This thread is comparing oblivion to morrowind, I don't fault the op because they are new and you inconsiderate nwahs didn't give him a fishy stick. You can't compare a game that hasn't been released, a few alteration of words and making it relevant to skyrim would make this thread all fine and well, but all i see is oblivion and morrowind.

And forgive my odd typing, the iPod is not a prime device to type posts lol

No ability to fast travel anywhere.
No quest markers that show you exactly where to go.
Dunmer voices.
More unique creatures.
No level scaling.
Dungeons that were different from one another and also dungeons that contained real loot instead of leveled loot.
Levitation.
More armor customization.

Definitely agreed. But some regions were originally intended as more different in Oblivion. Thing's sure, the devs know this and maps I saw of Skyrim show a very diverse landscape with mountainside, fall and pine forest, thundra and volcanic thundra, normal snowy areas, canyons. Should be very, very sweet.

Adding to the exploration thing, I say real articfacts should be back. Not the pseudo-artifacts of Oblivion where you only got through daedric quests and were scaled to your levels. Give us back unique dungeons with hidden artifacts and I'll be very happy.

Yeah... I meant morrowind and oblivion. But this is a Skyrim thread about how we want the game, only fair to compare previous games of the series, no?

To be honest,I don't really have high hopes for Skyrim either.It DEFINATELY looks more promising than Oblivion,but still it's pine trees vs molag amur trees.Sure,distinctive regions are needed but they also need to be distinctive from eartly phenomena.Not all,but many.At least,that's what I miss from Morrowind.

Morrowind had more Ken Rolston.

crossbows, throwing weapons, more of an alien feel. the over all sense of discovery in morrowind that i think oblivion lacked.

The one thing that Morrowind had that Oblivion lacked, and that Skyrim is not likely to have either, is FAILURE. Yes, failure.

In Morrowind, you had to LEARN how to do things: how to fight, how to cast spells, how to fix your equipment, and how to create magical potions and enchanted artifacts. The challenge was in building the character up from a bumbling incompetent into a demi-god. The satisfaction of being able to do easily what was once frustrating and nearly impossible created a feeling of satisfaction that I never got in OB from being "handed" success on a silver platter, then being told how clever I was for doing what was impossible to fail at. The RATE of failure was too high in MW, and in some cases the lack of ways of avoiding the high failure rates, such as by being able to attempt easier versions of those tasks, made it too frustrating at times, but the IDEA was right.

The fog in Morrowind was good to a point, but WAY excessive. I currently use MGE to create a fog distance ranging from 0.8 to 6 cells, so you've got pretty clear vision out to about where MW's fog cut in, and then a very gradual decrease in visibility out to the distant hills. You can't quite see from one town to the next, but close to it, and the Vivec cantons are JUST visible through the haze if you wander a few paces down the road from Seyda Neen, while Red Mountain is completely invisible at that distance. OB's "unlimited visibility" made everything seem small and densely packed, and the 'bowl shaped" landscape that you could see across from rim to rim just made it worse.

Hopefully, Skyrim will have some "half-way between the two games" level of residual "haze", without returning to the "pea soup" fog of MW. I've given up hope of any return to a "challenging" game, where your character can fail at things above his or her level of proficiency, rather than being "impossible to try" at 49 skill, but "automatically successful" at 50.

all of what OP said plus werewolves

Cyrodiil is not an exotic place, unlike Vvardenfell. So the plant life and such that grew up in and around a landscape scoured by ash storms, or ancient desert denizens whose husks could be used for dwellings... that was all "of a place" for Morrowind, it made sense there. It would have been entirely out of place in Cyrodiil. I can understand (though not necessarily agree with) complaints about Oblivion being boring for all that it was a more traditional faux-medieval LotR type setting, but people that think that, for example, Telvanni mushroom towers or Ald'rhun husks as buildings were "missing", have maybe not tried to step back and take a bigger picture of the ES world - which encompasses fare more than Cyrodiil and Vvardenfell. If you could not overcome the dislike of Oblivion's landscape/art design, that's fine. But saying the exoticness of Morrowind was "missing" shows a lack of understanding of where or how Cyrodiil fits into its world. imo, of course.

I loved Morrowind for many reasons, but I don't play The Witcher, or, say Ego Draconis, or Dragon Age Origins, all of which have the faux-medieval type fantasy basis for the art/world design, and sit there going "aww, I wish I could see building made out of bug shells." Or "You know what's missing here? Giant parasol mushrooms and weirdly jointed animals.

