Morrowind...aka WTF happened Bethesda

[melkathi]

I'm pretty sure most of the factions in Morrowind were joinable without exclusion (I seem to recall being the head of both the Mage's and Fighter's Guild). There were exclusivity in the Houses as i recall (never did the Vampire stuff, but I seem to recall hearing they were exclusive).

 

Since Oblivion moved location, it seems the majority of the organizations that carried over weren't exclusive in Morrowind - if my memory is correct.

 

The fighters and thieves guilds were mutualy exclusive, as the Camonna Tong was using the Fighters Guild in its war against the Thieves Guild.

[Pshaw]

I loved the world of morrowind but beyond that I wouldn't argue that it's better than oblivion or skyrim.

 

While I do miss the spellcrafting from the earlier 2 games that's about the only thing I miss gameplay wise. Morrowinds world itself was a horrid randomly generated mess. Nothing but hills forming alleys across and an island filled with dust. The leveling system could and would punish you if you were not leveling up properly. The fact that walking around jumping non-stop and spaming crafted spells that did 1 damage on touch or illusion 1% for 1 second to boost your spell stats was an awful and tedious system. The upscaling of monsters until they all just gave you a disease wasn't a good way to go about adding challenge to the world. The main story itself was forgettable, I only ever completed it once and never had any plans to again in subsequent playthroughs.

 

The only thing Morrowind had going for it was an interesting setting. Both Oblivion and Skyrim just feel too medieval with no flavor for me to really fall in love with the setting. No giant mushrooms and floating jellyfish giving that sense of mystery and fantasy that I got in Morrowind.

 

However personally I find Skyrims more streamlined combat and leveling a boon to the series. It made it a bit more natural and far harder to create a character that couldn't keep up with the content. Some systems still need work. Mainly melee has always been a bit off in the elderscrolls series. Spell casting could use a bit of tweaking as well to get away from the 4-6 spells and you're out of mana time to pull out your sword kind of combat. Granted that changes once your enchanting is high enough to self enchant all your gear with the right stats but that's a long time coming. The UI also needed to be improved on the PC version. It was clearly set up for consoles which is fine but it's still clunky on the PC. Just take the time and build the UI properly for the PC.

 

So while Skyrim certainly has it faults I still think it the best of the 3 modern elder scrolls games. Especially since many of the major issues (like the magic and melee combat I just mentioned) plague all of the games in the series not just this one. As do problems with NPC interaction and a dozen other things I won't delve into at the moment.

[AGX-17]

TES has never been an exceptional roleplaying series. It's always been the freedom/exploration aspect that garnered its high scores. Morrowind by far had the best main storyline, and the lore is respectable, if incredibly derivative of real world mythology and fantasy writers. But in the end, story has been degrading at Bethesda since Morrowind. That was their narrative peak, and though Skyrim's main quest is better than Oblivion's, it's still bland and mediocre at best. Characters and roleplaying have always been pretty bad. It was excusable in the mid 90s, but not in this day and age.

 

Right, Shivering Isles. The expansion in which I killed a Daedric Prince called Jabberwock in one hit (level scaling be damned).

And Bethesda still couldn't do a boss fight well if their jobs or lives hung in the balance.

 

Also his name was Jyggalag. To me the most interesting Daedric Prince, and he'll probably never appear again.

Edited November 13, 2012 by AGX-17

[Gorgon]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a good boss fight. They are certainly very rare. It's usually trial and error and often with a new set of mechanics than what you had been using for 99% of the game, in other words an unwelcome nuisance at what was supposed to be a peak moment.

[Enoch]

The thing with the writing in Morrowind is that it was utterly lacking in pathos-- it never gave the player much reason to care whether the world was saved of not, or what the Real Story was behind all that prophecy nonsense. I'm sure there was a deep storyline of cosmic significance that unfolded as you read the books and progressed through the main plot, but the game didn't give me much reason to want to bother with that, because there simply weren't any characters who presented an interesting mystery or were worthy of much empathy. In the absence of effective narrative motivation, I just did what was fun, which was mostly to wander around and see all the weird stuff.

 

I get that some people like this, in that the game wasn't 'spoon-feeding' its core narrative to the player. But a game can be free to let the player do his/her own thing and still present the character with an emotional hook to pull him/her into the main story. And you can't really do that in a game that essentially lacks any compelling or memorable characters.

