I hope not! I have been playing Fallout 3 for a while and don't like it one bit. I try to find things to do that make it interesting, but everything is just the same, again and again.

Morrowind is still my number one game ever and just listening to the theme makes me want to play it again. When I got Oblivion I really had this feeling of "Is this it?!" while Morrowind felt endless. Being forced to make choices and having actual consequences of those choices restrict gameplay was one of the great aspects of Morrowind that made it come alive. It made the world more believable. All the political intrigues and feeling that you were involved in it. It seems that the story was not as high on the priority list for Oblivion.

For Skyrim I really hope that the developers will concentrate on the cultural dynamics within and try to make the player feel that they are part of it.

I agree with the view distances. I know sometimes it's good to wonder just what's ahead (though it's more fun if the fog looks like real fog) but I generally much prefer the great, majestic views. I am happy that Skyrim will have a good blend of these, with some really foggy areas and some clear areas.

And yes, level scaling is definitely a huge factor in fear. I got my heart racing a bit in Morrowind when I got lost in a dangerous area at a low level, and was trying to avoid various wildlife and bandits. In Oblivion, I knew I could just kill them all.

That wasn't the fault of Point of Interest markers themselves, but rather, when they were shown to you. Morrowind had POI markers... on your world map, it had markers for Seyda Neen, Balmora, Vivec, etc, and on your local map, it had POI markers for individual doors. Oblivion included POI markers for dungeons and Daedric Shrines on its world map, and this was good. In fact, there were mods to add even more of these... markers for the Aedric Shrines, for instance. The Unique Landscape mods sometimes add their own POIs, too.

The problem was, they showed up on your compass, too, before you actually found them. Personally, I didn't mind that too much... some dungeons were pretty easy to pass by even when you're looking for them, and realistically speaking, you'd have more clues to find them, such as smells, displaced underbrush, footprints, etc. I do agree that they're shown from too far out, though. I think it could even be fun to tie the distance that POI markers show up on your compass to a Tracking skill or perk set.

Yes, if they did not show on compass, and showed on map, *only* when my character could actually find the entrance, him/herself, then it would be OK, not otherwise.

i tried playing morrowind twice after playing Oblivion for years and i just couldn't do it... it was too, slow, nothing happened, combat svcked! thats not to say that there werent things done better in MW than OB. from what ive heard the level scaling in MW was WAY better than in OB. also rival factions waring a feuding against each other seems like it would be pretty cool and opens up more choices/options so you chould pick which side to be on...( i dont think that would have really fit in OB to much though however from what we know of Skyrims political climate it sounds like its almost a must in this game).... also MW seemed to have more stuff weapons and weapon materials, and armor materials.

also i know i havent played MW that much but count me in as one who things OB gets a bad rap... ive read countless posts on here about people who seem very put out that this feature was in MW but not in OB and alot of the times its one little stupid arbitrary thing that i honestly want to just smack the person for complaining about. one example is fast travel, im sorry but dude how about just not fast traveling its not a game breaker if you dont friggin use it..... another thing is spears like seriously i wish they were in OB but how is not having a spear a game changer get over it... there are other stupid "game breaker" complaints ive read that are just ridiculous.

Oh i do want to add that i hope map markers are tweaked some... there should be more quests that you dont really know where to do except over that montain but if you get to the town of ___ you went to far... there should be some where somebody has been there or heard tales of said place but all they know is follow said road, when you see the ____ statue head do east.... there will be a river called ___ follow that till you see a grassy knoll, head past the giant weeping willow and out there somewhere are the ruins of shangra la.... some quests the person should know exactly where you should go but if youve never been there it should be an area on the map with a marker on the compass (notice i didnt say anything about the compass before) but the compass only leads you to an area (kinda depends on the land your at and what your looking for as to the size of the area) and when you get to said area you have to look around for whatever... if it a ruined fort then the area should be kinda large and perhaps there is vegetation and trees blocking your way so youll have to go explore a little, if your looking for a cave entrance then perhaps the area is the half of the mountain side that the entrance is on so you know its on the west side of the mountain but not exactly where or how high up.

oh i think im done for now.. and i dont feel like fixing any more grammer...

