In regard to the modularity versus the hand-craftedness of Oblivion's dungeons, for those that happen to have the Construction Set handy, go open the following interior cells:

WarehouseAyleidRooms01
WarehouseAyleidRooms02
WarehouseAyleidRooms03
WarehouseAyleidRooms04
WarehouseCaveBandit
WarehouseCaveBeastLair
WarehouseCaveConjurer
WarehouseCaveEntrance
WarehouseCaveNatureMythic
WarehouseCaveSmTombNecro
WarehouseCaveTombNecro
WarehouseFortRuinsEntrances
WarehouseFortRuinsHALLCrypts
WarehouseFortRuinsHallPITUnique
WarehouseFortRuinsHALLRooms
WarehouseFortRuinsHALLSQuickStuff
WarehouseFortRuinsRooms01
WarehouseFortRuinsRoomsLarge
WarehouseFortRuinsRoomsMedium
WarehouseFortRuinsRoomsTransCave
WarehouseFortRuinsxxxCLUTTER
WarehouseFortRuinsxxxCLUTTERarrangements
WarehouseFortRuinsxxxCLUTTERarrCrates

The entire point of the existence of these warehouse cells was to build decent-sized modular pieces of dungeons once, so that it could be copy-pasted in differing combinations. That goes for rooms, weapons, npcs, and ruin-appropriate clutter. Virtually everything that I think of when I think of the majority of Oblivion's dungeon design has been pre-fabricated inside these cells.

Were dungeons touched up? Sure. But are they still completely modular at the core? Absolutely. Hand-crafted in the sense of each dungeon put together individual piece by individual piece? Most certainly not.

EDIT: And while I'm not stating that Morrowind's dungeons were entirely and fully free of any and all problems or improvements, there are no comparable modular warehouse-cells in the Morrowind CS that I can find under any name.

Excellent news, and also agree on ur quest point - if they actually accomplish this, I will sacrifice 10 virgins to the 12 Lords of the Abyss.

I wonder if BGS has an in-house interior designer monitoring the placement of objects and clutter in all of the dungeons and buildings.

Morrowind had a couple cool dungeons, the rest were boring and repetitive.
Oblivion had a couple cool dungeons, the rest were boring and repetitive.

I hope Skyrim's dungeons are nothing like either Morrowind or Oblvion's.

There were a few good dungeons in Morrowind, but most of them were terribly bland. Sometimes there were really cool things like Nordic boat burial (in terms of dungeons, all dungeons should have been designed with that quality and depth), and things like the grotto that connected to the dwemer ruins (or the same concept but kwama cave connecting to a dwemer ruin). However, 80-90% of them were dull and plain. Maybe that was meant to be the reality of the gameworld, but in terms of gameplay it was boring. The dungeons you go to during the main storyline were well designed, the first dwemer ruins, the burial the mages guild sends you to, the astral burial in the ashlands, the two 6th house bases you go to, and to a lesser degree the final dwemer ruins. Those were really great. If the other ones had been made to that quality it would have been much better.

Morrowind dungeons have some modular pieces. I'm not sure about caves but the tombs have prebuilt rooms that are used. However, you can create them manually as well by piecing them together. If you want to take a look, go under statics and I think the naming hierarchy is something along the lines of v_in_s_-- something like that. May have velothi spelled out fully rather than the v. Been a while.

I've worked long enough with Morrowind tilesets to know why they didn't need these prefabricated pieces. MW tilesets were incredibly simple, they were very bland and boring. A room was always made up of the same three basic pieces. Corner, floor, wall. That's it. Of course there was some additional clutter, but the basic room was made of just a few very basic looking pieces. Oblivion's tilesets were much more sophisticated and cobbling them together took more time, that's why they made those copy/paste rooms to work more quickly with them. That is how it was done in Fallout as well, only that for FO they have a tool to combine statics into one object directly in the CS. It saves time and simply is the best way to go, Crysis and probably other modern editors do it the same way. It's not a step back, it's a step forward.