 

Bethesda has been trying to get better in this regard. In Oblivion and Fallout3, they went with the "the player will care about these characters if we hire famous people to voice them!" approach. Skyrim was a bit better in that it presented the player right off with the Nord rebels, telling their tale of woe and dying for their cause.

[BruceVC]

I got lost for hours in Morrowind, the amount of time I spent on a single playthrough dwarfs almost every other game I've played. But then I played the GOY edition with Tribunal and Solstheim, which added substantial content.

 

Like others have said, if you read and explore while doing the main quest, the game experience of it was much better. I can remember actually liking Dagoth Ur, but for the life of me I can't remember exactly why.

 

But really the degradation of content from Morrowind to Oblivion(not just the quality) is huge.

 

Morrowind (without Tribunal and Bloodmoon) factions:

 

House Redoran

House Hlaalu

House Telvanni

The Empire

The Fighters Guild

The Mages Guild

Thieves Guild

East Empire Company

Blades

Fighters Guild

Mages Guild

Imperial Cult

Ashlanders

Tribunal Temple

Morag Tong

3 vampire clans

 

Choosing one faction over another locks the other one out. Quite a few have different paths to take to reach the high point of the faction.

 

Oblivion:

 

Fighters guild

Mage guild

Blades

Thieves Guild

Dark Brotherhood

Arena

 

You can join all factions and they are all linear paths.

 

I tend to think this sums up the decline from Morrowind to Oblivion nicely.

 

Wow, I didn't realize that Morrowind had so many factions. It just shows how little I explored in the overall world

[Metabot]

Well the topic of discussion wasn't which game is better. It assumed that morrowind was better and asked why the otger games arent quite as good. If you dont agree with that thats fine, but go run your mouth about it in some other thread instead of derailing this one.

 

How can there be an open "discussion" with your prerequisite assumptions getting in the way?

 

Lol there can be a discussion about the topic. If you don't want to discuss this particular topic and just want to express which game you thought was better start a new thread.

[melkathi]

No, a discussion requires all participants to be comfortable with the fact that other people will not share their opinion. It requires various views and arguments and counter arguments. If your reaction to the first opinion that does not fit yours is "GTFO", then what you are looking for is perhaps chit chat, but not a discussion.

[ilhdr]

eveyone knows that the best TES was Daggerfall

[meomao]

 

The fighters and thieves guilds were mutualy exclusive, as the Camonna Tong was using the Fighters Guild in its war against the Thieves Guild.

 

Not true: it was just a matter of roleplaying. You can became head of both organizations (I know because that was my choice).

[melkathi]

The fighters and thieves guilds were mutualy exclusive, as the Camonna Tong was using the Fighters Guild in its war against the Thieves Guild.

 

Not true: it was just a matter of roleplaying. You can became head of both organizations (I know because that was my choice).

 

Then you got the proper order of doing things. If you did some missions in some order, you could end up killing someone who's death blocked your progress... I think. Can't remember that well

[Hurlshort]

 

Skyrim is worse than oblivion and fallout 3 sucked so your opinion is null and void.

I've played skyrim for hundreds of hours. Morrowind blows it out of the water.

 

This may be the most ridiculous thing I have read on these forums.

[HoonDing]

Right, Shivering Isles. The expansion in which I killed a Daedric Prince called Jabberwock in one hit (level scaling be damned).

 

Did the same with both of Morrowind's expansions... and Dagoth Ur in the main game. And everyone else for that matter.

There were only two enemies that I did not one hit: a specific Hand of Almalexia named Salas Valor (3 hits) and a frost giant by the name of Karstaag in Bloodmoon (5 hits if I remember well).

A Daedric Prince on his home plane should be a slight bit more powerful.

 

I also one-shotted Hircine in Bloodmoon but he was just an aspect.

[Volourn]

This may be the most ridiculous thing I have read on these forums."

 

Yeah, it's one of those again... I play x game for HOURS just to prove it sucked. L0LZ

[Hurlshort]

This may be the most ridiculous thing I have read on these forums."

