I agree that skyrim has gotten a bit stale comparitively quickly. I clocked well over 400 hours on oblivion and left it with still plenty to do, but i'm now pretty bored with skyrim after 'only' 200 hours. I'm not exactly an Elder Scrolls veteran (oblivion was my entry point into the series) but there is definately something missing in skyrim that was there in oblivion, and I think there are several problems which can't really be fixed by mods. The first really is the quality of the writing. I don't know about anyone else but I thought the main storyline of Oblivion was much more engaging than Skyrim's. This is mainly down to pacing; in Oblivion the story took all these twists and turns - you start the game, within half an hour (the tutorial was too long, imo) the most important person in the world was dead at your feet. From there your focus changes from finding out what the hell just happened, to finding Martin, to getting the amulet, to rallying all the cities, etc, all with this backdrop of the Mythic Dawn; you really get the feeling they are everywhere and that this is something that has been planned for years. Gates to oblivion have opened everywhere and you can see signs that the empire is starting to collapse. Let's compare this with skyrim: You're about to be executed and OH S#!T A DRAGON! Certainly a better start, but there's no mystery, nothing quite like the insidious threat of the MD. And the plot never really budges from there: dragons are nasty, kill their boss. That's it. And it's the same with the factions; they start out seemingly more interesting but they're over as soon as they've begun. The fighters guild in Oblivion has about 20 individual quests. The Companions have ten (as far as i'm concerned radiant quests don't count unless there's a legitamate reason to do them besides money). Every major faction you join in oblivion makes you do some 'business as usual' quests in order to give you a sense of belonging to that faction and the main faction quest is only revealed after a certain level of advancement. Again, the companions let you into their elite circle of leaders after about three missions. I think that Bethesda spent too much time on shiny new graphics, needless gameplay alterations and limitations, and ruining the interface (which is easily fixed with SkyUI) and as a result the depth and quality of writing that I at least have come to expect from their games was neglected as a result. So while the gameplay might be slightly better there's nothing to make me want to keep playing it. This is the same problem I had with New Vegas from Fallout 3. The gameplay was better but the writing just wasn't up to scratch. I'll probably leave Skyrim for half a year or so, wait until the DLC and big mods come out, then maybe start a new game when there's more to keep me interested
