While that's very true of Bethesda, if you think gaming companies aren't making story-driven games anymore you're playing the wrong games. In particular, indie companies are making games with deeper stories than anything from the so-called "good old days" of gaming (see for example To The Moon, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Thomas Was Alone, Dear Esther, Transistor, or any of Daedalic's adventure games like The Whispered World or the Deponia trilogy). And even among AAA titles BioWare still manages to put out story-driven RPGs, even if DA2 was crap and some people have issues with ME3; DAI shows they still have it. But yeah, these days it seems Bethesda wouldn't know a good story if it walked up and shook their hand--as far as I can tell, Skyrim doesn't even have a story, good or bad, and honestly doesn't have the game mechanics to make up for it.

EDIT: But I do agree with everything you said about The Elder Scrolls. Morrowind was clearly a once-in-a-lifetime kind of game, and it won't happen again from Bethesda. And that's why I'm still playing Morrowind but don't even have Skyrim and Oblivion installed anymore.

Get off my lawn, darn kids ...

http://youtu.be/aMTKvmD9p_Q

Seriously, though, I actually think the Elder Scrolls Online does a great job of channeling Morrowind, and Skyrim's Dragonborn expansion is a great retread of Bloodmoon.

I have come to terms with the fact that, even though I might objectively look at another game and think it's superior, nothing can ever fit the Morrowind place in my heart.

If I'm trying to be objective, Skyrim has the user-friendliness (I know, OP, you were trying to be funny with the quest arrows and the fast travel, but that's honestly how I prefer to play!), and it has the gasp-inducing landscapes and the great combat and stuff. It is, objectively, a better game. It surpasses Morrowind in character development (don't pretend Serana isn't the best companion, modded or otherwise, you've ever met!) and you can ride horses without mods and buy houses without mods and it just looks better and everything.

But Morrowind is uniquely, permanently special. It's special in the way that I'll never be able to think of the west coast of the USA without being reminded of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, or imagine the feeling of fear without thinking "Thief". Morrowind is special in the way that playing Elder Scrolls Online is simultaneously quenching and heartbreaking. Morrowind is first-love and Tom-Baker-as-Doctor-Who and anytime-I-look-at-Balmora-I-feel-like-I'm-at-home. Balmora is more home than the city I've lived in for 12 years, or the suburb I've lived in for four. I can navigate it blindfold. Morrowind is enough to get me to forget Fallout 3.

That title does and always will belong to Julan Kaushibael. Aside from Julan, any runner up would come from a BioWare game: Garrus Vakarian, Alistair Theirin, or Morrigan come to mind.

I actually disagree that Skyrim did better in terms of character development. Honestly, the only character who was in any way memorable to me from Skyrim was Brynjolf--and mostly because I liked his not-really-Irish accent. True, neither Oblivion nor Morrowind were stellar on this point either--dialogue and character development have always been Bethesda's greatest weakness--but there are at least a handful of really memorable characters in Morrowind: Divayth Fyr, Baladas Demnevani, Sul-Matuul, Vivec, Dagoth Ur, Ahnassi, Ahjira...

I also disagree that Skyrim is "objectively" better. Objectively prettier, sure. But the only thing I thought Skyrim did really well was the archery--but Tomb Raider did it better (still need to finish that one...). And as far as pretty goes, Dragon Age: Inquisition may be the prettiest game I've ever played (aside from that hideous hair--but to be fair I can't think of any game where the hair was more than decent) and it has great story too.

Not trying to come off as combative or argumentative. I just don't think that Skyrim can be called "objectively" better than Morrowind. In my opinion, slightly better gameplay and shiny graphics are not sufficient inducements to put up with Skyrim's lackluster story, bland characters, and stripped down mechanics. Not everyone will agree with my assessment, of course, and that a lot of people enjoy Skyrim is evident and is their prerogative. For myself, I prefer RPGs and point-and-click adventures to hack-and-slash action games (a much better label for Skyrim); it's just a genre preference. For me, personally, though Morrowind will always remain my favorite game: its exotic setting, its hominess (as you said), and its mythic depth create something that I don't foresee any other game supplanting any time soon.

