So my sister has been playing a lot of Oblivion latetly and I've recently read that they're selling Oblivion for really cheap on Steam. So I've been hearing a lot about how great it is and I decided that I would give it one more chance. After all, I loved Fallout and isn't Fallout just Oblivion with guns? So I loaded up the game and played for 2 hours, and remembered all of the reasons that I hated it. I know that most of you who read this won't agree with me (One of the best rated games of all time) but I feel that I just need to express this.
  Here's the main reason why I hate Oblivion; everything is the same. Every mine looks the same, every cave looks the same, every sewer looks the same, every guard is the same, you can tell that they used some voices for hundreds of characters, etc. The big thing that everyone loves about Oblivion is that there's so much to do, boasting 200+ hours of game-play. But 200 hours in Oblivion is just repeating the same 20 hours over and over. Sure it's expansive, but like I said, everything looks the same. Sure there are lots of quests, but how many of those are just "go into this cave and kill everything inside and/or retrieve this item". Sure there are lots of cities but most of them feel the same and there's not a whole lot to do. Hearing the same set of dialouge spoken by 30 characters doesn't help also. Fallout 3 had more variety. It was smaller than Oblivion, sure; but at least it was more entertaining. The greater variety of missions and gameplay types helped keep me entertained until the end of the game. And then I just wanted to go back and do it again. Unlike Oblivion.
  The combat just isn't satisfying also. To quote an article from cracked.com, "Sword-fighting games like Oblivion are worse. You can slash the bad guy in the face with your blade and it does nothing. The enemy looks perfectly normal until he finally falls over dead, as if he had a heart attack from the excitement." I at least enjoyed the combat in Fallout 3 due to the VATS system, awesome weapons, and gory effects. Maybe I'm missing some of it because I never used spells in Oblivion, but if this game was really great, they should make combat enjoyable no matter what weapon you choose.
  I like RPGs, mostly because I like to see how my character progresses. Fallout 3 was awesome this way; do evil stuff then Three Dog will hate you and mercenaries will try and kill you. Do good stuff and other good characters will notice. Oblivion sucks this way. The most you will get in interacting with NPCs is that they's sometimes recognize you as the "Hero of Kavatch" or "The Grand Champion". But I also want to see progression in the way of skills. I thought that Fallout 3 did an excellent job with the perk system and how you gain levels through experience points. Once again, Oblivion failed me. It takes way too long to raise your skills up high enough (especially if you made the mistake of making one of your primary skills athletics or acrobatics). I never really felt like I was progressing that much in Oblivion, which is supposed to be the whole point in RPGs.
  In the end, Oblivion just wasn't entertaining. I didn't have fun with combat, missions, character progression, or really anything in the game. I have no idea why it has a 94 on MetaCritic, making it the 5th best game on Xbox 360. If I missed something in Oblivion that would've made it better (or worse) feel free to say it. Thanks.
Edit: Just remembered, both games' soundtrack annoys me. Listening to the same 5 songs for 20 hours drove me insane.

