I just want to start off by saying that I have never played an Elder Scrolls game before. A friend recently hyped it up for me and explained how awesome previous games like Morrowind were for him. I'm interested in Skyrim but one thing that has me on the fence is that this is the latest installment in an established, deep franchise. The only information I have on this game are from the teaser, the trailer, a gameinformer article, and whatever is told to me. Will I be lost coming into this game? Does anyone know if there are going to be a lot of returning characters or alluded events that every veteran would know and not the newbies? I've read up on the previous games on Wikipedia and the UESP wikia, but sources like those normally don't provide all the information you get from playing the game itself.

Every game lets any newbie jump in and test their tongue to see if the taste of the game suits them or not. play what you want, you won't be missing anything of the previous genre unless you yourself go and try them out.

They're separating this game from the last one by 200 game years, it will seem new to all of us. There will be interesting things in the books and perhaps a few good references to the old games, but nothing to the point that you'd have needed to play all the games.

Awesome, glad to hear!

If you're coming out of shooter franchises and havn't touched an RPG before then even the "streamlined" sense of Skyrim may still be alien to you. They are going to be referring to events in Morrowind, Daggerfall, Arena, and Oblivion quite a lot (I assume)

You should buy Oblivion and/or Morrowind and play those. If you're interested and have the time download Daggerfall.



Separation aside you're still going to hear about the Oblivion crisis, The Tribunal, maybe the warp in the West, Ngasta, etc.



That's not true, oblivion was my first TES game and when I first played I didnt know what the heck was going on. If you're interested in the story then it's definitely worthwhile playing the previous title.

Todd Howard said in an interview that they assume the person playing the game has never played any of their games before, so you will be fine.

Arena and Daggerfall might be downable from somewhere at the Beth site, Morrowind and Oblivion are here (The Netherlands) quit cheap .... I believe you can grab Morrowind with hIs expansions for 5 or 10 euro's ... Ofcourse in game reference by books I am sure they put some books in from earlier events , I even won't be suprised if there are books about the oblivion crisis and the 'Greymarch' , and the Knights .... Also there is this site, wich also is quit worthwhile http://www.imperial-library.info/ ...

Good luck and happy weekend ...

I believe Skyrim will be more accessible to new players than Oblivion and Morrowind.

I stumbled upon Oblivion because I was looking for FO3 mods. I didn't know anything about the history of Tamriel but it was easy to get engrossed in this game and it has become my favorite game of all time.

I later bought the Morrowind GOTY in a Bethesda sale on Steam and I also loved it, but I think because it is a bit more dated, if I had tried Morrowind first I would have been turned off by it.

In the OPs case, I think Skyrim will be the best introduction to the TES series, possibly preparing him to better enjoy Oblivion and Morrowind

There will probably be a great Bethesda Steam package deal again toward the end of the year

Go out and buy Oblivion.

Personally, I actually loved when I first got Oblivion and I had no idea where I was so I just kept exploring until I came across something, and then all the stuff people talked about made no sense to me, but it made me want to learn more to start to get into the fascinating world. It was an exciting experience, like going to another planet and experiencing their culture for the first time. If you are worried about being unprepared, I reccomend you get Oblivion, it's easier to get into than Morrowind and will introduce you to the world.

Oblivion was my first TES game too, but I had no trouble getting a grasp on things. I was a lone prisoner, the Emperor gave me a magical amulet before he was assassinated, and I needed to take it to Jauffre to find his son because some demon was coming to threaten us. Got to Jauffre, and he gave me more information.

While playing the previous titles is definitely worth your while, it's hardly needed. If you want to get into the world lore or look at the fine detail, then absolutely, but to understand and enjoy Skyrim's story, I doubt it. Bethesda has been good about making sure the information you need for each game's story is in the game.

Bethesda game never really had much in the way of continuity from one game to the next. Theirs some background lore, and a few npcs that cross over from one game to the next. But they just have background roles and never really appear in the games much if at all, at most they may give you plot exposition to drive you forward. It's not as if you wanna hang with them or anything. Just about all the lore you might want to look can be found http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page

It's not like certain Bioware games, where you might have a returning love interest that you might want to settle down with an have blue children.

If you want you could try out previous games, I enjoyed them. But you won't really miss anything if you decide to make Skyrim your first Elder Scrolls experience.

Seriously, go out and buy Oblivion. It's really cheap now. Chances are, you'll love it. But if you don't then at least you've saved some money by not getting Skyrim.