EDIT: Despite my intention, that last bit still sounded arrogant, which really isn't the way I meant it. What I was trying to say is: I don't enjoy Skyrim, others do, it's a matter of opinion and that's fine.

I agree with Zaarin. Skyrim is not objectively better. It may be subjectively better for some players. But it's not objectively better.

Also, princess stomper mentioned that she likes to play with quest arrows and fast travel. That is not at all how I like to play at all. One of the reasons Morrowind is the best for me is the journal and how NPCs actually give you some direction about what to do so you can figure it out, something they don't really do in Skyrim. Instead, most quests in Skyrim just tell you the result you are supposed to achieve and then let you follow the quest arrow or map marker to get there.

It's not just that - but Skyrim doesn't use quest markers consistently. The Stones of Barenziah take ages to find without quest markers or some clues about their locations. When finding the priest in Dawnguard, no quest marker was there for you to investigate the road south of Dragon Bridge but gave you a quest marker once you find blood.

Although, I would've followed the trail of blood to the cave itself so a quest marker was pointless in that context IMO.

That video is pretty funny. The series is becoming more casual, definitely. Has anyone seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEI4yS7sFEw? I've said the series has been dumbing down for years but I've recently had a change of thought. Things like the quest marker, essential NPCs and less dialogue options were to improve the mechanics of the series. I prefer Morrowind's directions where the NPC describes how to get there. But Morrowind's directions can be broken or hard to follow, and quite often, like in real life, you have more questions regarding how to get to a certain location. But since you can't continually ask the NPC any other questions about how to get there, you have to go off of whatever directions they gave you. The quest marker eliminates this and tells you exactly where to go. Both approaches are flawed but if you have a mod that alters Morrowind's terrain, those directions given to you by the NPC may not help at all if the exterior is radically modified.

With the introduction of Radiant AI in Oblivion, essential NPCs was kind of a necessity because anybody could be killed from venturing outside and being attacked by creatures or bandits. I've never liked essential NPCs but it makes sense to have them so that your quests aren't broken if an NPC dies. What if Caius Cosades was attacked by a flock of Cliffracers and died while he was heading over to the Eight Plates inn? Sure, you could reload an earlier game but you shouldn't have to play the game that way. Besides, for me personally, my character never kills NPCs any ways so it's not something I notice when playing.

Dialogue can only be fleshed out so much in a game. Morrowind's hyperlink system isn't all that great but I like it better than Skyrim's and much better than Oblivion's. Clicking "Latest Rumors" would only give you one or two lines of text and clicking on it repeatedly would give you the same line of text. Yeah, that svcks, but Skyrim is the same way after you've finished clicking all the dialogue options. NPCs in Skyrim have a more in-depth personality and their dialogue sounds like how people really talk, but it leaves less to the imagination. Morrowind's writing style is general enough to where I can pretend the NPC is saying additional things, especially in the persuasion system. I love the way Morrowind handles Persuasion because you can make up whatever your character says in your head based off of the NPCs response. Oblivion's cheese wheel svcks and Skyrim's persuasion was almost non-existent.

Morrowind could have very deep dialogue but it would clutter up the main data file if every NPC had a mammoth biography. That's one reason why we're not giving every NPC an in-depth personality over at Tamriel-Rebuilt, Skyrim:Home of the Nords or Province:Cyrodiil.

I actually don't agree with the bolded statement here. Essential NPCs aren't needed to keep people from dying, there's already a solution for that, Protected NPCs (different from essential, and actually shown in Skyrim on companion characters). The difference between essential and protected; essential means they cannot die at all, protected means they cannot die unless killed by the player directly.

Skyrim has protected NPCs in the form of a recruited companion, whatever happens they cannot die unless the PC hits them while they are down otherwise they just fall down and get back up. The problem, that's it, everybody else is essential.

One thing I hated about skyrim was that they had the solution already present in game, but instead made it so only companions were protected and made everyone else essential for some reason.

