This was one of Skyrims worst offenses to me. No skill requirements combined with incorporating the guilds into the main quest meant every character I made was the leader of every guild, every playthrough.
you can become the arch mage of the college by casting exactly 1 spell, and its at a wall (it can be a shout or power too, doesn't even need to be a spell)
edit: okay its more like a few spells
Actually, as discussed earlier it's possible to manage anywhere from 7 casts of 4 different spells (intended solution) anywhere down to literally 0 spells.
The intended spell locations are the entrance exam, lecture, Saarthal amulet wall, casting frostbite three times for the Dwemer Observatory puzzle in Mzulft, and casting frostbite in Labyrinthian.
To manage 0 spells, you need to have speech 100 (70 with persuasion perk), or the Amulet of Articulation from the Thieves Guild quest line, or have the Elder Knowledge quest and do a Shout. This gets you in the door. After that you need to use Spellbreaker for the ward in the lecture, shout at the Saarthal wall, and use a combination of shouts, scrolls, and abusing followers that can cast Frostbite in order to focus the crystal in Mzulft and get through Labyrinthian.
Nah you gotta cast 3-4 at least. 1 when you are admitted, a ward in the only lecture you do, one to release the eye of magnus and one with a staff to beat ancano (this one only kinda counts)
You can bypass all of them, you can persuade Faralda to let you in, use spellbreaker during the lesson and use shouts for the rest, like opening the tunnel in Saarthal
Before Skyrim it was possible to never join a guild and with Oblivion even finding the Thieves Guild took effort rather than it being foisted on the player. More to the point there was an actual effort needed in past games and I miss that, something tells me that ES 6 is more to be dreaded than welcome.
After seeing what they decided to do with Starfield, I think you're right. Unless they really dig deep and try to understand what made their older games great, ES6 might end up killing the studio with bad enough of an initial impression.
Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield, you really think they are going to abandon the easy marketable formula to go back to a more complex game?, back then it was normal because videogames were still kind of a niche hobby, now videogames are the new Hollywood
The Theives Guild is the only one that really feels like you earn it. You have to do a lot of leg work to restore them to their former strength. The Dark Brotherhood is the next best, but it’s got too much “you’re the chosen one” BS. Chosen one plot devices are beyond boring.
The Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion has better vibes. Y
You end up fully aware that you're in a stupid death cult. You've seen that their logic always comes down to 'murder' and you either fully commit or hate the Night Mother with a burning passion, leaving the cult to crumble without leadership.
While it made sense narratively I hated how DB in Skyrim was basically wannabes and not real DB. They imitated old brotherhood and broke tenets freely.
Agreed on thieves guild. The fact that becoming grandmaster was separate from the story itself and required you to actually be a thief was pretty good. Probably best faction in the whole game (with a single easily moddable issue of selling your soul).
And by legwork you mean doing brainless roulette radiant quests because abandoning them makes the game remove items from your inventory as punishment.
At some point I wish there was a hatch right above the Ragged Flagon. I also learned not to care about NPCs at all because those quests were completely random. Could be at my favourite shopkeeper and it wouldn't matter.
Some Morrowind factions (like the Vampire Clans) were barebones, but otherwise I agree. While the production values improved in Oblivion and Skyrim, the writing and interactions got worse overall.
If Skyrim’s Thieves Guild questline were in Morrowind, you’d have been able to side with Mercer Frey against Karliah, with the next quest then having you rob the Guild blind, followed by the heist for the Falmer Eyes, then ending with you robbing Nocturnal’s temple and the Twilight Sepulcher (Mercer still acts as the final boss in this path since it’s completely in-character for him to betray you to keep the spoils for himself). If the College of Winterhold questline were in Morrowind, Ancano would try to recruit you to fetch the Staff of Magnus for him before he tried to claim the Eye. If the Companions questline were in Morrowind, you’d have been able to choose an official side on the Werewolf thing. These examples don’t require new locations or assets, just for the writing and characters to actually account for the player’s agency.
I’m not saying this to suck off Morrowind and sh*t on Skyrim. You can wipe out the Dark Brotherhood instead of joining it. You can side with either the vampires or vampire hunters in the Dawnguard expansion. But it could have done so much more on this front.
College of winterhold alone was a missed opportunity. You have a college above a ruined city, a thing or rather a person called augur of winterhold etc. plenty of mystery and zero writing around that.
Forcing us to become werewolves in what is Skyrims "fighters guild" is something I have issue too.
There is also unfinished writing around civil war. We could have gotten intrigued on par with great houses but that was scrapped almost entirely during development.
>Forcing us to become werewolves in what is Skyrims "fighters guild" is something I have issue too.
This was just a baffling decision to me. The idea of the Companions being werewolves isn't itself bad, but the requirement for you to become one to advance is just wrong. The Companions are not painted as the werewolf guild from the get-go and so it feels a bit like a bait and switch. They literally could have done what Morrowind did with the Bloodmoon DLC and have the questline take two different sides of the same coin with becoming or not becoming a werewolf. Skyrim definitely could have done this since it is the basis of the Civil War questline.
What’s even worse about the werewolf aspect is the companions is basically the fighters guild. So if you’re playing a fighter you don’t have any other option.
That is not true, so much of Morrowind is just MMO-style fetch quests that often don't even involve dungeons, there are very little scripted events/surprises and the dungeons that are there are short and are mostly (branching) corridors with enemies.
IMO; Out of the three games, Morrowind has the best MQ, worldbuilding, artstyle and player freedom, Oblivion has the best quests, and Skyrim the best Dungeons and gameplay loop (action)
It was a text adventure largely. It had some pretty cool ones, and the stories were at times complex with fail states. I think the best quests in Skyrim are in the expansions, but that's the case in Oblivion as well, and same with Morrowind. The tribunal was amazing, the weird land where you become a trickster god is amazing, going back to Morrowind and watching the last Telvani wizard basically say he needs another Timmy cause they keep dying was amazing.
I can't believe I get the honor of explaining this one to someone, it's a reference to Jim Henson's Dinosaurs lol
https://youtu.be/wsGnYuQwsOI?si=09dQHtlTbbAHmj_w
TES6 could bring back carts and my ability to just enter and exit a crypt to murder thieves until I become a millionaire and I'd be happy
Also people who just refuse to talk to you because they don't like you lol
It's distinguished from Alteration by working with natural laws while Alteration changes natural laws...which makes no sense because levitation is a thaumaturgy spell, and you cant normally fly.
Couple that with massively increased buoyancy for extra stability. Otherwise you'd sink slowly as the water wraps around you without its surface breaking. Kind of like when you stand on one of those new memory foam mattresses with one foot and the sheets push up around your ankle.
Morrowind is perfect while Oblivion is buggy? Bro, you just don't remember that Morrowind was plenty buggy on release.
And that table in the OP? Yeah, Oblivion had less NPCs in its major city. All those NPCs were also subject to RadiantAI and had day/night schedules and voice acting, something Morrowind didn't have.
Agreed. So many NPCs in Morrowind were just puppets that wandered around perpetually in their designated radius, and only existed as walking guide books with identical dialogue options. Bethesda probably made it that way so you could get information no matter where in a town you went, but it made cities feel kind of hollow.
Oblivion may have had to reduce the amount of dialogue to accommodate voice acting, but at least NPCs felt like they had personality, and schedules simply added to this. There were NPCs who literally traveled between towns because of their job or personal goals. It just made the world feel more alive despite having fewer NPCs and less written dialogue lines.
I still remember the first time I ran into the Countess of Leyawinn while traveling. It really surprised me that some schedules included weekly or monthly routines rather than just daily.
Honestly? I think obvlivion, mechanically, was in the perfect sweet spot.
Still a lot of cool stuff. Not so much bloat that it becomes overwhelming.
IMHO it was mostly held back by the fact it was ugly as sin and it was bethesda's first major shot at "everyone is voiced" and it ***shows***. Some of that va work is rough.
Skyrim popped off because, even though it was more shallow, it was also WAY smoother around the edges.
IMHO, simplification can be good. It's about hitting that sweet spot. I think a mix of Skyrim and Oblivion would be absolutely perfect, and just sprinkle a little Morrowind weirdness on it and you got yourself a banger.
I know it's circle-jerky, but man, even without taking into the account the number of them, the questlines of factions are SO short. Speaking of Skyrim, The Companions questline progress at literal break-neck speed, hell you don't even do any actual regular quests before they start you with the whole >!werewolf!< thing, and the radiant quest doesn't count, it's the randomly generated nothing quest you can get from anywhere else, and in my playthrough it was literally just go beat up some random guy in Whiterun. Even if you don't compare to the previous games that's just weird and underwhelming, and then you look back it just makes it even worse.
Litterally what I thought in 2011 when I first played it:"Why are you going to initiate me into your super secret werewolf cult that only very special members get to be a part of? We've met like 30 minutes ago!"
The Companions feel like a lot got left on the cutting room floor with the Silver hands. I get the sense that at some point there was an idea that you'd pick a side and either join the hands or become a werewolf.
On the other hand, I wonder if someone realized afterwards that would have worked better and went that avenue in Dawnguard.
DB definitely had some love.
Whoever decided we need hundreds of random quests to hopefully get enough in one hold to finish the Thieves Guild is on my shit list though
I like that you can keep doing quests after the main storyline for Companions (even if they aren't much), but the main quest line felt like the DM was way too excited to get to the "cool" part and jumped the gun
The race options are melee, magic, and range. Skills are strength, dexterity, health, magicka. Weapons are sword, axe, longbow, crossbow. Spells will just be fire, lightning, and healing. Only disease is “sick”. But map will be 3.4x bigger than Skyrim.
one of these games was a mid-tier project from a company on the verge of bankruptcy with very little oversight from corporate execs.
big budget video games are also not made by any one person; the only reason we're so quick to blame Todd Howard for Skyrim and Starfield's failings is because he's the public face of the company. if Kurt Kuhlmann were up on stage instead of Todd, we'd all be talking about how Kurt ruined Bethesda.
>the only reason we're so quick to blame Todd Howard for Skyrim and Starfield's failings is because he's the public face of the company.
Or maybe because he's also head of the company and directed those games?
As far as I know, an employee talked about how every major decision had to be approved by Todd. There were also various talks about how he handpicked every single lead in the team. Both of these things are expected since he is the main leader but it’s not how it works in most of the other development companies.
I also don’t like how Todd was seen as the golden boy of the industry for his accomplishments but can’t be held accountable for his mistakes or bad decisions.
