I got hooked on the Elder Scrolls series with Morrowind. I love that game, and I still play it even after I got Oblivion. In fact, I actually prefer it over Oblivion. The reason why is because of it's depth. Not so much the plot, because I've never actually finished the game. No, to me it's the game's world that makes it so special, so out of the ordinary. Whenever I made a character, I would role-play. I'd make up a little backstory, choose how he would act in different situations, take quests depending on if they fit his morals. And it always helped that there were so many options in the game. Instead of a generic 'magic' skill, there were 8 individual schools of magic. A 'blade' skill was split into long and short blades, 'armor' had three subcategories, etc. Every NPC had a distinct personality. You could make your own spells and enchantments. The list goes on and on and on. That is what made Morrowind stand out.

That block of text brings me to the trend I noticed: The games are getting simpler. The number of skills are lowering, NPC's have fewer lines they say, there aren't as many factions, and so on. I've never played Daggerfall, but looking at the Elder Scrolls wiki I can see this, illustrated in the crude charts below.

Game | # of skills
----------------------
Daggerfall | 38
Morrowind | 27
Oblivion | 21
Skyrim | 18

Game | # of Factions
----------------------
Daggerfall | 6
Morrowind | 16
Oblivion | 14
Skyrim | ?

Not only that, but think of the smaller details.
Daggerfall had vampires, were-creatures, and witch covens.
Morrowind had vampires and werewolves,
Oblivion had vampires.
Daggerfall had a massive world.
Morrowind had a smaller world, but an amazingly detailed one.
Oblivion had a slightly larger world than Morrowind, but had less detail.
Morrowind had a great magic system, with plenty of different effects.
Oblivion has a less expansive magic system, and not near as many effects.

And the menu system! I don't know about Daggerfall or Arena's menu systems, but I loved Morrowind's right click menu. It had everything you needed on one screen, as opposed to Oblivion's where you navigate through a set of menus. In Morrowind, you could just pause and figure out whatever you needed too, like if you need to decide what spells to use against something or figure out an enemies resistances. It helped me think through things.

Also some mods aren't possible in Oblivion. I prefer to set up a house I bought to my liking, and Morrowind had furniture mods that let you place your own furniture. In Oblivion, everything uses the Havoc physics engine, so things jostle around even if you're playing as a physically wimpy mage and you're bumping into a giant desk. Don't get me wrong, I love how you can drag and move stuff in Oblivion, but still.

I could go on, but I don't want to have to big a wall of text.

EDIT: I forgot about a few things. One of them is the combat system. I don't know if anybody who's reading this has played Mount&Blade, but I loved the combat system from it. You directed your attacks with the mouse, which also affects what attack you use (similar to Morrowind's movement to control attacks), only the damage done is based on how hard you hit, where you hit, what attack you used. It's actually pretty close to Oblivion's combat system. It added a level of complexity to fighting that I've never seen before or since. If Oblivion's combat system is improved, that's how it should be.

The second thing was AI. Oblivion was way better than Morrowind in that regard, so I don't have anything to complain about there. However, Morrowind had a feel to it whenever you talked to people. There were huge amounts of options for what you would say. That (and the different ways NPC's responded) made it seem like the people you were talking to had actual personalities, likes, dislikes, emotions. I guess having voice actors kinda limits that, but even so, I wish TES could recapture that depth to the characters.

My point is that the series seems to have peaked at Morrowind, and is bit by bit losing what makes it stand out against the hordes of other games. I recognize that the people at Bethesda probably have ideas far, far different from mine, and they wouldn't change what they're doing because a chunk of people feel nostalgic. Maybe I'm in a minority on this point, maybe the series is just being more geared towards the X-Box or something. I don't know. I just wish it would go back to being like Morrowind, only with better graphics and stuff. What does everyone else think about it?

Not to mention all the nifty abilities you could have in Daggerfall that just aren't present in the games after it. Like having magic that's stronger in daylight (Very lore-friendly since Nirn's sun is a hole in the universe to a plane of pure freaking energy), having a hateboner for the undead, different languages, all sorts of awesome things that we're seeing less and less of.