Personally, I'd be perfectly fine with protected NPCs, makes sense so that an npc doesnt get killed walking down the street (even though in Oblivion and skyrim an NPC cannot be killed unless they are in the same cell as the player. NPCs do travel across map while you're not there, but they don't get in combat unless they are physically loaded into the world, which only happens when you enter the same cell as them), but it feels like an insult to my intelligence when half the npcs in a town can't be killed and stormcloak/imperial generals can't even die even though you've finished the civil war on the opposite side.

Like it just feels like the devs were thinking "well let's make all quest givers essential, we don't want out stupid customers to inadvertently 'break' their game by killing a quest giver, do we?". I didn't like the essentials in Oblivion, but luckily there wasn't too many of them. Skyrim it just seems they went further down that path and there's a handful of people in every town that can't be killed because they're essential and it felt way too overboard. Even though i rarely do it in these games, I still like having the freedom of being able to murder anyone in my way.

And just note, I'm not talking about the essential children in game, because it's obvious why you can't kill the kids and I'm perfectly fine with that (well except when you have a town like little lamplight with a bunch of smug trash talking kids, because they can back up their trash talk - not because they're badass, but because they're video game immortal and it feels cheap - that's the one time i actually wanted to kill a kid in any game so far).

THIS and Vilja has to be on that list and who can forget Nathyrra from Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark.

I can't agree with quests. How Skyrim do quest is much dumbed down. Quest markers are really big hand holding and makes player a brainless NPC with pathfinding.

Morrowind quest can be done with some thinking. Some directions are false, but these are rare cases, like bugs. System can be done better, like adding option to ask NPC a question about direction. And if tip was written wrong by the mistake, it can be fixed in a patch.

Way how Skyrim has journal is really unnacceptable. There was no real reason to replace immersive journal entires with dumb tips that appears a the top of screen. It's threating player like an idiot (or as NPC with pathfinding).

The problem isn't abuot immortality or not immortality. It's AI problem. If random bandits attack the city, NPCs should escape to safe place, not stay in place and watch. That would prevent important NPCs death.

AI isn't dumbing down. It just not improving. Will we in TES IV still have enemies, who can't jump at rocks? Aren't programmers skilled enough? Are consoles too weak for better AI?

Finding reasons for "not dumbing down" isn't good. It's explainng design and non design mistakes. Can you find real explaination for simplified skill system, than making game easier for causal gamers?

I didn't enjoy vanilla Skyrim. It was rather a poorly made action game, than RPG.

I don't understand how people can say the series isn't dumbing down. Designing the game to be played with quest markers is proof of that alone. Add in compass, simplified journal and even floating markers. Saying that NPCs are essential because they would otherwise die in the wilderness is like saying the devs are too stupid to use the protected status they themselves created. Puzzles. Most of the dialogue choices you have are dumb questions, fitting for the target audience. (too harsh, sorry.)

On essential NPCs, at least in Oblivion you could check if someone was essential, because your cursor changed to a crown if they were. In Skyrim you just have to risk it and hope for the best. It's bad design.

I keep telling myself I'll play Skyrim or Oblivion long enough to get to know Vilja, but unfortunately I haven't yet.

This is one of the things I hated most in Skyrim. The worst example is in the Thieves Guild quest line when Brynjolf tells you about Nocturnal, you literally have no other choice than to say, "I'm a thief; I'm not religious." Because of course a religious thief is beyond the realm of possibility. I guess my devoutly Azura-worshipping Ashlander thief is a paradox that will bring down the universe itself. I could never play Dragonborn because of all the inane dialogue choices it foisted on me. For voiceless protagonists, categories that allow you to fill in for yourself what your character said are much better than dialogue options.

On the other hand, Skyrim left precious little to the imagination; it rather seemed to be designed to bend over backwards for those who don't have one.

@Sentinel
I didn't know about the "Protected" NPCs. I thought it was just a tweak to the Essential code that allowed the Player to kill an NPC but creatures and other NPCs couldn't. Children should be protected too and not essential, if you ask me. Which game out of the series handled NPCs the best in your opinion?



