OP...Your avatar...pisses me off.

Anyways, I liked the Fact that they added voiced dialogue to Oblivion (even if they only had like 7 voice actors).

I liked that they got rid of the dice-rolls of morrowind and went with something that didn't miss 5 out of six times

Your avatar makes me want to beat you with a telephone pole

I also liked the UI/graphical changes for obvious reasons.

I don't know about the lifestyles of England and America to be all that different... even all of Western Europe, it's pretty much the same thing.

A bunch of sweaty Celts, who the Romans gave up on long ago, pretending to be civilized. But sooooo not fooling anyone.

Fixed your post.

EDIT: I love how you changed your post, lol. Still the same.

Lol, what?
That has to be the worst excuse for Bethesda as for why Dunmer were complete [censored] bags in OB. The reason they sounded like that is because Bethesda chose to cut cost on voice acting and give 1 voice actor per 4 races/sixes.
Ever seen the E3 video that Todd Howard showed when OB was announced? The dunmer in that video had a deep voice. It got cut, however.

I really enjoyed a lot of things from oblivion over morrowind mostly because the game play itself was much smoother and easier to get a handle of.

Ok I love Morrowind, but seriously, there were so many things about that game that made it far too difficult to progress.

Oblivion had:
-better leveling system
-better combat, especially for a stealth or marksman character (assassination= awesome)
-better guilds (although I would like to see more in the next game)
-better customization of character class
-better physics and graphics (and I had no problem with the distance.... I live in Colorado.... on top of a mountain I can see Kansas. Kansas! That is nearly 100 miles from Storm Mountain... and I can see it so if you were to stand outside of Bruma and stare down at the country it would be easy to see most of the other towns in the area on a clear day, especially the Imperial City with its hey-look-at-the-overly-conspicuous-tower-there!)
-I liked the way they handled most of the races, the Argonians and the Kajiit especially (model wise) but I do think that a lot of the uniqueness and individuality of certain races was lost form Morrowind and I would really like to see some of that brought back. (the one thing that really irked me was the Human races all being pretty much the same thing with hardly any distinguishing differences between them)
-Generally I would say the NPC's were better however some of the filler npc's were far too bland. I like that Morrowind had more story to them. The next game I think needs to combine both of these things.
-Voice acting: I realize some of the acting was not as fantastic as it could have been but here is why it needs to be kept. I have three very close friends who are dyslexic and cannot read the text on the screen. The voice acting lets them know the story without someone having to be in the room with them to read their text options for them. We need to keep the voice acting.
-Buying houses: I would like the option to purchase any house I choose though.... Kind of like Fable where I could go and murder someone in cold blood and their house would be available to me for purchase.
-The quests were fun and offered me a lot of things to do. It took me two years to complete the main story because I did as much exploring and side quests as I could before starting the main quest. I like that and I want to keep that amount of exploring available. Morrowind was ok but FO3 was so disappointing with its side quests its not even funny.

I liked the uniqueness of Morrowind and the amount of interesting places and people, but I like the system of Oblivion better. I do like the mounts, I am not a huge fan of the fast travel. I would like an option to turn it off or make the mounts more useful. And I loved the character generation of Oblivion but the races themselves need to be more unique looking like they were in Morrowind. I also would like the option to choose a voice for my character because.... they just didn't always fit with the personality I had in mind for the character.

That's about it.

-Better running animations
-Faster running
-Better combat
-Manual blocking
-Voiced NPCs
-Guilds that aren't just quest after quest like Morrowind. Sure there were less guilds in Oblivion, but they almost felt like a main quest in itself
-Better looking armor (Sorry, I just hated the armor in Morrowind)
-Better "living" environment (the deer and the animals)
-No cliffracers
-The Dunmer voices don't annoy the hell out of me this time around
-Wes Johnson is AMAZING

Aye, and Morrowind didn't have in-depth conversations, hell most everyone in Balmora says the same thing

I liked the magicka regen in Oblivion. I downloaded GCD for Morrowind which implemented a magicka regen system. I hated having to rest or drink potions to restore my magicka (barring the Atronach sign obviously).
I liked manual blocking.
I absolutely adore the ability to create poisons and apply them to weapons.
I also liked the ability to buy houses.

