Oh god hahaha. That diagram just makes me laugh i mean like come on.
And sorry Esperahol but you must not have fully experienced Oblivion. The creativity was everywhere and what would seem like a normal little quest could turn into something crazy and mystical. Skyrim was just boring and obvious. Go in a cave, kill stuff, get loot and a shout, then leave. There was never anything unique about the caves (Pretty sad that there wasnt considering the map was made of nothing but caves) and if there was, it wasnt anything that would take you by surprise itd just be more of a "Oh there are glowing mushrooms all around this cave thats cool" Where i remember one place in Oblivion you enter a shack or fort of some sort, and when you go in the basement its just nothing but blackness and narrow walkways and it would totally take you by surprise. Skyrim was just a really generic feeling RPG with nothing unique but the fun spells (that got pretty repetitive after a couple playthroughs) and the dragon shouts that were a great feature.
Dude I logged in over 140 hours into Oblivion before I even got the DLC - then I logged in another 85 hours so I'm pretty sure I get a lot of experience from Oblivion. However, I've easily done twice as much time with Skyrim and that's not taking in account Hearthfire and Dawn Guard. I mean having explored a lot and completed an ungodly amount of "randomly" generated quests I can honestly say that the caves can get complicated, and that there was more than caves. I can also say that all of Oblivion was caves, and they got really boring/annoying, really fast.
I don't know... many I mean I can think of at least four "caves" off the where things got very interesting with snipers and hideously overpowered enemies and that one time something kept stealing my health... and vampires. What can I say? I like entering a place that can quickly lead to me being outside or wandering in an ice cave or trapping in the suffocating darkness of a booby-trapped Dwarfen hellhole. Whereas Oblivion was just the same dungeon over and over again with the same five monsters and having to hit switches. Its the same thing with quests - Oblivion seemed to be mostly fetch quests without much depth to them. However, Skyrim quests usually had multiple parts if they were part of a storyline, and/or were very "intensive" if they were a one off. They also had more interesting set-ups or surprises.
I wasn't expecting to meet characters I'd been reading about since forever (Potema The Wolf Queen, Mad Pelgius) or to kick it with a talking Dragon (or six) or to have what seems like a simple case turn out to be something to do with the Princes (the Haunted House, the Whispering Door, etc). Skyrim felt like a generic RPG to you, but for me it was a great example of how to improve on previous work. The skill trees were a fascinating idea, having actual separate environments with their own effects, the variety of creatures (werewolves, vampires, hag-whatevers, dragons, giants, mechanical whatamacallits, trolls, the horror story that is the Fawen) and the fact there is actual wildlife (rabbits, wolves, deer, hawks (stupid hard to hit hawks)) besides the issue of ghosts and zombies is just... it's better. Besides which the major quest lines actually felt meaningful, and the minor quests were just really interesting.
(In Skyrim when i saw him i was very let down :/ ) I feel like the fact that Oblivion wasnt made of nothing but caves like Skyrim is has something to say though. I just cant stand how many caves there are in Skyrim. I mean you can probably go from cave to cave just by using your compass without ever not seeing a cave lol