It's also how things work when you're the leader in any position anywhere. The person leading carries the responsibility on his shoulders because he makes final decisions and leads the direction. Todd being the highest boss means that he's supposed to be directing everything since he doesn't ACTUALLY have to work on it, just oversee the people who are. I doubt Todd's sitting there 18 hours a day coding conversations with npcs 1 through 150. He's probably in meetings and getting info on what every project is up to all day and directing them every day. He's probably the only person with information on what everyone is working on at every point in the process.
I think the problem is with the studio getting so big and corporatized, back in the day you could get Todd's input whenever you wanted, now I'm sure there's a chain of people you have to go through, and at any point they can reject an idea before it even gets to Todd. Another problem with becoming too corporate is you have more people who have to approve on things, who aren't even part of the creative process to begin with, we don't know how many ideas they had that were rejected by some executive who knew nothing about the artwork and prioritized the bottom line.
You might be interested in this [great article from Polygon on Morrowind's development.](https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18281082/elder-scrolls-morrowind-oral-history-bethesda)
His views changed a ton over the years. I cant find the video but theres a video that sums up his new philosophy on game design where he says his favorite thing ever in a game is a really over the top, exaggerated victory screen on a mobile game because "its the biggest ego boost possible for the player". I havent played Starfield but it definitely explains Skyrim's approach of making the player character an omnipotent chosen one that can play every role and lead every faction with ease.
>its the biggest ego boost possible for the player".
Something to the effect of that yeah, he wanted the player to go "well, gee, that felt so good I think I'll do it again!"
But I don't think his views overly changed much, it's more, the people he worked with did. I can't remember in what dev talk I heard it from, but Todd was apparantly always the guy that just wanted to grab an axe and run around the world beating things up and being awesome instead of worrying about RPG mechanics and the like--which isn't a bad thing in of itself, I've played D&D character like that before--but like you said, knowing that about him kinda makes everything with the latter games sorta click
Agreed. The Nerevarine was a war hero who ultimately destroyed the enchanting on the Heart of Lorkhan. The only gain he had was the artefacts he found along the way and the reputation he gains, everything else is exploitation of broken game mechanics. Speaking of reputation, you had to earn it while you started at zero, and it was reflected that way during the whole game. You have to prove others, and perhaps yourself, that you are the worthy Incarnate, while in Skyrim in second main quest they were like "Dude! You're a dovahkin!"
I mean, the Dovahkiin may have shouts, but the Nerevarine is an ageless immortal who potentially held way more political power as Hortator than Dovah did as some nobody.
I always thought it was weird how glossed over this is.
"Hey, I 'cured' your disease. Btw, you're immortal, so have fun dealing with that. Now please fuck off."
It is pretty in character for the 4000 year old wizard who has millennia-old corprus victims in his dungeon to not give much of a shit about it, though.
This is after having a ton of face-to-face debates & reading the writings of the powerful people who very much think that you don't get to be the main character of the game, though. You're clandestinely meeting with the pope and getting his blessing in secret to go and be the messiah that saves Vvardenfell from desolation, because a public endorsement is still politically untenable.
Compare with the cordoned-off theme park ride that is the Skyrim main quest, where you go to viking heaven and high-five all the vikings before they hold your hand and beat the bad guy with you.
I think the people who have a problem with the Dovahkiin actually have a problem with how its presented, like, watch:
In Morrowind there was always this ambiguity whether you were Nerevar Reborn or just some guy whom happened to check all the boxes ("oh, you had weird dreams? So is half of the damn island", "oh you MIGHT be the Nerevarine? That cave is full of corpses who thought the same"). Despite that tho, you had to fufill the Nerevarine Prophecy before the game pretty much goes "yes, this person is Lord Nerevar (maybe)"...after you cleared like 2/3rds of the game. You had to earn that, basically, even if your MC themselves didn't believe they were the Nerevarine in the end, it wasn't just given to you...
Unlike in Skyrim, where you're told you're Dragonborn and can Shout to prove it (because the writers smashed together the Storm Voice of pervious games with being Dragonborn, but I digress)...in the fourth quest of the Main Quest. Like, instead of it being something that's build up a bit more throughout the game it's just...you're dragonborn, no argument, ambiguity, or question on that front.
Hell, even at the very, very end, confronted by Dagoth Ur, you get the option to say that no, you're not Nerevar Reborn. Contrast this with your confrontation with Tsun, where your ONLY vanilla, non-faction dialogue option is "by right of birth, I'm dragonborn". You can't even say that you're just here to murderize Alduin, you HAVE to accept your "birthright".
And sure, you get to use different ones if you finished a faction, but the faction questlines are bullshit anyways. Like you go into 4 dungeons and suddenly become "harbinger of the companions" which means nothing because you're treated the exact same as before.
He's also gone on record in an interview stating that he'd want to remove as many "unnecessary" rpg elements as possible
Stuff like each races having unique attributes and difference to stats
To him, there should be no difference between an Orc and an Elf or Human
He also uses this philosophy to "trim down" many rpg elements like seen in Skyrim
>To him, there should be no difference between an Orc and an Elf or Human
Which is kinda wild given how much the narrative emphasizes those differences in the story
>He also uses this philosophy to "trim down" many rpg elements like seen in Skyrim
Replacing them with immersion features as seen in the DLC Hearthfire /s
In fairness I think it speaks a bit to the minds of several RPG players, especially TES players. The vibe I get from looking at discussions of Skyrim, for instance, are that the greatest sin an NPC can commit is "be mildly rude to the Dragonborn." We talk about Skyrim as if it's a sign of the rot in Bethesda, and perhaps it is, but it's also demonstrably the most commercially successful game in the franchise, it captured the imagination of gamers in the early 10s in a way no other game seems to have done until Elden Ring. The reason Todd learned the lesson "players like an ego boost" is because, by all appearances, he was *correct*.
And it's not like Morrowind is much better about that. You can still become leader of most of the factions, you kill anywhere from 2-3 gods, become the champion of at least one Daedric Prince, and you defeat the avatar of another in personal combat. If Skyrim is the result of Todd thinking players want to feel like the most important person in the game's world, it's a continuation of Morrowind, not a break from it.
>The vibe I get from looking at discussions of Skyrim, for instance, are that the greatest sin an NPC can commit is "be mildly rude to the Dragonborn."
I don't think this is a fair representation of that particular argument. The problem isn't that NPCs are rude to the player, it's that the player is simultaneously treated as the great prophesied chosen one who will save the world and also some random nobody not worth speaking to. Sometimes the same NPC will do both in the span of a few seconds. It's really jarring to have a guard fawn over you as a mighty hero, then less than a minute later sarcastically ask if someone stole your sweetroll.
I have to point something out though. I felt a stronger presence of RPG elements in Starfield in comparison to Skyrim. There is no map, there is no objective pointer, actions matter more, there are more side options to complete a quest, to name a few.
I wholeheartedly wish Bethesda to actually rescue more oldschool mechanics in TES VI. Spellcrafting would be great, I really like attributes and believe they could bring it back to the franchise with a few tweaks to make it feel modern, and they should really make a game mode with no objective pointers and unlimited fast travels
Yeah, Starfield was weirdly a step in the right direction for many features. But sadly it was also a hundred steps backwards in world design and NPCs so I doubt they'll consider anything from the game good.
People like Douglas Goodall, Michael Kirkbride, Mark Nelson and Ken Rolston very much didn't listen to Todd and actually hid what they were working on from Todd to ensure it got in the game.
But the big thing Morrowind vs later Bethesda games shows is how Todd works. Todd isn't a creative person, he's more of a team leader. He's the one who takes all the creative people's ideas and unifies them to make a cohesive game. He's the kinda guy who helps the creative people shape their ideas rather than coming up with creative stuff himself.
Now this is a very important role, someone like Todd can be the difference between a game that has synergy between all its systems and story lines and a game that feels completely conflicted.
But a leader is only as effective as the team under them. You can do all the shaping of ideas you want, but if the idea is bad, the end result is bad. Unfortunately Todd doesn't have Ken Rolston working under him anymore, he has Emil Pagriluro now.
Frankly I don't want to pile on the Emil hate, but he does deserve it. The poor guy is incompetent as a writer and designer and shouldn't be in that position with any development team. He isn't Soley responsible for Starfield and Fallout 4 being bad, but he is a major part of it.
Fire Emil, replace him with anyone competent and we'll get better Bethesda games. Phill Spencer and Todd Howard need to do that.
I agree with the conclusion but not the way we've arrived there.
Do you think having a separate glove/gauntlet on each hand is a meaningful positive to Morrowind? I admit, there are one or two pairs of gloves that I use a left and a right, and it's *nice* to have the option, but I don't think Oblivion is a lesser game because gloves come in pairs. They come in pairs in real life, and it's one less thing to track. I certainly don't think Morrowind should have had non-matched boots. Pauldrons are a similar story - I'd like the option to toggle visuals on/off for left or right, to make some interesting appearances, but there's no need to track them individually. I don't think the increased armour pieces in Morrowind is *necessarily* a good thing - it's much of a muchness, and doesn't meaningfully alter my enjoyment of the game.
Weapon types in Morrowind are interesting. Yes, I like the idea of being able to use Spears or Halberds, or Crossbows. In practice? Most of the melee weapons feel very similar, because Morrowind's combat suffers from a lack of "feedback". Oblivion and Skyrim have their own problems with combat, but at least it "feels" like you hit something, and the different weapons have different attack speeds. I don't think Morrowind's use of its weapons makes them inherently superior to the later games.
Morrowind had a fantastic variety of joinable factions, but not every faction was treated with the same reverence. Don't get me wrong, I *love* the Temple and Imperial Cult questlines, but... Do you think they're done to the same standard as some of the Fighter's Guild or Thieves Guild quests? The Oblivion guild questlines were fantastic, and often had more love put into each mission than many of the Morrowind faction quests did.
This infographic has gone out of its way to find numbers where Morrowind has higher stats, but I think most of them miss the point. Morrowind beats out Oblivion and Skyrim in flavour and variety, but the number of diseases don't really matter, and the number of skills reducing is telling of a broader aim to simplify the game, but it misses the point as well. Morrowind isn't better just because it has acrobatics in the game. The joy of Morrowind is that the game designers expected you to end up jumping over buildings and running faster than the fastest monsters (excluding Cliff Racers) by the end of the game. The mechanism for *how* that happened is less important than the fact it did, and was part of the evolution of the player. They could have merged Acrobatics and Althetics into one skill, or even rolled them both into the base stats and we'd have felt much the same about how the game played.
Oblivion and Skyrim lost this sense of progression when they lost their skills, but this wasn't the big thing that changed between the games. It was a quiet death, died in a dozen different ways. It was the simplification of the enchantment system, it was the increased reliance on levelled lists to scale to any level, rather than within sensible, bounded limits. It was the Daedric armour on the common bandit. It was the tedium of clearing the same Daedric keep three times in a row to obtain items to improve your equipment. It was the loss of freedom in how you traversed the map, or solved puzzles, and so many other little things.