And it's not just TES that's doing this. It's the entire freaking industry.
It's like as the technology increases the complexity of games decreases.

You have no idea how many times I've mentioned something that's been in an older game as something that'd be 'great to have' in an upcoming game, just to have everyone I know say 'that isn't possible, be realistic!'

Gaming industry, you make me sad, sometimes. ;_;

EDIT:

Just noticed you're join date was yesterday, I'm assuming right before midnight.
Trust me, you're not alone on this; plenty of us want the level of complexity Morrowind and Daggerfall offered to be in the upcoming games.
Hell, one of the first threads that opened in the Oblivion mod forum was 'Close shut the flaws of Oblivion.'
Of course, I think that one was glitch related, but still.

I'm glad I'm not alone about this. It isn't so much I wish Skyrim is like Morrowind, it's more I wish Skyrim was as complex as Morrowind. All those things that are added into the previous games and taken out of the later games should have been kept in and just polished and improved.

Also, I joined about an hour ago. Maybe the forum doesn't list 'today' as when somebody joined.

Well, it's past midnight where I am, so it'd make sense for it to say yesterday.

Yeah, I really do wish they'd try to get some of these things to work in their upcoming titles. I mean things like languages, magical power based on daylight/darkness, NPC depth really aren't that far-fetched for modern game design. There are examples of each in recent games, but they're the entire freaking focus half the time. It's like every game made in the past couple of years either has to be bland as gray dirt or so focused on gimmick that there's hardly anything aside from it.

...and we sacrifice all that awesome for pretty graphics and physics engines. :/

That's a far fetched conclusion since we've only had one game after Morrowind. Don't get me wrong, Morrowind is my favourite game, not just in the TES series, but in general. Oblivion's success obviously opened a much bigger market for Bethesda, and a new Morrowind would only loose them customers (mainly, console players looking for an action game), so I would be very surprised if they didn't put specific emphasis on gameplay, interface, debugging etc. At present however bethesda have the resources (talent, money, time, technology...) to make a game that would offer solid gameplay/combat without having to compromise the complexity, depth, and detail of the world. It remains to be seen if they actually pull it off, but I for one am moderately optimistic.

Make it more complex.


Peace. :mohawk:

@OP:

A few things I must point out in your anolysis. For one, the faction section. Daggerfall had 6 factions? No no no. Daggerfall had 6 categories of joinable factions. So if you count all the factions in each category and add to that all the non-joinable factions, you end up with a tremendous amount of factions. Also, without actually knowing how many factions Skyrim has, it's hard to say if the "trend" is continuing.

About the skills: I read that they're down to 18 too, but I also read they introduced perk-like abilities to allow us to specialize more in each of them, depending on what weapon/style we prefer. Don't know what those abilities are like, but it sure sounds interesting to me.

Concerning Oblivion, as far as I know, it was meant as an introductionary game to introduce newbies to the series without murdering them horribly in the first few minutes. For that, I think it was a huge success. It did bring tons of new players to the Elder Scrolls, including me. But now with Skyrim, they don't need to do that. They can aim for a deeper, more dangerous and complex game... and that's exactly what I'm expecting.

Sorry to throw around highschool science terms but I believe you guys are thinking quantitatively oppose to qualitatively.

In a recent interview, Todd Howard said something along the lines of "I don't ask myself why we don't have more races but I ask myself how can I make each race feel unique?"

I feel like we can apply this methodology to the way the Elderscrolls has been shaped in the past 8 years. If we look at the guilds of Morrowind, nearly all of the high end quests near final advancement require you to find an artifact and then challenge the guild leader.

Oblivions quests feel more personalized towards their factions, although they are limited in quantity, but you cannot deny that the quality of their storylines is nothing below par.

Oblivion's main quest....well thats a different story.