  So my sister has been playing a lot of Oblivion latetly and I've recently read that they're selling Oblivion for really cheap on Steam. So I've been hearing a lot about how great it is and I decided that I would give it one more chance. After all, I loved Fallout and isn't Fallout just Oblivion with guns? So I loaded up the game and played for 2 hours, and remembered all of the reasons that I hated it. I know that most of you who read this won't agree with me (One of the best rated games of all time) but I feel that I just need to express this.
  Here's the main reason why I hate Oblivion; everything is the same. Every mine looks the same, every cave looks the same, every sewer looks the same, every guard is the same, you can tell that they used some voices for hundreds of characters, etc. The big thing that everyone loves about Oblivion is that there's so much to do, boasting 200+ hours of game-play. But 200 hours in Oblivion is just repeating the same 20 hours over and over. Sure it's expansive, but like I said, everything looks the same. Sure there are lots of quests, but how many of those are just "go into this cave and kill everything inside and/or retrieve this item". Sure there are lots of cities but most of them feel the same and there's not a whole lot to do. Hearing the same set of dialouge spoken by 30 characters doesn't help also. Fallout 3 had more variety. It was smaller than Oblivion, sure; but at least it was more entertaining. The greater variety of missions and gameplay types helped keep me entertained until the end of the game. And then I just wanted to go back and do it again. Unlike Oblivion.
  The combat just isn't satisfying also. To quote an article from cracked.com, "Sword-fighting games like Oblivion are worse. You can slash the bad guy in the face with your blade and it does nothing. The enemy looks perfectly normal until he finally falls over dead, as if he had a heart attack from the excitement." I at least enjoyed the combat in Fallout 3 due to the VATS system, awesome weapons, and gory effects. Maybe I'm missing some of it because I never used spells in Oblivion, but if this game was really great, they should make combat enjoyable no matter what weapon you choose.
  I like RPGs, mostly because I like to see how my character progresses. Fallout 3 was awesome this way; do evil stuff then Three Dog will hate you and mercenaries will try and kill you. Do good stuff and other good characters will notice. Oblivion sucks this way. The most you will get in interacting with NPCs is that they's sometimes recognize you as the "Hero of Kavatch" or "The Grand Champion". But I also want to see progression in the way of skills. I thought that Fallout 3 did an excellent job with the perk system and how you gain levels through experience points. Once again, Oblivion failed me. It takes way too long to raise your skills up high enough (especially if you made the mistake of making one of your primary skills athletics or acrobatics). I never really felt like I was progressing that much in Oblivion, which is supposed to be the whole point in RPGs.
  In the end, Oblivion just wasn't entertaining. I didn't have fun with combat, missions, character progression, or really anything in the game. I have no idea why it has a 94 on MetaCritic, making it the 5th best game on Xbox 360. If I missed something in Oblivion that would've made it better (or worse) feel free to say it. Thanks.
Edit: Just remembered, both games' soundtrack annoys me. Listening to the same 5 songs for 20 hours drove me insane.

Firstly, wall of text.

Secondly, Oblivion obviously doesn't float your boat, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

Thirdly, mod the living shit out of it to fix all the problems you have with it and enhance every aspect of the game.

Man, me mentioning the fact that I'm not a fan of Oblivion today just brought them all out of the woodworks, eh?  lol

I never felt like I was repeating the same stuff over and over again personally. The only thing repetitious that I didnt like was going into Oblivion gates (in fact I stopped playing the main quest because I couldent bear to enter one again) but apart from that I loved the world, though less inventive than morrowind, it felt so diffrent city to city from the architecture to how Xenophobic some of the towns people can be lol 

I can agree that it dosent feel like you have that much impact on the world though for example you could go around and murder and entire town and then pay the gold fee to the gaurds and suddently everyone likes you again. And im supposed to be the hero of Kvatch (which never seems to get repaired which is annoying), the Grand Champion, the Master of the Theives guild, the listener for the Dark Brotherhood and so many other things but hardly anyone mentions it to me. It would be nice if one time a shop keeper said "Hey its the Grand Champion in my little shop" and then gave me a discount or even a simple little dialouge.

I still love the game though, no game has hooked me in the same way. Ive played hundreds of hours and theres content there for more and ive got the hunger for more. Even if im not in the mood for combat I still love to walk about the diffrent towns but in Fallout 3 that was lost for me, I did it a little but I found the towns to be more empty and depressing than Oblivions's. Though Fallout 3 is still so much fun, Oblviion for me is the king.

I agree with you. Plus there are many other reasons why I don't like Oblivion, but I don't think I'm going to name any of them in too much detail. I do hate how the game is pretty much unplayable if you attempt to be a bad guy from the start. The funny thing is I always play as a really good, perfect guy the first time through, and then play as a bad guy during my second playthrough. However, in Oblivion, it's ridiculously easy to get in trouble... often times even accidentally. I agree that the areas often seem very similar and lots of times I'm unsure if I'm reentering a cave I've already explored.. until a few minutes later one I'm inside and start to see some familiar places.

I didn't enjoy the combat much, and truthfully, most of the time I felt like I didn't know what I was doing or that perhaps I wasn't doing things the best way possible. Guards are unbelievably annoying, and so are all the people. I don't like talking to anyone in Oblivion, unlike Fallout 3 where I don't want to miss a single branch of dialogue. Every area in Fallout 3 felt unique and interesting to me. No two areas seemed the same at all. I loved just having the opportunity to get to see what would come next in that game.

