As others have said both games have things about them that are great and both games have massive gaping flaws. Oblivion is a great looking game but it is also an example of better graphics not making a more interesting game world. Morrowind's graphics are clearly older but the geography, landscape and architecture of the game world is far more varied and therefore, at least in my opinion, far more interesting. It's a place I want to explore. The forests in Oblivion look great but they also all look exactly the same, as do the cities for the most part (besides, isn't Cyrodiil supposed to be a jungle?). If you've seen one region of Cyrodiil you've seen them all, with he exception of the mountains in the north, and if you've seen one city in Cyrodiil you've seen them all with the exception of Bruma and the Imperial City. Maybe it's just me, but I got a very Roman Empire vibe from the Imperials and the empire from my very first time playing Morrowind back in 2003, so I found Oblivion's medieval European atmosphere jarring. I also prefer Morrowind's story to Oblivion's. In Morrowind I really felt like I was the only one who could defeat Dagoth Ur and end the blight, and doing so was no easy task. Gfh110 said it perfectly earlier in this thread when he said that in Oblivion he felt like a super powered outsider coming to the rescue of an empire of people who are either too lazy, stupid, apathetic or incompetent to deal with the situation themselves. I know that fighting back against the Daedric Prince of destruction is a daunting task, but one would think the the Legion would try to do something to prevent what happened to Kvatch from happening to the rest of Cyrodiil. Don't get me wrong, Oblivion is a great game and it did a lot of things right, but Morrowind had a much mare varied and immerseive world and tells a better story, which makes it the better game in my opinion.

A http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/75-Oblivion by Yahtzee which many have already seen by now sums up Oblivion fairy well in my opinion. Yahtzee stated at the end of the critical review: "On the other hand I thought Morrowind was pretty good." By the way, where did all these Oblivion squabblers come from?

I solved the mystery of why there is so much tension between Morrowind and Oblivion players and my revelation promised to relieve tensions on both sides.

But then someone went and deleted my post... oh well.

P.S. whoever moved this thread to the general forum might as well just attach a fuse to it

I don't know , my first TES game was morrowind and I played on xbox at first, but then i got it for PC, then I first played Oblivion on xbox as well, again then bought it for PC. I think People that play morrowind as there first TES Game have more respect for the series rather than "some" of the ones who come in and want to turn TES online.. It wasn't built for that. But I can see what you are saying too, Morrowind is such a great game It is impossible not to love it, It's a "Pacman" of sorts..

You really just had to play Morrowind when it came out I guess. Only then could people see past the graphics. It's combat had a lot more classic RPG elements like missing with a weapon, which gamers today aren't used to. In my opinion, the main quest and environment was much more unique than Oblivion. Morrowind has nothing like it, whereas Oblivion takes a lot of influence from games like D&D. Both are great games though, I just prefer Morrowind.

People who claim that Oblivion was "bland" or "boring/ rubbish" are just being plain ignorant. The game is regarded still as one of the best on consoles. If you notice on other message boards people are always comparing the latest RPG to Oblivion, thats because the game is a benchmark, it sets the standard at the moment.

Oblivion was and is a great success, it didnt get game of the year for no reason, you know.

As everyone here already knows my stance on just about everything in Oblivion, and other people here have voiced opinions very similar to mine already, I'll just say something that no one else has yet:

The Magic System of Oblivion.

I keep hearing Oblivion players claim it was better because they can cast whenever they want. Is that their only reason? Rather short sighted of a reason, it seems. The magic system in Oblivion was horrible. It was dreadful. Repulsive. Upsetting. Down putting. Disappointing.

They stripped spells off of it. Interventions, mark & recall, levitation, and others.

I didn't mind the moving of some spells, except for absorb spells. Thanks for totally neutering mysticism as a decent skill. Wowzers, I can use telekinesis and detect spells! Woopty freaking do. Losing teleportation and absorb made mysticism a total trash skill.