@ iomind

Yeah, you're right that I can't very accurately call it a trend, given how Oblivion is the only game after Morrowind so far. But I'm also looking at Daggerfall, which seems to have as much stuff in it as either of the more recent two games. Also, the fact that they're gearing there games more toward consoles makes me think they'll keep some of Oblivion's traits (the menu's, NPC's talking, etc.). A lot of stuff that works brilliantly on a PC translates terribly to a console.

@ Rivendell

I agree about the graphics. I'd be happy with Oblivion-level graphics or less if it meant the game had tons of stuff to do.

@ Logorouge

I haven't played Daggerfall, so my knowledge of it is entirely wiki-based. I just saw the little list of factions and assumed that was it. I also didn't know about the skill perks in Skyrim; I hope they make those work well. I can see how Oblivion is sort of an introductory game, maybe Skyrim will be done differently.

@ Mikedzines

Good point. Bethesda does a great job at making stuff unique, but what about the stuff that's been taken out? Not so much what it is, as how it lets you do more stuff. How it let's you play in different ways. It looks like they're taking out more than they're adding.

Okay, I know this is a double post, but... wow. Just, wow. I looked at Skyrim more thoroughly and I've suddenly switched to thinking the next game is going to be totally awesome. I still stand by what I said about losing skills and factions and whatnot, but the game looks more awesome than I thought.

Daggerfall: "quantity/size"
Morrowind: "quality/quantity"
Oblivion: "good enough"
Skyrim: "quality/variety"

The overall trend seems to be that Bethesda is taking a classic RPG and attempting to gradually turn it into a FPS, while retaining just enough RPG elements to attempt to sell it to the old RPG fanbase. As we saw in OB, it drew in a lot of new FPS players, but a lot of the existing RPG fans weren't very happy with it. Now we've got a product line with conflicting fanbases, and a big problem trying to please both elements, if Bethesda even bothers to humor the old fanbase in the next release.

I don't mind simplifying the interface and controls so the underlying complexity is hidden from view or direct exploitation, but when things are simply removed, that's a step backwards.The goal should be to allow you to just "play" and have the underlying mechanics handle everything, where your actions have a direct impact on your character's improvement and on the surrounding world, but you don't see it happening at the moment. Instead, we're getting simple "arcade" perks, limited dialog, less choices, and a more "primitive" (or is "primitive" the wave of the future?) underlying game purely for the sake of combat and graphics. Instead of "plastic surgery" we're getting "amputation", which is being marketed as an "improvement".

Sad part is, I don't really care for the so-called "immersive combat" style that they're steering toward (I don't find it at all realistic, no matter how it LOOKS), and I can deal with mediocre graphics if the game is good enough. I'm going to wait to see how reactions to Skyrim go before deciding whether or not to buy it. If it's as weak from a RP standpoint as OB was, or worse, then I'll have to pass on it, no matter how "exciting" they make the hack & slash parts of the game.

You are definetly the first person to notice and make a thread about this

Let's all try not to be pessimists.

If you've watched the Todd Howard interviews, he says that they're trying to decrease the number of skills to make things easier on the player. Yes, there are less skills, but there's still just as much to do. They're removing Mysticism as a specific school of magic, but all of the things you could do with Mysticism in earlier games is now being implemented into Illusion and Alteration and other schools of magic.

Also, Oblivion had 14 factions? Yeah, I guess if you include things like the Blades and the Knights of the Thorn and other "factions" that you can't rank up in. But as far as joinable factions that you can progress in, there are only 5. I'm not sure where the figure of 7 factions plays in with Skyrim as I've been trying to avoid reading EVERYTHING about it so there's still some surprises for me, but if it's 7 joinable factions, that's a step up from Oblivion. I'd rather there be a few really good and in-depth factions than several effortless factions. I love the hell out of Morrowind, but their factions were typically less interesting than the factions in Oblivion.

I understand and can sympathize with the feeling, but I don't think we need to worry. I have faith in Bethesda and I think they learned a lot from Oblivion. I've seen no indication at all that they seem to want to take the series in a "make money regardless of how thoughtless our games are" direction.