@Rytelier
Yes, I much more prefer written directions as well. If you modify the exterior landscape to where it doesn't match the written directions, the text can also be modified to match whatever mod you're using. That's one of the reasons I love Morrowind so much is because you can practically change anything.
Bethesda could have used verbal directions for the other games but it's harder to modify voice dialogue because you have to record your own voice and there's a good chance your voice won't match the NPC's. Much easier to simply change a few lines of text.
As far as quest writing, I think Oblivion did the best.


@Bad Penny
Okay yeah, the puzzles in Skyrim are just stupid. It's a give-n-take of immersion regarding the NPCs. Let's say all NPCs did have Protected status so that only the Player could kill them but nothing else could, except for other quest-related NPCs (i.e. the soldiers of the opposing factions in Skyrim). You're in the wilderness and come across and NPC who is being attacked by a herd of trolls and keeps going unconscious but you can go punch him and finish him off. That's immersion breaking. Essential is immersion breaking altogether. Making every NPC killable is realistic but it's immersion breaking when main quest related NPCs die and there isn't anyone else to pick up where that NPC left off. If Caius Cosades died, the Empire would have had the Player speak with someone else. But the game doesn't factor in things like that because Morrowind doesn't have Radiant AI. So all approaches are immersion breaking in one way or another. It just depends on which one suits you the best.

If you enjoyed Julan then you won't be disappointed with Vilja. Companion Vilja is like Shani and Julan combined into one personality. Vilja is like a little chtterbox sister who doesn't shut up. She is like an air head blonde (insert favourite blonde joke now) who is just so innocently ignorant but cute as a button. She will make you laugh and become your best friend or even lover. I prefer the Oblivion Vilja and to be honest I never would have even finished Oblivion if it wasn't for her. Oblivion was cool for about two weeks and then it went into my desk drawer. Once I found Emma and her Companion Vilja mod I played the game for 4 years straight. I blame everything on Vilja

http://i.imgur.com/w9Xge.jpg will tell you if you will like Vilja or not. Other than that I am happy to see that everyone (more or less) agrees with my post

Mine as well. One example is "Was that dragon on your side?" during the intro, after Alduin attacked and killed men from both sides. There shouldn't be no doubt, that dragon is clearly not picking any sides. And there's other ways to make it clear than wasting dialogue options to make my character look like a fool. There's too few options already, and half of them is wasted on dumb questions. Or just dumb dialogue. Seems like there never is any options that you'd like or any satisfying ones.

"Why would Dawnguard, a vampire slaying group, have a problem with you, Serana, a vampire?" I don't really remember what the question exactly was, all I remember that it was stupid and made me lose interest. The quest after that was the one where I gave up, because all the quests up to that point were [censored] timewasters to make the DLC seem longer.

Pressing tab is often the best solution.

TOP 3 Most immersion breaking options

1. NPCs are completely immortal.

2. NPCs are immortal to anything else besides you.

3. Blades won't sent another guy to advise you after you murdered Caius in cold blood.

Number two is the best realistic solution, although I'd love to have an option to make every NPC killable. Plus, NPCs should flee if in danger and when it's appropriate. And not every NPC needs to be essential anyway. Just because they accidentally dropped their sword in a nearby bandit cave doesn't mean they have to be immortal. Not being able to kill off those legates after civil war really pissed me off. They were probably just left essential as a mistake.

But really, if there is essential NPCs in the game, there should be some way to know. Trying to do a sneak attack, shooting an arrow at a commoner, only knocking him unsconscious is the most immersion breaking option, and the most irritating.

Bring back those messages from Morrowind and make the game do an autosave just before the NPC is dead, that you can load if you feel bad.

"By killing this man, you're unable to do a minor fetch quest. No need to load a previous save though, the quest would have been lame anyway."

I'll probably give Oblivion another go eventually--even if all the other voice acting is bad, at least it has Sean Bean. While I have to admit that Shani drove me absolutely crazy to the point I ended up leaving her in the Ahemmusa camp, I do have a soft spot for naive oblivious characters.

How dare you say that Michael Mack, the voice of Cyrus The Restless himself, and all male Redguard until Skyrim is bad! Take that back!