 

Yeah, it's one of those again... I play x game for HOURS just to prove it sucked. L0LZ

 

I guess I should have added 'most ridiculous today' because we do seem to be getting a lot of people lately who are angry about games they've sunk huge amount of time into.

[alanschu]

Skyrim is worse than oblivion and fallout 3 sucked so your opinion is null and void.

I've played skyrim for hundreds of hours. Morrowind blows it out of the water.

 

This may be the most ridiculous thing I have read on these forums.

 

It's like when people validate their opinions of why a game sucks because they have spent 60+ hours on such a game, so they are well qualified in stating that the game is total suck,

 

(oops I see Volourn commented on this too.... WTF I have been entirely too agreeable with the chap lately!?)

[Amentep]

To be totally fair, I imagine that people do the "I played this for 100 hours and hated it. Then I took an arrow to the knee" bit because far too often conversations go like this:

 

Player 1: "I played Skyrim for 3 hours, but couldn't get into it and ultimately felt without any narrative that hooked me or other interest that I shouldn't continue..."

 

Player 2: "Oh only 3 hours, you need at least 5 to see all the good bits. You should play it more and you'll see why its great..."

 

etc.

 

And of course that leads to the silliest argument of all, that you can't dislike a game until you've done everything in it (including beating it) and only then (after 60+ hours) can you say you didn't like it...

 

...at which point people begin to wonder why you put 60+ hours into something you hate.

 

Its a viscous cycle, I tells ya!

Edited November 13, 2012 by Amentep

[melkathi]

Right, Shivering Isles. The expansion in which I killed a Daedric Prince called Jabberwock in one hit (level scaling be damned).

 

Did the same with both of Morrowind's expansions... and Dagoth Ur in the main game. And everyone else for that matter.

There were only two enemies that I did not one hit: a specific Hand of Almalexia named Salas Valor (3 hits) and a frost giant by the name of Karstaag in Bloodmoon (5 hits if I remember well).

A Daedric Prince on his home plane should be a slight bit more powerful.

 

I also one-shotted Hircine in Bloodmoon but he was just an aspect.

 

Final boss of an expansion should be a challenge regardless of the lore. That's the whole point of a climatic battle.

[Fighter]

I enjoyed Skyrim more than Morrowind. Granted I am continuously disappointed by how all that work on great area design, scale, and atmosphere is wasted on uninspired writing.

[Metabot]

This may be the most ridiculous thing I have read on these forums."

 

Yeah, it's one of those again... I play x game for HOURS just to prove it sucked. L0LZ

 

I guess I should have added 'most ridiculous today' because we do seem to be getting a lot of people lately who are angry about games they've sunk huge amount of time into.

 

I was simply pointing out that I have played Skyrim quite a bit..

[Drowsy Emperor]

This influx of codexians with the start of Project Eternity makes us old Obsidianites look like nice people.

 

Even Volo's got his **** together.

Edited November 13, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[entrerix]

man, when volo looks like a saint you know there are some new folks around

 

edit: so im not totally off topic

 

new vegas>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>morrowind>skyrim>fallout3>>>oblivion

Edited November 13, 2012 by entrerix

[alanschu]

I was simply pointing out that I have played Skyrim quite a bit.

 

The real question is why you would spend so much time playing something that you don't like?

 

Or is Morrowind so immaculate that even though Skyrim is worse than even Oblivion, it's still a good enough game to sink "hundreds of hours" into it?

[HoonDing]

New Vegas is apparently so awesome that it literally pushed Failout 3, Skyrim and Oblivion out of bounds.

Edited November 13, 2012 by Drudanae

[Orchomene]

Morrowind was for me the first TES game I played (I had just played less than ten hours of Daggerfall with a friend, so that doesn't really count). I loved the freedom, the non random generated objects that were in some dungeons. You could steal an entire set of glass armor as a thief if you managed to be stealthy enough. You could levitate. Houses felt very different in their way of living. There were some conflicts between factions (fighters/Thieves guilds).

Then I bought day one Oblivion and felt it boring with everything randomly generated and leveled. There was no real interest in exploring since all you will find will be corresponding to your level and could have been found in any other dungeon.

Skyrim is a bit better than Oblivion, still too much random loot. The story is bit better than the Oblivion's one and the rpg system a bit less unbalanced. Yet, it lacks something. Novelty, maybe.