to obtain), so the small handful of non gamey quests in OB autofail in this regard.
Strength of Morrowind's quests didn't lie in the quests themselves. It lied in the picture of the world they painted and lack of contrivances.
It also lied in the way the organically interconnected - actually, Beth seemed to try and replicate this sort of structure in Skyrim (quests organically leading into one another) and they desrve some credit for that, especially after the disjointed mess that was oblivion, but having opted for their rigid scripts and unpickable locks it turned out a sordid failure more than a few times - in Morrowind it worked precisely because there were no unpickable locks and tightly scripted questlines to unexpectedly make an entire faction questline a necessary step in an unrelated misc quest.
^ Yeah except I'm not even talking about the shitty back story involved in either game's guild quests. I'm just talking about what you are asked to do. Skyrim goes something like this
- welcome to the guild lets go to a dungeon together and kill everything inside
- wow that's an interesting orb, we need books to decide what to do, where are the books you ask?.... in a dungeon where you have to kill everything
- hey books! hmm not enough information, you should go talk to secret source of knowledge, where is this knowledge you ask?.... in a dungeon where you have to kill everything
- ok we need to find where magic artifacts of power are, how do we find out you ask?....go find a mage in dungeon where you have to kill everything
- hey you're back! stuff has attacked the town go kill 5 orbs of light flying around right outside
- ok time to get magical items to stop this evil, so where is the staff?.... oh I see so you have to go to a dungeon and kill everything do you.... ok
- ok you're back! time to fight the obviously evil elf dude who unexpectedly activated orb of doom
And oblivion's goes:
(in any order)
- go find a proof of 1x ranking guild member evil and retarded and wants to kill you for no reason on behalf of this guild member (proof is just outside the building, 2 min maybe)
- steal an item or cast dispel once (inside the same building, 15s tops)
- steal an item or buy it back
- go to a dungeon and kill everything there, retrieve 1x incompetent moron
- go to a dungeon and kill everything there plus a necromancer, retrieve 1x magical trinket
- fetch an item for one party, optionally steal it back and give it to the other party, order doesn't matter
- go to a middle of a road and kill everything there (1x wild woman)
(ordered)
- go
make yourself a staff just kidding, to a cave (why is it even a cave?) and kill everyone there, retrieve 1x incomplete staff
- ok, that's one is almost decent - the closest OB comes to political matters and fetaures 1x non-evil (or at least non hurrr-evil) vampire.
- go to a dungeon (apply 1x solution that is handed to you to a "puzzle", but since similar details are omitted in your Skyrim's quest description...) and kill everything, retrieve 1x PJ's LoTR ripoff
- go to a dungeon and kill everything (note - you actually don't *have to* kill everything, but save for the Labyrinthian you can bypass combat in CoW quest dungeons too, if you see fit, so let's not have the facts get in our way).
- go to a dungeon and kill everything
- do your 1x vampire acquaintance a favour consisting of going to a dungeon and killing everything (although it allows several solutions and about two different values of everything).
- go to a guildhall and kill everything
(parallel)
- go to a dungeon and kill everything (retrieve 1x ugly helm)
- go to a dungeon and kill everything (the everything may pretend to be friendly at first)
(ordered)
- instruct allies to apply obvious tactics (seriously, why do you even have to manage the tactics if there is only one obvious correct option?) to ambush everything and kill it (put 1x evil retard out of his misery)
- witness an hero, then go to a cave and kill everything.
Do note that your summary also misses CoW quests outside of main questline, which are actually more numerous than the questline ones and arguably more diverse.
On an unrelated note:
I've just learned that Alexander Brandon did some of the VOs for Skyrim.