Seriously, I think he's great, they need to bring him back. Redguard men don't sound right without him. Though Erik Todd Dellums did a good job as Nazir I will admit.

Out of TES, it's hard to say but I like Oblivion and Morrowind almost equally but for different reasons. I like oblivion's take because you actually had npcs with schedules and all that, was definitely an improvement, but the essential NPCs were something I didn't like a lot, and that NPCs usually only had 1 unique thing of dialogue and there wasn't much to say to them.

I like morrowind because even though they don't have voice acting, the NPCs feel like they have more personality with their dialogue, the dialogue from Caius Cosades alone beats out all the npc dialogue from either oblivion or skyrim IMO. I also like being able to ask certain things to NPCs, like what services there are in town, the politics behind that town, and even scouts that would tell you about outposts and places of interest in the ashlands.

Yeah, they were like walking encylopedias at times, you could do with a little less options, just for the sake of not having npcs saying the exact same thing all the time. But is npcs with all the same knowledge really more immersion breaking than every guard taking an arrow to the knee and quitting adventuring? I mean, that's a pretty specific line of dialogue that every guard happens to say.

I'd take NPCs with hordes of information and some of them repeating the same mundane directions or services question over NPCs that don't say anything interesting, don't talk about rumours and all say the same opening line.

Personally, I think Fallout New Vegas (though not made by bethesda, it's the same style of game and most assets used and software is bethesda's) did NPCs the best. Nobody was essential (except kids, but there were very few of them), and you could kill any quest giver anywhere, but what would happen is you would get a "X Quest Failed" notice, so then you could decide for yourself if you wanted to reload, or that the quest was probably for a faction or person you weren't going to work with anyway.

One of the great things about New Vegas is that there were so many quests, and it was literally impossible to do them all because lots of times quests for one faction would have you kill a quest giver for another faction, therefore barring you out of those line of quests. You could actually join any faction you wanted, side with any of them, and decide who takes control at the end of the game. You could even work for them all for the most part and try to do as many quests for each side as you can until you are forced to start taking out guys from another side.

Okay just gotta say, awesome Avatar. Absolutely love that show.

But yeah, the messages were a good route IMO. Also see above in my reference to Fallout New Vegas, that was probably one of the better approaches for essential NPCs. You get the message, but you actually get the name of the quest failed notice, so then if you really wanted to see if it was gonna screw you over later, you could go online and check the quest if you really wanted.

Or just make a judgement call, lets say you were working for the NCR and you got a mission that had you kill a legion guy, and then you got a quest failed, you could decide for yourself are you gonna reload so you dont block that quest, or continue playing because it was obviously a quest for the legion and you know you aren't going to side with them.

Take Oblivion's Vilja with you on Anvil's Sirens Deception quest. If Vilja's comments on that one don't win you over on that one, well then you are really hard to please. Just thinking of that questing with Vilja me want to start my Oblivion game over again. I will say that I too traveled with Vilja for nearly four years Until she talked me into going to Morrowind. She said I'd like it and I do.

Yeah, I'm variably fond of Serana (some of my characters really liked her, some of them found her irritating as anything and I tend to side with whoever I'm playing in these matters) but she's not a patch on, say, Alistair, Morrigan, Sten or Shale from DAI, the aforementioned Julan and Vilja modded TES companions, and probably others both vanilla and modded from games I've not played (I also really like Anders and Fenris from DA2, although they aren't necessarily better than Serana, though come to think of it, neither of them raises zombies when I'm trying to sneak, so yeah, they're totally better.) Hell, although she's obviously got more detailed story and dialogue than the other Skyrim companions, I'd say she's got less character than Jenassa at the very least. Plus, again, the zombie thing. Ooh, and Teldryn Sero.

As far as protected vs essential NPCs go, my understanding is that (whether intentionally or not, I'm unsure) protected NPCs *can* die as a result of bleeding damage or poison if it is enough to make the difference between crawling on the floor and zero/less than zero health. So that would probably still be less than ideal for questgivers, although I agree that at the very least not all of them need to be kept safe (it was annoying when a dragon killed that girl in Morthal who gives you a letter to deliver, not least because surely I could still have taken the letter to whatshername in Whiterun to ask for help for thingybob's brother, he's not been eaten by a dragon, but it was hardly game breaking).

