Dragon Age Origins or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?

I've been playing Dragon Age non-stop for the past couple of months, and I have to say that it's incredible. I never really had a thing for vastly sized RPGs until I started playing this game. I love everything from the story to the characters to the layout - save it being a bit buggy sometimes.

I just recently acquired Oblivion (yeah, I know, I'm late to this party), and I heard a many good things about it.

I'll defiantly be making comparisons to each game as I go a long.

So I just wanna know, ZU. Which one do you perfer overall? Dragon Age or Oblivion?

Please elaborate on your posts.

It's really hard to compare the two. The gameplay styles are totally different.

In terms of lore, I think Oblivion takes the cake, if only for the fact that the TES universe has a ****ton of lore dedicated to it

But, Dragon Age has this spark about it that I can't quite place. Maybe it's all the Tolkien-esque racial attributes (dwarves had huge beards and battle axes, elves were tall and mystical, etc).

The gameplay is worlds apart though. Oblivion's got the first person/third person view, real time fighting, all that jazz. Dragon Age plays like more "traditional" RPGs like Neverwinter Nights (I think. Forgive me if I'm wrong, I've never played NWN).


Both have their merits and flaws, and I still find myself playing both. But I repeat that actually comparing the two probably won't work out too well.


I think I prefer Oblivion though. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's the complete open world aspect. Who knows?

This is, essentially, a "quality or quantity" question.

Dragon Age: Origins takes the cake in terms of quality; the gameplay remains strategic throughout, the dialogue system is wonderfully in-depth, the character development is top notch, and the whole thing is a very polished, cinematic experience. With that said, since it's a more plot-driven game, it isn't jam-packed with content like Bethesda's RPGs are (However, if you're like me, you'll feel driven to play through the game more than once, playing as various characters).

Oblivion, on the other hand, is the "quantity" option. There's a ****load of stuff to do (And near-endless entertainment comes with it if you decide to mod the game); however, the gameplay often devolves in to mindless hacking and slashing, the character development is nonexistant, the character models are ugly, the dialogue system is terrible, dungeon environments quickly grow stale and repetitive, there are bugs everywhere, the lack of voice-acting variety will begin to irritate you, and there is little actual role-playing involved (The odd choice in the progression of a questline here and there doesn't count, neither does the fact that you can completely avoid the main quest and goof off/do sidequests (That isn't role-playing; it's just choosing which content to experience)). With that said, Oblivion isn't a bad game; just a severely flawed game that really is a prime example of quantity over quality.

---------- Post added at 03:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:43 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Red

But, Dragon Age has this spark about it that I can't quite place. Maybe it's all the Tolkien-esque racial attributes (dwarves had huge beards and battle axes, elves were tall and mystical, etc). ?

Most of the elves in Dragon Age: Origins were dirt poor and lived in the slums, treated as second-class citizens. The Forest Elves were more Tolkienesque, yes, but they were far less in count.

I've got Dragon Age for the Xbox and I've gotta say, it's ****ing impossible to play as a class that doesn't dual-wield. Without a mouse to control with, archery and magic are a pain in the ass to control whereas non-dual-wielding melee styles just lack that wonderful DPS.
Oblivion is a sandbox RPG, where you can just aimlessly dick around for hours and love every moment and still discover secrets for months if not years of play. Dragon Age may be better put together and have better characters and story and such but Oblivion's the one I can really sink my teeth into.
Well, it was until I played Fallout 3. And I've been assured New Vegas will similarly ruin Fallout 3 for me.

Dragon Age was meant for the PC. This next installment however I'm not too sure.

Personally I prefer Dragon Age. Oblivion is damn good fun but still too buggy for me. If the game was tighter and combat a little cleaned up Oblivion would be amazing.

Originally Posted by Andross

Most of the elves in Dragon Age: Origins were dirt poor and lived in the slums, treated as second-class citizens. The Forest Elves were more Tolkienesque, yes, but they were far less in count.

Not to mention they were also shorter than humans, rather than about the same height or taller. However, I did feel that Dragon Age did extremely well with Dwarves, both physical features and their lore.

Oblivion is a game with an expansive world and a massive number of quests, monsters, NPCs, locations, etc., but it has very little substance, its RPG systems are very simple, and the game is set up to allow most players to "max out" almost every stat they have. It's a pretty decent sandbox exploration title, but as an RPG it's utter garbage. Doesn't help that the story, dialogue, voice acting, and character animation are all terrible even by 2006 standards.

Dragon Age, meanwhile, is a story-driven game which hearkens back to the Baldur's Gate series. It's got similar tactical combat with an accelerated turn-based system underlying it, but the number of spell options, character classes and specialisations, etc. have been reduced, as has the overall size of the world. I do find that Thedas is more interesting a location than the Forgotten Realms, and compared to Oblivion, it's pretty much no contest (most/all of Oblivion's lore actually comes from Morrowind, before Bethesda lost their decent writers). While I don't think Dragon Age is the height of role-playing, it's certainly a far more focused and driven game than something like Oblivion, which, while huge and utterly expandable using mods, really just comes off as a bunch of technical dick-waving once you realise how half-baked the design is.