I'm not sure where those two are coming from. The leveling system is identical, unless you're referring to the perks, in which case I agree with you. The better customization is just plain inarguable. Oblivion had less skills available and less slots open for use. Less options means less customization. Class customization is the one area that has clearly and indisputably been declining with every TES since Daggerfall. Each one sees less and less options with less distinct classes as a result.



As for voice acting, I used to be really opposed to it. DA:O changed my opinion on that. The entire thing's voice-acted and for the most part it's all excellent quality. Is it of comparable scope with a TES game? Hard to say. It's got less than Morrowind but way more than Oblivion.

The way conversation is handled changes things too. Unspoken lines in Morrowind are no issue because it's done in that Wikipedia interface, but in Oblivion it brings you up close to them and you select options. If a line hasn't got voice acting, then you're just standing there in this awkward silence with a guy making an uncomfortable level of eye contact with you. It feels weird.

My suggestion is that Beth takes a page out of Bioware's book. Two pages, actually. The first is to do voice-acting Baldur's Gate style, where important lines are voice-acted but the rest is just text. I believe this has been suggested a few times now. The second is to actually get some decent voice-actors on the set. I mean, seriously. They must have the budget for it by now. With the exception of the main characters, the ones in Oblivion were absolute rubbish. There's no way that after Oblivion and Fallout 3 Bethesda doesn't have the money or personnel to take voice-acting seriously and get some talent in there, taking the time to familiarize them with the game first.

This - it's essentially a non-issue at this point.

Regarding voice-acting, a high profile game like TESV isn't going to be released in this day and age without it. For better or for worse, the real discussion should be: " TESV will have voice-acting - how can it best be implemented?"

LOL, there were just seven or so posts arguing the opposite of this. To each his own, I guess, but I completely disagree...

anyway, things in Oblivion that were improvements over TES III:

- magic system (though the elimination of skills and spell affects was bad, and some more creativity with spell effects would be nice)
- graphics (duh) though the character facial models were horrible.
- animations were better than Morrowind, but still weren't all that great. FO3 looked better though.
- staves that cast magick
- guards patrolling the road.
- the limited RAI that was still present, however it so utterly failed to live up to expectations. Maybe in TES V they can fully realize their vision for RAI.
- The stealth system. However, only being able to sell stolen goods to fences really limited a player's options. If you stole anything you HAD to join the Thieves' Guild to sell it.
- Horses? But fast travel killed the need anyway. Boo fast travel.
- Alchemy
- Skill perks, but these could be improved. And the Magick skill perks were more of a limitation than a perk. Perks like FO3 would be cool but the advantages/disadvantages from Daggerfall would be even better. SO MUCH CUSTOMIZATION!
- Patrick Stewart

Most everything else was either about the same, or worse. In some instances much worse.

The only things I really like better were the schedules and animations. I liked Morrowind's combat better, Morrowind's graphics better (might not be as high-res, but they don't look like they're covered in plastic wrap), Morrowind's dialogue system better, etc, etc. That's not to say that I hate Oblivion. I don't. I love Oblivion dearly, but it failed to live up to Morrowind, IMO.

Difference between how magic was handled in Oblivion compared to Morrowind;
Hrm. Haven't tried a mage character yet in Oblivion. In Morrowind, I knew how to use the magic system. Well, I should say I knew how to exploit a hole the magic system. I made an amulet that recharged my magic points. Didn't use the console or any mods or any cheat codes. I then went around with a custom "summon undead horde" spell, chuckling to myself as I watched bandits try to fight off my little horde. Only did that once. I prefer warrior types or warrior/mage type characters. I meant to keep that particular character in my huge "vault" of saved characters, but accidentily deleted it. I remember how to make that amulet, though, and could do it again.