I seriously can't believe how anyone could think that MW's dungeons were superior to Oblivion's (despite the level scaling aspect, which is a different matter). MW's dungeons were tiny and extremely boring. Even the Dwemer ruins, which looked so big from the outside were just a few tiny, barren rooms. Entering a dungeon in MW was hardly worth the loading time. There were exceptions, but not many. I know that I was annoyed by the dungeons when I played Morrowind. The first few times entering a Dwemer ruin or a tomb was fun, but when the dungeon always ended after 3 minutes it was very disappointing.

I don't like Oblivion dungeons that much either, but at least they were quite large and had some interesting architecture (although the architecture did indeed become repetitive after a while, which is no wonder if you have 214 mostly multi-level dungeons and just three tilesets). I think they should have made one third of the dungeons only and should have made them more unique and interesting instead. Which is what I hope they will do with Skyrim (where they have only half as many dungeons, but more dungeon designers to work on them).

That's fair enough, Morrowind's statics were simple enough to just create the room modularly as it's own static. But the designers didn't see fit to fill entire warehouse cells with pre-determined clutter (aka pre-determined modular atmosphere), which is honestly my biggest beef. If in Oblivion they copy-pasted the rooms but hand-detailed everything else, it would've been a lot more forgivable in my eyes.

But seeing the exact same cavern sub-room with table w/ money and dishware, exact same chest and sacks of grain, and exact same bedroll in the corner, in about 10+ different caves...
Or seeing the exact same stone slabs in conjurer dungeons, with the exact same hourglasses and exact same crystal balls and exact same alchemy equipment...
Or seeing the exact same iron weapons-racks...
Or seeing bookshelves with the exact same books in the exact same order...
etc, etc...
That was pretty unforgivable IMO, as it's the clutter that I see as giving the dungeon its life and uniqueness. And there was enough clutter copypasta in Oblivion to render most dungeons totally soulless.



See above, if there weren't other copy-paste issues to worry about, I wouldn't mind the repetitive room-architecture nearly as much.


I wasn't looking for length when I traversed into Morrowind's dungeons. Actually, I found it kind of refreshing that not every dungeon was a giant 3+ interior'd area of doom; it set the pacing in such a way that finding a really big dungeon was something really exciting.

And I dunno about you, but I always found enough detail in Morrowind's dungeon clutter to make me question what was really going on there, beyond what the dungeon implied obviously. Perhaps I was forced to do that because the dungeon experience was a bit lacking in combat and exploration duration, but there were usually always things. Little notes, little quirks. A fancy item out of place, a corpse surrounded by unusual and unexpected things. I distinctly remember one tomb that was fairly small and short-lived, but I walked in and saw a skeleton pinned to the wall by a spear through the ribcage, random junk on the floor beneath him. Things like that. Maybe they stood out only because they lacked elsewhere, but I still found them interesting as letting the designer's ideals for the dungeon open up to me. And I find that's a lot easier to convey through a dungeon, regardless of its size and combat length, when things are less and less predeveloped. Oblivion failed to communicate that aspect to me. Perhaps it was there, but perhaps it was hidden by all the copy-paste elements that negate such an aspect.

EDIT: I do think that FO3-style dungeons are a good hybridization of Oblivion's repetition and size and combat duration, with Morrowind's uniqueness and dungeon-pacing. So if they're going for that for Skyrim, or a variation of it, I'll be a happy camper.

I never liked Oblivion's dungeons. They all felt the same way. Both in how they actually looked inside, and what type of things were there. The same structure was over and over and over again, with little to almost none unique feeling.

I liked Morrowind's dungeons because they felt a lot more interesting. There were valuable, hidden things on a lot of places that made it really fun. Some dungeons were also so cool having several levels and secret places that you had to levitate to.

Neither Morrowind's nor Oblivion's dungeons were perfect imo. But personally, Morrowind's dungeons were the ones I enjoyed the most without a single doubt. I have no interesting, cool or fun memories from Oblivion's dungeons, even though I played Oblivion later than Morrowind. All I remember from Oblivion's dungeons is that I thought they felt bland and non-unique. Even though there were some differences of course, they all gave me the same feeling. Eventually, when I explored in Oblivion and saw a dungeon, I thought: "Oh... yeah a dungeon. I don't really want to go into that one. It's just the same all over again. Nothing interesting or special."

