I ended up playing Oblivion, Morrowind, and then Fallout 3 in rapid succession and in that order (actually, the MW and FO3 games are concurrent; I'm close to finishing the main quests of both right now), and IMHO, the quality of the writing hasn't changed as much as its distribution.

What I mean by that is that in MW, the narrative is mostly divided between the main quest and in-world books. The guild and House quests, at least the ones I've done, don't really have plots per se. There are lots of quests, but not much story connecting them; Oblivion changed that, to the extent that I found the stories told in the guild quests (my favorite being the Thieves' Guild) more interesting than the main quest. FO3 is similar, with a main quest that strikes me as more interesting for the places it takes the player than for the story it tells, but bits of narrative scattered around the world, but shorter questlines than Oblivion's. I don't know whether that's part of an effort toward making it feasible to do most of the quests in the game with a single character or related to FO3's level cap and original closed-endedness.

Sometimes, though, I fire up Oblivion just to blow off steam killing monsters in one of those respawning dungeons.

In my opinion Bethesda made a bad step with Oblivion. Its main problem for me is that I can hardly call it an RPG any more. In Morrowind the RPG aspects were much stronger, although they could have been better for sure even there. But in Oblivion? I seriously cannot play the main quest because most of the time I cannot find a good excuse to do so. The way it is forced on me is just against what I want to RP. and ther are so many othe decisions that are just made for you. It is annoying. If I leave all the quests be, then I can roleplay, but I can see how most of the random ones were ment for nice a good paladin-like characters who only care for making good. If this si not what I like doing, then I can forget about those. And in this way Fallout does not give me much hope either. In some aspects it returns a bit to RPG but not that much and is geered even more towards an action game which I feel as a very bad idea. Unfortuantely for us, hard-core RPGer, the shooters are so much easier to make and so much more liked by the general audience and so much better suited to show form with little to substance that it is understandable that Beth is taking this path and is leaving us behind. I wish I was wrong abd Beth realised that mainstreeming their games is a way to hell, but I do not hold my breath for TES V.

In my opinion, Oblivion was a far better Role Playing Game than Morrowind was. No matter what character archetype I started with in Morrowind, they all became the "All Powerful Nerevarine" by the end of the game. So my post and the last one just proves how pointless of a discussion this really is, Bethesda is in business to make money. They do that by producing games that appeal to as many consumers as possible. Not just those of us that are dedicated enough to their games to join these forums and debate them. I don't know which game sold better, but I am assuming its FO3 then Oblivion then Morrowind. So the next game is probably going to be closer to either of those than it will be to Morrowind. Most people that I know that played Morrowind hated it.

And I have been playing RPG's since 1988 when I started playing D&D so I consider myself to be as much of a "hardcoe RPGer" as anyone else. Well, anyone that doesn't do LARPG's anyways. LARPers are much more hardcoe than me.

edit - from a business model, no Bethesda is going down the right path. They are making a successful product that consumers are willing to spend their money on. This ensures that Bethesda is making a profit for their parent company. Which means that they stay in business, and get to make more games for us to enjoy. Seems to me that everyone wins.

This is when I put my faith in the modding community to take care of some of the things that are missed or are defective about the original games. Modding allows for almost endless possibilities and for complete individual customization. The world becomes as YOU like it (with the help of the modders of course). I too believe morrowind was the better of the two, over Oblivion. It was darker and more mature of a game. I fear that the developers are making games with a younger audience in mind and therefore dumbing down the worlds as a result, but this is another subject. Morrowind had a more involved plot, and was more immersive. I would like to see more of this in the furture from bethseda. I love the whole TES series, they are some of my favorite games of all time. But the modding community is like the icing on the cake, fills in the cake holes and cracks, and is the main reason I still play both games today. It is with this faith that I look forward to the next game in the series, even if it's not as good as Morrowind or Daggerfall. (Devs: If you are reading this, this is NOT an excuse to give us a dumber/worse game and expecting the modders to fix everything that is missed!!!) I certainly would hope they will blow our minds and do their best with TES V. I still want to thank them, devs and modders, for the countless hours of my life I've lost/enjoyed playing their games.

