skyrim is my first TES game and I've done pretty much about 98% of the things you can do and I'm extremely hungry for more Elder Scrolls. I originally planned to play the games in order before buying skyrim but then I saw all the great reception it had gotten, and I caved, so I bought it anyway, and I am in love with TES. I need more! I can't wait for the DLC. But I'm worried that playing the previous games after playing skyrim will feel outdated and boring. I should note that I play on console so modding the previous games for better graphics isn't an option. Also, i'm not trying to spark a "which TES game is best" debate, I just want to know if playing the previous games after playing Skryim will feel outdated and unsatisfying. Some of the changes that I have read about discourage me from playing the other games like the improved third person view (played 85% of skyrim in third person), the improved interface (I actually wished the interface in skyrim was more accessible and I was surprised to find it was actually an improvement), improved dungeon design (i actually felt the dungeons in skyrim were a bit repetitive) etc etc.


I think I should clarify something. The reason I want to play the previous games is because I'm hungry for more Skyrim and I can't wait for DLC. But I'm worried that the previous games are too different than skyrim and won't satisfy my needs. I'm thinking of getting a fallout game because I haven't played a fallout game yet (skyrim is also my first bethesda game) and I've heard that fallout 3 is like skyrim with guns. I guess I should explain why I love skyrim so much.

What I really love about skyrim is the freedom and the open world. My most amazing gaming experience in recent memory (possibly in my whole life) is travelling and exploring the amazing open world, running into crazy situations, discovering secrets and miniature storylines. It's just so amazing how immersive and enthralling it is to explore and I love doing whatever you want, however you want (i'm talking about the combat and leveling system as well here) and I've never played a game that gave you so much freedom. Also, I absolutely love the ridiculous amount of things to do. Anyway, based on everythihg I've said, would playing any of the previous games satisfy my need for more skryim? Or should I just play fallout 3 or fallout new vegas?

The words "Skyrim", "Interface", and "improvement" only belong together if discussing SkyUI.
Unless one counts "random dialogue selection" as an interface feature.

In it's current bugged out state the previous games currently play a bit better... However I will point out that in all previous TES games there are attributes and a few extra skills like acrobatics for jumping and athletics which dictates your run speed and fatigue regeneration while running... Also one main thing that's a pain but makes the old ones a bit more realistic is that your armor and weapons will degrade with use thus forcing you to constantly keep them repaired or the become as useless as your fists... However the older games allowed you to play something like a martial artist if you wanted to spec in hand to hand combat another skill that was tossed from skyrim but I won't complain about it much... Just expect the same open world experience with a few things not there like marriage isn't in the older games but the open world is what TES games are all about...

All in all I think it's a good idea to try out the older ones and that they were all worth playing...

I would also go backwards through the series at this point as many people who start with a later game in a series can't go back to something like daggerfall or arena based in DOS and be able to enjoy it the same unless like me you basically started your gaming in an old school system like that... So I would start by trying out Oblivion next and if you like it move on to Morrowind and then Daggerfall and Arena...

Graphics wise they will be somewhat outdated,especially games before Oblivion.
Since you played Skyrim on a console the easiest thing to do is buy Oblivion right now,because Oblivion was published on the same consoles as Skyrim.
Morrowind was only released on the first xbox,and past games where PC-only.

Note that while some parts in Oblivion will feel a little outdated,the game itself has more content than Skyrim. More cities,more dungeons,more npcs,more quests..
Also note that Oblivion has more of a classic RPG feel than Skyrim.
The general feel of Skyrim is more action-adventure style than Oblivion,and Skyrim felt to me more like I was playing a game like Zelda but with mature stuff and 10x times more content,while Oblivion felt more like playing an electronic version of the classic book-based pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons.

To answer your question playing older Elder Scrolls games is generally suggested. More if you are familiar and/or like classic DnD style rpgs,less if you are more of the action-advneture type or you care too much about graphics...
Either way,have fun.