I have to say that I, too, am glad Bethisda finally got rid of the chance of spell failure. I never liked that in games. On that same note, however, Bethisda, to me, made the magic system just about as worse as improving it by getting rid of a few enjoyable and even a vital spell type- leviate (enjoyable) and teleport/recall (needed). With the enchant system severely limited as it is in Oblivion, well that's just more points lost I suppose. So I guess I have to say that I still prefer Morrowind's magic system to Oblivion's.

I like the fact that Bethisda brought back horses with Oblivion and even made a variety. Took no time at all to figure out how to steer the beast. Don't have the fastest horse yet, but I'm looking foreward to it.

Morrowind didn't have a full rage of weapons per weapon type. For example- the katana. Not counting artifacts, in Morrowind it was possible to find a steel katana and a daedric katana. That was it. Nothing in between like Dwarven or such. My two favorite weapons from Daggerfall were an ebony claymore and an ebony dai-katana. I just like big swords and an ebony dai-katana is just.. neat. None to be found in Morrowind, though I didn't complain once I found the daedric versions of them. Although this is a relitively small issue, I'm still glad I have a chance of finding a good ole ebony claymore in Oblivion. Already found a silver dai-katana and I like it.

Other than that, let's see... Nice trees.

Cool story, bro-- not counting Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, or Terence Stamp, Oblivion only had two fewer voice actors than Morrowind (12 compared to 14), including a bunch of people who weren't even in Morrowind. And Fallout 3 had 32 (again, not counting big-name actors). So put your "Bethesda is too cheap to hire VAs" argument in your Skooma pipe and smoke it. The Dunmer voices were a design choice.

Ehh, if ya talking about voices on NPC race alone, there only 11 voice provided in Oblivion for a normal NPC compare to 20 voices in Morrowind for NPC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL8pyOP0VQI&playnext_from=TL&videos=DYCKfF_sdIM seems to invalidate your argument.

The Dunmer voices where the way they where because of space, I believe. They couldn't have all those voices on one disc. Either that, or lost files. They lost a bunch of Dunmer voices and had to settle with the piece of crap they gave us.

Have to disagree with you on some points.

Magic system - I strongly want to disagree. However, I haven't played a mage yet in Oblivion. I don't like the looks of the severely limited enchanting system and the lack of all the various spell effects.

Staves - Morrowind had staves that could cast spells, too. You could also fight with them. Staves in Morrowind were among the fastest types of weapons and I came to like them. Can you do that in Oblivion? Granted the basic steel staff could only take a basic enchant in Morrowind, but those ebony staves were good.

Guards patrolling the road - Have to agree here. That's a nice effect. However, they do odd things. I once saw an imperial patrol hop on his horse and ride his horse right into the lake surrounding the imperial city. I watched with amusemant until he vanished into the distance.

Horses.. Hmm. Horses are nice. But, fast travel does kinda make it a little bland. I'm using a mod that removes every single city landmark from the map for a newly made character, meaning I actually have to travel to those cities first. Encouraged me to raise funds and get a horse.

Radiant AI - I have to agree here that this is a joke. Ultima 5 had NPCs who had schedules and went from home to work, etc. And that was in the 80s. And they didn't ride horses into a lake. Come on now. Bethisda should've taken their time with this to get it right or just avoided it altogether. The so-called Radiant AI in Oblivion is so bad it's comedy.

Stealth system - So far, I agree 100% that the stealth system is better. Simply because in Morrowind you had to hold down the control button to stay in stealth mode. Made my pinky finger hurt after a time. Now, control just toggles it on and off. Much better.

Alchemy - Alchemy is Oblivion is better than Morrowind? You're joking right? In Morrowind, alchemy was the key to uber godliness. A few times, I made some uber strength potions and beat down that a few of Morrowind's god characters while standing naked and fighting with a dagger or my bare fists. Simply because I could. Just to do it. Otherwise, I'd just use it for practical purposes as well as a lot of fun. I'd actually combine bad effects with good ones, calling the potion something like Radioactive Ashland Ale or Corpus Mead. Yes, mead made from corpus meat. Yum! In Oblivion, you can't use an effect until your skill is high enough. That's kinda like punishing a player for having previous game knowledge and replaying the game.. or you're simply punishing a player for exparamenting (ie- playing the game) and finding out neat things about it. Besides, it doesn't make sense. Someone once said that even if you don't know what poison ivy is, it doesn't mean you won't get a rash from it. I forget who said that, but I agree with it.

