If You're thinking that I'm going to talk about THE Scrolls... You're wrong. Let me explain.

For some time I've been wondering what's so different in Skyrim that I feel like it's not as good as Morrowind or even Oblivion. Graphics and mechanics aside ofc. It's not that I say it's a bad game. However something is missing and after a lot of tought, topics about unique items and lack of truly immersive, scary and dark dungeons/caves, I think I've finally managed to pinpoint my problem with this game. It's the small things. I haven't noticed it until recently.

When I played Morrowind, the land of Vvanderfell felt harsh, brutal and... like something I've never seen before. The whole Island and the Dunmer culture was new, something I've never seen in any other game, book or movie. It was kinda fresh and unique. And that feeling that if you won't watch out something horrible will happen... like you'll end up dead, killed by some "outlander" hater or cut into pieces while venturing into Daedric Shrines. Naturally after a while the player was able to create such powerful character that not even a God could be a match for him. At that point everyone randomly met would praise You're name as the Nerevarine.

- progression, from Zero to Hero
- after some timepeople would recognize You
- Dunmer Culture/Architecture
- a harsh and demonic land

Few years later Oblivion came out. Very colorful and bit... can't find a proper word - strange. Despite the flaws like new level-scaling system, awful NPC faces, their animation during the dialogue, dreadful Oblivion Gate closing and few other things, it was still a great game. We were in the center of The Empire, Cyrodiil. Although the cities were very and I mean very small compared to those from MW they were filled with NPC of all races, talking with each other and... spreading gossips. Imagine my surprise when I accidentally heard a chat about Nerevarine! It felt so good to hear stories about what's going on in the world. It felt real and alive. The guild's were back, some had really interesting questlines. It overally felt like I'm in the center of culture for the land of Tamriel. The Shivering Isles made things only better with Sheogorath and his crazy world.

- center of Tamriel, filled with different cultures (races)
- interesting quests (I'm still amazed by a quest where I killed a guy with a Deer Head trophy!)
- NPC's talking, spreading gossips
- Shivering Isles

Now we have Skyrim. What can I say about it. It's a great game. It improved both on graphic and mechanics but... it doesn't feel like an Elder Scroll game so much anymore! You'll say "WTF are You talking about!? There are books, artifacts and tons of other stuff!". Here is the thing.

Anyway it was said that Bethesda plans to improve Skyrim. I hope they fill in some gaps to expand it's story with something more oryginal and... tamrielic?

I agree.

Maybe this is what has been irking me all this time. maybe.

Or maybe it was the backwards flying dragons and lack of consequences in my actions and the eeeeeeevvvviiilll radiant quests and essential NPCs persisting.

I'm not sure. I think the only given for me right now is that Fallout New Vegas was a much better experience for me.

TES went from being a true RPG (complexity, real risk and reward) into a video-gamey (streamlining) RPG. Get with the times and get used to it now, because the major game companies will never go back to the Golden Age. This is the Green ($$$) Age. Keeping things simple to satisfy the widest demographical range is what it's all about.

I agree as well, Skyrim feels like a weird TES Hybrid Shallow RPG instead of Being a TES RPG. That doesn't mean it's a terrible game but I think it's missing the magic that made Oblivion great and Morrowind too.

100% agree, I even started replaying Morrowind
I can't stand the NPCs in Skyrim either,
"Hands to yourself sneakthief" lvl 30 sneak...
Farengar's quote about the college syaing I should join.. No, I am archmage
A guard says something like your the new Companion and fetching mead.. Again, no I'm in the Harbinger
things like that are such an annoyance but I really wish they did keep the dialogue about other provinces too. Idk, TES seems to go from good to worse, it's frustrating

/endrant

Don't fool yourself, TES games have never had any good system or risk and reward or any major complexity involved in the questing and stories (You could say Morrowind at a stretch but that's about it). They've been doing what they've been doing for years, appealing to the current demographic of gamers - they did that for all previous games.

EDIT:

Also, I would like to say that I agree with the OP on some levels. The streamlining of some of the games features doesn't bother me as much has others but what does bother me is the much blander landscapes of the modern games; but then again, Arena and Daggerfall were pretty bland in their landscape design.

I think the game I liked the most was Morrowind, mainly because of how original and alien the entire island of Vvardenfell felt. From the silt striders to the bull netch, it all felt very fresh when you looked at the other games on the market.