You could get your skills maxed out in both Oblivion and Morrowind. Every character can become the Nerevarine or the Champion of Cyrodiil. There is no difference in that aspect and basing any argument off of it must take into account that fact.

As for me, I do not hate or dislike Oblivion. It was a fun game, but it sorely disappointed me. Many aspects just felt wrong. Cutting out magic like teleportation, cutting out skills like Spear, cutting out weapons like spears, crossbows, and throwing weapons, making many of the encounters leveled (which made the game feel the same no matter where I was), etc. In Morrowind, there were many armor and weapon sets to choose from. Tons of skills. Enemies leveled sometimes, but mostly out in the world. Many parts of the world were scary and dangerous before you got strong enough. It really gave you a sense of progression, from pissing yourself as you entered your first Six House base, where many of the enemies there were very very dangerous to your, to finally getting so strong you bust in like you're the baddest hero in town, streaming with enchantments and wielding ancient arms and armor. In Oblivion, I can kill Umbra at level 5 and get a worse sword than if I had waited. How ridiculous is that?

But regardless of what Oblivion did, it matters what Fallout 3 did more. If fixed EVERYTHING I hated about Oblivion. Its level scaling made sense and still provided challenge. It had a wider array of weapons and armor. Some of the skills from Fallout 1 and 2 got cut, but the cuts made sense and all of the old functionality was still there, just moved a bit. Combat felt smooth and, even better, the dialog was great. I could be a nice guy, I could chose not to care. I could be an ass, or I could just be out for my next stack of caps. I rarely felt there was a situation in Fallout 3 were I didn't get as many options as realistically available. In Oblivion, most dialog options didn't even matter, because the answers were always the same.

I feel Oblivion was a try at reaching out to a newer audience. It worked, but they certainly realized that their system was not perfect. Even before Fallout 3 was made, you could see their attempts to change things with Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. I have high hopes for TES V. Lets hope its a game that we can all enjoy.

STOP READING MY MIND!

But yes, I agree with everything you said there. I really had to go WAY out of my way in OB to RP. Hell, the game has been modded so much to hell, my machine gets angry with me. Why? Because there were so many problems that needed to be fixed in the game itself, coupled with a few aesthetics. FO3 and MW, on the other hand, didn't need much in the ways of overhauls. Most of my mods are purely for fun, aesthetics, or extra quests for the hell of it.

So, when I got FO3, I was relieved to know they were bringing back RPing to the game, with a nice bunch of action. Now, if they can keep the action aspect and add more RP elements from what they did in FO3, coupled with some MW, I'd expect TES:V to be a really freaking awesome game.

Whatever anybody says, Oblivion and Morrowind were both great games, no matter the changes they made between the two.

No, I don't think Bethesda is going down the wrong path. They made one game that was a bit easier than the other three, and suddenly they've messed up the series?

The two things I missed most from Morrowind were the factions that got cut, as well as the new dark elven persona. The dark elves in Morrowind were really cool. Their whole culture was something unique to the ES series. I didn't like the way they were portrayed in Oblivion, and I especially didn't like the voice they used to replace the awesome raspy dunmer voice from morrowind.

Never got bored with either Morrowind or Oblivion. I love both games a lot, though the dark brotherhood, while a teerribly fun questline, is still no comparison to my beloved Morag Tong.

While some of us would be happy with bad graphics I agree most people would not be. I think the problem is RPGs should not shoot for high end graphics, good graphics yes, but not high end. Take the forthcoming Final Fantasy 13, the complaints about how linear it is and the lack of things like towns are fairly intense. Sure it looks awesome, but if you have to make the game 1/3 of previous games because of the fancy graphics you failed. One of the primary things people play RPGs for is for the open ended large worlds, if you take that out or reduce it too much because you wanted shiny graphics you took out one of the main reasons people play RPGs. It is a delicate balance, you want your game to look good so it can attract people to it with just a quick look, but you need to keep the huge worlds in order to keep your base. Personally I wish these games would dump voice acting, I don't mind reading.