ILearn from oblivion is all that is really needed

I can understand why new players who love Oblivion as much as we loved Morrowind get annoyed when we complain. Then again, when I do rarely hear someone talk about why Daggerfall was better than Morrowind, I also see their logic, and usually agree with them. I might not agree that Daggerfall was a better game overall (although it is still pretty nifty, what, 16 years later?) but there are things from Daggerfall that shouldn't have been dropped, like languages skills, climbing, etc, which Morrowind simplified. However, the leap in detail between MW and DF is much larger than between MW and OB, so it's hard to make a direct comparison.

That said, let's talk about stuff like fast travel and spears. It's not that we don't like fast travel. It's that we don't like fast travel that's free, and obnoxiously convenient. And since they include it they way they have, they feel no obligation to add other varieties. Oblivion's solution to fast travel is what you do when you want to include a feature and don't have the resources to flesh it out, not what you do when you have 100 people working for 4 years. Compared to Oblivion, Daggerfall's solution for fast travel was more complex, immersive, detailed, mature, realistic, and other words. And they had how many people working on it? I've said it before and I'll say it again: OB fast travel is teleportation. For free. You don't use any magicka, health, or gold. All your equipment is in as good of condition as when you started. It just doesn't make sense.

Okay, spears. It's not so much about the spears themselves, even though they are THE most common, useful weapon for the last 20,000 years of human history, from caveman's pointy sticks to bayonets on machine guns. It's the idea that a MASSIVE, open world, record setting RPG like the Elderscrolls would cut content. Are you really unconcerned that they are okay with just saying "Meh." to additional features? What if they got rid of axes, or helmets, or shock spells? I'm getting a little tired of Bethesda always trying to make the newest, shiniest RPG, rather than the most inclusive, expansive, and record setting. Nice graphics fade. 16 years from now, Skyrim is going to look like crap. 16 years ago, Daggerfall came out. And no one has broken the record for the size of it's game world.

I don't want it to feel like Morrowind. In fact I'm getting sick of hearing about Morrowind in comparison to Skyrim, no offense to people that hold Morrowind as their favorite.

I want Skyrim to be Skyrim.

I've played all ES games since the start, and loved all of them at the time (except Battlespire, which didn't do it for me, and Redguard which I never played because of my negative experience with Battlespire), but I recently fired up Arena again for the first time in 15 years and couldn't stand it. The flat and identical-looking terrain made it nearly unplayable for me after the hand-drawn environments of Morrowind and Oblivion. That, and the traditional (and IMO obsolete) XP-for-killing-monsters system (as opposed to the skill-use system) made it feel like technological and conceptual advances have simply outrun it. I actually try to avoid playing old favourites nowadays, because I'm almost always disappointed, and have the nostaligic illusion shattered. This is especially true with old NES games, which of course are very simplistic and repetitive, but were endless fun as a kid.

Nobody wants Skyrim to look and be like Morrowind, what we are asking for is Skyrim to create the same feelings of wonder and mysicism that Morrowind did. It doesn't have to look like Morrowind to do that.

they could add the hostility and racism of npcs towards the player i guess... but the question is. do they want to?

Oblivion gave me those feelings, so for me all it means is for it to feel like a game in the series.

one thing

the SHOCK of new things like new buildings, new flags, new plants, new animals, and new sounds that's why Morrowind was much more wowy than OB

in MW everything was new, every corner hid new monsters, new adventure, a lost ruin, an unknown.

all in all MW was a better game than OB, but OB had better game play in general, MW combat system was horrid (not at the time of course)

Some of my favorite points in a great post. Thanks!

I've been playing Oblivion for two years and love the game. I recently picked up Morrowind and have to agree with the comments regarding the wonderful atmosphere and attention to detail this game has. Sure the graphics are older, the combat is frustrating, and the general mechanics of operating your actions in the game seem a bit clunky. But I can see why some consider it such a high bar when comparing other games.

Don't get me wrong. Oblivion will always be my first love and I also do get tired of the endless comparisons. But there is a valid point in wanting to see the richness, atmosphere, and attention to detail that even as a (sometimes frustrated) noob to Morrowind I can clearly feel and appreciate. Loved the Dwemer Ruins!

I hope to enjoy Skyrim for itself and also hope that those at Bethesda incorporate all of what they've learned along the way into this new experience.