This. I had the exact same experience. Oblivion was, furthermore than my first TES game, my first RPG ever! And I had no trouble getting into it at all. I absolutely loved the experience, and that is why Oblivion is still today my favourite game of all time, that sensation of exploring a new world was never replaced.

I am only trying Morrowind now, and it is indeed more difficult to get into it. So, OP, if you want to get to know the world and the lore a bit before going into Skyrim, my advice is that you go into Oblivion first. But you are surely not missing out anything if you play Skyrim first. Bethesda has the habbit of making all their games independent, so that new players can enter in any installment

It was my first RPG, as well as my first open world game. I didn't get what a lot of stuff was, and it took me a while to work out how to play it, but that's probably partially due to skimming the tutorials, foolishly thinking I'd catch on immediately. Might be just my mind extending the feeling of how long it was taking, but I swear the first trime I tried to follow my marker to Weynon Priory it took me at least half an hour. Don't ask me how that happened! I fought about 3 camps of bandits on the way.

Hey Alak, you'll definitely enjoy it, 200 hundred years after, you won't be missing out on a lot. How about you do yourself a favor and go out and buy Oblivion, it's really cheap, it won't let you down and hey with the game time in that game, you probably won't be finished with it the day Skyrims released! =)

Its not a sequel in the sense that Dragon Age 2 is a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins etc. Plot threads and characters won't be, for the most part, carried over and while events in Oblivion and Morrowind will probably be alluded to occasionally it's certainly not necessary for a person to play those in order to understand whats going on in Skyrim. TES games are standalone adventures.

Each game is an individual story. It's not exactly a sequel, just another game set in a different part of the same world. You don't need the other games to understand it, although I would really reccomend playing them - not to help you understand Skyrim, but just because they are awesome themselves. :goodjob:

Agreed. When i was quite young i picked up morrowind, played it for a day and then tossed it aside again simply because i didnt had a freakin idea of what the heck i was supposed to do. Maybe i should say im from Denmark so english isnt my native language, so there could be a barrier there i wasnt fit to climb at that age, but got oblivion around 18 when it was release and was blown away so after i went back to morrowind and yet again, was blown away by TES!



:tes:

My first TES game was Oblivion, and I remember when I played it the things that confused me were the new words. What is a Daedra, Dunmer, Bosmer? There were also many things that you've heard in rumors about other provinces, that I just nodded and just accepted it would mean something deep and interesting.

You don't really have to know what happened in the other games, the plot tends to be go on its own, but there are books and mentions about the happenings of other games.

My first TES game was Morrowind, and I have to say one of the most beautiful things I came across was a library. It contained so many books and so much information about the world, the culture of the people, the gods, the landscape and all other things. I walked out of that library with more information than I had come across over all the other days I had spent playing. "All the other days" were really just a few days, under a week really, however the point is, even if you walk into the world and even if it is all foreign and exotic to you, then you can still grow to understand it if you just take it slowly and take your time talking to the people of Tamriel and reading the books you come across.

As for returning characters... well there is only one who is physical and is a sort of an easter egg, then there may be organizations but Skyrim will most likely introduce you to those organizations just as well as Morrowind and Oblivion did, and then there are the gods. It would be an achievement in itself to get through a TES game without learning about the gods so I′m not even going to give you tips to learn about those, you just will whether you like it or not.

So if you have had any doubts that you will enjoy Skyrim because you haven′t played the former games then just cast them aside, you will get around in Skyrim quite nicely without any information from the former games if Skyrim is anything like previous TES games.

I was thinking exactly the same. The in game books are excellent and not only for gaining knowledge about tamriel. I think most of the folk who frequent this forum can tell you the plat of at least 10 books and will go into great detail about their favourites. Morrowind had a great book related quest involving one illicit tome entitled, The Lusty Argonian Maid. It's a bit of a classic now I'd imagine.

You probably don't need to do anything to understand the story in Skyrim.

But if you want to understand the world around you, I'd recommend getting Morrowind or Oblivion, both of which you can get cheap.

You aren't going to miss much, there's many lore books in the game that you can read if you wish to catch up on details of the past, along with many historical sites that you can see in-game to get a feel for the ruggedness of the cultures. If you want to know how the gameplay works out, that's mainly the only thing different from the rest of the other games' play, it's more streamlined now with less drawbacks and more jump-in-and-play-how-you-want action.

But they will only exist to add some flavour, they won't have any real impact on the game itself. And with that much of a time span, I really don't see there being a lot of that to begin with. The events in all the previous games will be considered ancient history by then. Most of those references will be buried in a book somewhere.