As for the sequel vs. series discussion, which still makes me mildly queasy due to Fallout 3 ad nauseum arguments, these are games in the Elder Scrolls series. I could be wrong, but I think Bethesda usually refers to, say, Skyrim as the "follow-up" to Oblivion. They probably purposely don't use sequel because sequel is a string of related events. A sequel would pick up shortly after the prior story left off. Again, i will use The Witcher - the 2nd game coming out in May is a sequel - the events of the prior game will be acknowledged in some manner in the current game, as the story of Geralt continues.

Having blah blah blah'd all that, I still love Morrowind. I still love Oblivion. I suspect I am going to love Skryim and lose another 1000 hours over time. I have never felt the need to compare them, because each game is a standalone story. With good decisions and not so good ones - which would be true of every single game I play.

Don't stick to examples.It's not that we want exactly the same buildings as Velothi or Telvanni in Cyrodiil.Cyrodiil doesn't have the same geographical features as Morrowind,sure.None of the provinces is exactly like one other.This however,doesn't mean that the creativity level in design is allowed to drop.It's pretty possible to create brand new architecture that goes with Imperial culture,or Cyrodiil climate but still look unique.
So,it's not a problem that Ald'ruhn style buildings are missing,it's a problem that the design approach has changed.That's how I see it.

I'm sorry - did you just tell me "don't stick to examples?" Try not to tell me how to discuss things, okay?

I can accept that the design approach has changed - that is basically what I was saying above, albeit wordily. You simply didn't like the design - that's disappointing - , but it's not actually a "problem", which implies they did something heinously wrong.

Yes, changes to IPs we love - whether its writing, or the look of the game, or using a different voice actor, or whatever can be disappointing. In the Oblivion world, they defined what Cyrodiil looks and feels like. Would it have been kind of cooler to have more swampy/jungle-y setting down by Leyawiin (and please note, this is NOT an excuse to go on about the lack of swamps around Leyawiin, yes, I know it was supposed to be a jungley. Or was a jungle at some point in time, but that discussion has been done to death.) Sure, different decisions could have been made. I just get tired of this implied argument that Oblivion design was lazy or entirely lacking in imagination. It was not.

You all could have made this a thread about what you like about Morrowind. Instead, the OP purposely pitched it so that it skews negatively as to more "what didn't you like about Oblivion." And that's fine, y'all have been civil in the discussion - I just find the Oblivion bashing tiresome. And this is coming from someone who loves Morrowind. It wasn't Morrowind. I never expected it to be. I was certainly sorry to see some things go or change (yep, I loved levitation, I like mage guild portals, boo, I can't wear pants and shirt under my robe and so on) but I was also happy to see some things in OB that were not in Morrowind. And frankly, there were some things that were dropped after Morrowind that I will never be able to care about because they were not bothered with when I played the game. (I have secretly wondered how many of the people who bemoan the loss of spears ever actually used a spear through a large portion of the game.)

Not all negative comments about Oblivion are "bashing". I enjoyed the game on my first play through, however certain things that are present in Morrowind were missing in Oblivion that made subsequent play throughs more of a chore than an entertainment. I think that the biggest complaint about Oblivion's setting can be summed up like this "Morrowind took place in a unique world that was compelling. Oblivion took place in the Shire-lite". It was possible for Bethesda to make Cyrodiil unique without making it strange/alien. They chose to instead give us a copy-paste Medieval fantasy setting and people who were awestruck with Morrowind's setting found Oblivion's flavor to be very overcooked.

I think this list sums up the thread quite nicely, just add the idea following




Yes, this and the lack of regional variation that someone else pointed out. This is why I'm actually interested about how they're playing large mountains in the middle again; they're dissecting the landscape to force us to walk through different regions :tes:



All of my hate :banghead: But yes, technically cliffracers were a unique creature that lent character to Morrowind beyond what character Oblivion had

I just plain don't play any of those games because they use rehash fantasy. If TES wants to be the same boring faux-medieval setting as every other two-bit fantasy game on the market then I guess fans can't stop them. I love TES because it tries to build a world separate from the fantasy stereotypes that exist today but Oblivion just turned out to not differentiate itself setting-wise from any other fantasy game on the market.

Sure, maybe Morrowind was set in a different landscape that allowed for more unique enemies. Does that mean that Cyrodiil was destined to be a bland and emotionless setting from the start? That's anyone's guess. Maybe they just should have ignored Cyrodiil or gave it a more interesting environment.