The spell perk system was just dreadful. An entire tree of the game using all the exact same set of perks. There was literally no point in having the skills because of the perks. For those that do not remember, and to also flesh out my point a bit more, I'll mention the perks. 25: You can use X and X spell now! 50: You can use X and X spell now! 75: You can use X and X spell now! 100: You can use X and X spell now!
This system effectively reduced magic to 4 points per skill. All the points in between didn't matter for [censored] for the most part. It was totally unneeded. What, is paralyze too overpowered that it has to be locked behind several perks? The Morrowind system worked just great. Powerful spells like Paralyze would cost a lot of mana or have a high failure chance. You could still cast them at low levels, but it was a gamble, but it was often worth it. All spells were open to use at any level, only your skill determined how strong they were or whether you could cast them readily. Using perks to lock spells made magic a joke because it made it linear. It made it boring. There was little experimentation, and there was no failure at all. Way to take the fun out of magic guys.

Enchanting practically requires an entire other post. It was removed as a skill (when it should have been improved so that it was actually possible to enchant something on your own without needing a million fortify intelligence potions), and, worse, its effects were stripped to have only constant effect and cast-on-strike. Where are my fireball launching rings? My levitating spears (dohoho I'm clever)? Gone. An entire subset of potential items went missing. In addition to this insult, we get the injury of having effects limited on enchantments. Some effects can't even be used at all. Then there's the cap of 80%. Way to take the fun out of enchanting guys.

The spell making altar now is the only way to make spells, and the only way to access it is by joining the mages guild. Freedom? We don't need no freedom in our Oblivion. No, if you're a mage you're going to have to join the guild. [censored] the altar.


I don't car if the Nine Divines think the game is good. That doesn't make it any less bland or boring or rubbish or any other adjective I can think of to accurately describe the game.

no, they just have different tastes to you
I've played Oblivion for over 1000 hours so I feel entitled to make my own judgement on it rather than following someone elses
Decent game but I found it nowhere near as interesting as MW

Not ignorant, just bitter, honestly.

Of course, as a stand-alone RPG, Oblivion is an excellent game and a benchmark, as you say.

But it really aims itself at a different demographic, if you think about it. Morrowind, although it presents itself like a hack n' slash, is really a slow-paced, micro-management game when you really get into the gameplay.

You have to understand that if you played Morrowind first, and then were expecting TES 4 to be the same type of slow-paced game, where you'd be spending most of your time reading lore and exploring, you'd be disappointed, too.

I would like to know if anyone started with Morrowind, but prefers Oblivion anyway. I would really like to see what that person has to say, so reply if you notice this, if you exist, person who played Morrowind first but prefers Oblivion.

Because I really think the one you prefer depends on what you believe TES should be. And what you believe TES should be depends largely on which TES game you played first.

Not me but both Rabidnid and Pseron Wyrd who've already posted in the thread were playing MW and members of this forum when I joined 5 years ago.

The first Elder Scrolls game definitely matters because I did spend most of my time in Oblivion exploring and reading lore. All the lore was new to me, since Oblivion was my Elder Scrolls first game. The lore that was actually new(Ayleids, Alessia, Reman, Chim el-Adabal, Umaril, Pelinal Whitestrake, the new stuff on Sheogorath and Jyggalag, the Commentaries) was not all that was new to me. As for exploration, Oblivion is very explorable. I never expected to find Chrysamere in a dungeon when I first played Oblivion, since I didn't play Morrowind first, but I loved exploring, and I found myself some interesting things. However, when I first playing Morrowind and Daggerfall, I didn't expect them to be the exact same thing. Look at the difference between Daggerfall and Morrowind and Arena and Daggerfall. No two games of the series are really the second version of their predecessor, but Morrowind and Oblivion are the closest to being that way. Of course, my love for Oblivion was greatly augmented by Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles(which were already with the game when I first bought it). I can't say I would love Oblivion nearly as much as I do without those two, partially because I don't want my Nine Divines-worshipping knight to wear Daedric armor that makes him look like the spawn of Satan and because the Isles make a great contrast to the original game. In a strong sense, I am bery biased towards Oblivion because I was not disappointed by it and because I did spend most of my time playing it reading lore and exploring. I will not despise TES V because it does something different, though. As long as the game has exploration and lore, which Oblivion did, I will be happy with it. Now, I still play Oblivion for role-playing.

Flaws? When I think of my morrowind days I cant really think of major flaws that stuck out tbh. The game was simply the best game I have ever played.

I picked up Morrowind something like 7 years ago and never looked back. That being said, I like Oblivion more in a lot of ways.