As for the part I've highlighted in bold: From what I've read in GI, it sounds like they are going to make an attempt to keep all of the mechanics / stats in the background and let you simply 'play your character'. What that will end up like in the finished product is up for speculation, but it sounds like it could be good if it is implemented well. To be honest, though, I'm optimistically skeptical. After all, everytime they try to reinvent the wheel on some aspect of gameplay, they tend to introduce new problems along with it.

As for the rest of your post, I'm afraid to admit that I am sensing the same things you are. It seems like with each successive title, more and more things end up on the cutting room floor all for the sake of streamlining. That isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but it is a little disheartening to watch as the streamlining process takes the series closer and closer in the direction of an action game, and further away from the direction of a traditional RPG game (where gameplay relies more on the character's skills, and less on player skill). Chances are that I will buy Skyrim regardless of what other's say about it, for the simple fact that I will want to try it and see for myself. If it isn't more engaging than Oblivion, however, Skyrim may very well be the last Elder Scrolls title that I buy.

They're just trying to figure out what works and what doesn't - they pay attention to their fans, experiment, etc. Yell loud enough and they will listen.

I will buy Skyrim just to try it...but I think it may very well be my last TES title

I predict that the sixth Elder Scrolls game will be dubbed Escape from Shadowscale Mountain, and you will have three skills (Combat, Magic, Stealth), and nine spells to choose from.

I don't think there's a trend, especially not when you think of the shivering isles and fallout 3. which both addressed issues of the fanbase.

Bethesda just have a trend of trying to correct the critiques of the former games, sometimes the correction just isn't the best one.

Skyrim also seems to be getting more deep and complex.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you Araph. Everyone should keep in mind streamlining does not mean loss of depth.

Now, I've only played Daggerfall briefly so forgive me if I'm mistaken but...

Daggerfall had a HUGE world space and amount of content. Yet, most of that was incredibly bland and if quite a few cases randomly generated with nothing really unique about it. A large number of skills which were redundant and really unnecessary. It had it's good points, such as the advantage/disadvantage system.

Morrowind improved upon this by having a much smaller game world yet it incredibly detailed. Also getting rid of unnecessary skills and re-implementing the advantage/disadvantage system as birth signs. It had a ton of dialogue, which was possible because it decide to be behind the curve and use text instead of voice over, and what most NPC's had to say was exactly the same as what any other NPC had to say with slight variations based on race. NPC's just stood around all day and all night doing nothing besides occasionally walking a few paces. The factions were also not extremely fleshed out as people seem to make them out to be, the combat was laughable, and offensive spells had no real substance other than being orbs of different colors, and once you got to level 20 or so the game just lost all difficulty.

Oblivion again got rid of some redundant skills, attempted to rectify the difficulty problem with level scaling. A good theory but they over did it and ended up making the game incredibly easy at all levels. Never challenging the player at all. Sacrificed quantity of factions for attempted quality. Again, the factions were all unique and felt well done. Their only flaw was making the stories not conflict with each other. They lost the "interconnection" they had in Morrowind. It greatly improved the A.I. Literally blowing every other game out of the water at that time and vastly improved combat over the previous titles. Certain spells were removed for specific reasons. Such as levitation because cities were no longer open. Offensive spells still were bland colored balls with a damage number.

Skyrim looks to out do all before it by fixing the level scaling problem. Being more akin to Fallout 3 it aims to challenge players while still giving that feeling of becoming powerful as they level up. Allowing your choices and specialization to directly affect your character. IN previous titles a master of long blade and a master of axe used the exact same style of fighting and were not really different at all. Skyrim fixes that with the addition of perk trees. Now specializing in a certain weapon types actually matters. Making the combat skills far more complex than just having skills for each weapon type. Same goes for Spells. Gone are the days of no difference between casting a fire spell or a frost spell. They now actually have REAL affects besides doing damage. Fire can set oil ablaze, burn the area around it, etc. Whereas frost actually slows your enemy down and I would assume if powerful enough it's possible to completely freeze them. Skyrim has a actual economic system that you can affect. Destroy the town mill? The price of wheat sky rockets and the towns economy suffers. Now, ANY NPC can possibly become a quest-giver with the addition of Radiant Story. Now some side quests will be completely generated by Radiant Story to be tailored towards how you're playing, who you're friends with, who you're enemies with and where you have/haven't been. Leveling is being completely overhauled with the removal of classes. Following the Elder Scrolls motto of "You get better at what you do by doing it" we will now literally do just that. No more broken system that requires you to actual not use your major skills if you want +5's for all of your attributes.

