I understand this is the next in the franchise but is this pretty much the "same" as Oblivion?
Yes and no.There are a couple of new things, primarily Shouts and dragons flying around as creatures. But I would say fundamentally this is a better version of Oblivion. Better how? Primarily the leveling system is much, much better. In Oblivion I'd constantly be worrying about what skills were being leveled and how many pts I was getting in stats at each level and do dumb stuff like jump on and off a fountain for 30 minutes to maximize that increase. I haven't really thought about what skills were being leveled in Skyrim once. I certainly haven't worried about it. Some skills level, not always the ones I really care about, but that's fine. The perks system guides where your character is really improving. There are some other things that are also improved: the lockpicking is much better, the archery is much better, the spell-casting is much cooler, the mage's clothes are better, there's some awesome killing moves that your character does, the dungeons are more varied... the list could go on but you get the point.That all said, I think this is a better Oblivion not fundamentally a different game. The most noticeable things are the things that were pains in Oblivion and now aren't not the things that are fundamentally new to the franchise.