Also, it amuses me to no end when people in this thread make "concessions" about Oblivion's strengths by saying something along the lines of "They've both got good points. Oblivion looked nicer, and Morrowind had better gameplay, exploration, atmosphere, lore, dialogue, characters, and mudcrabs."

Well to be fair... the mudcrabs in Morrowind were a hell of a lot classier than their Oblivion kin...

Well, I played Morrowind for years before Oblivion came out. As I said previously started playing Oblivion about a year after it came out and have since deleted my 22 gig of saved mods and thrown out the discs for Morrowind. I had done everything in Morrowind a number of times, and it was only the mods that kept me playing it. Oblivion is my staple RPG game. I come back to it every few months to see what new quest mods have been released for it.

Did I like Morrowind? hell yes, and if it was remade on the Oblivion engine I would start playing again, Morrowind the game is however too broken and simply too boring to bother with any more. Would I have prefered Oblivion to not be a pseudo medieval hack and slash? yep, but its still a great game, and it along with FO3, are the games I still put more hours into than anything else more recent.

So, basically you're saying that the engine is the big difference for you?

Really? I still haven't even come close to doing everything in Morrowind once, let alone multiple times! I can say that about Oblivion though. :shrug:

I've completed the main quest about 5 times in total,including both way, all of the house quest lines a couple (except for Redoran just the once) and all of the guild quest lines a couple times, plus hundreds of side quests more than once. I might have missed a few quests, but not many. Same thing with Bloodmoon and Tribunal.




Not so much engine as all of the restrictions that were added in Oblivion suited me more that the completely free structure of Morrowind. I can just wander out of the sewer with a character and start playing straight away. Stealth and archery are the two big gains over Morrowind, along with the practical magic. i would have prefered another game with a story the depth and complexity of Morrowind, but that wasn't to be.

Perhaps because Morrowind came 7/8 years ago, and Oblivion came out in 2006?

There is a "backpath" that allows you to complete the MQ without most of those "essential" NPCs, and the conversation with Vivec shouldn't be needed, in that case. That beats having a number of "essential" NPCs get struck down by opponents' weapons or spell effects 20 times during the course of a mission and keep getting up again.

As with "Fast Travel", the quest compass is NOT an "if you don't like it, don't use it" deal. The quest descriptions were based around the use of the compass, so NO directions of any value were given. Without that compass, "somewhere North of here" won't get you very far.

The "magic number 7" obviously makes the game so much better, right. If that's how they "balanced" the game, no wonder it's so screwed up. I'm much more inclined to believe that they wanted to cut the number of lines of text on the menus and stats screens for console play; at least that would be a "rational" excuse for consolidating so many skills and limiting character diversity so thoroughly.

As for choice and consequence, Morrowind was a bit light on the "consequence" part, except in terms of skill-based failures (where it was somtimes a bit excessive); Oblivion took "consequence" out of the game almost completely, to the point where the character's skills or choices hardly mattered except as a way of triggering ridiculous "perks". Any more "arcade oriented", and they might as well have just placed "power-ups" scattered around the dungeons, like in Pac-Man or Super Mario Brothers. I don't brand all (or even most) of OB's fans as "casual" gamers, but they're far more "action game" oriented overall than MW's fans, who are generally far more "RPG" oriented. "Hard-core" and "Casual" gamers exist in both groups.

Oblivion made a number of very good and needed changes to Morrowind's game mechanics (better animations, NPC schedules, poisoning of weapons, sortable Alchemy ingredients that showed "matches", etc.), it's just that it gave up far more than it gained (Weapon types, simultaneous Robe/Armor/Clothing combinations, Levitation, do-it-yourself Enchanting, etc.), in my opinion.

I like Morrowind the best, but I keep playing Oblivion cause it doesn't feel as "old" as Morrowind, but thats the only reason I play Oblivion. The thing that ruined Oblivion for me and many others is not that Oblivion is a bad game, but because it was a good game with disappointment.

These are the facts on Oblivion that was done wrong.

1. The lvl scaling was ruined.
2. Spells was removed.
3. Items was removed.
4. Skills was removed
5. Guilds was reduced.
6. Dungeons and ruins was simplefied.
7. Artifacts was removed.
8. Not as many handplaced items.
9. No evidence on the politicians, and the imperial legion residents that was supposed to make Cyrodiil marvolouse.