And here I was thinking that you wanted to complain that you can find only one Elder Scroll in the game... you know, not enough Elder Scrolls in The Elder Scrolls.

I actually made a thread about this very same topic a month or so back.

I agree entirely. I love the game, don't get me wrong. However, it feels like it's not really as attached to the series as the rest of the games. I was enthralled by the rest of them, but Skyrim seems like it was designed to expand the franchises market to accomodate the everyday gamer rather than the loyal TES fans. As I said, I still love the game, but as YOU said, it seems like the world of Skyrim is seperate from the rest of Tamriel. Maybe I expected it to be too much of an improvement on Oblivion, or maybe I just expect too much of Beth. They did a really good job with the game, obviously. Either way, I agree with what you're saying.

It's Elder Scrolls enough for me, and I am not dissapointed with the architecture and general artwork. It is much better than I expected, to be honest. And so is the music. When it sometimes hit 'the Nordic Tune', the land of Skyrim feels magic to me.

But the NPC's?? OMG! You are perfectly right OP. The fact, that a minor thing like the gossip from Oblivion would be a gigantic improvement to the whole game, perfectly illustrates, how shallow they really are.

If you take to heart on What Bethesda said: pay attention to the games events, it seems the most likely option is that the Dovahkiin will have to re-light the dragon fires in the imperial city. The Aldmeri High Council is trying to destroy each of the 8 towers that dot Tamriel's landscape, the only two that remain, the Snow Tower and the Bronze Tower(Dwemer Owned), but that was lost in time with the Dwemer. If you take it by its literal name: Snow Tower; you would say High Hrothgar...but according to Dwemer texts, there is a second Blackreach underneath the southern portion of Skyrim that runs under The Throat of the World. The texts also explain that there are two entrances two this second Blackreach, one lost in Blackreach itself, and the other in the Dwemer city of Markarth.

Thus is why you find Thalmoor in this city and none other. Since the signing of The White-Gold Concordiate the Thalmoor can move freely in Skyrim...relatively free at least. If the Thalmoor succeed in destroying the Snow Tower, which for the sake of story that will probably happen, the Dovahkiin will be forced to relight the dragon fires with the Amulet of Lings. Lore suggests that when all 8 towers cease to work, reality will unfold on itself and chaos will reign and thus bring about the World Eaters return. This will force the Psijic Order to intervene and stop time and tell you to relight the dragon fires.

With some speculation, we can assume that if using an Elder Scroll creates a time wound, it is likely that there are many wounds that have been created over the years. When Martin shattered the amulet of kings and brought down the powers of Akatosh, Akatosh uses the power of time as his main entity. If shattering the amulet of kings brings forth Akatosh, Then it can be assumed that the shards are cast through the open time wounds, Then the Dovahkiin would have to travel through time with the help of the Psijic Order, who are known to be able to control time. Once the shards are reunited the Dovahkiin would then be able to light the fires, but probably not before having a final showdown with Alduin and then the Aldmeri High Council Leader after the Dragon Fires have been lit.

i want this as the dlc!!

It actually doesnt sound bad. I would imagine that someone like the Dovakhiin should not be restricted to just Skyrim in these times.

I personally think Skyrim is vastly superior to Oblivion in almost every way. It's essentially Oblivion 2, correcting a lot of what Oblivion did wrong, while still ignoring a lot of what made Morrowind so memorable. (Namely Skyrim/Oblivion's over-reliance on procedural content). About the only thing I believe Oblivion did better than Skyrim is the Guilds. More accurately, the identity of a Guild. In Skyrim, each faction questline is essentially a self-contained "Save the Universe" Story, in a metaphorical sense, and on one occasion, literal (Eye of Magnus).

This issue stems from Bethesda's desire to "Make the ultimate Stealth/Magic/Warrior" Game in each iteration. A perfect example of "Trying too hard", and they've gotten consistently worse. The better idea is that instead of over emphasizing a faction storyline, make it fit in the context of the world. Morrowind's Fighter's guild is perhaps the best example of this, combining elements of virtually everything in the game, and making a storyline that feels genuine to the world. Oblivion's only major failing in factions was that each guild was almost totally insular to the entire world. One exception I think was that you had to collect Imp Gall for someone in the Mage's guild.

