Ugh, all these DLCs couldn't really be any less interesting, and that's not really because of their content. I just don't have any motivation to ever touch the game again because I feel I've seen everything it has to offer. In this regard it might actually be a worse game than Oblivion.
I actually had two walkthroughs of Oblivion, although I didn't fully complete any big quest line more than once. My first playthrough was only with an UI mod or something so I pretty much got the pure Oblivion experience. My character was an Imperial Spellsword that spent most of his time stabbing monsters in some lame-ass dungeon somewhere in Cyrodiil. At some point it became sort of painful, but I did manage to complete the main quest and all of the guilds except for the Mages Guild which completely sucked ass. One beautiful day I uninstalled the game in rage because of the Bosmer voice actor and swore never to touch it again.
My second playthrough was a couple of years later with OOO and a bunch other mods, probably because I had heard that mods could actually fix the thing. I can't remember my character's class (probably a custom one) but basically he was a Dunmer thief who also practiced mysticism, alchemy and Daedra worship. It was a bit LARPy since I spent something like a dozen hours in the Imperial City just reading books and making potions in my room at the cheapest inn, robbing rich people's houses at night, fighting in the arena, making money by selling herbs, stalking and murdering people with bad voice actors (meaning anyone and everyone, I guess, but especially Bosmers) and working for the Thieves Guild before doing any kind of actual dungeon crawling, but it also was the most fun I had with the game and made me forgive or at least forget a lot of the stupid things in the game. There really was a lot of stuff to do in the game even when you completely ignored tons of content, even if it wasn't exactly Morrowind in that regard. Eventually I got completely fed up, uninstalled the game in rage for the second time and swore never to touch it again, but after Skyrim I may have to give Oblivion a bit more credit than I initially did.
There's just nothing in Skyrim besides dungeon crawling, not a single reason to start up the game again and try a different character. All the guilds are the same and short as hell, there are no interesting locations in the cities (like the Ayleid artifact collector's house in the Imperial City), and the total lack of interesting spells means that I have no interest in trying out a mage character after already mastering swords and stealth with my previous character. As a game Skyrim is much better than Oblivion and nowhere near as offensive, no doubt about it, but it's just so stripped-down, bland and repetitive that playing it feels like a chore now. Oblivion is pretty much an abomination from Hell but among all the shit there's still a bunch of redeeming features that Skyrim unfortunately lacks.
I actually had two walkthroughs of Oblivion, although I didn't fully complete any big quest line more than once. My first playthrough was only with an UI mod or something so I pretty much got the pure Oblivion experience. My character was an Imperial Spellsword that spent most of his time stabbing monsters in some lame-ass dungeon somewhere in Cyrodiil. At some point it became sort of painful, but I did manage to complete the main quest and all of the guilds except for the Mages Guild which completely sucked ass. One beautiful day I uninstalled the game in rage because of the Bosmer voice actor and swore never to touch it again.
My second playthrough was a couple of years later with OOO and a bunch other mods, probably because I had heard that mods could actually fix the thing. I can't remember my character's class (probably a custom one) but basically he was a Dunmer thief who also practiced mysticism, alchemy and Daedra worship. It was a bit LARPy since I spent something like a dozen hours in the Imperial City just reading books and making potions in my room at the cheapest inn, robbing rich people's houses at night, fighting in the arena, making money by selling herbs, stalking and murdering people with bad voice actors (meaning anyone and everyone, I guess, but especially Bosmers) and working for the Thieves Guild before doing any kind of actual dungeon crawling, but it also was the most fun I had with the game and made me forgive or at least forget a lot of the stupid things in the game. There really was a lot of stuff to do in the game even when you completely ignored tons of content, even if it wasn't exactly Morrowind in that regard. Eventually I got completely fed up, uninstalled the game in rage for the second time and swore never to touch it again, but after Skyrim I may have to give Oblivion a bit more credit than I initially did.
There's just nothing in Skyrim besides dungeon crawling, not a single reason to start up the game again and try a different character. All the guilds are the same and short as hell, there are no interesting locations in the cities (like the Ayleid artifact collector's house in the Imperial City), and the total lack of interesting spells means that I have no interest in trying out a mage character after already mastering swords and stealth with my previous character. As a game Skyrim is much better than Oblivion and nowhere near as offensive, no doubt about it, but it's just so stripped-down, bland and repetitive that playing it feels like a chore now. Oblivion is pretty much an abomination from Hell but among all the shit there's still a bunch of redeeming features that Skyrim unfortunately lacks.