Where you said: "Throughout the process, the dungeon type (marauder fortress, goblin cave, vampire lair, etc.) determines the architecture we use and the types of spaces the layout can and should use." <- also did not make it into the game. there were forts, caves, ayleid ruins and mines.

actually it did make it into the game, Vampire lairs had corpses to the walls while marauders were more fort like structures. Goblin caves had captured rats for food and some simple construction and cluttered objects. but i agree, most of what you said that should have shown up, did not :/

No unique things in Oblivion? Did no one else find the Ayleid Statues? Along with traps, Oblivion's dungeons were a lot more fun.

I think the issue here is that Morrowind's interior meshes were a lot more modular: literally, there was a separate object for every single hallway joint and stairway piece. All of the individual pieces were so generic that you thought more of the content inside of the dungeons than the literal shape of them. Don't you recall stumbling upon bizarre Sixth House symbols on the floor, arranged out of gold pieces? Or finding a corpse stashed behind a large stalagmite with a weapon by their side. That's what I enjoyed about the Morrowind dungeons: they may have not played perfectly, but they had so many little nuances that they each felt like little "stories" - I don't know about you, but to me it feels as if the developers had a lot of fun just designing Morrowind in any way they wanted. Everything was an experiment (as was the game itself, I think we can agree) and, though it's a lot messier than Oblivion, the game feels more "real" to me.

Returning to the mesh point Oblivion's dungeons may have interesting architecture but it's featured so prominently compared to that of its predecessor that I myself think more of the individual rooms than the entire dungeon. "Oh, here's that trapped Ayleid hallway overlooking the big room with the coffins" or "here's the two hallways that are parallel to each other with a locked door in between". I also severely disliked how much of the loot was confined to containers, often placed in the same locations. It felt more like a Roguelike or even Diablo/Torchlight than a real location with a history and purpose. Oblivion's traps were awesome, though. I'll give you that.

I said I was probably not going to respond, but this is just too easy.

"exactly one dungeon with a unique book" - would that be "Hiding with the Shadow" in Lake Arrius Caverns, or Journal of Lord Lovidicus in Crowhaven, or "Fire in the Darkness" in the Hall of Epochs, or "The Art of War and Magic" in LeaFrot Cave, or etc. Not to mention many more unique books found outside of dungeons.

No hand placed items? There is. Most is randomly generated. Which as I say adds to replay value, if you don't cheat by saving and reloading. Non random loot too, like Fin Gleam, a hand placed Amulet of luck, a Royal Cuirass, dagger of depletion, Bands of Kwang Lao, Brusef Amelion's armor, and more. But I agree that Morrowind has more. Whether that's good is a subject of debate.

Handcrafted dungeons, they are. Inspection will show that to be an actual fact as mentioned above. Similar styles but, just as ancient Chinese or roman buildings would have similar styles but uniquely placed items. Where - everywhere. That's a fact.

The "vampire" (necromancer actually) from Daggerfall was mentioned in my first post. That's why I didn't mention it again in the second. Maybe you were thinking it was the Lich. That is a completely seperate unique dungeons.

Linear. Silorn requires you to go from zone 1 to zone 2, back to zone 1 to get to zone 3. As an example. Many, maybe most, but not all are linear. Just like Morrowind.

Huge room with a platform. I could think of Wendelbek. Where are the other five like that?

I hope this is on topic since the not going to respond, but this is just too easy.

"exactly one dungeon with a unique book" - would that be "Hiding with the Shadow" in Lake Arrius Caverns, or Journal of Lord Lovidicus in Crowhaven, or "Fire in the Darkness" in the Hall of Epochs, or "The Art of War and Magic" in LeaFrot Cave, or etc. Not to mention many more unique books found outside of dungeons.

No hand placed items? There is. Most is randomly generated. Which as I say adds to replay value, if you don't cheat by saving and reloading. Non random loot too, like Fin Gleam, a hand placed Amulet of luck, a Royal Cuirass, dagger of depletion, Bands of Kwang Lao, Brusef Amelion's armor, and more. But I agree that Morrowind has more. Whether that's good is a subject of debate.

Handcrafted dungeons, they are. Inspection will show that to be an actual fact as mentioned above. Similar styles but, just as ancient Chinese or roman buildings would have similar styles but uniquely placed items. Where - everywhere. That's a fact.