I agree with the topic's author. In fact, I think Morrowind was a game million times better than Oblivion. The history, places, enemies, gameplay, features. Morrowind only sinned in the fact that only show Vvardenfeel and not show the Mainland, but apart from that, Morrowind is 10 and Oblivion is 6. I want to see if they will sin with The Elder Scrolls V.

I knew Bethesda was going down a bad path when she started listening to the rap music. I'm an open minded guy so I kept my mouth shut, but then I found the drugs in her book bag. Before I knew it she was running around with a bad crowd, pushing old ladies into traffic and kicking dogs.

they made one game that was like a kick in the teeth to the older fanbase.

and suddenly they messed up the series.

I don't think Bethesda is going down a bad path, for RPers you can say that, but in terms of business no I think Bethesda is doing the opposite.

Also, keep in mind Oblivion was originally meant to be a T rated game which is IMO why a lot of things were dumbed down (Yes Morrowind was T too, but looked like it was geared towards are more mature T than Oblivion was headed)

You're exagerating. It wasn't that bad.

Hm. You may have a point, though I think the biggest difference is between Oblivion and Fallout 3 in regards to play time. I got more than 300 hours out of Oblivion, with more than 175 being with one character. With Fallout 3 I got about 100 hours in total, including all characters, with the max for one being 70.

However, I know Bethesda has more than heard the feedback from the community, and will improve quite a bit. TESV will be one hell of a game.

english are wimpy? :cold: I thought we where all baldy builder crack workmen? ^_^
But yeah, the dumner where nowhere near what they should have been. I saw a trailer around youtube once where they had proper Dumner voices (Among many other things), and I was actually outraged that they released that trailer and didn't include any of the features they had shown.



Bah! this is the single most annoying argument ever. Morrowind is nearly 8 years old. The graphics where, when released, to a better standard than Oblivion. This is like complaining about Space Invaders having bad graphics. AND another thing, graphics are not important in a game. If you play games because they have graphics, you don't deserve to play games. it's people who put pressure on graphical sides of games that ruin the games by making companies focus more on graphics than content. And "Great story" is an over statement. Sure, the story in Oblivion could have been enjoyed a bit, but I could never play the quests again, they got stale in a few minutes, mostly because the complete lack of thought needed to do them. And personally I never even finished the main quest because I got bored.


Staying on topic... I never actually played Arena and Daggerfall (Though, through what I hear, I can never put them down), I believe them to be better than Morrowind. I agree that TES started to get worse, and has been slowly falling, but I think Fallout 3 was a step in the right direction. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but Bethesda have started to get back on track. I think TESV will be awesome, only due to TES fans who are complaining about Oblivion. (I mean TES fans - not Oblivion fans)


Fixed your comment.

The only true good thing I say to come out of Oblivion was the shivering isles, much, MUCH better storyline, characters, but it was to small(then again it was an expansion pack).

And just to make a note, im not mad at Bethesda for this, it took place in Cyrodil its enviroment really wasnt FIT for the uniqueness that Morrowind had, but they definetly could have made the quest 10x better.

I have bethesd fever lol im playing Oblivion and fallout 3 trying to get past the first level on daggerfall

Except it was until they decided to change it to a damned forest.

"Indeed, if the history of the Nords is the history of humans on Tamriel, then Cyrodiil is the throne from which they will decide their destiny. It is the largest region of the continent, and most is endless jungle. Its center, the grassland of the Nibenay Valley, is enclosed by an equatorial rain forest and broken up by rivers. As one travels south along these rivers, the more subtropical it becomes, until finally the land gives way to the swamps of Argonia and the placid waters of the Topal Bay. The elevation rises gradually to the west and sharply to the north. Between its western coast and its central valley there are all manner of deciduous forest and mangroves, becoming sparser towards the ocean. The western coast is a wet-dry area, and from Rihad border to Anvil to the northernmost Valenwood villages forest fires are common in summer. There are a few major roads to the west, river paths to the north, and even a canopy tunnel to the Velothi Mountains, but most of Cyrodiil is a river-based society surrounded by jungle.