I would definitely love to see a return to the Morrowind journal, although I'd like it to be a wee bit more interactive, in terms of being able to mark certain quests either 'abandoned' or 'later' (ideally both options) so for example broken quests or ones I've decided aren't worth the effort can be cleared from my journal like completed ones are (but perhaps with the option to re-activate) and ones that I'm not ready for can be saved for later, so I can look at a list of quests and not have to scroll past half a dozen things just to get to the ones I'm after (yeah, I couldn't do that on a paper journal, but I could cross things out, or rewrite the list or divide it into three sections, or use different inks...) But yes, I really like the diary/notebook style journal, and the ability to ask directions and note them down - obviously that would be kind of laborious with voice acting, and I don't think full voice acting is going anywhere, but it would be easy enough to have NPCs who would reasonably be expected to know the way to either say 'I'll mark it on your map' (I play Skyrim with iHUD so I only really use quest markers for map markers to get a general idea of where to go on quests where I should be able to do that - I get a bit confused by people who claim you HAVE to play with quest markers unless they're on console/don't use mods, but even then you can just not activate any quests) or 'let me just write down some directions... here you go!' and either have a note appear in your inventory or have the directions appear in your journal (perhaps even in a different font to indicate it's not your writing...)

(Side note, it's not really come up here, I think, but I really like the way text dialogue allows mod authors to integrate their mods much more seamlessly into the game, although I imagine there's also scope for a clueless MA to wreck things... But having vanilla NPCs be involved in a quest without having to resort to voiceless subtitles (have they suddenly gone telepathic?) is really nice, and it also means that e.g. modded companions whose maker couldn't get voice acting for whatever reason aren't going around being the only people whose words are inaudible (thinking of Ruined-Tail's Tale, which I haven't played but I've seen a Let's Play with the mod, it looks really good but the lack of voice acting is a bit of a sore thumb in Oblivion.) (OTOH one of Vilja's charms is her voice acting, albeit in a bit of a love it or hate it way, so there's that.)

I am hard to please, but I'll definitely give her a try.

At least she doesn't summon atronachs while sneaking like that Dunmer mage from the College of Winterhold (Brelyna, I think?). But yes, those were certainly the best characters from DAO and some of the finest characters BioWare has ever made. I really disliked Anders (only spared him because I'm a remarkably nice guy ), and Fenris tended to get on my nerves--DA2 didn't have quite the cast DAO did, I only really liked Varric, Hawke, and Merrill and to a lesser extent Aveline.

I was specifically thinking of Elder Scrolls games, but Vilja's way too neurotic about how her bottom looks in that armour, and Julan's just a big ol' fusspot.
*hides from two most beloved friends.*

That's what I love about Julan! Most companions always agree with you, always do what you tell them. Julan is very happy to give you a piece of his mind.

I was just reminded of Constance, who just might beat the lot of them in my estimation - she truly was my "little sister" when playing Morrowind. I literally laughed out loud at her dialogue and general mischief.

I think Julan reminds me a little too much of boys I dated when I was younger, and Vilja is probably a little bit too much like me (pvssyrbox).
I have a huge amount of fondness for them all, though.

My very particular fondness for Serana is because the others - Julan, Vilja - are recognizably "human" (elf or otherwise) whereas Serana has that Kate-Beckinsdale-in-Underworld aloof coolness - more like the cool character I'd like to be, and she also makes me laugh.

I guess it's just a difference of taste. I love how human Julan is. He's exactly the sort of character I would roleplay in a game or write in one of my novels (in fact, I'm working on a story where the main character originated as a character strongly inspired by Julan, and even now that the story has changed considerably he still has a lot of Julan in him). But I'm also a literature major, so exploring what makes us human is a passion of mine--and Aspergers gives me something of an "outsider's perspective" on the subject.

I'll have to give Julan a try. I assume it would be best to be on a new play through, yes? I have Constance as my Morrowind companion at the moment. Really don't want to let her go. Would the two of them work well together?