EDIT: NM, misunderstood the OP.

Since you can't mod the games on console, your opinion will depend purely on why you liked Skyrim. If it's for the combat, or the familiar and beautiful scenery, Oblivion might be enjoyable, but you'll probably HATE Morrowind (oddly, the most popular mods for OB: OOO, MMM, etc,. make aspects of its gameplay and its adversary spawns more like Morrowind).

If it's for the world, politics, stoyline, and NPC interactions, or for a glimpse of a very different culture and environment, then you might find Oblivion sadly lacking, but enjoy Morrowind in spite of its clunky animations, primitive graphics, text-based dialog, and awkward "die roll based" combat where you miss most of your attacks at low skill levels.

Daggerfall is far less detailed graphically, while being even deeper and more varied from a political viewpoint, and the sheer immensity of its world (the largest of any [ fantasy ] video game, by a large margin) is offset by the shallow and repetitive procedural generation of most of it. Each game has its strengths and weaknesses, and is very different from the other games, yet set in the same vast and detailed world.

Different players play for different reasons, and you can probably find at least one "gem" in the series that suits your tastes.

Very large yes, but not quite up to the scale of Frontier or First Encounters

You should try them anyway, they're great games.

I see what you did there.

Get morrowind on the pc! it takes more time to get into though and it requires a brain to play unlike Tes's latest games. Being a 10 year old game it doesnt require much at all to run.

A thousand times YES!

Arena and Daggerfall are free to download directly from Bethesda.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/daggerfall/

I can't say you'll like it, but it isn't like it'll cost you anything.

I think I should clarify something. The reason I want to play the previous games is because I'm hungry for more Skyrim and I can't wait for DLC. But I'm worried that the previous games are too different than skyrim and won't satisfy my needs. I'm thinking of getting a fallout game because I haven't played a fallout game yet (skyrim is also my first bethesda game) and I've heard that fallout 3 is like skyrim with guns. I guess I should explain why I love skyrim so much.

What I really love about skyrim is the freedom and the open world. My most amazing gaming experience in recent memory (possibly in my whole life) is travelling and exploring the amazing open world, running into crazy situations, discovering secrets and miniature storylines. It's just so amazing how immersive and enthralling it is to explore and I love doing whatever you want, however you want (i'm talking about the combat and leveling system as well here) and I've never played a game that gave you so much freedom. Also, I absolutely love the ridiculous amount of things to do. Anyway, based on everythihg I've said, would playing any of the previous games satisfy my need for more skryim? Or should I just play fallout 3 or fallout new vegas?

Morrowind has all of that. It just isn't as pretty or user-friendly.

Actually after this post of yours I would now highly recommend you to play Oblivion.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas follow the same basic formula of "go wherever you want,do whatever you want,explore" but are far shorter in content than Skyrim or Oblivion.

Oblivion has everything you want,it actually gives you MORE freedom than Skyrim,and if there is a single complain for Skyrim in these forums by older Elder Scrolls fans is because of that.
Oblivion has a huge world the size of Skyrim's but with more cities,dungeons,npcs,skills,and a bigger number of unique quests,so it's probably what you are asking for.
Fallout 3 is a nice game in its own merit,but the wasteland becomes dull and boring after a while and there are less things to do than in Oblivion.
Oblivion is the biggest,more content single player game I ever played. If you played Skyrim about 1-2 months,you will be playing Oblivion for 5-6 months.
That's all I needed to say,period.

buying previous TES games after playing Skyrim= [censored] great idea

Oblivion vanilla UI > Skyrim vanilla UI > Morrowind vanilla UI (Not including quest journals).

Try older TES games, If youn liked Skyrim you'll enjoy them, Morrowind is really awesome, and Oblivion isn't bad at all.

In this case I definitely recommend working your way backwards through the series starting with Oblivion... The open world is what TES games are all about but start with the newer ones and go backwards so it's not too big of a change at a time...

