Thanks for the link, bookmarked. Both games are my favorite and did an awesome job.

I think that now since the 3D top video gaming era has emerged, Beth is going down a good path.

I liked Morrowind and Oblivion both, and even though everyone of us had a favorite one of the two, we need to admit they were great games compared to other video games, instead of hating on each other and making an arguing filled war over it, because none of our opinions will change.

Beth has learned the good and bad from Morrowind and Oblivion, and even I don't like Fallout nearly as much as TES, you must include they have learned from it as well in both aspects. We can only hope now that they decide not to do something stupid and make TES5 based on the good of Morrowind, Oblivion, even Daggerfall and Arena, and possibly some of the good aspects of Fallout 3 with the bad of all of those games taken out, to make one awesome game that will out do any game they have ever made.

It comes with an increase of technology, and experience along with wisdom of the games they have made in the past, and learning from their successes and mistakes.

Members are reminded of the constructive criticism rule:



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I liked MW + Addons out of the box. I played it for a lot of hours. At some point I added an pretty faces mod but thats it. Did not need more. After the first few hours of "ohhh shiny gfx" I started to really dislike Oblivion out of the box and stopped playing it. It required ~3x the size of the maingame of mods to like it (even more than MW now). As far as TES goes I would say they sacrifice in each part some athmosphere & gameplay in favour of mainstream and political correctness. If it wasn't for the pleasant surprise of FO3 I would have completly agreed with the topic title. But I think they got back on track with that one. Not fully, but a good step towards the right direction.

I believe that many (not all) of us who have had the opportunity to play Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion sequentially, prefer Morrowind. My theory on this, is that after playing Daggerfall for several years (awesome game, I played it from the month it came out, on an off, until Morrowind in 2002) Morrowind felt like the perfect stepping-stone in every way. It was definitely scaled down from Daggerfall in terms of landmass, but was still quite large, and it made up for any reduction in size, with lots of unique static content, and all sorts of interesting places that were off the beaten path and not even required by the main quest. Speaking of the main quest, it was long, varied, and not cyclical and repetitive.

Oblivion, for many of us who played Daggerfall and Morrowind first, seemed very superficial. The saying goes, "an inch deep and a mile wide." I would explore and explore and find nothing. I must have broke into half the basemants in the game only to find the exact same carbon copy basemant with nobody inside, or anything worth taking. Everything was level-scaled so I wouldn't find something until the developers took me by the hand and brought me to it when they felt I was ready. In Morrowind you were given creative license with your own game. Once I drank a bunch of flying potions to get into an area that was otherwise unaccessible for a low level character, then drank a bunch of intelligence potions, and used a single lock pick I had found on a dead body to open a chest that had a kick-butt suit of magical armor. What a RPG experience! Like a real thief I had to run as fast as I could from the guards when they finally caught up with me because there was no way I could beat them in combat. I never had one player-generated experience like that in Oblivion. As much as they talked about 'Radiant-AI,' everything felt scripted not spontaneous. Morrowind, which had basically no AI, felt more spontaneous and alive than Oblivion.

There is no two-ways about it, Oblivion sold more copies and made more money for Bethesda than Morrowind. That occured for four reasons:

#1) Morrowind was gamesas's first big run-away hit. After Daggerfall the company was very close to chapter 5 bankruptcy, and Morrowind saved them; but TES was not the video-gamers household name it is today. It was co-released on the Xbox, a system that never attained the kind of following the Playstation and Nintendo systems had. That said, over time Morrowind built a base and millions of people were anxiously awaiting the next TES game because of it.

#2) The Xbox 360 was a new and increasingly popular console, and Oblivion was one of the very first, if not THE first RPG's for it. Once you take the waiting audience of Morrowind and combine it with the burgeoning 360 audience (who were starved for games by the time Oblivion launched. The 360 had very few next-gen titles for it, for months after it's release) you have a lot of sales.

#3) Simply put, Oblivion is more accessible to younger, and/or less advanced RPG players. That is not to say every person who enjoys Oblivion more than Morrowind is a simp, but if you cannot accept getting killed early and often because you keep walking into a cave populated by tough NPC's or monsters, Morrowind is not for you. In Oblivion I walked all over the world, from city to city, without ever being worried about getting killed because of the heavy-handed level-scaling. In Morrowind, most of the map is black, and you are definitely NOT just going to waltz into every cave you come across in new territory without saving the game (maybe twice for good measure).

#4) Statistically there were just a lot more people playing video games in 2006 than in 2002. That is just a fact.