I prefer Oblivion because I love its lore. As Red mentioned, there is an enormous wealth of lore to the Elder Scrolls Series and it doesn't feel like a direct ripoff of The Lord of the Rings like Dragon Age does. I liked exploring Cyrodiil so much simply because it's just another bit of Tamriel I get to explore and find out about. Like eribear mentioned though, the writing is god awful and most of the good bits of lore in the game were Morrowind's scraps.

I liked parts of Dragon Age, but I was playing on consoles and I really disliked the controls of the game. The story didn't grab me very well in either game, but as far as design goes I'd have to say Dragon Age is exponentially better than Oblivion. I liked Oblivion's cities because they were each unique and had different feels, but everything else was cut and pasted all over the map. Every Aylied Ruin, Imperial Ruin, Cave and Plane of Oblivion felt more familiar than the last.

A lot of people complain about the voice acting, and while it is bad, I can't help but love it. Since I'm such a huge Elder Scrolls fan, I find the terrible voice acting, ugly faces and laughable dialog funny. It all has some sort of strange, hilarious cuteness to me. Especially the voice of the Imperial race. Those guys sound downright hilarious. Bretons sound like their tongues have been cut out, too. But yeah, just because I'm a fan of the series doesn't mean I don't recognize the game's flaws. I can't understand why they made your enemies level the same way you do, and seeing penniless farmers and roadside bandits carrying Daedric or Ebony weapons completely diminished any thrill of having such a weapon. In Morrowind, when I came across a Daedric dagger I spent the longest time leveling up my short blade so I could use that thing, and I felt like the ultimate badass with it. Now, Daedric weapons look like they're made of rotting flesh pulled over medieval weapons and they're a dime a dozen.

The thing I like the best about the game now is how colorful and dazzling the environments are. I understand the graphics were very poor and the bloom filled the screen half the time, but the impossibly green grass and impossibly blue sky made Cyrodiil feel like an epic fantasy world worth exploring and protecting. The night sky was awesome two, with millions of stars in the sky. I loved it when the gas giant Nirn orbits was visible in the sky. Part of the reason why I enjoyed Oblivion more than Fallout 3 on the first playthrough is this-- I wanted to be in a beautiful, magical fantasy world, not some brown nuclear wasteland.

It's hard to compare the two. I enjoy both for different reasons but Dragon Age really is a much better game than Oblivion in many ways.

For Oblivion I just really love the sandbox aspect, and I'm willing to take the bad voice acting, story, character animation and stuff (I think it actually kinda grew on me in its awfulness). I wouldn't play Oblivion at all without mods though. I'm playing it now but only with some major gameplay overhauls to make more sense of things like the levelling systems and all sorts of minor flaws. I'd also only play it on PC because of that. It's still an unstable thing, and easy to break. But I'm also not very demanding and I enjoy running around the world without an actual purpose. Not sure if I'd go through the effort of making all the mods work together again though.
My main gripe with Oblivion aside from its poor design is that immersion in the main story is lost. You're of course free to completely ignore or delay the seemingly highly important main quest which you're given right from the start. But progression in it also seems to have very little actual impact on the game world and the NPCs in it.

Dragon Age I love for being more focused and story-oriented. I think it's more of an experience that way. But it's also much, much cleaner as a game. Better design, better world, better story and better gameplay (PC version, once again) reminding of Baldur's Gate. In terms of quality, I'd pick Dragon Age over Oblivion any day.

If someone tries the stupid "apples and oranges" excuse to not compare two games again (lookin' at you Red), I'll kick them in the nuts.

Personally, I haven't played either of them. But I've seen vids and pics of the Elder Scroll games, and thus would be inclined to check that one out first.

They are two great games, and are also difficult to compare with each other. Oblivion is fun simply because it is a massive sandbox world, where you can do pretty much anything. The character development, however, is small, and it's hard to get too immersed in the world when you got into conversations like this that remind you you're only playing a video game:

'"Hello."
'"Hi."
'"I'm through talking to you."
'"Goodbye."
'"Bye."

Plus the same voice actors were reused for every NPC... having a unique voice actor for each NPC would be difficult for a game with so many characters, but a bit more variety would have helped.

Dragon Age is typical Bioware fare; that is, it's an excellent role playing game that focuses more on character development and story than combat (although it does well with both elements). It's a quality game, no doubt about it... however, being a huge Baldur's Gate fan, I was constantly comparing DA with BG, and I have to say the Baldur's Gate series easily remains Bioware's finest work.

They're both good games, but the gameplay is different for each one, and the above comments represent my nitpicks about each title.

Demon's Souls > Every RPG this generation.

Originally Posted by The annoying Bird

Demon's Souls > Every RPG this generation.

Depends on how you define "RPG," but yes, it's far better than both Dragon Age and Oblivion and is one of the last decade's greatest games.