It’s been nearly two weeks since I last played Skyrim, but while I was playing I was completely absorbed in the game, as I’d known I would be. 146 hours I put into that game, and I feel fairly certain that I’ll be going back to it in maybe a year or so, once some of the better mods have come out.

I did enjoy Skyrim a lot, but I can’t help but feel that it wasn’t as good as Oblivion in a number of ways. Sure, the graphics were an improvement. That’s a function of the improved hardware between 2007 and 2011. They also got rid of Oblivion’s lame conversation wheel mini-game. But I can’t help but feel that alchemy was much more useful and more fun in Oblivion – I’m not sure why they changed it at all. Skyrim’s perk tree was a vast improvement over the 25/50/75/100 perk schema in Oblivion, and Bethesda was smart to get rid of the weird major and minor skill system that caused such a leveling paradox in Oblivion. I also really liked the new lockpicking system. It was almost too easy at times, but that’s much better than being too difficult.

My primary gripe with Skyrim, and the reason that I preferred Oblivion, was due to the nature of the game’s main plot. In Oblivion, the world was being invaded by the demonic Daedra through horrific gaping red magical gates, and it was the player’s job to save the world by venturing into a realm that might as well have been Hell. It was epic. In Skyrim, the plot involves killing dragons because they’re kind of mean. Sure – there’s one big powerful dragon who’s extra mean and must be stopped, but the threat seems nebulous and so relatively minor. The dragons in Skyrim were never as much of a threat as the Daedra were in Oblivion. Plus, even though the main dragon will have been defeated at the conclusion of Skyrim’s main plot, there are still many powerful dragons in evidence, attacking just as much as they ever were. How much has actually been resolved?

My last gripe with Skyrim is mainly geared towards the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild plots. Although there are ostensibly unlimited quests in Skyrim, the game’s foremost quest lines are the main story, the civil war, the Wizard’s College, the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, and the Companions. That’s six questlines, and two of them are really only available if you choose to be at least partially evil. And while I’m not at all opposed to games that allow you to be evil, I find it odd that large sections of content are entirely closed off unless your character is a cold-blooded murderer or thief. Two out of six questlines is a third of the game’s non-random content, although it’s actually less since the main quest likely has far more content than other quest lines. Personally, playing as a sneak sniper is my favorite way to play Skyrim, so it’s ironic that the Dark Brotherhood is the only quest line I never touched.