The "vampire" (necromancer actually) from Daggerfall was mentioned in my first post. That's why I didn't mention it again in the second. Maybe you were thinking it was the Lich. That is a complete seperate unique dungeons.

Linear. Silorn requires you to go from zone 1 to zone 2, back to zone 1 to get to zone 3. As an example. Most but not all are linear. Like Morrowind.

Huge room with a platform. I could think of Wendelbek. Where are the other five?

I hope this is on topic since the subtitle compares Morrowind to Oblivion. But I think my point is made, so I'll try not to post anymore.

I'm in the Fallout 3 camp, it showed Bethesda really starting to master dungeon design, multi layers, item based exposition, notes, non journal quests, high level enemies and atmosphere.

Most of Morrowind's dungeons are practically identical, though with a good amount of the above stuff from Fallout, Oblivions dungeons were the right size, nice and epic with lots of traps...but they felt empty, I found perhaps five notes and three unmarked quests in the whole game, Shivering Isles on the other hand had brilliant dungeons, I have no fears about Skyrim's dungeon design.

Not so much linear as much as being predictable. The dungeons in Morrowind were less predictable in size and direction.

Most of those books were quest related, in quest related dungeons. Do not count as handplaced interesting stuff, as interesting surprises or verisimilitude. The art of war magic, yes, thats one.
I was talking about 'Advances in lockpicking' though, in the dungeon north of Aleswell.

No, hand placed items are hand placed items, like fingleam. Not like random loot chest. Fingleam was one of very few of those. The only one at that even slightly useful at higher levels, and then not even for me personally, as I cant see anything with nighteye. (Ironic, but true, I cant distinguish things from each other anymore with it active.)

The similar style does come from a jarring realisation that they are all modules, pasted on each other.
Ive been looking over the UESP to find more of those chambers as in Wendelbek and when my patience ran out I hadnt found any.
But the modularity is clearly visible, and if you look at a lot of maps you see the same structures/ modules again and again.
Going from one level to another doesnt mean anything if in the end its just one long circle.

The necromancer is my mistake. They are two different things, true.
The lich is an unfinished bugged quest at lost boy cavern, The necromancer is in the first dungeon you probably come across after exiting the sewers, and if all Ayleid ruins were of Vilverin quality, I wouldnt have an issue. But they are not.
The necromancer/ vampire confusion comes from his undelivered note to Aluc Cardius in Daggerfall, an obvious pun on Dracula.

People claiming Morrowind dungeons were more boring or equally as boring as Oblivion dungeons are wrong. Unless they mean graphically.

The reason Morrowinds might not have been considered to be as good was because they had less to work with.


However, there were far less repetative and samey dungeons in Morrowind. Those who state this, did not dungeon crawl Morrowind much. This is a FACT, it's a big issue with Oblivion for a reason, note with OBLIVION.



Honestly, it irritates me that people constantly denegrade Oblivion and deify Morrowind. However, reacting to every single critisism with this level denial and childishness does not solve the issue.

Honestly, Morrowind's dungeons were very short. Especially Daedric shrines. Tombs seemed all the same, and Dwemer ruins seemed to be the only thing worth going into. But than again, so were Oblivion's. Good for Skyrim having 8 dungeon designers. :thumbsup:

Personally, I liked Oblivion's dungeons. A lot. They were dark and kind of creepy at times; however, still nice to look at. It took me several playthroughs to really start getting bored with the layout of the various caves, mines, forts and ruins. I personally did not have much of an issue with the so called "cookie-cutter" nature of the dungeons until about the 80 hour mark. I imagine that they will be going all out this time to appease those that do not agree with me though. In regards to the initial topic of the thread; I hope Bethesda takes nothing from Morrowind at all. That includes the dungeons. Morrowind (and this is just an opinion so don't get your panties in a twist) was a lot less accessible than Oblivion in pretty much every way. The game play was just not fun at all for me and I found the dungeons were boring and uninspired. There is nothing good about Morrowind that Oblivion didn't do 10x better.

Edit: The way Oblivion handled Enchanting was a bit of a step back. I will give Morrowind that at least.

Really? Wow.