And that's just a little taste of the information we have so far. If Skyrim can deliver on just what they have said so far it will be the most complex and interesting Elder Scrolls game yet. While still staying accessible to those new to the series.

TL;DR: You have to realize everything that has been removed was done so for a good reason. They all love Elder Scrolls just as much as we do and they're just trying make the best damn game possible. Remember, they make the kind of games they want to play. Coincidentally, people like to play those kind of games too,

well said sir. everything you said i will gladly second!

I have made few posts here since joining the forums some years back. A little background: I am 43 years old and have played TES since my mid-twenties, discovering Arena in 1995. There is a great deal of affection and many, many hours devoted to this series of games: I own (and have played repeatedly) registered copies of TES1-4, plus plugins and expansions for the later titles.

The complexity level issue is a key point for me. At the time Arena was published it did things very few other RPGs allowed. The complexity of the game play was deceptively simple yet had, for its time, a lot under the hood. When Daggerfall changed the system from XP-based to skill-based I embraced it whole-heartedly. I still feel that way about this aspect of the series today. Best of all, there were many skills and you could customize even pre-built classes using them. However, there were some issues with over-complexity inherent: you had to enjoy looking at your character sheet, targeting a skill or set of skills to build in the game and then find ways to do it. You also learned some skills were close to useless (i.e. the various language skills - dragonish, imp, and so on) due to cuts made to the game play due to time of release pressures.

Morrowind hit the best combination of skills and complexity in the series to date. Enough for a great deal of variety, yet no so much that you drowned in it. Additionally, the skills removed or changed made a great deal of sense and added measurably to the role-playing in-game.

Once Oblivion came out, I loved it too... but only in certain areas. Thiefly play and stealth combat rocked. It was (and is) visually lovely and the exploration aspect was certainly rewarding. But the skill system? Horrid! Too simple, not enough variety, too much like riding a rocket sled on greased rails with no control on where you were going. Classes lost their nuances, as did the skills supporting them. (Example: combining axes, maces, clubs and calling them "Blunts"? That was pretty hard to swallow. The most elegant solution was a simple mod I still use that changes the base skill name to "hafted" - better but still not wholly satisfying.) I realized then that my ideal would be about the the complexity level of Morrowind (or Daggerfall minus the useless skills).

I feel strongly enough about this simplification issue that, in viewing a recent interview with Todd Howard about Skyrim, one where he mentions how he is a strong proponent of finding new ways to "fold things in" to streamline the TES series even further, I made a difficult and sad decision. I will not be purchasing or playing any future TES titles. Tamriel is a beloved world for me, 15 years worth in fact, but I simply cannot play in a series whose game play drops to the level of insulting my intelligence. I game to be stimulated, entertained, to share the enjoyment with fellow fans and to have my brain challenged. Oversimplifying leaves me cold.

I think that the designers and the community should know that these changes have an effect on who is willing to play a new TES title. I have no expectations that the words of a fan and customer of 15 years will make any difference - the continued streamlining process in the face of fan protests as far back as the release of Oblivion in 2006 is proof of that. The days of new TES titles allowing me to game the way I want to are gone for good - they won't return. That is the way of things and I accept it - the series has gone somewhere I'm not willing to. The current fans who love the later games as they are now will discover this for themselves as each iteration and change comes about in future titles.

Four good games plus numerous expansions and mods is enough for me. Skyrim will be pretty, no question, but it was also be too simple for my tastes. Without rancor or malice I wish the newcomers and those previous title players who remain the absolute best in their future TES gaming. Thanks for all the fun Bethesda. Thanks to all the modders for adding even more to that. It was a great ride, but all good things end.