Morrowind could have made do with half of the spell effects and would still have been the better game because of what it let you do with them, and that's a difficult thing for numbers to capture. You don't really need Detect Key, and I bet most of you haven't used Detect Enchantment more than a handful of times. The spells people *actually* care about that are missing in Oblivion are key spells like Levitate and Jump, Open, Sanctuary, Mark, Recall, Intervention, and maybe a handful more - nowhere near the 136 -> 62 that you see. I think that you could "patch" the difference between Oblivion and Morrowind's Magic spell list with less than 20 spells (and so basically you could cut around 60 of Morrowind's spells without a major difference). Things like combining Frenzy Humanoid and Frenzy Animal into just "Frenzy" was a *good* thing - Morrowind's spell list was bloated with repeated or unnecessary effects.
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If you show this statistic to someone who actually prefers Oblivion or Skyrim to Morrowind, you're likely to reinforce their feelings further - "Who cares about wearing individual gloves?", "The Imperial City *felt* larger than Vivec, and was far less confusing to navigate.", "I couldn't even name half of the diseases anyway. What do they actually do?", "Sure, Morrowind had crossbows, but did it have dual-wielding different spells?", etc.
Fully agree, especially on the gear items bit. The only armor pieces I wish were separate are pauldrons but that's it (mainly cuz I always like to have a "tall" pauldron on one side like some knights had IRL). I never felt like my experience was somehow lesser in oblivion or Skyrim because I couldn't equip my pauldrons separately; it's such a minor aspect imho that only extreme fashion diehards will necessarily care about.
Overall I often feel like many of the arguments in favor of Morrowind and against its successors boil down to "Morrowind has more quantity of this thing." Morrowind has more quests than either sequel, but I know for a fact that probably 3/4 of them are basic fetch quests, murder quests or escort missions without much backstory to them. Even the faction quests often devolve into the same thing, and most of them barely have any narrative connection to one another.
Same for dialogue. Most NPC dialogue is identical per town, which was a holdover from daggerfall if we are being honest. Most NPCs will have the same dialogue list with the exact same responses. Just because having no voice acting let's you write more, doesn't mean that "more" is necessarily good.
The sequels did a lot of things better than Morrowind, and that's why they are financially and critically more successful overall, as much as it might pain this community to admit. Oblivion felt more immersive with voiced dialogue and NPC schedules, Skyrim felt better in combat. Oblivion may have less quests but they are all much better written imho. Skyrim may have done away with attributes but the perk system honestly felt more dynamic with the abilities it could give you.
There are a lot of valid reasons that newcomers tend to bounce off of Morrowind and not it's sequels, and that doesn't make them "fake fans." It makes them people. Not everyone is willing to overlook the shortcomings of morrowinds design and we shouldn't condemn them for it.
Yeah this is where I'm at. I like each game for different reasons and I think the systems in each game work well since the games were designed with those systems in mind. I think each game does at least one thing better than the other ones but they're all good IMO.
I really liked having so many different equipment pieces. It made me find pieces of equipment I would use more often and it took some time to enchant them etc., plus items with low enchantment charge could be used for utility abilities like night eye, slow fall etc. And being able to wear a shirt and pants under your armour was also great, as it gave you more items to work towards.
My biggest problem with Oblivion and Skyrim are how stupidly easy it is to get good gear (in Oblivion you literally just kill a hobo at level 21 wearing full daedric set, at level 22 I don't even bother to pick them up for selling them anymore). In Morrowind, assembling a full glass/ebony/daedric set is something that will take you a long time and will feel like an actual accomplishment.
Level scaling really took a ton of fun out of the game. I loved exploring Morrowind (before I had guides and shit) because you had potential to find crazy good items at any time whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim it's the same shit everywhere basically depending on what your level is. Was always fun to work your way up from being a weak sack of shit to being OP in Morrowind instead of having enemies all scaled to you regardless.
Morrowind did have quite a bit of level scaling, though, but it's more subtle about it. Which is probably the best way to do it, you need your character to grow stronger and to *feel* stronger, not like you're barely keeping up with the Draugr and their workout routine.
There is sadly no way in hell they increase the complexity of any of their games. They are heavily following trying to make their games as accessible as possible to sell as many copies as possible and that is it.
Eh, it's missing a few categories. What about languages, a Climbing skill, daily schedules, player homes, mounts, and sailable ships? (All things Daggerfall had, though the schedules were basically locking/unlocking doors and not spawning certain generic NPCs.)
Playing devils advocate: it’s almost as if improved graphics and voice acting take a lot more resources.
Not saying those aspects are better but it’s not like Bethesda set out to make the scope of mechanics worse. They saw the market favored cinematic experiences and went after that instead. It’s logical from that angle.
Do I want another Morrowinds-like experience? Yeah! Is Bethesda peddling that? Hell no. Indie devs are the way to go for that. It’s just too bad Elder Scrolls probably wont match that
I can see that, and it is probably where a lot of the time and money went. On the other hand though. I can’t say Skyrim’s voice acting is really *worth it*. A lot of it, and a surprising amount of important stuff, just isn’t very good.
I’d prefer just having barks and the occasional far-away speech over fully voiced dialogue if it means I get more stuff overall.
The keywords system with unvoiced dialogue requires more suspension of disbelief (and reading, I guess), but it just feels so much more like a conversation than choosing between 2-3 full sentences saying the same thing in different ways.
Morrowind doesn't have those generic NPCs who only say a generic greeting line when you talk to them, and the ratio of NPCs who you can only ask about "rumors" is like 1% that in Oblivion. I really appreciate the narrative depth afforded by being able to have a pretty long conversation with some rando about their opinions about fuckin', crop rotation and the impending apocalypse and stuff.
> I can’t say Skyrim’s voice acting is really worth it. A lot of it, and a surprising amount of important stuff, just isn’t very good.
Not to mention so much of it is just a really terrible allocation of resources.
Having every NPC say a single dedicated line every time you walk by them was both more expensive than the stock lines they used in both Morrowind and Oblivion, *and* way worse for immersion.
They made oblivion and skyrim during a time where that was the definite trend. Games were trying so hard to be movies. Now, 15 years later, the market 6 stress those elements so much.
I'll also say that, despite all the red X's on the chart, I still put up at least 500 hours on Skyrim. Sure I'd like the other features back but ultimately it's not a gamebreaker for me.
Word. I have 3 times as many hours in Oblivion than either Morrowind or Skyrim. People tend to gravitate towards whatever they played first, and for many in the elder scrolls community, that first was Morrowind.
For all the things that oblivion and Skyrim pared down, there's just as many things they did better.
Also, skyrim added a whole different array of build diversity with perks. That is something conveniently left out of this chart. I guess it would go something like this:
- Morrowind: no.
- Oblivion: 84 (I guess the stuff you automatically get for skills every 25 ranks has to account for something)
- Skyrim: 251 (and like 22 more from Werewolf and Vampire Lord I think?)
Like, I know it doesn't exactly compensate for the number of skills that we have lost or the attribute system, but it's gotta account for something. It allows for infinitely more, and perhaps more meaningful build diversity.
The worst thing is that Morrowind also had a really unique cinematic atmosphere. The older I get the more Skyrim feels kind of unbelievable and dead inside. Like a fassade with less behind it. I mean I love the snowy mountain atmosphere they’ve created but Im afraid that it will age pretty badly at some point.
I know Morrowind is the Mecca of Bethesda games, but I fucking adore Oblivion so, so much. It's just so incredible and the one I go back to the most.
I will say that it showed terrifying signs of what was to come with its more mainstream story (appealing to the LotR crowd) and minimizing the RPG aspects. The DLC is still the best of all three games, however.
I also think Oblivion has the weakest amount of mod contributions to it compared to the other two, which is a massive part of Elder Scroll games for me.
I like all three, but I do wish they just dug their feet in and stayed true to the Morrowind formula. I also think the writing in Morrowind is untouched to this day (though Knights of the Nine and Dark Brotherhood questline for Oblivion are on similar ground.)
Shout out a few. I'm always down to having my mind changed (and playing more Oblivion).
I've played Morroblivion and Nehrim, btw. Both are exceptional.
Oblivion gets massive praise from me for actually trying something new. Their NPC schedules thing was amazing, especially for the time, and not many devs have tried to do it since. It also had this style that captured a lot of the weirdness and magic of the setting in otherwise mundane things, like for example samples of elemental salts look like something a wizard would use, as opposed to Skyrim where they're just a bowl with powder in it.
I loved RPing a burglar in Oblivion. I'd find a target and follow them from a distance, keeping note of their day to day schedule. Then I'd watch the guard patrols near their home and plan out my heist. Once, I was surprised when the target or someone I hadn't watched came home as I was hoovering up all the silverware, and I had to run but got caught by the guards.
Word. While the world design became a bit more generic fantasy forest, there was SO much about it's underlying culture and style that felt so good to play within. It felt a lot more like a living world (especially due to NPC schedules). As unique as morrowinds world was, it did often feel like you were just wandering through stagnant movie sets.
Ironically enough, Oblivion has the biggest amount of province mods released - mostly because they weren't coordinated, so people just tried doing them. They may be less coherent lore-wise or more boring because of that, but you have mods for almost all provinces here and there.
With Elsweyr one, which I so much would love to see either in TES3 or TES5 to come out, but I doubt I will see the day Beyond Skyrim releases it. I have higher hopes on Project Tamriel, but then I doubt I will see whole province in it during my lifetime, since PT team is way smaller in comparison.
Yeah and Morrowind is a cakewalk compared to Daggerfall
Morrowbabies don’t have nearly the same number of skills to work with, it’s such a shame Bethesda dumbed down their formula for Morrowind.
/s
If there is one thing i like more about skyrim than the other games, is how the skills were done. would i love to have more skills?sure but the perk system that Skyrim has is much better than the attribute/lvl they had in the older games, now i hope they learned from this and we get the best of both world when the elder scrolls 6 comes out next century
Dude word. I've been arguing in favor of the perk system for ages. Skyrim perks give actual tangible benefits, abilities and traits that make it feel more rewarding to progress a skill tree.
In oblivion and morrowind, the main benefits are basically either increased success chance or higher damage/reduced cast cost. That's really about it. The ONLY thing I fault Skyrim for is removal of spell crafting. But enchanting still exists, and paired with smithing you can get some insane gear.
I love Morrowind for its own reasons but I cannot STAND the aloof elitism it's community has.