I can't wait. :tes:

This in particular is something I wanted to expand on. Especially themed monsters and loot. While themed monsters were obvious. Daedric ruins usually have Daedric foes. I definitely think it's important to make each area unique in both flora, fauna and landscape, so it actually feels like a different region. Sure, some creatures can overlap, but each region should have one to two (Minimum) creatures not found anywhere else.

Themed loot I've talked about a lot lately, and I use it as an example of one of those "Little" things nobody paid attention to, but everyone felt it missing in Oblivion. You could really sell the "Criminal underworld" atmosphere just by selecting the proper loot in a cave. What's more, is I'm hoping that some of the caves that have "People" in them, actually feel lived in. A lot of the primary smuggler dens in Morrowind were literally small villages, in Oblivion, you were lucky to find a bedroll or a table.

Why should feel bitter toward Morrowind? It was a great game.

If you really have to feel bitter toward anything, then you can feel bitter toward, people who have different mind set and ideals from you, and expect different things from an open world RPG game.

Or maybe you can feel bitter toward the developers that put different ideal into the game at each iteration, and gather a fan base with a set of specific ideals in one generation and then completely overthrow the set of ideals in the next iteration, and target different fan base in the next game, and this radical change of direction has great potential for conflicting ideal in the fan base, which result in this conflicting hate/love relationships.

That's the core of the problem, and those ideal are so radically different that, the member's of each mind set group, really can not understand, the other group,and why should they be totally different.

You can be glad that you belong to the larger fan base, because the majority of gamers belong to the mind set that the Oblivion ideals present, but on the other hand, the Ideals that make Morrowind, like being able to read large blocks of text, or pursue intellectual activities as opposed to action based visual ones and so on... has potential to make dedicated fan base that are regular forum dweller who like to attend debates and pursue them.

On the opposition, the ideal that make Oblivion, tend to make easy going fan base who like to jump in the game and have fun and jump out and do not look back, so we do not see a lot of them in the forums.

This fact can describe, why although there is a larger Oblivion fan base, we see more dedicated Morrowind fans here in the forums.

I have a lot of viking blood in me so listening to the new skyrim theme song makes me want to kill a bear with my hands and celebrate later with a pint.

I don't think anyone wants Skyrim to be Morrowind, I think people (such as myself) want Skyrim to provide a similar experience to Morrowind. I think the whole idea of Skyrim is great, this unique Nordic feel and the dragons of course. It's is more the way the gameplay runs. I loved Oblivion and have played it hundreds of hours, but I always felt that I was never as immersed in that world as I was in Morrowind.
Simple things also annoyed me a bit, like being able to do everything with the same character. In Morrowind, membership of one house closed the doors of the others. That is how I expect a real world to work. The beauty of Morrowind was playing the game several times with different characters and seeing how some doors were opened and others closed depending on your actions. That level of interaction between the player and the game was a lot less present in Oblivion.

I think that most people who compare Oblivion to Morrowind desire the more immersive experience Morrowind presented in a whole new realm (Skyrim). A game that provides more than going from one dungeon to the next and which concentrates on more than just the fighting. Things like political intrigue, social dynamics and feeling part of that. I would love to see the guilds compete more directly for power, sometimes even have them going after the same goals in different ways. Having the player make a choice of helping the thieves guild steal an essential document or the fighters guild protect it.

That would not change Skyrim into Morrowind, it would make Skyrim come more alive and feel more realistic.

It's just my opinion, but that's how I see it.

That's right.

No one wants Skyrim to be Morrowind 2, and if we want that we can simple replay Morrowind with mods that bring it's graphic to today standards and remove the bugs, and so on...

But we want a Skyrim that incorporates ideas that are more like Morrowind, than Oblivion.

Give us more variety and choices and their consequences, more replay-ability, more depth, more stylish environment and more culture and intertwined stories and lived in, purposeful dungeons.

More... OK, that's enough.