Thank you. Good sir! :thumbsup:


I ask you to not take Oblivion as the rule for streamlining. As you'll notice in my previous post I touch a bit on streamlining does not = lack of depth. A wonderful example of this is how they did companion orders in Fallout New Vegas, as opposed to Fallout 3.

Fallout 3: You had to go through a list of dialogue options, that in themselves sometimes had lists just to say "Stay here" in some cases.
New Vegas: They introduced the companion wheel. All the options you need from orders, healing, or changing gear were right there in front of you. Yet companions also had more depth in New Vegas.

Now let's take a look at how Skyrim plans to implement skills and how through streamlining they are actually adding more depth than ever before.

Previously in Morrowind we had multiple weapon skills for each kind of melee weapon. Short Blade, Long Blade, Axe, Blunt, and Spear.
You will notice that becoming a master in any of these had no real benefit opposed to the other. The only real noticeable difference was the reach you had with a spear. And that had nothing to do with actually being good at the skill.

Oblivion combined the Blade skills into one and merged Axe into Blunt. They also added perks to give you more of a incentive to advance in your skills. A step in the right direction but as was the case of Oblivion it did not step far enough (or in some cases over stepped)

With Skyrim they have made it One-Handed and Two-Handed. Which, as they say are really playstyles when it comes down to it. It's a lot easier to just add a skill and give it a number. It's a lot harder to actually make that skill interesting and worthwhile. And they aim to do just that.
Each skill has it's own perk tree. Emphasis on tree. It is not like Fallout. Think almost more like Dragon Age Origins. (note: almost. not exactly)
In the One-Handed skill there are perk trees for long blades, Axes, maces and possibly more. These perks trees actually make a difference. So now if you are a master of using a mace. That is to say, 100 One-Handed and you got all the mace perks you will ignore a % of your foes armor. And that's only a example of ONE perk that has tiers within itself. If you neglected the Long Blade perks you will still be good at using a long blade, you are master of One-Handed weapons after all. But you will be substantially better with a mace.
In previous games if I was a master of Long Blade and you were a master of Axe are playstyles wouldn't be any different. Are tactics exactly the same. But now in Skyrim the way I play and plan out my strategy is going to be a lot different from you.

So you see? In just that one example Skyrim has streamlined something while adding a ton more depth to it. I could go on about how just the school of destruction within itself has the potential to give us more depth with spells than spell-making ever gave us.

Judging from your post it's obvious you are willing to except new things if they are well done. So, I ask of you to have a little faith in Skyrim. And not to say you will never play Elder Scrolls again just based off disappointments with Oblivion. What if you would have said that about Daggerfall? Then you would have never discovered how awesome Morrowind was.

Well said, Outlander. Well said.

In 1929, the flappers and such were having the same debate over silent films vs. talkies, with ardent fans of silents bemoaning the fate of the art of movie-making. Folks, technology changes, people change, cultural interests shift... It's called game "development", not game stasis. I have many older games that I still love. I don't expect new games to be the same as those. I expect new games to be new and different and I will make my own judgments on whether a game is good/enjoyable/smart/clever based on how much I like it. Particularly single player games. I expect new games to result in additional games I will love to play. I don't expect game developers to limit themselves and not adapt, respond, experiment with their projects. If they did, I would need to find a new hobby.


Interesting, can I see the data where you got that bit of info that I bolded?

Can't someone who enjoys an FPS also... *gasp* enjoy an RPG? Or a sim game? Or is it important to partition oneself off as a purist for one narrowly defined label? I've been PC gaming for 15 years or so, I have loved so many games, played them intensely in their time, some games replayed periodically like re- reading a good book, others realized that technology has changed, I have changed, life circumstances have changed, and left to collect dust on my shelf. Frankly, I am always interested in what so many different game companies are doing. Are some of the results disappointing? You bet. Do I lose sleep over it or bemoan it years after the fact? Nope. Are some of the results making me add new favorites to my list? You bet.