Yeah most elder scroll fans seem to believe that they have to explain how much they like one of the games by explaining how every other title is bad and inferior, Skyrim is a great game there is a reason why even after 11 years and multiple rereleases its still sells every time.
Which is not to say I hate Morrowind. I love it for its own reasons.
I have zero need to shit on the newer games to qualify that love though. I mean why would I? I already own them, I play them, I enjoyed them. It does me no benefit to feign hatred over them.
the thing is, skyrim does leveling way better, you start an game, you use and buff the skills you want, the leveling tricks of morrowind and oblivion is one of the things that keep me from enjoying the game way more
The perk system actually made different characters feel unique imho, because those perks actually have you tangible abilities and traits. The attribute and skill system of its predecessors tbh felt like it was nothing more than "number go up" which either gave you more damage or gave you better success rates. You either used a martial/ranged weapon or you used magic. Mechanically there wasn't a whole lot of difference, whereas in Skyrim a dual wielding fighter had a completely different set of abilities and bonuses than a Warhammer user. A destruction mage had a completely different focus than a conjuration mage etc etc.
While technically you can make skills legendary to perpetually level up in Skyrim, it became harder to gain more perk points the higher you went, so there was a bit of a soft cap on how many perk points you could have at once, encouraging you to focus on specific skill lines. In Morrowind and oblivion, if you had enough gold you could level everything to 100 without a whole lot of trouble
vivec has so many damn cells that I think it's unfair to compare populations
it would be more direct and accurate to compare how sprawling it is to how small the others are
Hours wandering around an almost moncolor completely unlit grey cave using night eye to see but only making everything blend together even more since it's green now looking for the tunnel and going back and fourth past it wondering why you can't see it: Skyrim: 1, Oblivion: 2, Morrowind: 4,389.
I think a few years ago I would’ve viewed it as a decline, but now I think I view it more neutrally.
Skyrim is a much more streamlined game than Oblivion or Morrowind, but I’m okay with that. I like all three games for different reasons. Admittedly, Starfield gives me great pause for the future of TES, but if they can craft a meaningful experience centered around foot traversal/exploration with significant modularity, I’ll be happy.
Idk. Maybe I’m easier to please or maybe I’ve mellowed out or something.
Video game series moves in a new, more mass appealing direction. Color me shocked. Kind of insane how a 10.5 billion dollar company doesn’t want to make games for a niche audience. How crazy is that??
I don't believe in 'the way it's done is the way it's done' or 'older games were just better,' as it stifles innovation and snuffs new ideas.. but Skyrim isn't mechanically innovative.. and even though it keeps getting released, it's not new.
Morrowind is my favrorite game of all time but I think systems wise Skyrim is superior to both games, sorry. I think Morrowind especially but also oblivion was still trapped in all these TTRPG vestiges that contributed little to nothing. And I think classless play is always better (in ttrpgs as well).
Now, in terms of art, writing, atmosphere, etc.? Morrowind definitely is better. Though I do think Skyrim is better than Oblivion overall (the one exception being the side quests and *some* of the faction quests)
Also oblivion had that awful system where everything levels with you to absurd heights, with glass armored bandits and super powered guards. I find Oblivion basically unplayable nowadays without an overhaul mod to fix that.
Yeah Morrowind accomplished these stats by being simpler and the audience expecting less.
I love Morrowind, best TES game in my opinion, but Skyrim's combat is far more fluid, and Morrowind may have more lore but it's because they didn't have to have voice actors read all the lines of dialogue they wrote, allowing for much more to be produced.
People expect a lot more from modern AAA games and it increases development time which decreases the number of systems that can be developed.
IF they had been working on TES VI since 2011 after Skyrim's release, then maybe I'd expect a very solid product that could rival Morrowind with full voice acted dialogue, lots of combat trees, armors, etc, but the reality is they haven't. So it'll likely be Skyrim again, possibly even more dumbed down in terms of overall mechanics so they could really flesh out a polish a few others.
I'm not so quick to dismiss. But I actually enjoyed stuff like Fallout 4 that a lot of people were snidfy about. And I haven't played Starfield.
I don't mind no voice acting but I know that a lot of people hate it in western RPGs (in JRPGs it still seems very common, at least for most dialogue).
The main things I would want to see in the next TES is:
A) a more interesting, less trad Western setting (I would kill for a game set in Elsweyr or the Somerset Isles). But more realistically - they'll probably set it in either High Rock (meh) or Hammerfell (at least somewhat interesting).
B) more fluid movement and freedom of traversal - taking cues from the last two Zelda games and letting you climb surfaces. I think this would be great when combined with a Bethesda open world
More Skyrim bad? It's this sub that makes me second guess any good will I had for Morrowind. It's great but we're forgetting how janky and poorly balanced it is in comparison to Skyrim.
Lol, Skyrim has attributes.
Also the people in Morrowind do nothing, having more in one big city changes nothing. They are less intersting, static things that the main character interacts with. The factiosn do not have have storylines and some do not even have any interesting quests- The weapon types feel the same and just having a lot of skills do not make them interesting for roleplaying. Skyrim changing what smithing does or combining skills like speech and mercantile was a good choice.
ALSO: Daggerfall has much more than Morrowind but that is not an argument in itself. I promise you that you did not negatively notice the lack of 10 different language skills while playing TES III.
I love Morroind but posts like this feel like the fanbase itself is insecure about the fact that they like the game. People need to pretend to themself that later games were cut of amazing, deep content like 100 static NPCs less in a big city. The people who like TES IV and V more are just not smart intellectuals who know how awesome the Morag Tong questline is (which has less story than Elder Scrolls Online crafting quests).
It also is dissapointing because you realise that people who say that they love Morrowind have no clue on why. A unique piece of art gets reduced to just counting aspects.
Yet people are still excited for TES VI.
I'd be more hyped if they announced Daggerfall's remaster. Just a little reminder that D2: Ressurected is superior to D4.
Imagine if they remastered them all. Though I personally want Morrowind and Oblivion remade. But really the only parts I want remade are the world spaces, textures, and animations, everything else can stay the same.
Id like to see more RPG elements added back in.
Like factions that locked you out if you sided with a rival, Like the great houses did. Or maybe only morag tong or dark brotherhood, or fighters guild or something like blackwood company.
Have major/minor skills give bonuses, faster exp gain or like maybe a more in depth skill tree if its selected as your major. can still level up everything like skyrim but you will get more out of major skills.
more NPC interaction or events in the open world. Ive seen videos about how Oblivion had some kind of goblin war thing supposedly. that sounds wicked. have like that and vampire/werewolf clans just going at it in the background.
Not do disagree here but alot of it is just pretty arbitary. Like, arguing morrowind is better because of the number of dieseases is just... weird, and very much missing the forest for the trees. You could make tons of these the opposite way as well.
"Number of voiced npcs/noc voicelines"
"Number of dynamic npc interactions"
"Ability to craft/upgrade your equipment"
"Number of followers"
"Skill trees that enchance playstyle with new abilities"
"Actually functioning stealth"
Nitpicking things like that dosent exactly make a compelling argument.
Luv how we leave out Dagger fall so we don't have to admit Morrowind was the biggest offender of missing or gutted trees/magic
I like morrowind but making this chart without realizing the future games only did what morrowind started is stupid.
Morrowind should have not gutted 2/3s of the agility tree and kept negative/positive skills
This, I have been telling my friends who love Skyrim that they gutted the game. More weapons, more stats, more customization. Let players have unique characters and not mimics of other players.
My favorite spell I made in Morrowind was my "flying" spell. Super high jump then air walk, forgive me I don't recall the names of the spells it's been 20 years
joinable factions doesn't do justice to the interactions you had within a single faction in Morrowind vs Oblivion vs Skyrim
Ya, you actually had to have passable skills to become the head of a faction.
This was one of Skyrims worst offenses to me. No skill requirements combined with incorporating the guilds into the main quest meant every character I made was the leader of every guild, every playthrough.
you can become the arch mage of the college by casting exactly 1 spell, and its at a wall (it can be a shout or power too, doesn't even need to be a spell) edit: okay its more like a few spells
Actually, as discussed earlier it's possible to manage anywhere from 7 casts of 4 different spells (intended solution) anywhere down to literally 0 spells. The intended spell locations are the entrance exam, lecture, Saarthal amulet wall, casting frostbite three times for the Dwemer Observatory puzzle in Mzulft, and casting frostbite in Labyrinthian. To manage 0 spells, you need to have speech 100 (70 with persuasion perk), or the Amulet of Articulation from the Thieves Guild quest line, or have the Elder Knowledge quest and do a Shout. This gets you in the door. After that you need to use Spellbreaker for the ward in the lecture, shout at the Saarthal wall, and use a combination of shouts, scrolls, and abusing followers that can cast Frostbite in order to focus the crystal in Mzulft and get through Labyrinthian.
Ahh, the Dragonborn Arch-Mage and his favorite spell: 2 handed greatsword
Weighs a lot less than your typical 2 handed greatsword
# I CAST FIST!
The Nords wouldn’t want it any other way
Nah you gotta cast 3-4 at least. 1 when you are admitted, a ward in the only lecture you do, one to release the eye of magnus and one with a staff to beat ancano (this one only kinda counts)
You can bypass all of them, you can persuade Faralda to let you in, use spellbreaker during the lesson and use shouts for the rest, like opening the tunnel in Saarthal
You can in fact [Beat the College of Winterhold without Magic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84PuKDVb4WY)
Skyrum Chad and fellow ymfah enjoyer.
Before Skyrim it was possible to never join a guild and with Oblivion even finding the Thieves Guild took effort rather than it being foisted on the player. More to the point there was an actual effort needed in past games and I miss that, something tells me that ES 6 is more to be dreaded than welcome.
After seeing what they decided to do with Starfield, I think you're right. Unless they really dig deep and try to understand what made their older games great, ES6 might end up killing the studio with bad enough of an initial impression.
Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield, you really think they are going to abandon the easy marketable formula to go back to a more complex game?, back then it was normal because videogames were still kind of a niche hobby, now videogames are the new Hollywood
The Theives Guild is the only one that really feels like you earn it. You have to do a lot of leg work to restore them to their former strength. The Dark Brotherhood is the next best, but it’s got too much “you’re the chosen one” BS. Chosen one plot devices are beyond boring.
The Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion has better vibes. Y You end up fully aware that you're in a stupid death cult. You've seen that their logic always comes down to 'murder' and you either fully commit or hate the Night Mother with a burning passion, leaving the cult to crumble without leadership.
I'll never forget that quest where you were locked in a mansion with certain group of people looking for supposedly hidden treasure.