Fallout 3 takes many of the problems of Oblivion, addresses them, and freshens it up, adding so much more live to the universe. If you ask me, it's easily one of the best games this gen. I find Oblivion to be vastly overrated, repetitive, and for the most part, just totally not fun and annoying. I really didn't expect to like Fallout 3 and didn't think the setting would appeal to me, but man was I wrong. It also helps that Liam Neeson is your dad. How cool is that? That sucked me in right from the get go. What you got on that, Patrick Stewart?

For the most part you hit the nail on the head on every reason that I loved Fallout 3 over Oblivion. The number one problem for me was the combat. I didnt use melee weapons in Fallout at after i had enough ammo to avoid them, and in Oblivion you have almost no choice but to either use melee weapons or magic, which just didnt do it for me. 

Okay, there's a whole lot wrong with this post, but I'm just going to address one of the more glaring oversights:

@JDDrewes said:

"Sure there are lots of quests, but how many of those are just "go into this cave and kill everything inside and/or retrieve this item". Sure there are lots of cities but most of them feel the same and there's not a whole lot to do. Hearing the same set of dialouge spoken by 30 characters doesn't help also."

I completely agree with you. I bought Oblivion on 360, and yeah, I know, inferior to the PC version. But this is the game that's sold to you by Bethesda, unmodded. It's Oblivion. Did this after playing Fallout 3 to death, and I thought, hell more of the same really, I'll probably enjoy it. Wrong. I still enjoy travelling around the massive map, travelling on my own, finding new places. All of this is great, I love exploring a sandbox world. But when it gets to character interaction and quests, I cannot invest any of myself in the game. It's flaws completely destroy the suspension of disbelief that I always have playing Fallout, and doing things for the first time.

I can confirm Ark's statement.

Fallout 3 is better I'll admit, mainly because Fallout 3 is more focused and Oblivion is just kind of do what ever the hell you want which just as personal taste I don't like. I don't want my hand held but I like having more context to what I'm doing. As far as OP saying all the towns and mines and what not all look the same in Oblivion, he seems to forget that playing Fallout is like being in an episode of the Flinstones. You keep walking but the background just loops through, the same expanse of barren wasteland, then the same burned out ruins, then the same subway tunnel, over and over again. Fallout 3 recycles as much or more content then Oblivion does. Its which repetitive world you prefer to keep seeing over and over again thats different. Though in this regard I lean towards Oblivion, Fallout 3 feels empty and void of life so I'd rather walk through the same forest over and over gain because at least its better than walking through the same desert over and over.

Oblivion felt like such a step backwards compared to Morrowind. Sure the combat was a bit better but the world design, art direction, handling of loot, and the levelup system were just poorly done.

The sad part is Fallout 3 is only better than Oblivion in that it managed to fix most of the things that Oblivion screwed up in the first place. Got bored of it after a short time though. While Oblivion has the same caves and ancient temples Fallout 3 has the same ruins & subways. The Battle system in FO3 doesn't hold a candle to part 2's either which for me was the real kicker.

I found the scope alone kind of inconceivable, in that I have this concept that the game is going to be massive but no idea how much so. I'm not sure if anyone else has had this same experience but it put me off the game. Coming from the perspective of someone with pretty limited playtime in this genre it's a really hard game to get into. Perhaps games that employ 'cookie-crumbs' have blotted my ability to deal with a world that says, 'Go do this', and then leaves you to report back.

Fun Fact:  Oblivion came first and the developers learned from the criticism.

Both games have similar problems.  Terrible production values for one.   After being spoiled by GTA4's stellar mo-capped cutscenes, watching a dude stare at me while droning on and on about my mission doesn't cut it anymore.

You're doing it wrong.  even if it is the same 20 hours, those first 20 hours are well worth it!  Also, everything looks the same?  You answered your freaking criticism after, you h ave fields, farms, forests, snowy mountains, caves, mines, sewers, dungeons.  As for the voices, yeah, they fixed that with Fallout.  But hey, at least the landscape in oblivion is more varied than the wasteland, but thats what you get when you blow the shit out of a place with nukes.

I'll give you Oblivion's leveling system.  The primary/secondary skill thing was unbelievably stupid.

On the flipside, Oblivion's maps are way better than Fallout 3's blurry green map.  The interior caves were so easy to navigate in Oblivion, but forget it in Fallout.  I fucking hate it when you're in a 5-story structure, and the map only shows a top-down view of the whole thing, it's worthless.

Oblivion was definately a better game, but I still loved Fallout 3.