OUCH!

Skyrim has far more "lasting consequences" in terms of Factions and Skills than Morrowind had.... I could create a "Master of Everything" in Morrowind. Skyrim's perk system means that I have to actively care about what skills I invest in, instead of get everything to a roughly even number and do whatever the heck I want.

The factions... Morrowind, you could join one of three Great Houses, or Hlaalu and either of the other two houses. Skyrim goes with two binary choices instead of three once-off choices: Imperials or Stormcloaks? Greybeards or Blades? And the repercussions of those are much deeper than the Houses of Morrowind, because the former completely changes the political landscape of Skyrim, while the Latter directly influences what resources you have access to.

Why do people think there's some kind of "Mutual Exclusivity" between the guilds in Morrowind. I was the Master Thief, Archmage, Fighter's Guild Master, AND Morag Tong leader all on one character. The same thing I could accomplish in any other TES game. In Skyrim, the guilds are even brought into the main quest (Something I detest most highly in the case of the game trying to conscript you for the Thieves' Guild this time around)

And why do people continue to try and delude themselves into believing that Daggerfall was more like Morrowind than Oblivion?

And the amount of time and investment I've put into Skyrim completely invalidates any argument that "It's all flash, no substance." The world is Far deeper than the corpse that is Morrowind.



Morrowind is not "The Best TES game ever". What Morrowind had that the following TES games lacked is simple: the euphoria of it being "Your first time". That is something you can never experience again, except by cutting out your brain and clearing all memory.

I never played Arena.
I loved Daggerfall when it came out.
I loved Morrowind when it came out, but missed playing Daggerfall
I loved Oblivion when it came out, but missed playing Morrowind & Daggerfall

I think we all have these same stories. The truth is, I tried to play Daggerfall again and was disappointed. I tried to play Morrowind again and it just didn't grab me anymore. Now with Skyrim out, Oblivion is the same way as was what came before.

I agree with bring back the fantastic. Morrowind did some great things and those need to be acknowledged. Both Oblivion and Skyrim are exactly as they are depicted in the lore - more or less Europe and Northwest Europe. Still that shouldn't preclude them from adding some creative flair and populating the world with fantastical trees and critters instead of butterflies, pine trees and deer.

I have to disagree with some of your post, however.

Fast Travel is freedom to me. I can choose to adventure, or I can fast travel if I want to. Fast Travel was a part of Daggerfall, and I missed it when it was removed in Morrowind.

To me, less skills is freedom. I can spend more time actually playing the game instead of worrying about what weapon I want to play for the entire game. I can choose different weapons and not be gimped or constantly be worrying about what skills I have trained. I am happy to be playing an Action RPG not a Stat RPG. I hated that if I found the ancient axe of hooba khan I couldn't use it because the game limited my freedom by forcing me to specialize in a particular weapon. Or if I tried to level up many weapon types, I would be level 30+ and a master of nothing and my nickname would be "slayed by guar". Or if I wanted to be faster than a MudCrab I had to spend 37 hours swimming in a pool. Freedom? No sir, tedium ad nauseam. Those freedoms actually detract from the game play and I am glad they are gone.

I admit that making your own spells was cool, but to me it is more realistic to have your spells level up with the character. It makes more sense that a fireball is stronger as you become a stronger Mage. That is awesome. Sure I give up being able to create my own spells, but the only reason I made my own spells in Morrowind in the first place was because my Fireball spell needed an upgrade.

Levitate was cool, but I never used it for anything except getting on top of buildings and skipping over mountains. Sure it would be cool to have it back because I had a lot of fun with it, but I don't miss it. If I want to see cool things, I detach myself from the role playing aspect and turn on no-clip and fly up into the sky. Haven't tried it in Skyrim, but after I beat Oblivion a couple of times, I had a lot of fun flying around doing my superman impression.

Bottom line, just as you find Morrowind to be the best game ever, there are those of us that think Skyrim is worlds away an improvement over what has come. Skyrim is certainly not perfect, but Morrowind is only the best game to some.

BTW, I was really impressed when you condescendingly referred to players like me as quick game players with the attention span of a walnut. Bravo. *golf clap*

I've given up on these debates since playing Skyrim. It's not just an amazing game, it's an Elder Scrolls game through and through.

Sure, I prefer Morrowind. But if you keep comparing games to the best, you'll never have any fun...