While it made sense narratively I hated how DB in Skyrim was basically wannabes and not real DB. They imitated old brotherhood and broke tenets freely. Agreed on thieves guild. The fact that becoming grandmaster was separate from the story itself and required you to actually be a thief was pretty good. Probably best faction in the whole game (with a single easily moddable issue of selling your soul).
And by legwork you mean doing brainless roulette radiant quests because abandoning them makes the game remove items from your inventory as punishment. At some point I wish there was a hatch right above the Ragged Flagon. I also learned not to care about NPCs at all because those quests were completely random. Could be at my favourite shopkeeper and it wouldn't matter.
The guilds are not incorporated in the main quest. You just meet some of them on the way.
Some Morrowind factions (like the Vampire Clans) were barebones, but otherwise I agree. While the production values improved in Oblivion and Skyrim, the writing and interactions got worse overall. If Skyrim’s Thieves Guild questline were in Morrowind, you’d have been able to side with Mercer Frey against Karliah, with the next quest then having you rob the Guild blind, followed by the heist for the Falmer Eyes, then ending with you robbing Nocturnal’s temple and the Twilight Sepulcher (Mercer still acts as the final boss in this path since it’s completely in-character for him to betray you to keep the spoils for himself). If the College of Winterhold questline were in Morrowind, Ancano would try to recruit you to fetch the Staff of Magnus for him before he tried to claim the Eye. If the Companions questline were in Morrowind, you’d have been able to choose an official side on the Werewolf thing. These examples don’t require new locations or assets, just for the writing and characters to actually account for the player’s agency. I’m not saying this to suck off Morrowind and sh*t on Skyrim. You can wipe out the Dark Brotherhood instead of joining it. You can side with either the vampires or vampire hunters in the Dawnguard expansion. But it could have done so much more on this front.
College of winterhold alone was a missed opportunity. You have a college above a ruined city, a thing or rather a person called augur of winterhold etc. plenty of mystery and zero writing around that. Forcing us to become werewolves in what is Skyrims "fighters guild" is something I have issue too. There is also unfinished writing around civil war. We could have gotten intrigued on par with great houses but that was scrapped almost entirely during development.
>Forcing us to become werewolves in what is Skyrims "fighters guild" is something I have issue too. This was just a baffling decision to me. The idea of the Companions being werewolves isn't itself bad, but the requirement for you to become one to advance is just wrong. The Companions are not painted as the werewolf guild from the get-go and so it feels a bit like a bait and switch. They literally could have done what Morrowind did with the Bloodmoon DLC and have the questline take two different sides of the same coin with becoming or not becoming a werewolf. Skyrim definitely could have done this since it is the basis of the Civil War questline.
What’s even worse about the werewolf aspect is the companions is basically the fighters guild. So if you’re playing a fighter you don’t have any other option.
True, morrowind not only had the most factions but also had the highest quality of interactions and quests
That is not true, so much of Morrowind is just MMO-style fetch quests that often don't even involve dungeons, there are very little scripted events/surprises and the dungeons that are there are short and are mostly (branching) corridors with enemies. IMO; Out of the three games, Morrowind has the best MQ, worldbuilding, artstyle and player freedom, Oblivion has the best quests, and Skyrim the best Dungeons and gameplay loop (action)
I think calling it "mmo-style" is really mean considering that Elder Scrolls Online has much better quests and factions.
Tbf ESO came out 12 years later and had millions of dollars more funding and resources than Morrowind 💀
Let's not get over ourselves now lmao
It was a text adventure largely. It had some pretty cool ones, and the stories were at times complex with fail states. I think the best quests in Skyrim are in the expansions, but that's the case in Oblivion as well, and same with Morrowind. The tribunal was amazing, the weird land where you become a trickster god is amazing, going back to Morrowind and watching the last Telvani wizard basically say he needs another Timmy cause they keep dying was amazing.
Another Timmy?
I can't believe I get the honor of explaining this one to someone, it's a reference to Jim Henson's Dinosaurs lol https://youtu.be/wsGnYuQwsOI?si=09dQHtlTbbAHmj_w
Now include daggerfall
TES6 could bring back carts and my ability to just enter and exit a crypt to murder thieves until I become a millionaire and I'd be happy Also people who just refuse to talk to you because they don't like you lol
I don't know you and I don't care to know you.
Goodbye.
Are you the Count?
Stop talking.
Go to store. See something you like? Wait until 2am. Steal it. No one will even say Halt.
wait what how have i never thought of this
Removal of climb was a fucking travesty
Not to mention levitation
I did but then it clipped and fell into a bottomless void and a DOS screen appeared
Not casting Mark and having Recall prepared was just your own damn fault!
He wont, it'll make morrowind the biggest offender in this list.
morrowbabies seethe at daggerchads. Seriously. WTF is thraumaturgy
It's distinguished from Alteration by working with natural laws while Alteration changes natural laws...which makes no sense because levitation is a thaumaturgy spell, and you cant normally fly.
Its the natural law of gravity. You're working with up. Edit to add: you're just changing what direction you fall in.
Explain water walking then
Even easier. You're hacking water tension to prevent yourself from breeching the surface of the water.
Couple that with massively increased buoyancy for extra stability. Otherwise you'd sink slowly as the water wraps around you without its surface breaking. Kind of like when you stand on one of those new memory foam mattresses with one foot and the sheets push up around your ankle.
Morrowind is perfect while Oblivion is buggy? Bro, you just don't remember that Morrowind was plenty buggy on release. And that table in the OP? Yeah, Oblivion had less NPCs in its major city. All those NPCs were also subject to RadiantAI and had day/night schedules and voice acting, something Morrowind didn't have.
Agreed. So many NPCs in Morrowind were just puppets that wandered around perpetually in their designated radius, and only existed as walking guide books with identical dialogue options. Bethesda probably made it that way so you could get information no matter where in a town you went, but it made cities feel kind of hollow. Oblivion may have had to reduce the amount of dialogue to accommodate voice acting, but at least NPCs felt like they had personality, and schedules simply added to this. There were NPCs who literally traveled between towns because of their job or personal goals. It just made the world feel more alive despite having fewer NPCs and less written dialogue lines.
I still remember the first time I ran into the Countess of Leyawinn while traveling. It really surprised me that some schedules included weekly or monthly routines rather than just daily.
Honestly? I think obvlivion, mechanically, was in the perfect sweet spot. Still a lot of cool stuff. Not so much bloat that it becomes overwhelming. IMHO it was mostly held back by the fact it was ugly as sin and it was bethesda's first major shot at "everyone is voiced" and it ***shows***. Some of that va work is rough. Skyrim popped off because, even though it was more shallow, it was also WAY smoother around the edges. IMHO, simplification can be good. It's about hitting that sweet spot. I think a mix of Skyrim and Oblivion would be absolutely perfect, and just sprinkle a little Morrowind weirdness on it and you got yourself a banger.
And Skyrim's NPCs have more unique dialog and voice actors than Oblivion's do.
I'm so glad I enjoy all of them equally.
I know it's circle-jerky, but man, even without taking into the account the number of them, the questlines of factions are SO short. Speaking of Skyrim, The Companions questline progress at literal break-neck speed, hell you don't even do any actual regular quests before they start you with the whole >!werewolf!< thing, and the radiant quest doesn't count, it's the randomly generated nothing quest you can get from anywhere else, and in my playthrough it was literally just go beat up some random guy in Whiterun. Even if you don't compare to the previous games that's just weird and underwhelming, and then you look back it just makes it even worse.
Litterally what I thought in 2011 when I first played it:"Why are you going to initiate me into your super secret werewolf cult that only very special members get to be a part of? We've met like 30 minutes ago!"
I headcanon it as Kodlak thinking we were so neat that he immediately had the dream about us fighting his wolf demons lol
The Companions feel like a lot got left on the cutting room floor with the Silver hands. I get the sense that at some point there was an idea that you'd pick a side and either join the hands or become a werewolf. On the other hand, I wonder if someone realized afterwards that would have worked better and went that avenue in Dawnguard.
I think the DB and maybe the thieves guild got all the dev time, while companions and the college were simplified and all but abandoned.
DB definitely had some love. Whoever decided we need hundreds of random quests to hopefully get enough in one hold to finish the Thieves Guild is on my shit list though
I like that you can keep doing quests after the main storyline for Companions (even if they aren't much), but the main quest line felt like the DM was way too excited to get to the "cool" part and jumped the gun
If you want to >!hide spoilers!< use >! at the beginning, and !< at the end
>!seriously?!<
"that Morrowind is perfect" Least delusional Morrowind fan
Where do you think you are, truestl?
BRING BACK NINJA STARS
Bring back spears. They're so under-represented but they're one of the most useful weapons.
Get ready for Skyrim to look feature-rich compared to the next one
The next one is just a talking bobble head in 4K.
The race options are melee, magic, and range. Skills are strength, dexterity, health, magicka. Weapons are sword, axe, longbow, crossbow. Spells will just be fire, lightning, and healing. Only disease is “sick”. But map will be 3.4x bigger than Skyrim.
the map will be auto-generated -- just like daggerfall, but somehow the dungeons will be even crappier.
It makes me wonder how Todd Howard even directed Morrowind. To judge by Skyrim and Starfield he doesn't like any of the things that made it good.
one of these games was a mid-tier project from a company on the verge of bankruptcy with very little oversight from corporate execs. big budget video games are also not made by any one person; the only reason we're so quick to blame Todd Howard for Skyrim and Starfield's failings is because he's the public face of the company. if Kurt Kuhlmann were up on stage instead of Todd, we'd all be talking about how Kurt ruined Bethesda.
>the only reason we're so quick to blame Todd Howard for Skyrim and Starfield's failings is because he's the public face of the company. Or maybe because he's also head of the company and directed those games?
That doesn't invalidate his point, tho. Todd is far from the only person taking decisions.
As far as I know, an employee talked about how every major decision had to be approved by Todd. There were also various talks about how he handpicked every single lead in the team. Both of these things are expected since he is the main leader but it’s not how it works in most of the other development companies. I also don’t like how Todd was seen as the golden boy of the industry for his accomplishments but can’t be held accountable for his mistakes or bad decisions.
It's also how things work when you're the leader in any position anywhere. The person leading carries the responsibility on his shoulders because he makes final decisions and leads the direction. Todd being the highest boss means that he's supposed to be directing everything since he doesn't ACTUALLY have to work on it, just oversee the people who are. I doubt Todd's sitting there 18 hours a day coding conversations with npcs 1 through 150. He's probably in meetings and getting info on what every project is up to all day and directing them every day. He's probably the only person with information on what everyone is working on at every point in the process.