Armour choice.
Weapon choice.
Levitation.
Open cities and towns.
Terrain diversity.
Story pacing and suspense.
Equipment, (Morrowind allowed you clothes and armour)
Not to mention the title of this thread which is not debatable, the staff have noted that oblivion dungeons were not well designed which is why they are specifically telling us they have 8 members of staff this time.

These are just off the top of my head. Your statement is quite frankly, BS. You didn't play Morrowind.

Okay, I played Morrowind. Lemme give it a shot.

Armor choice. I'll give you that.

Weapon Choice. Meh, they removed Spears, which were overpowered and they removed throwing weapons and crossbows, not really a game changer. I never used them anyway and many people didn't, though there were many that did also but you just can't say from your personal experience that the game was lesser because they removed a couple weapon choices, especially when one of them was to balance the game.

Levitation. Once again removed because it was unbalanced and also because of closed cities, but mostly because it was broken. So imo, it was an improvement to remove it. Daggerfall did levitation better anyhow.

Open cities and towns. This was for technical reasons, such as several things in Oblivion since they were making the game for a console that didn't exist yet. I didn't really see any issue with it anyhow, my computer was fast enough to load the cities quickly.

Terrain diversity. Oblivion did it well, I don't know why everyone hates it. Oblivion did it realistically in fact. Morrowind however, it had like 8 drastically different ecosystems on such a tiny island. There are islands on earth that have similar diversities but they are very large islands in comparison. Oblivion's terrain diversity was gradual and realistic.

Story pacing and suspense. I thought the pacing in the story of Oblivion was fine. The main story had fallen out of the lime light since Morrowind, Morrowind had a stellar main story, Oblivion had stellar sidequests. They both had amazing stories, just one was in the main quest line (Morrowind) and the other was in the "extra" quests in Oblivion. Many people seem to think Oblivion had a bad story even though in reality, the main story was good and the amazing story was in the side quests and that matters, but some people see the main quest line as the actual game but when it comes to TES, everything is the game, so side quests need to be taken into account.
Equipment. You already covered this with armor choice and weapon choice. Not fair to beat a dead horse :tongue:

Oblivion's dungeons were fine, they could be better but they were far from bad. People really need to stop attacking Oblivion's quality and not bringing up Morrowind in the discussion which suffers from the same issues.

But yes, this was just to point out why you shouldn't flame that guy. As for my opinion on this thread, Bethesda shouldn't take anything from Morrowind except the armor slot system, the rest was pretty lack luster in comparison to both Daggerfall and Oblivion imo. Morrowind was a good game but it definitely wasn't the end all be all some people make it out to be.

cosign. Oblivion did feel like a Roguelike

Ah, I see, you were referring to the placing of things that would generally be consider clutter rather than the rooms themselves. That's fair. Even considering that though, thematically, Morrowind only had a number of flavors when it came to dungeons.

Ancestral Tomb
Ancestral Tomb (Occupied by Daedra)
Cave (Smugglers/Bandits)
Cave (Mages/Daedra)
Cave (Mineral Mine)
Cave (Egg mine)
Cave (6th house)
Daedric Temple
Dwemer Ruins
Stronghold (Bandit/6th House/Daedra?)
Telvanni Tower (Rogue Mages)
Grotto

I may have missed a thing or two, and the list is a bit longer than it seemed in my head, but they were still terribly similar from one to another. I would have loved more depth, and I mean that quite literally. The Mournhold sewer system was more the largest 'dungeon' in the entire game. It was also likely the most variable in terms of themes and inhabitants. That's partially because they couldn't leave the city and there was really no where else to stick Tribunal stuff other than there, but just the sewers itself, excluding all the offshooting dungeons were larger and more complicated than any dungeon in Vvardenfell save a few important ones to the main quest. Maybe that's just my annoyance in the lack of quality mods that work on these things.

Personally, I like the idea of dungeons, and I don't really mind if their small. But I would really love if they made more aboveground structures, and things to do aboveground. I hate the dungeon atmosphere unique or not. I scoured every inch of Cyrodill aboveground, but the dungeons...meh.

Radiant Story sounds great...but i hope it doesn't place all quests in dungeons.

I hope the dungeons are improved a lot. One thing that I would like to see, though I may be alone on this, is two or three epic dungeons. By this I mean two or three dungeons that may take like 3+ hours to compete and have awesome loot and leave you struggling to survive. Would be so great!