Cyrodilic history truly begins by the middle of the Alessian Reformation (see sidebar, Alessian Order), when civilization and cultivation had allowed the region to emerge as a discernible Tamrielic power. Its culture and military strength centered in the sacred Nibenay Valley, a grassland expanse with a vast lake at its heart. Several small islands rose from this lake, and the capital city sprawled across them, crisscrossed with bridges and gondola ferries. Rivers connected the city-state to both its profitable outlying territories and the friendly inland ports of Skyrim and Pellitine. Rice and textiles were its main exports, along with more esoteric treasure-goods, such as hide armor, moon-sugar, and ancestor-silk. The sheer size of Cyrodiil's physical theater, and frequent intervals of Elven tyranny, made its unification as a whole a slow and oft-interrupted process. At the height of Alessian influence, its western arm enjoyed a brief autonomy as the Colovian Estates, a demarcation that still colors an outsider's view of the Empire today; often, Cyrodiil has two faces, East and West, and any discussion of its later social history must first be tempered with a summary of this early divergence.

------------

Places of Note:
The Imperial City

Refayj's famous declaration, "There is but one city in the Imperial Province,--" may strike the citizens of the Colovian west as mildly insulting, until perhaps they hear the rest of the remark, which continues, "--but one city in Tamriel, but one city in the World; that, my brothers, is the city of the Cyrodiils." From the shore it is hard to tell what is city and what is Palace, for it all rises from the islands of the lake towards the sky in a stretch of gold. Whole neighborhoods rest on the jeweled bridges that connect the islands together. Gondolas and river-ships sail along the watery avenues of its flooded lower dwellings. Moth-priests walk by in a cloud of ancestors; House Guards hold exceptionally long daikatanas crossed at intersections, adorned with ribbons and dragon-flags; and the newly arrived Western legionnaires sweat in the humid air. The river mouth is tainted red from the tinmi soil of the shore, and river dragons rust their hides in its waters. Across the lake the Imperial City continues, merging into the villages of the southern red river and ruins left from the Interregnum.

The Emperor's Palace is a crown of sun rays, surrounded by his magical gardens. One garden path is known as Green Emperor Road-here, topiaries of the heads of past Emperors have been shaped by sorcery and can speak. When one must advise Tiber Septim, birds are drawn to the hedgery head, using their songs as its voice and moving its branches for the needed expressions.
- Pocket Guide to the Empire: Cyrodiil

Someone was trying VERY hard to screw that up.

I'm stretched out on the canopy of a Nibenean san-pan right now, rockin to Susie-Q.

Why couldn't they have stuck to the jungle-cyrodiil? That sounds so cool.

Oblivion is EXACTLY why I want Bethesda to stay very far away from any of the interesting provinces for a while. Oblivion was fun and all, but the Cyrodiil and Imperial City in Oblivion was a slap in the face of established lore. I really really hope TESV is in Skyrim, because they can't possibly screw that up. However, if it's set in, say, the Summerset Isles, I will be very very worried that they'll ruin it. I have faith in them to make a good game regardless of where it's set, but I have no faith in them in regards to them following the fantastic lore they've established for the provinces. If they do Skyrim right I will, but until then I wont.

Oblivion gets no points for graphical improvement, true.

But in a lot of the game mechanics separate from graphics, Oblivion is a big improvement over Morrowind. Much more interesting and involving stealth/magic/combat systems, 24 hour (and even month-long!) NPC schedules, a more user-friendly and surprisingly stable construction set.

All Bethesda needs to do to return to greatness is to absolutely fire the writers. And art directors. And VOICE actors. And the managers responsible. Then, find the dudes who wrote Daggerfall and Morrowind and get them to come back.

Oh yeah, and cast out whoever thought Level Scaling was a good idea, forever. Hand-craft your worlds without relying on such a [censored] crutch.

1) True, though I prefer Morrowind's CS' dialgue system.

2) Except for good ol' Wes Johnson...And re-hire the Morrowind-Dunmer for the Dunmer instead of Haskill. (Although Haskill was awesome)

I found Oblivion to be a great game. Sure it had some glaring problems, but so did Morrowind. However, it seems like the main "problem" is that the experience is fundamentally different from that of Morrowind, and those that fell in love with Morrowind found that it wasn't what they wanted.