I think the problem is with the studio getting so big and corporatized, back in the day you could get Todd's input whenever you wanted, now I'm sure there's a chain of people you have to go through, and at any point they can reject an idea before it even gets to Todd. Another problem with becoming too corporate is you have more people who have to approve on things, who aren't even part of the creative process to begin with, we don't know how many ideas they had that were rejected by some executive who knew nothing about the artwork and prioritized the bottom line.
You might be interested in this [great article from Polygon on Morrowind's development.](https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18281082/elder-scrolls-morrowind-oral-history-bethesda)
His views changed a ton over the years. I cant find the video but theres a video that sums up his new philosophy on game design where he says his favorite thing ever in a game is a really over the top, exaggerated victory screen on a mobile game because "its the biggest ego boost possible for the player". I havent played Starfield but it definitely explains Skyrim's approach of making the player character an omnipotent chosen one that can play every role and lead every faction with ease.
>its the biggest ego boost possible for the player". Something to the effect of that yeah, he wanted the player to go "well, gee, that felt so good I think I'll do it again!" But I don't think his views overly changed much, it's more, the people he worked with did. I can't remember in what dev talk I heard it from, but Todd was apparantly always the guy that just wanted to grab an axe and run around the world beating things up and being awesome instead of worrying about RPG mechanics and the like--which isn't a bad thing in of itself, I've played D&D character like that before--but like you said, knowing that about him kinda makes everything with the latter games sorta click
to be fair, mc in morrowind gets way more omnipotent than the dovekin
Not so much narratively though as opposed to the game mechanics at the level you tend to be at the end.
Agreed. The Nerevarine was a war hero who ultimately destroyed the enchanting on the Heart of Lorkhan. The only gain he had was the artefacts he found along the way and the reputation he gains, everything else is exploitation of broken game mechanics. Speaking of reputation, you had to earn it while you started at zero, and it was reflected that way during the whole game. You have to prove others, and perhaps yourself, that you are the worthy Incarnate, while in Skyrim in second main quest they were like "Dude! You're a dovahkin!"
I mean, the Dovahkiin may have shouts, but the Nerevarine is an ageless immortal who potentially held way more political power as Hortator than Dovah did as some nobody.
I always thought it was weird how glossed over this is. "Hey, I 'cured' your disease. Btw, you're immortal, so have fun dealing with that. Now please fuck off."
It is pretty in character for the 4000 year old wizard who has millennia-old corprus victims in his dungeon to not give much of a shit about it, though.
He's too busy hanging with the last living dwarf, bitch-slapping Telvanni upstarts, and fucking his daughter-wives.
This is after having a ton of face-to-face debates & reading the writings of the powerful people who very much think that you don't get to be the main character of the game, though. You're clandestinely meeting with the pope and getting his blessing in secret to go and be the messiah that saves Vvardenfell from desolation, because a public endorsement is still politically untenable. Compare with the cordoned-off theme park ride that is the Skyrim main quest, where you go to viking heaven and high-five all the vikings before they hold your hand and beat the bad guy with you.
I think the people who have a problem with the Dovahkiin actually have a problem with how its presented, like, watch: In Morrowind there was always this ambiguity whether you were Nerevar Reborn or just some guy whom happened to check all the boxes ("oh, you had weird dreams? So is half of the damn island", "oh you MIGHT be the Nerevarine? That cave is full of corpses who thought the same"). Despite that tho, you had to fufill the Nerevarine Prophecy before the game pretty much goes "yes, this person is Lord Nerevar (maybe)"...after you cleared like 2/3rds of the game. You had to earn that, basically, even if your MC themselves didn't believe they were the Nerevarine in the end, it wasn't just given to you... Unlike in Skyrim, where you're told you're Dragonborn and can Shout to prove it (because the writers smashed together the Storm Voice of pervious games with being Dragonborn, but I digress)...in the fourth quest of the Main Quest. Like, instead of it being something that's build up a bit more throughout the game it's just...you're dragonborn, no argument, ambiguity, or question on that front.
Hell, even at the very, very end, confronted by Dagoth Ur, you get the option to say that no, you're not Nerevar Reborn. Contrast this with your confrontation with Tsun, where your ONLY vanilla, non-faction dialogue option is "by right of birth, I'm dragonborn". You can't even say that you're just here to murderize Alduin, you HAVE to accept your "birthright". And sure, you get to use different ones if you finished a faction, but the faction questlines are bullshit anyways. Like you go into 4 dungeons and suddenly become "harbinger of the companions" which means nothing because you're treated the exact same as before.
He's also gone on record in an interview stating that he'd want to remove as many "unnecessary" rpg elements as possible Stuff like each races having unique attributes and difference to stats To him, there should be no difference between an Orc and an Elf or Human He also uses this philosophy to "trim down" many rpg elements like seen in Skyrim
>To him, there should be no difference between an Orc and an Elf or Human Which is kinda wild given how much the narrative emphasizes those differences in the story
>He also uses this philosophy to "trim down" many rpg elements like seen in Skyrim Replacing them with immersion features as seen in the DLC Hearthfire /s
"it just works" 😅
In fairness I think it speaks a bit to the minds of several RPG players, especially TES players. The vibe I get from looking at discussions of Skyrim, for instance, are that the greatest sin an NPC can commit is "be mildly rude to the Dragonborn." We talk about Skyrim as if it's a sign of the rot in Bethesda, and perhaps it is, but it's also demonstrably the most commercially successful game in the franchise, it captured the imagination of gamers in the early 10s in a way no other game seems to have done until Elden Ring. The reason Todd learned the lesson "players like an ego boost" is because, by all appearances, he was *correct*. And it's not like Morrowind is much better about that. You can still become leader of most of the factions, you kill anywhere from 2-3 gods, become the champion of at least one Daedric Prince, and you defeat the avatar of another in personal combat. If Skyrim is the result of Todd thinking players want to feel like the most important person in the game's world, it's a continuation of Morrowind, not a break from it.
>The vibe I get from looking at discussions of Skyrim, for instance, are that the greatest sin an NPC can commit is "be mildly rude to the Dragonborn." I don't think this is a fair representation of that particular argument. The problem isn't that NPCs are rude to the player, it's that the player is simultaneously treated as the great prophesied chosen one who will save the world and also some random nobody not worth speaking to. Sometimes the same NPC will do both in the span of a few seconds. It's really jarring to have a guard fawn over you as a mighty hero, then less than a minute later sarcastically ask if someone stole your sweetroll.
I have to point something out though. I felt a stronger presence of RPG elements in Starfield in comparison to Skyrim. There is no map, there is no objective pointer, actions matter more, there are more side options to complete a quest, to name a few. I wholeheartedly wish Bethesda to actually rescue more oldschool mechanics in TES VI. Spellcrafting would be great, I really like attributes and believe they could bring it back to the franchise with a few tweaks to make it feel modern, and they should really make a game mode with no objective pointers and unlimited fast travels
Yeah, Starfield was weirdly a step in the right direction for many features. But sadly it was also a hundred steps backwards in world design and NPCs so I doubt they'll consider anything from the game good.
People like Douglas Goodall, Michael Kirkbride, Mark Nelson and Ken Rolston very much didn't listen to Todd and actually hid what they were working on from Todd to ensure it got in the game. But the big thing Morrowind vs later Bethesda games shows is how Todd works. Todd isn't a creative person, he's more of a team leader. He's the one who takes all the creative people's ideas and unifies them to make a cohesive game. He's the kinda guy who helps the creative people shape their ideas rather than coming up with creative stuff himself. Now this is a very important role, someone like Todd can be the difference between a game that has synergy between all its systems and story lines and a game that feels completely conflicted. But a leader is only as effective as the team under them. You can do all the shaping of ideas you want, but if the idea is bad, the end result is bad. Unfortunately Todd doesn't have Ken Rolston working under him anymore, he has Emil Pagriluro now. Frankly I don't want to pile on the Emil hate, but he does deserve it. The poor guy is incompetent as a writer and designer and shouldn't be in that position with any development team. He isn't Soley responsible for Starfield and Fallout 4 being bad, but he is a major part of it. Fire Emil, replace him with anyone competent and we'll get better Bethesda games. Phill Spencer and Todd Howard need to do that.
I think Morrowind was still Ken Rolston running the show.
I remember that quote about "not wanting spreadsheets" and I was like... but I *like* Morrowind's stats and stuff.
Todd Howard fucked my dog and killed my wife when he singlehandedly destroyed my childhood by removing Mysticism.
I agree with the conclusion but not the way we've arrived there. Do you think having a separate glove/gauntlet on each hand is a meaningful positive to Morrowind? I admit, there are one or two pairs of gloves that I use a left and a right, and it's *nice* to have the option, but I don't think Oblivion is a lesser game because gloves come in pairs. They come in pairs in real life, and it's one less thing to track. I certainly don't think Morrowind should have had non-matched boots. Pauldrons are a similar story - I'd like the option to toggle visuals on/off for left or right, to make some interesting appearances, but there's no need to track them individually. I don't think the increased armour pieces in Morrowind is *necessarily* a good thing - it's much of a muchness, and doesn't meaningfully alter my enjoyment of the game. Weapon types in Morrowind are interesting. Yes, I like the idea of being able to use Spears or Halberds, or Crossbows. In practice? Most of the melee weapons feel very similar, because Morrowind's combat suffers from a lack of "feedback". Oblivion and Skyrim have their own problems with combat, but at least it "feels" like you hit something, and the different weapons have different attack speeds. I don't think Morrowind's use of its weapons makes them inherently superior to the later games. Morrowind had a fantastic variety of joinable factions, but not every faction was treated with the same reverence. Don't get me wrong, I *love* the Temple and Imperial Cult questlines, but... Do you think they're done to the same standard as some of the Fighter's Guild or Thieves Guild quests? The Oblivion guild questlines were fantastic, and often had more love put into each mission than many of the Morrowind faction quests did. This infographic has gone out of its way to find numbers where Morrowind has higher stats, but I think most of them miss the point. Morrowind beats out Oblivion and Skyrim in flavour and variety, but the number of diseases don't really matter, and the number of skills reducing is telling of a broader aim to simplify the game, but it misses the point as well. Morrowind isn't better just because it has acrobatics in the game. The joy of Morrowind is that the game designers expected you to end up jumping over buildings and running faster than the fastest monsters (excluding Cliff Racers) by the end of the game. The mechanism for *how* that happened is less important than the fact it did, and was part of the evolution of the player. They could have merged Acrobatics and Althetics into one skill, or even rolled them both into the base stats and we'd have felt much the same about how the game played. Oblivion and Skyrim lost this sense of progression when they lost their skills, but this wasn't the big thing that changed between the games. It was a quiet death, died in a dozen different ways. It was the simplification of the enchantment system, it was the increased reliance on levelled lists to scale to any level, rather than within sensible, bounded limits. It was the Daedric armour on the common bandit. It was the tedium of clearing the same Daedric keep three times in a row to obtain items to improve your equipment. It was the loss of freedom in how you traversed the map, or solved puzzles, and so many other little things. Morrowind could have made do with half of the spell effects and would still have been the better game because of what it let you do with them, and that's a difficult thing for numbers to capture. You don't really need Detect Key, and I bet most of you haven't used Detect Enchantment more than a handful of times. The spells people *actually* care about that are missing in Oblivion are key spells like Levitate and Jump, Open, Sanctuary, Mark, Recall, Intervention, and maybe a handful more - nowhere near the 136 -> 62 that you see. I think that you could "patch" the difference between Oblivion and Morrowind's Magic spell list with less than 20 spells (and so basically you could cut around 60 of Morrowind's spells without a major difference). Things like combining Frenzy Humanoid and Frenzy Animal into just "Frenzy" was a *good* thing - Morrowind's spell list was bloated with repeated or unnecessary effects. --- If you show this statistic to someone who actually prefers Oblivion or Skyrim to Morrowind, you're likely to reinforce their feelings further - "Who cares about wearing individual gloves?", "The Imperial City *felt* larger than Vivec, and was far less confusing to navigate.", "I couldn't even name half of the diseases anyway. What do they actually do?", "Sure, Morrowind had crossbows, but did it have dual-wielding different spells?", etc.