Morrowind just has a nostalgia factor for me. Aside from that, there are only a few things that it has the advantage of in Oblivion, namely the storyline and the environment. Morrowind had a good storyline (though by no means the best storyline I've ever seen in a video game, which I am handing to Mass Effect for now) but Oblivion's was just unsatisfying because you're nothing more than the savior's errand boy. The environment is also a factor, though that's not something I'll fault Oblivion for. Morrowind is entirely foreign. The architecture, native flora and fauna, culture, and terminology contributed to the uniqueness of the game. Oblivion, on the other hand, was very much a European fantasy game. They could have made Cyrodiil a jungle, but I honestly think the Imperials fit much better in a province modeled after Europe, because the Imperials themselves are a very European Roman-British society at heart. Oblivion had better combat, Morrowind had better customization. Both Morrowind and Oblivion's leveling was very flawed, but Skyrim looks to deliver better on that.

A few select features, plus the clear nostalgia, has created a very enthusiastic group that values nearly all parts of Morrowind above Oblivion, and won't be satisfied until Skyrim works just like Morrowind did. But Skyrim is not trying to be more like Morrowind. It's trying to fix the flaws that Oblivion had, but it isn't replacing them with features from Morrowind. I prefer this, to be honest. I already played Morrowind, and was left satisfied with a game of that time, and I played Oblivion but felt that there are some things it could have done better. Instead of criticizing Skyrim for not being like Morrowind, it should be recognized as Oblivion done right, not Morrowind done again.

Morrowind touched me in so many places. That's the Morrowind Feel. Share the Feeling!

Well, if Oblivion was given more consequential choices, depth, culture, etc., would that not be Oblivion done right?

Mass Effect has a camel toe factor.

Morrowind was able to accomplish something that is very difficult in a high-fantasy setting. It didn't feel like Tolkien World variation 3,281,983. Sure, dialog system made most character interaction feel about as unique and emotionally engaging as browsing through random links on wikipedia - flat but still able to provide a wealth of information on the world and society. If the individual NPCs lacked a bit of depth that was more than made up for by the fact that the various interests and factions had clearly understandable motivations. They didn't act or exist in a vaccum isolated from competition with each other - as nearly every power in Cyrodil that was not automatically an antogonist from the start seemed to.

That's how people work really - even in mostly cohesive societies you still have factionalism and tribalism to an extent. In Morrowind they were the various factions and houses. In modern democracies they would be political parties. The fact that the various houses of Morrowind still competed and fought with each other even though they were members of the same province and shared a common culture to a large extent made them more believable. You got the feeling that if a catastrophe wiped out one of the major settlements there that as soon as it was resolved the Dunmer houses and some of the Imperial factions would nearly be at each others throats to grab up the newly vacated territory. In oblivion it just seemed odd that as soon as the Kvatch gate was closed you didn't have Anvil and Bravil bickering over who got to loot the best bits of the corpse of the dead city-state.

At the same time the cultures and vistas were truly foreign feeling and the setting as a whole managed to free itself from the nearly archetypal standard template for high-fantasy. If you were going to compare the tribal Dunmer Ashlanders to anything familiar it wouldn't be "dark elves" it would have been the Fremen of Dune. When you start up a fantasy RPG its a pleasant surprise if you yourself more able to compare bits of it to Arrakis than to Middle-Earth or any number of DnD settings. The cultures and vistas in Cyrodil did not have this same luxury - for the most part they are inspired by things more familiar to medieval themed high-fantasy and so it didn't feel like you were in a strange alien land that may as well have been another planet as another province. For the Imperial province such a feeling of novelty would have required retconning the not insubstantial existing lore.

Skyrim is not the far off Volcanic island we got to explore in Morrowind but neither is it the familiar and reasonably metropolitan land that we got in Oblivion. It is familiar to a degree - resembling Germanic, Norse, and Celtic cultures that clearly provided inspiration for it. It is still a wild place and on the verge of civil war. Lord or Lady "A" from from the ruling family in major city "X" is very unlikely to live in a vacuum. He or She is almost certainly it odds if not directly engaged in hostilities with Lord or Lady B from major City Y. While they might both be of Skyrim and have cause to unite against say... the end of the world they will almost certainly not magically get along despite the lack of Imperial rule. Yay for politics and factionalism offering an opportunity for a return to at least part of what I loved about the backdrop Morrowind offered. Sure we might not have not have mushroom forests and deserts of wind-swept volcanic ash but we will at least have a rugged and wild country populated by not-so-harmonious tribes of Nords and bickering scheming nobles.