I love Morrowind, and dearly hope that TES:5, figures out a way to recapture the magic of what made Morrowind great and combine it with the advanced graphics of Oblivion into a face-melting experience.

There is a certain mod that cannot be named in these forums which took the graphics of Oblivion and applied them to the design choices of Morrowind and it is jaw-dropping. Now I'm not saying re-make Morrowind again. I'm saying, get the world designers of Morrowind back so they can create a new and unique world with graphics as good or better than Oblivion...as long as it's not at the cost of in-depth game-play.

Yeah I agree. I played Oblivion first and couldn't get into Morrowind (enjoyed Daggerfall though, which is strange

It's a generation thing. Old school RP gamers who remember the old top down isometric days will miss some of the elements from those kinds of games that are lacking in Oblivion, which I can understand. I like Oblivion more cause I like the freedom and adventure side of the game more than the roleplaying aspects

We'll probably never agree. You guys are cool and all but I like slashing things

I started with Oblivion actually, yet I prefer Morrowind.

^ this.

As I said in my posts before, I like TES games for their passion and atmosphere, Morrowind definitely had more of both of these aspects. Whilst half (okay not half but ALOT) of oblivion was generated by a software program, Morrowind was mostly handmade.

I think Fallout 3 was a step in the right direction, now I just hope Bethesda finds the right formula between the two extremes (Morrowind, and Oblivion) for TES5.

I am only now truly enjoying Oblivion...with QTP3r, RAEVWD, DetailedTerrain, Qarl'sNormals 4096, BT4096, Complete UL, BBC, Godsrays, BP, TNR, AN, AWS, OOO, MMM, COBL, RGO, OSSO, MIS, S&S, and quest mods...so basically it's not Oblivion anymore, but I love it now.

Yes and no for me. I liked a lot of it, but I still prefer you miss and hit based on your character stats. I consider that a somewhat essential part of RPGs, I also liked spell chance of success instead of the spell always works. But I liked the idea of more interactions in the environment(though it rarely came up), and I liked how stealth worked.



While it was better for immersion, it was worse for gameplay IMO. It really just became a pain in the butt while I waited and waited for stores to open and some days they wont, some days they open late for no good reason etc. Heck just have more NPCs so the shopkeeper can take his 2 day journey to another town while leaving the shop open with his assistant. And have better hours with the NPCs actually making it to work on time.



Agree with pretty much all of this.

I think the difference is what it takes to be graphically amazing increases each generation of games. You used to be able to have a graphically amazing game and still have a game of huge proportions. Nowadays when a game becomes graphically amazing it is small and linear. For RPGs you have to balance graphics to draw in the crowds with screen shots and trailers with the size and open ended non-linear world your fans expect. If you put too much of your time and budget into graphics your fans will be upset with how overly linear and small your world is, if you put too little into graphics too many gamers wont even look at it.

Also people used to accept multiple disks, cds as a standard of the roleplaying game world. Heck even with CDs people wanted multiple load disks but only 1 play disk on your computer. Once DVds came out people started to think of one disk games as being the standard, but as graphics have improved you can't be both 1 disk and stay a large open ended game. Either something like blue rays have to become more common place or we will need to go back to multiple disk games, and heck given the current graphical highs I am not sure blue rays will cut it on there own. I remember playing games with 20+ 5" floppies, the games were awesome for the time and while changing disks was irritating it was worth it to play a better game. Unless a better method of storing and getting games to players arrives before TES 5, I don't think people can expect something to be both graphically amazing for the time and have a large game world unless they are willing to go with multiple disks.

I'm willing to go with multiple disks.

They are games. Enjoy them for what they are. Stop worrying about small details. Wait until they drop the A-Bomb for you to worry about the game quality.

I don't literally mean drop the A-Bomb. I mean they make a screw up TES game.

They are indeed games. And the opinions about their comparable qualities are all across the board. Whereas I'm assuming you find them negligible in quality difference, someone else will claim that game B was greater than A or C or D. Or that game C was greater than A, B, and D. Or that game D was greater than A, B, and C. And they will list out their reasons and experiences as to why. Small details? These games are literally made by small details; if they are important to the designers, they are important to the final product and therefore important to the consumers.

Depending on the opinion held, Bethesda may have already made a screwed-up TES game. Hence the point of discussion regarding whether Bethesda really is going down a bad path or not.

Are you familiar with the game "Oblivion"? <_< I keep trying to finiah the main quest, but I get bored too quickly.

