Well sure we may as well have an Elder Scrolls thread, even if it’ll just die after a page or two. Let’s split this all off?
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See, that's where I highly disagree. Skyrim, undeniably has amazing graphical abilities compared to oblivion, I'm not going to act like it doesn't. But the art direction (aside from the race differences, most of the races in oblivion looked bad) in oblivion seems way better to me. In skyrim, just about every fucking place I looked at was grey or brown or covered in snow. Now I understand that it is that way to match it's location, but it doesn't mean that I think it's much better to look at. In Cyrodiil (where oblivion takes place) the landscape is vibrant, and overall nice to look at, and even then it's not all same-y as in the south the landscapes are a bit more muddy, in the north, it's more cold looking, and in dungeons it looks more.... dungeony? Point is, I feel that the visiual aesthetics are just way better in Oblivion, where in skyrim I feel blessed to look at a green tree.
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I agree with you about Skyrim having a more limited color palette, but personally I feel it’s justified by the much stronger atmosphere and setting. Cyrodiil feels to me like it lacks a strong environmental personality - it feels like Generic Cheerful Tolkeinesque fantasy land #86498, whereas Skyrim very much comes across as a fantasy interpretation of a medieval Scandinavian province. The duller color scheme ties to the bleaker weather and the rather miserable current affairs of the world.
Every time I try to play Oblivion all I can think about are Thomas Kincaid paintings. I just don’t think the more saturated environment and color scheme of the world translates into more atmosphere and immersion, sadly.
To be fair, some of the very first Skyrim mods I installed were ones that focused on lighting and weather, to try and make the world a little less brown and grey. I want to try installing an ENB mod sometime as a lot of those make the world much more colorful and vibrant without going overboard; a lot of them are fairly resource-intensive though which puts me off.