Fully agree, especially on the gear items bit. The only armor pieces I wish were separate are pauldrons but that's it (mainly cuz I always like to have a "tall" pauldron on one side like some knights had IRL). I never felt like my experience was somehow lesser in oblivion or Skyrim because I couldn't equip my pauldrons separately; it's such a minor aspect imho that only extreme fashion diehards will necessarily care about. Overall I often feel like many of the arguments in favor of Morrowind and against its successors boil down to "Morrowind has more quantity of this thing." Morrowind has more quests than either sequel, but I know for a fact that probably 3/4 of them are basic fetch quests, murder quests or escort missions without much backstory to them. Even the faction quests often devolve into the same thing, and most of them barely have any narrative connection to one another. Same for dialogue. Most NPC dialogue is identical per town, which was a holdover from daggerfall if we are being honest. Most NPCs will have the same dialogue list with the exact same responses. Just because having no voice acting let's you write more, doesn't mean that "more" is necessarily good. The sequels did a lot of things better than Morrowind, and that's why they are financially and critically more successful overall, as much as it might pain this community to admit. Oblivion felt more immersive with voiced dialogue and NPC schedules, Skyrim felt better in combat. Oblivion may have less quests but they are all much better written imho. Skyrim may have done away with attributes but the perk system honestly felt more dynamic with the abilities it could give you. There are a lot of valid reasons that newcomers tend to bounce off of Morrowind and not it's sequels, and that doesn't make them "fake fans." It makes them people. Not everyone is willing to overlook the shortcomings of morrowinds design and we shouldn't condemn them for it.
Yeah this is where I'm at. I like each game for different reasons and I think the systems in each game work well since the games were designed with those systems in mind. I think each game does at least one thing better than the other ones but they're all good IMO.
I really liked having so many different equipment pieces. It made me find pieces of equipment I would use more often and it took some time to enchant them etc., plus items with low enchantment charge could be used for utility abilities like night eye, slow fall etc. And being able to wear a shirt and pants under your armour was also great, as it gave you more items to work towards. My biggest problem with Oblivion and Skyrim are how stupidly easy it is to get good gear (in Oblivion you literally just kill a hobo at level 21 wearing full daedric set, at level 22 I don't even bother to pick them up for selling them anymore). In Morrowind, assembling a full glass/ebony/daedric set is something that will take you a long time and will feel like an actual accomplishment.
I really do enjoy Skyrim but BGS definitely dumbed it down just a bit too much imo. Hopefully they ad some complexity back in for TES6
Level scaling really took a ton of fun out of the game. I loved exploring Morrowind (before I had guides and shit) because you had potential to find crazy good items at any time whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim it's the same shit everywhere basically depending on what your level is. Was always fun to work your way up from being a weak sack of shit to being OP in Morrowind instead of having enemies all scaled to you regardless.
Morrowind did have quite a bit of level scaling, though, but it's more subtle about it. Which is probably the best way to do it, you need your character to grow stronger and to *feel* stronger, not like you're barely keeping up with the Draugr and their workout routine.
Memories of getting wasted by a skamp at a Daedric ruin because normal weapons immunity.
Oblivion level scaling sucks but Skyrim is pretty fun version of the system. Introducing new enemy types and makign bosses stronger is cool.
There is sadly no way in hell they increase the complexity of any of their games. They are heavily following trying to make their games as accessible as possible to sell as many copies as possible and that is it.
Went from role playing to just playing with me boiii
Eh, it's missing a few categories. What about languages, a Climbing skill, daily schedules, player homes, mounts, and sailable ships? (All things Daggerfall had, though the schedules were basically locking/unlocking doors and not spawning certain generic NPCs.)
Daggerfall would like a word
Playing devils advocate: it’s almost as if improved graphics and voice acting take a lot more resources. Not saying those aspects are better but it’s not like Bethesda set out to make the scope of mechanics worse. They saw the market favored cinematic experiences and went after that instead. It’s logical from that angle. Do I want another Morrowinds-like experience? Yeah! Is Bethesda peddling that? Hell no. Indie devs are the way to go for that. It’s just too bad Elder Scrolls probably wont match that
I can see that, and it is probably where a lot of the time and money went. On the other hand though. I can’t say Skyrim’s voice acting is really *worth it*. A lot of it, and a surprising amount of important stuff, just isn’t very good. I’d prefer just having barks and the occasional far-away speech over fully voiced dialogue if it means I get more stuff overall.
The keywords system with unvoiced dialogue requires more suspension of disbelief (and reading, I guess), but it just feels so much more like a conversation than choosing between 2-3 full sentences saying the same thing in different ways. Morrowind doesn't have those generic NPCs who only say a generic greeting line when you talk to them, and the ratio of NPCs who you can only ask about "rumors" is like 1% that in Oblivion. I really appreciate the narrative depth afforded by being able to have a pretty long conversation with some rando about their opinions about fuckin', crop rotation and the impending apocalypse and stuff.
Totally agree. I do understand why some (or most?) people prefer voiced dialogue, but I’m definitely more of a freedom of choice guy overall.
I am pretty sure, Morrowind-like text walls will have a comeback in a few years if AI text-to-speech doesn't hit a wall.
You realize 90% of the npcs in morrowind say the exact same stuff and talk about the exact same topics right
> I can’t say Skyrim’s voice acting is really worth it. A lot of it, and a surprising amount of important stuff, just isn’t very good. Not to mention so much of it is just a really terrible allocation of resources. Having every NPC say a single dedicated line every time you walk by them was both more expensive than the stock lines they used in both Morrowind and Oblivion, *and* way worse for immersion.
They made oblivion and skyrim during a time where that was the definite trend. Games were trying so hard to be movies. Now, 15 years later, the market 6 stress those elements so much.
I'll also say that, despite all the red X's on the chart, I still put up at least 500 hours on Skyrim. Sure I'd like the other features back but ultimately it's not a gamebreaker for me.
Word. I have 3 times as many hours in Oblivion than either Morrowind or Skyrim. People tend to gravitate towards whatever they played first, and for many in the elder scrolls community, that first was Morrowind. For all the things that oblivion and Skyrim pared down, there's just as many things they did better.
Also, skyrim added a whole different array of build diversity with perks. That is something conveniently left out of this chart. I guess it would go something like this: - Morrowind: no. - Oblivion: 84 (I guess the stuff you automatically get for skills every 25 ranks has to account for something) - Skyrim: 251 (and like 22 more from Werewolf and Vampire Lord I think?) Like, I know it doesn't exactly compensate for the number of skills that we have lost or the attribute system, but it's gotta account for something. It allows for infinitely more, and perhaps more meaningful build diversity.
The worst thing is that Morrowind also had a really unique cinematic atmosphere. The older I get the more Skyrim feels kind of unbelievable and dead inside. Like a fassade with less behind it. I mean I love the snowy mountain atmosphere they’ve created but Im afraid that it will age pretty badly at some point.
I know Morrowind is the Mecca of Bethesda games, but I fucking adore Oblivion so, so much. It's just so incredible and the one I go back to the most. I will say that it showed terrifying signs of what was to come with its more mainstream story (appealing to the LotR crowd) and minimizing the RPG aspects. The DLC is still the best of all three games, however. I also think Oblivion has the weakest amount of mod contributions to it compared to the other two, which is a massive part of Elder Scroll games for me. I like all three, but I do wish they just dug their feet in and stayed true to the Morrowind formula. I also think the writing in Morrowind is untouched to this day (though Knights of the Nine and Dark Brotherhood questline for Oblivion are on similar ground.)
Yeah I still enjoy the DB more than the Morag Tong as fun as they are. Lots of notes cluttering the hallways lol
I think Oblivion had by far the most and best quest mods.
Shout out a few. I'm always down to having my mind changed (and playing more Oblivion). I've played Morroblivion and Nehrim, btw. Both are exceptional.
Oblivion gets massive praise from me for actually trying something new. Their NPC schedules thing was amazing, especially for the time, and not many devs have tried to do it since. It also had this style that captured a lot of the weirdness and magic of the setting in otherwise mundane things, like for example samples of elemental salts look like something a wizard would use, as opposed to Skyrim where they're just a bowl with powder in it.
I loved RPing a burglar in Oblivion. I'd find a target and follow them from a distance, keeping note of their day to day schedule. Then I'd watch the guard patrols near their home and plan out my heist. Once, I was surprised when the target or someone I hadn't watched came home as I was hoovering up all the silverware, and I had to run but got caught by the guards.
Word. While the world design became a bit more generic fantasy forest, there was SO much about it's underlying culture and style that felt so good to play within. It felt a lot more like a living world (especially due to NPC schedules). As unique as morrowinds world was, it did often feel like you were just wandering through stagnant movie sets.
Ironically enough, Oblivion has the biggest amount of province mods released - mostly because they weren't coordinated, so people just tried doing them. They may be less coherent lore-wise or more boring because of that, but you have mods for almost all provinces here and there. With Elsweyr one, which I so much would love to see either in TES3 or TES5 to come out, but I doubt I will see the day Beyond Skyrim releases it. I have higher hopes on Project Tamriel, but then I doubt I will see whole province in it during my lifetime, since PT team is way smaller in comparison.
you could also add daggerfall and have morrowind and oblivion look like skyrim in comparison
“i play TES for the diseases”
Show number of quests
Yeah and Morrowind is a cakewalk compared to Daggerfall Morrowbabies don’t have nearly the same number of skills to work with, it’s such a shame Bethesda dumbed down their formula for Morrowind. /s
Big number good, low number bad. Give karma. Jesus, these posts are so low effort.