I don't feel they are going down a bad path, mainly because I don't feel the current status of that path is with Oblivion, I know it the latest TES game, but it isn't the latest RPG that Beth produced, I feel that the shivering isles and Fallout 3 gave an impression that Beth are swinging like a pendulum from one side which is Oblivion, to another which is daggerfall, since it has already been at one extreme (Oblivion) it is coming back down if fallout is any indication. I've played and enjoyed (yet not finished) all of the TES rpg games except for arena, so really I can't say I'm feeling bad about any of them, sure they all have flaws, usually in completely different areas, but they are alright (for their time). I keep get this feeling that it's because I'm a gamer who can enjoy a diverse set of genres, so when the lines get blurry I'm still having fun. I mostly cherish the ability to be anybody I want, to solve an issue from a different perspective, this is usually only rpg stuff, which is why most of my games are rpgs or rpg like.

TES games(especially since Morrowind) have never been about the main quests(which make up very little of the games).

What? Are you kidding me? Just ignore that an entire town was destroyed in Oblivion. TES games are quite sandbox-y but they definitely revolve around the main storyline.

Ehh..gotta disagree with that. Nothing revolves around anything. You do what you want, when you want. At no point in time are you FORCED to do anything.
That's the whole point of "role playing".
Morrowind DEFINITELY didn't revolve around the main quest. I played through 2 characters without even realizing what the main quest was when I first got it. 0.0

I have never once completed Oblivion's main storyline. I've been playing Oblivion for a year and a half, and I still have much to do. Also, I like SI's and KotN's stories better than the main quest's story.

The games have always been about offering a central story to the player, but the world has never revolved around the story.

That is why TES series is unique. Oblivion's main quest is boring, but since it doesn't even make up a large chunk of the game, that has never bothered me. TES games feel like second lives, not just games that have nothing interesting to do except for the main questlines. Morrowind's main questline was pretty good, but I still don't play TES games for the main questlines. I play them for their freedom, their size, and to learn lore(no other games have as many ingame documents and as much lore as TES games).

If you really look at Oblivion, Bethesda made it to be as playable as it could be for any type of gamer and in that process all types of game play suffer somewhat. Oblivion is a fun game to play, no doubt about it, but as soon as I kill a major plot character and watch him or her get up a few seconds later, it all becomes a bit ridiculous. Not that I have not played Oblivion a lot, with mods and all I most likely have over 500 hrs in the game, but because they paid so much attention to the graphical parts of the story it becomes "all the same" after a while. Dragon Age from Bioware is basically the same type of game where you progress through an interactive storyline and it really does seem that RPG development has gone away from the sandbox style to the more dramatic and cinematic style we see in games like these.

I think it will take developers time to focus more on the "game" part of the RPG design, but for now as they are all exploring the visual side of RPG and game desgin we see less of the game side of things. Once developers as a whole get past the visual side of technology advancment they will go back to the sandbox approach more and more. I personally think it is just a phase the industry is going through at the moment....

OP, what about quality over quantity? "Lots" to do is a highly subjective judgement at best....how do we measure it? OK, we could count up the number of quests, but that doesn't take into account the time taken to complete the quest nor other factors. Personally, fewer high quality quests are preferrable to more "junk" quests (go there, fetch this, come back, speak to generic NPC etc...). Take the MG quests where you could become the Archmage without having to display any magical accomplishment - it was basically an extended series of fetch tasks. Compare that to the TG quest "The Ultimate Heist" which is one of my favourites in the whole game due to it's variety, creativity and ultimate reward.

Maybe there could have been more thought/time put into the quests in TES IV, but personally, I would have much rather seen more time investment into the Radiant AI (along the lines of some of Duke Patrick's mods, and Syclonix's BRAINS) as this is a highly specialised area that is ripe for improvement, not only in this game but in many others. There are hundreds(?) of mods out there adding more quests....but very few addressing the retarded AI, because very few have the experience to improve this area.

Another issue, following from Rahl's post, is the lack of scope for being confronted in the game by genuine moral and ethical choices, and having to deal with the consequences of those decisions. That is ROLEPLAYING, not deciding whether to wear the ebony or the daedric armour (does my butt look big in this?).....Bioshock tried to achieve this via various mechanisms (not the bigger butt...the moral/ethical thing). Due to the much greater freedom inherent in Oblivion, there was much more scope to try and achieve this......

I think a lot of the problem that most veteran RPG'ers and TES fans have is that the bar was set so damn high with Morrowind. Morrowind was an amazing game, almost no flaws at all. A truly inspiring and open ended experience that had more replay value than ANY other game out there, to date.
That's hard to follow, and that shows with OB.