Animations are better in Oblivion - Hmm. Shopkeepers still stand like statues behind their counters. It would make a huge difference to do something very simple.. like going into a store and finding the occasional shopkeeper lounging back in a chair with his feet kicked up on a stool. Maybe others are passing the time reading a book. I dunno.

Skill perks.. hmm.. hmmmm. I'm undecided as of yet. Skill perks also mean more limitations and restrictions than there were before, too. After all, in Morrowind you didn't need a 50 armorer skill to try and repair a magic item. Some of the perks don't make a lot of sense. Like, a master of Heavy Armor isn't encumbered at all by heavy armor. Haven't gotten this far yet, but does that mean heavy armor suddenly starts to weigh nothing at all?

The advantages/disadvantages system from Daggerfall - Here I really have to agree. You said this allows for customization. Honestly, I think the word here is personalization. In Daggerfall, right from the start, you could make an unholy dude who got hurt from stepping on holy ground, yet regenerated in darkness. Or a darkness mage who's spells were weaker in daylight and stronger in darkness.. or the reverse of that (day mages were a bad idea though heh). The birthsigns weren't a bad idea, but they were a little less personal.

Graphics - Hmm. The NPC faces still look like computer graphics to me, so it's still just computer graphics. That goes both ways, for Morrowind and Oblivion. Not saying it's good. Not saying it's bad. It's just computer graphics. I'm not gonna have a hernia over it.

Patrick Stewart - This guy adds a touch of dignity to anything he works with. Great actor. Wonder if it was expensive for Bethisda. Glad they kept at least some of their previous voice actors, like the guys who do the Nord males and the Redguard males.

All those corny conversations NPCs have, though.. well, am I the only one who finds this strange? Go into some building and see them standing around or going places. Oh! But now that you're here, they just HAVE to run up to each other and start chatting about goofy things. A few conversations have been something like "Oh.. It's you. Hi. I went shopping the other day at (someplace). Bye." That's just weird, man. Very weird. Am I alone here?

All in all, with the strange NPC behavior and the weird conversations it makes for the strangest game world I've traveled around in thus far. I halfway expect to bump into the old host from the Twilight Zone sometimes. People walking into each other while looking at me with big smiles on their faces. Weird, I tell you. Weird.

In Morrowind you'd hear only an occasional NPC comment, making it not so goofy. They were simple, but casual and very realistic like "Hmm, where did I put that?" In fact, sometimes, after playing Morrowind for the 100th time, you'd hear a random comemnt that you hadn't heard before and it'd be like.. heh! I can still remember the first time I heard a High Elf muttering to himself saying... "And there I was.. naked!" It was like.. what the hell? I cracked up. I still chuckle about that on occasion. I think it was that NPC who runs the shop in Seyda Neen.

There's one thing you forgot to mention- background music. Background music in Oblivion is 300% better than the single tune you always hear in Morrowind. I think I've had the background music volume turned all the way down in Morrowind for years now. I mean it wasn't bad, for the first few times. But enough was enough.

Oblivion is a good game. It has many positives and in many aspects it is better then Morrowind. The problem is that should it retain more features of Morrowind, instead of a good game it could be a great game. Here is a short list of things TES V should retain from Oblivion:

Stealth system. Well, I guess that this goes without saying. I think I have never seen anyone actually arguing about this one

Female items look feminine. Well, it bugged me to no end that in Morrowind almost all clothing items looked the same on males and females

Arrows do not disappear, but remain in dead bodies and even on the ground. This makes far more sense then Morrowind's disappearing arrows.