As I mentioned earlier, it would be just as easy to make a "Favorite part of Oblivion that Morrowind lacked" thread which could speak to animations, combat, AI, etc. Mechanics were generally better in Oblivion and setting/immersion was far superior in Morrowind (for what seems like the majority). It is not unhealthy to remind developers what makes their games special to their fans. Oblivion, while a technical improvement over Morrowind, fails to make itself unique in the genre beyond the classic TES freedom. Other fantasy games have good mechanics, animation, graphics, and AI. People don't play TES for those things. My observation is that people play TES for the unique ability to 'do anything' and to experience a deep and unique lore. It ruins the latter part when you make the lore/setting just as cookie cutter faux-medieval fantasy as every other game on the market and turns the series into just "that open world RPG that is a bit more open".

I never really understood the whole spear thing either. Yea, it's super cool to have variety in weapons, but it's hardly a huge issue.

This sums up my feelings so much that I could make this my sig.Thank you sir ^^

I'm glad my words are a reflection of other's thoughts. I don't usually understand why people hate 'Oblivion bashing'. Oblivion is a GOOD GAME. I doubt you'll find many people who want to revert back to Morrowind's AI, animations, graphics, or combat. When people are 'Oblivion bashing' they are merely pointing out what aspects of Morrowind they felt Oblivion lacked in order to transcend from 'good game' to 'a classic'. Great mechanics don't make a game 'classic'. CoD and it's ilk all generally have good mechanics but I doubt you will ever see them as 'classics' while some portions of the Halo franchise will because it carved a unique and interesting world into the genre

I miss being in a completely different universe. Oblivion was too much like some random forests In America. Why is there cheese and graqes and carrots, why not keep it with scuttle, bunglers bane, scrib jelly, and things like guar hide. Like someone mentioned before, I didn't like that the creatures were real creatures too. Bring back scribs and netches and MAYBE even cliff racers. Everywhere in Oblivion did have different architecture yes, but it wasn't really drastic like in Morrowind. I don't like instant fast travel at all. I would much rather find a silt strider or boat and not cheat my way across the world. I might even walk too just to see what parts of the map I could uncover that I haven't been before. So the sense of wonder and adventure for sure

Oblivion can be seen as almost comical if you REALLY want to be a cynic. It was like Tamriel was having a huge Renaissance fair and all of the Argonians, Khajit, Dunmer, etc were playing dress up to imitate a world that wasn't their own. That's a bit hyperbolic though :tongue:

(now I'm never going to get this image out of my head and I can never play Oblivion regularly again :facepalm: )

Right on the first page of this thread I posted that I hoped the devs were taking these things into account for the development of Skyrim. So yes. This thread is relevant. And very very interesting I might add. Some of these things I hadn't even thought of, but they definitely contributed to the lack of atmosphere in Oblivion.

Let me take this opportunity to point out that you are the one stating that this thread skews Oblivion in a negative way. This is far from the truth. Bethesda Game Studios is very critical of their own games, as soon as they finish a game, they go back and try to pick it apart to see what they could have done better.

This thread is a healthy discussion giving critical feedback on the features that are most missed in Morrowind. While you might take this in a negative way, in its heart this thread is full of healthy criticism. Todd himself stated that they are reading through the forums at least occasionally, and threads like this provide invaluable feedback from their own community comparing two of their games too each other. Particularly, comparing their older game to their newer provides even better feedback because it is unbiased by more advanced technology.

We could easily create a thread asking what was liked better about Oblivion that Morrowind lacked. But Oblivion came well after Morrowind and had numerous technological advances. Nostalgia glasses aside, Morrowind had numerous things that made it much more immersive and overall fun for many people, recapturing some of these things in Skyrim could bring the best of both worlds.

That's a good idea. I have yet to see more than a few opinions about Oblivion's superiority aside from the graphics. You should seriously make a thread about it.

I miss how slow paced Morrowind was, like the main quest went little at a time, so you can do a little bit of this and bit of that and do what you want.

Oblivion's improvements are pretty obvious: AI, graphics, animations, physics (it actually exists), hotkeys, combat, horses, etc. Arguably voiced dialogue too but some people dislike that because it actually truncates the dialogue in the end. Considering how obvious these improvements are a thread isn't that necessary in my opinion

This.

There were a lot of things lacking. The story of Oblivion, IMO, was nowhere near as complicated and filled with backstory as Morrowind's. I miss the sense of exploration, the unleveled dungeons, the sheer size of the world (I know that Cyrodiil was geographically bigger, but Vvardenfell just felt so much huger), the diversity of the environments, and the sounds. Every time I walk through the Ashlands and hear the Silt Strider moan I get chills.