A bigger overall issue though, especially to Morrowind-inductees like myself, is that Skyrim and Oblivion both utilize content generation similar to Daggerfall. That works to an extent, and what extent it works is proportionate to the size of your world. Oblivion and Skyrim are far too small to use it as a mainstay. Oblivion blunders here catastrophically, Skyrim corrects many issues with that, and almost finds a happy medium. But at the end of the day, when you have a relatively tiny world (In scale to a nation) you need significantly more detail (more meaningful detail, that is) to endear that realm to the player. Even though Morrowind was I think 1/3 the size of Oblivion/Skyrim, you have people speak of it entirely differently. Most fans can recall a massive amount of memorable moments. Add in the fact that Morrowind takes the reigns pretty much off the player the moment they step out of Census and Excise, and you have what defined the Elder Scrolls experience for an entire generation of gamer. Total control over your place in their world.


TL;DR - Skyrim still tries to choral the player too much. Morrowind allowed players to make their own memories, successes and failures, that made it more memorable and more endearing.

In addition to some of the suggestions above, I felt that one of the downfalls for Skyrim was the lack of really creepy/scary places. For me, in Oblivion and Morrowind they were the Ayleid ruins and Dwemer ruins. I would be creeped out the entire time, not just when I entered or when something surprising happened. In Skyrim, I have had a couple "wtf" moments, but no real terror, which I miss. The zombies also creeped me out a lot in previous TES games, and while I love the draugr, they don't have the same effect, perhaps because they are more sentient.

Just my 2c.

I don't know about you, but I've had heart attacks in Dwemer Ruins in Skyrim. Figuratively and Literally.

Is Morrowind really that good? First TES game I played was Oblivion and that was last year. But I've put an hour or two into MW and it seems like it totally svcks, what with the lack of quest markers and stealing icon.

But yeah, I see what your saying about the lack of diversity in Skyrim. I think that there is such a lack because it is Skyrim and not Cyrodiil. Plus there is lot of racism.

I definitely would like to see npcs have better lines, especially ones about the events that have happened outside of Skyrim.



Totally disagree.

True, they've never been nothing but open world dungeon crawlers. Difference is that in Skyrim they didn't even try to hide it

Had you started with Morrowind when it came out and then went to Oblivion you would like it...Because it's one of those games where you NEED to play it first before you play any after that.

sad but true i'm afraid.


"i dont care if youre one of us. you mess around and ill bash your face in"


I still don't understand the dichotomy of FONV and Skyrim. I know Obsidian did FONV but it would seem the creative direction for their RPG titles would be similar. So much of FONV was like reverting some of the badness of OB and improving/bringing back the faction politics and adding dialogue consequences that were missed. It seems NONE of the good ideas from FONV were incorporated in Skyrim. Bums me out.

Of all the hype surrounding Skyrim, FONV mechanics in TES lore was what I was hoping for, but we got a very empty shell compared to FONV. I still like Skyrim but I see the end of my playing it very near. I am already trading lots of game time to go back and replay FONV/OB/MW. I dont see myself replaying Skyrim like I have the previous titles. Taking a different build through a boring questline is still - boring.

That's precisely why many people around here hold the game in such high esteem. It required you to get your directions from questgivers, and actually read directions in your journal for important information. And when you got to your destination, you looked for the item you were picking up, you didn't follow a floating icon or compass. I would go back to a slightly modified version of Morrowind's journal system in a heartbeat.

I'm not flaming you, or saying since you don't like MW you're st00pid. But the need for quest markers and a stealing icon is exactly part of how the game has been streamlined and migrated to the lowest common denominator.

One of the first MG quests in MW you have to look for some mushrooms. Its basically a fetch quest, but its possible to be fun because there are no quest markers and good directions/descriptions of the shrooms. You actually have to go look for them.

The lack of a renown system hurts it. Really kills the feeling of all you have done when people are acting like you juts got there even though you are the thane everywhere and run all the guilds.

Agreed.

Fantasy RPG needs it's Fantasy back... WTB alien lands like Morrowind/Shivering Isles, more alien creatures like Morrowind/Shivering Isles, more story/character depth like....

Also wtb rare loot back... Enchanted items/Soul Gems should have been much more rare... *sigh* games are just too easy now... It's depressing.