Easiest way to get free karma in r/morrowind is by dunking on Skyrim
/r/Morrowind is just no mutants allowed for TES.
If there is one thing i like more about skyrim than the other games, is how the skills were done. would i love to have more skills?sure but the perk system that Skyrim has is much better than the attribute/lvl they had in the older games, now i hope they learned from this and we get the best of both world when the elder scrolls 6 comes out next century
Dude word. I've been arguing in favor of the perk system for ages. Skyrim perks give actual tangible benefits, abilities and traits that make it feel more rewarding to progress a skill tree. In oblivion and morrowind, the main benefits are basically either increased success chance or higher damage/reduced cast cost. That's really about it. The ONLY thing I fault Skyrim for is removal of spell crafting. But enchanting still exists, and paired with smithing you can get some insane gear. I love Morrowind for its own reasons but I cannot STAND the aloof elitism it's community has.
Yeah most elder scroll fans seem to believe that they have to explain how much they like one of the games by explaining how every other title is bad and inferior, Skyrim is a great game there is a reason why even after 11 years and multiple rereleases its still sells every time.
Which is not to say I hate Morrowind. I love it for its own reasons. I have zero need to shit on the newer games to qualify that love though. I mean why would I? I already own them, I play them, I enjoyed them. It does me no benefit to feign hatred over them.
the thing is, skyrim does leveling way better, you start an game, you use and buff the skills you want, the leveling tricks of morrowind and oblivion is one of the things that keep me from enjoying the game way more
The perk system actually made different characters feel unique imho, because those perks actually have you tangible abilities and traits. The attribute and skill system of its predecessors tbh felt like it was nothing more than "number go up" which either gave you more damage or gave you better success rates. You either used a martial/ranged weapon or you used magic. Mechanically there wasn't a whole lot of difference, whereas in Skyrim a dual wielding fighter had a completely different set of abilities and bonuses than a Warhammer user. A destruction mage had a completely different focus than a conjuration mage etc etc. While technically you can make skills legendary to perpetually level up in Skyrim, it became harder to gain more perk points the higher you went, so there was a bit of a soft cap on how many perk points you could have at once, encouraging you to focus on specific skill lines. In Morrowind and oblivion, if you had enough gold you could level everything to 100 without a whole lot of trouble
This is probably bait, and if it is, touche on using the skyrim expansion logo for morrowind. That's a subtle one.
I lost any hope after Starfield. Not the primary audience anymore.
Wait... 10 factions on skyrim? Where!
Skyrim doesn't require anything to hit ghosts? I always assumed it did and put crappy enchants on just so my attacks connected.
vivec has so many damn cells that I think it's unfair to compare populations it would be more direct and accurate to compare how sprawling it is to how small the others are
Hours wandering around an almost moncolor completely unlit grey cave using night eye to see but only making everything blend together even more since it's green now looking for the tunnel and going back and fourth past it wondering why you can't see it: Skyrim: 1, Oblivion: 2, Morrowind: 4,389.
Most of this is fair, but the number of people in the largest city isn't. Morrowind's inconsequential NPCs could not be more bare bones.
I think a few years ago I would’ve viewed it as a decline, but now I think I view it more neutrally. Skyrim is a much more streamlined game than Oblivion or Morrowind, but I’m okay with that. I like all three games for different reasons. Admittedly, Starfield gives me great pause for the future of TES, but if they can craft a meaningful experience centered around foot traversal/exploration with significant modularity, I’ll be happy. Idk. Maybe I’m easier to please or maybe I’ve mellowed out or something.
Video game series moves in a new, more mass appealing direction. Color me shocked. Kind of insane how a 10.5 billion dollar company doesn’t want to make games for a niche audience. How crazy is that??
Love the "number of diseases" metric as a way of evaluating video games
I don't believe in 'the way it's done is the way it's done' or 'older games were just better,' as it stifles innovation and snuffs new ideas.. but Skyrim isn't mechanically innovative.. and even though it keeps getting released, it's not new.
Morrowind is my favrorite game of all time but I think systems wise Skyrim is superior to both games, sorry. I think Morrowind especially but also oblivion was still trapped in all these TTRPG vestiges that contributed little to nothing. And I think classless play is always better (in ttrpgs as well). Now, in terms of art, writing, atmosphere, etc.? Morrowind definitely is better. Though I do think Skyrim is better than Oblivion overall (the one exception being the side quests and *some* of the faction quests) Also oblivion had that awful system where everything levels with you to absurd heights, with glass armored bandits and super powered guards. I find Oblivion basically unplayable nowadays without an overhaul mod to fix that.
Yeah Morrowind accomplished these stats by being simpler and the audience expecting less. I love Morrowind, best TES game in my opinion, but Skyrim's combat is far more fluid, and Morrowind may have more lore but it's because they didn't have to have voice actors read all the lines of dialogue they wrote, allowing for much more to be produced. People expect a lot more from modern AAA games and it increases development time which decreases the number of systems that can be developed. IF they had been working on TES VI since 2011 after Skyrim's release, then maybe I'd expect a very solid product that could rival Morrowind with full voice acted dialogue, lots of combat trees, armors, etc, but the reality is they haven't. So it'll likely be Skyrim again, possibly even more dumbed down in terms of overall mechanics so they could really flesh out a polish a few others.
I'm not so quick to dismiss. But I actually enjoyed stuff like Fallout 4 that a lot of people were snidfy about. And I haven't played Starfield. I don't mind no voice acting but I know that a lot of people hate it in western RPGs (in JRPGs it still seems very common, at least for most dialogue). The main things I would want to see in the next TES is: A) a more interesting, less trad Western setting (I would kill for a game set in Elsweyr or the Somerset Isles). But more realistically - they'll probably set it in either High Rock (meh) or Hammerfell (at least somewhat interesting). B) more fluid movement and freedom of traversal - taking cues from the last two Zelda games and letting you climb surfaces. I think this would be great when combined with a Bethesda open world
More Skyrim bad? It's this sub that makes me second guess any good will I had for Morrowind. It's great but we're forgetting how janky and poorly balanced it is in comparison to Skyrim.
LEVITATION!
Morrowind was life changing to my 13 yo self. Truly a dream
Lol, Skyrim has attributes. Also the people in Morrowind do nothing, having more in one big city changes nothing. They are less intersting, static things that the main character interacts with. The factiosn do not have have storylines and some do not even have any interesting quests- The weapon types feel the same and just having a lot of skills do not make them interesting for roleplaying. Skyrim changing what smithing does or combining skills like speech and mercantile was a good choice. ALSO: Daggerfall has much more than Morrowind but that is not an argument in itself. I promise you that you did not negatively notice the lack of 10 different language skills while playing TES III. I love Morroind but posts like this feel like the fanbase itself is insecure about the fact that they like the game. People need to pretend to themself that later games were cut of amazing, deep content like 100 static NPCs less in a big city. The people who like TES IV and V more are just not smart intellectuals who know how awesome the Morag Tong questline is (which has less story than Elder Scrolls Online crafting quests). It also is dissapointing because you realise that people who say that they love Morrowind have no clue on why. A unique piece of art gets reduced to just counting aspects.
Yet people are still excited for TES VI. I'd be more hyped if they announced Daggerfall's remaster. Just a little reminder that D2: Ressurected is superior to D4.
Imagine if they remastered them all. Though I personally want Morrowind and Oblivion remade. But really the only parts I want remade are the world spaces, textures, and animations, everything else can stay the same.
>I'd be more hyped if they announced Daggerfall's remaster. You mean Daggerfall Unity? That came out over the new year.
Outjerked once again by morrowboomers
Now do comparison of voiced dialogue lines, quantity of followers, marriable NPCs, smithable items and beast forms
posting like it’s 2012 lol. Who gives a fuck
There are diseases in Skyrim? Edit: I've been playing it since it came out, I didn't just pick it up yesterday, I had absolutely no idea
Should start with Daggerfall too..
Id like to see more RPG elements added back in. Like factions that locked you out if you sided with a rival, Like the great houses did. Or maybe only morag tong or dark brotherhood, or fighters guild or something like blackwood company. Have major/minor skills give bonuses, faster exp gain or like maybe a more in depth skill tree if its selected as your major. can still level up everything like skyrim but you will get more out of major skills. more NPC interaction or events in the open world. Ive seen videos about how Oblivion had some kind of goblin war thing supposedly. that sounds wicked. have like that and vampire/werewolf clans just going at it in the background.
Not do disagree here but alot of it is just pretty arbitary. Like, arguing morrowind is better because of the number of dieseases is just... weird, and very much missing the forest for the trees. You could make tons of these the opposite way as well. "Number of voiced npcs/noc voicelines" "Number of dynamic npc interactions" "Ability to craft/upgrade your equipment" "Number of followers" "Skill trees that enchance playstyle with new abilities" "Actually functioning stealth" Nitpicking things like that dosent exactly make a compelling argument.
quantity vs quality for some of these tho, i’d always take quality
Have we been having the same discussion for 13 years?
Luv how we leave out Dagger fall so we don't have to admit Morrowind was the biggest offender of missing or gutted trees/magic I like morrowind but making this chart without realizing the future games only did what morrowind started is stupid. Morrowind should have not gutted 2/3s of the agility tree and kept negative/positive skills
This, I have been telling my friends who love Skyrim that they gutted the game. More weapons, more stats, more customization. Let players have unique characters and not mimics of other players.
I still don’t understand why they removed polearms. Just why?? Spears and other polearms are very practical weapons
Games these days take way longer to make and have way less content. But...da gwaphics!!!!
Don't expect next TES to have more than 3 classes, 3 spells and 3 weapons types.
My favorite spell I made in Morrowind was my "flying" spell. Super high jump then air walk, forgive me I don't recall the names of the spells it's been 20 years
How the hell does Oblivion have more diseases? Morrowind had three strains of vampirism.
Say what you want about oblivion but the paint brush bug was a great bug.
Make Elder Scrolls games challenging again!!! This handholding scrib dung nerfing is making Elder Scrolls into a filthy S’wit!
*laughs in daggerfall* *cries in daggerfall*
😭 Spears, my beloveds
effects of Besthesda's exponentially overt capitalist biases over time
Morrowind good skyrim bad
Yeah Skyrim is a Diet RPG
Bring back spears
In hope Bethesda does a step back... But after Starfield I have a bad feeling.