You can say what you want, but don't tell me that you want a sequal for any game that was reduced and simplified as much as on this list. Goes for any game and not just The Elder Scrolls.

It could have been, though and that's the thing.

It's a bad thing for them to add restrictions to an RPG. If you prefer restrictions, then RPG's aren't your thing and you're more suited for action-adventure games. Yes, the stealth was more fun and the magic was easier to use, but those two elements are so trivial in the scheme of things. The thing is you can start playing right away in Morrowind, you just can't start fighting tons of monsters and dungeon diving right away. And if fighting is all you really want to do, then RPGs aren't really your type of thing. Because this game is supposed to be about exploring an open world, not just fighting things.

This is the reason I really want Bethesda to come out with an action game in between their RPGs, like they did before Morrowind. Now that Oblivion has attracted the FPS crowd, it will sell better.

Honestly, if you don't want to explore and you don't want to risk making the main quest impossible. If you want to be clearly pointed in the direction you need to go, so you only have to worry about killing things, then RPGs aren't your type of game to begin with.

I'm not trying to be rude. It's just wrong to expect Bethesda remove huge RPG elements out of their RPGs, and make them more like action games, when instead, you could just buy an action game.

Anyone else who started with Morrowind but prefers Oblivion? Of course, if you're into actiony games, you'll prefer Oblivion. I'm looking for someone who prefers Oblivion because they think it's a deeper game, not because they're just not into RPGs.

And you even admit it. You say, "I would have prefered another game with more depth and complexity." That's what I'm saying. They're two different things. Morrowind is the better RPG and Oblivion is the better action game. They should have released Oblivion as a linear action game, like Redguard, then put extra time and effort into a really deep TES 4, RPG. Then all the fans would have been happy.

I didn't care for Oblivion's fast travel.
In Morrowind the Intervention, Mark/Recall spells, Guild Guides, and the use of the Silt Strider and Ships made travel a matter of planning not just a mouse click.

EDIT: This is not on the subject but I also miss Crossbows.

I started out with Daggerfall. I still think that's the best game. It was very buggy however and quests soon became a bore, but the story was way better than MW's or OB's.



Level scaling was the worst. I've had numerous characters that couldn't get past lvl 7 due to too powerful enemies. Or characters that would take forever to reach lvl 5. Guilds, Spells, Items and Skills have been reduced since Daggerfall. I could climb vertical walls in DF!! (Though that's probably not going to return due to the 3D that was actual in 1996, referring to the square blocks opposed to the more realistic forms used in both MW and OB.) Dungeons were simplified since DF too. Artifacts were available in OB, the mace of Bjalfi (?) or the Sunfire ring are two of them. About hand-placed items, i don't care, it was ok in OB imo. Politics however is what made DF (and MW too) so grand and i dearly hope they'll include it in TES V.




Read above. OB is a good game which i enjoyed the most out of the TES-games i've played. It's the points above that make it less fun for others. The story about gates opening and such is quite good imo. Take a look at the compass, fast travel, sorting of ingredients and casting while holding a sword. It's more immersive this way. The reason i don't play MW any more, despite of it having a more challenging and interesting character development, is because of the lack of the aforementioned points, which DF beats MW in that. And i don't count the movement speed in. For me it was immersion breaking.

If you take a look at Fallout 3, which i hope all are familiar with, you can see the progress at Bethesda. True RPG-elements are choice and consequence. I always felt like OB didn't leave me much choice in a lot of the conversations, while F3 did. In F3 you get to arm a nuke to explode and evaporate a town, or disarm it. Each choice has its consequence, a house or an apartment, Talon company or Regulators and your taken path also reflects in the possibilities ahead. When good, you could ask your friendly neighborhood mutant to join you, when bad you could ask your friendly neighbor Jericho (If he wasn't already blown to pieces by your nuke). You were totally free to go anyway you'd like. If they would integrate such a system of choice in the new TES V, it will become a great game.

Conclusion, i am more biased towards OB. Though i do see why MW is attractive to people. Especially if you've got time on your hands and don't mind walking a lot.

Edit: a lot, i only just now found out about the preview possibility, i am bit new to this.

Yeah, agree on all points