Oblivion is very systems driven, has better character building, more diverse gameplay, wasn’t afraid to let the player get a little silly, generally had better writing, they were less afraid of whimsy, and the world felt like it could exist without you. Skyrim felt like a theme park or movie set focused entirely around you and they were afraid to let you cut loose.

*All of this in theory, the level scaling made oblivion borderline impossible to play and it is still fundamentally bad in that Bethesda way.