You haven't said which console you play on, but if it's the PS3 you only have the option of playing Oblivion anyway. If you have a 360 you can play Morrowind too, but from what you say I doubt you'd like that as much anyway.

For me it's quite the opposite: Morrowind UI >Skyrim UI > Oblivion UI. (Oblivion's systems of tabs was the most wretchedly awkward menu design I've ever seen in a video game).

Morrowind's UI is definitely nice, because it has all the menus on one screen at once. And it allows you to move most of the UI to anywhere on the screen, resize them as you want, or completely disable them. Or even stick them on the HUD.

But one advantage of Oblivion's inventory screen, preferably with a mod like Darn UI to allow you to see more items at once, is how you can directly compare things like weight, value, damage between items in a list. And you can sort the items by those factors. It's very useful for getting the information you need quickly, which is what an UI is for after all.

http://static.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/images/3863-1-1324518649.jpg is good for that too.

I get the feeling he just doesn't know which way round > and < go, hence the ignoring of Journals (I don't think anyone argues that Morrowind's was better. Well, apart from me, on a bad day).

And I have no idea. Some people end up loving them, some people end up hating them. just remember - Morrowind is the kind of game you don't 100%. Daggerfall and Arena are the same, but for different reasons.

Oblivion, however, is in my opinion, worse than Skyrim in pretty much every aspect. But I guess it's still worth a look.

As for Fallout, remember that 3 is the only Bethesda/Bethesda style one of the series. Not saying anything bad about the others, haven't even played them, they're just different. Fallout 3 is a good game, though, very different to TES in a lot of ways. But they're all stupidly open-world.

You might as well try Morrowind and Oblivion as they're very cheap now.

Whether you'll like them or not largely depends on how tolerant you are of outdated graphics and animations. That's all Skyrim really does better in my opinion.

I take those saying that Morrowind's UI was good played on the xbox, right? because on PC you ended up clicking and dragging to exhaustion.

Oblivion showed a good ammount of info and items on a single "screen".

Skyrim's is all abut scrolling.


Of course, I'm mostly talking about item managing, which is actually 90% of the work you do in the UI, aside from quest tracking, whicch, as I stated, I wasn't taking into account, and heavily varies with the quest markers. Me, I prefer directions.

I read some of the replies and I would agree with most of them. You will probably like oblivion although, what noone has mentioned is the RADICALLY different mechanics as far as leveling skills and leveling in general. You'll need to go old school with attributes and learn how minors influence "bonus" attribute modifiers. if you just play willy nilly you'll wind up with a horribly gimped character at higher levels. Oblivion is especially tough as they removed skills that were available in morrowind making attribute modifier bonuses much easier to obtain. Oblivion makes it quite tough and I'm not really sure why they did that - whether by design or by accident.

The morrowind graphics are not nearly as bad as everyone says. The characters themselves were the worst part - kind of stick figure- ish but as far as the world - it was stunning. It's still stunning. I was a HUGE morrowind fan. It is a LOT more old school and thus, tougher than skyrim. You won't gain 10 levels in one day. Maybe 10 in a week. You have to actually EARN your levels not have them handed to you.

there is no crafting in either game although you do have medium armor in morrowind which is a really great balance between heavy and light armor. The fact that much of it is made from parts of creatures in the game makes it all the cooler. Morrowind also did not dynamically level caves and such. Well, some do and some don't. Some respawn and some don't. most bandit caves do not respawn loot or bandits. Daedric ruins and crypts always respawn and dynamically level enemies to you - up to a point.

Oblivion levels enemies against you in a very dramatic upcurve. If you are not VERY careful maxing combat skills as early as possible you will quickly find yourself unable to win fights.

All that said, if you are patient and take each game as it is (not expecting it to be a carbon copy of skyrim) they are both huge open world open choice games with tons of stuff to do. You should love them. I wouldn't go back any further than morrowind due to the massive change over in hardware technology post year 2000.