Magicka regeneration. The idea is sound, the implementation not so much

Nicer spell projectiles. I like how frost spell is a fog, while lightning actually looks like lightning. There is still a lot of tweaking needed, but Beth went the right path here.

Some quests are multi-staged. What a shame there are only so many in the game

FaceGen. Again, not the actual implementation, but the idea

Physics. Same as above. It looked nice, but it had its bugs. Hopefully Beth will learn a bit here and make some much needed improvements

Hoods, or basically head items that are not armour

Visible amulets and rings

Dremoras are NPCs, so they are easier to mod as a playable race.

You can move and position bodies. It is useless, have no real consequence, but it is fun

You can make and use poisons. They tend to be a bit useless, but again, thank the god for the concept

That is about it for now. I guess, there might be other things I have missed. In a bit of an opposition to the idea of this thread, I will just state, that in my personal, highly biased and totally shameless opinion, I think that Oblivion's combat, magic system and dialogue system is a huge leap backwards and that Morrowind handled these areas much better (although not perfect)

Fun fact, a voice file takes up the same amount of space whether it's high and whiny or it has a smoker's cough. It was still a design choice. In fact, the fact that they originally had the old Dunmer voices and then changed them only seems to give my argument more weight. So thanks.

fun fact: many many many many lines in Oblivion were shared between multiple NPCs. By making altmer, bosmer and dunmer voices the same they saved space on all of these lines. Same with Khajiit and Argonian. Same with Orc and Nord. It was a space issue. There is absolutely no other reason game-design wise why you would want 3 different races to have the same voice. The elf voice sounds great for a goofy little bosmer, but horrible for a dunmer or an altmer. Gone is the regality and snobbishness of the altmer and the rough, edginess of the dunmer. They all sound like goofy wood elves.

If you are arguing that Bethesda WANTED to take unique voices away from the elven races, the orcs (giving them nord voices) and the beast races then you really insult Bethesda's effort and intelligence. They didn't do it because they thought it would make a better game because it clearly doesn't. They did it to save space on the disc and maybe budget on voice actors.

And people say that Voice files don't take up much space...

I didn't get the chance to play it for very long, but here's what I liked out of what I saw:

Animations. The ones for Morrowind were horrible. Oblivion's were much better.
Easier modding of animations. See above. All of the animators ran off to mod Oblivion. I'm afraid I won't ever see an Argonian in Morrowind that doesn't waddle like a lame duck.
Horses. Needs to be done better, but I liked that you could ride horses.
Magicka regen. Makes more sense.
Arrows getting stuck in objects and being retrievable.
Poisons. Like riding it needs to be done better, but the concept is good.
Casting spells without needing to put away your weapon.

I thought Oblivion had better combat. I appreciate that stats should affect combat in an RPG, but Morrowind's combat felt very disconnected. It made me feel like I was menacing a painting with a letter opener.

I also liked that NPCs in Oblivion had a routine and didn't stand in one place for the entire game.

Either way, it still takes up way more space than a text file. :wink_smile:

..
I won't argue about design choices. All additions were good on paper, problem was they were not as good as they advertised it. Something happened, maybe because of time constraints or consolization, what I am trying to say is Oblivion was %45 of what it could have been.

Let me point good things:
Physics/Animation.

AI. We all know it didn't work as advertised. Still, get praised for trying. Why I look like a graphics [censored], I am not. I'm an AI [censored]! But we aren't getting improvements in that department. Why I don't know. AI's impact on Gameplay was always underrated. I play Thief gold and MGS 1-2 to feel some good AI. Also lately, Rockstar did an amazing job at that. Those pedestrians acts to surroundings very well, I'm not talking about just Euphoria, they feel my intentions and act accordingly. I was surprised many times at that. "How did they know?" or "No, I wasn't gonna try that, it is a misunderstanding."


Schedules:

Graphics. It was beautiful. I think there were many occasions seeing bushes on country side and thinking, "wow, they look just like in Oblivion." If they tried a little harder, they could make Oblivion Crysis real.

Horses.

Sorry, it is very hard in Oblivion's case.., what can I do? :shrug:

Edited.