Yeah, definitely have happy memories of Oblivion. The melee / archery / stealth mechanics felt like a godsend versus Morrowind at the the time. It was also the game that taught me that if you throw in too many mods, you end up with a game that isn't stable! I do think that Oblivion had the weakest overworld of the past 3 games though, Morrowind and Skyrim were both evocative with a lot of regional variety - whereas Oblivion didn't feel otherworldly and it felt like you spent most of the game running around a giant grassy valley in sight on the imperial city.

I think the emerging AI text to speech developments are going to help this kind of open world RPG a lot. I really loved in Morrowind that NPCs had lots of questions they could answer about themselves and their region along with the special quest lines. Because it was only text it could be pretty open ended, and the act of reading it fed into your imagination somehow. In the past couple games, the prerecorded lines and shortlist of topics felt a lot more restrictive and gamey. At some point when morrowind-style dialogue can be spontaneously delivered in character voice it's going to be amazing.