Huh? It didn't work that way. In Morrowind, you start out weak and in order to survive or advance, you NEED to work on your class skills. You choose a class so you could specialize in certain skills, they gave you an advantage at the start with them. When getting into Morrowind, you're not a kid, you're someone with an history, if you were a battlemage, you still are a battlemage, you don't become one. And you need to play as a battlemage, not just whatever you want, unless you want to die. In Skyrim, you can do whatever the heck you want, you have no class. Each skill is at an acceptable level, and whatever you do makes you level up and level up those skills. Do whatever you do in Morrowind without worrying about your class? Well it will take you a [censored]load of time to be able to do certain things because you're too weak. Enemies don't mostly level up among you, so if you need to get in that cavern with powerful enemies, you need to have to play in a certain way. If you're a mage, you won't level up by jumping, it's a consequence. In Skyrim, I can just guess anything along the way and it will work and level up. In Morrowind, unless you're a mage, have scrolls or the skeleton key, if you don't have lockpicking as a minor skill, you're out of luck. In Skyrim, you can try until it works. And I mean, I'm a warrior yet I manage to open every chest I come across, how did it happen? Where is the consequence to how I decide to play?

Perks barely add any dimension, they're almost like subskills you need to choose from. So you start the game and decide to be a warrior, fine. So, do I use... one-handed or two-handed weapons? Do I want to deal some damage and not be able to use shields? Easy choice. Light, or heavy armor? I'm no assassin, I'll take the useful stuff for frontlines. Smithing, will I smith heavy or light armor? Well, I'm specialized with heavy armor, so... Okay, I level up. Double-handed, heavy armor or block? Kind of a choice, but one which doesn't make a big difference. As you level up, you realize that since you use double-handed weapons, perks in the block skill about shields are useless. Then, most perk choices you have with double-handed is making it better and specializing in either axe, blunt or sword, and once you made the choice, you only level them up. And then you realize you don't have always a [censored]load of perk choices each level. Ah, not high level enough to level up that perk. Ah, I need that perk before getting that one. Ah, I don't care about the other skills, the only perk I can level up is this one. Ah, I now can smith dwarven armor, seems like I won't have to bother giving perk points for smithing until I level it up 20 more times... It's not long before you know what you're going to play, it's not long before you're just waiting to unlock that particular perk. By making some choices, you grey out others. And since there's quite a bit less skill, it's not long you see the possibilities are lesser. You have more choices early on, but usually it's about what you want to be able to do first, and it's not long before all the other choices you could make are greyed out because you need quite some more levels, and you don't reach all the prerequisite at the same time, they usually appear one at a time.

Again, since there's less skills, less specializations. No more open-lock spells, no more chameleon, no more water-walking, no more levitation, no more spears, no more unarmored, no more acrobatics or athletics. The perk thing gives more of an illusion of choice and specialization. Often you need the same perks in order to unlock different ones. And since there's less skills, you have a thinner variety of skills, making choices between some easier. I mean, you want to specialize in combat, there's basically only 3 skills! 2 or 1 handed, and block. light or heavy armor isn't necessarily for combat as smithing. So guess what, 99% if combat characters will be "specialized" in 1 or 2 handed weapon, light or heavy armor. Then 95% with also be "specialized" in blocking and smithing. I mean, you CAN'T only attribute perks for a weapon type and armor, you'll start to bank on perk points. It's only logical as a warrior to them put points in either blocking or smithing, and then you'll realize you'll also bank on perk points if you don't put points in the other. It's not long before the perks you level up are obvious. If you play a certain way, you just put the perks in the skills you normally use, there's barely any consequences. The perk system is no more deeper than what we had before. Only now you can decapitate people or punch people harder in tavern brawls... there's more useful perks but you get my point. Axes, swords and blunt are just skills hidden within skills.

The moment you become a "master of everything" is the moment you maxed out all your major and minor skills and have a [censored]load of money to spend on training, because all your other skills are below an acceptable level, because you were not meant to use these skills. A thief isn't meant to kill people with battleaxes, but if he's wealthy, he sure could use someone to at least show him the ropes, to get started. And when you're there, you probably completed most of what you were doing. The moment you become a "master of everything" in Morrowind, you're close to be finished with your game and start a new character. Sure, you can become one, but so can you at that same point in Skyrim, probably before.


Yet all 3 Great Houses offer you long, DIFFERENT questlines. And they affect how people perceive you, how they like you, how much you need to bribe them in order to do something. The only choice about the imperial or stormcloaks is mostly only related to what's going to happen beyond Skryims, and not the repercussions it has on your character, otherwise it plays out identically both ways and the direct consequences to the game are the same.

I bet you became headmaster of all guilds at the same time. I bet you didn't invest a lot of money into training later in the game when you were probably done with the main quest and already headmaster of a certain guild, in order to meet the requirements to reach certain ranks you need to reach. Each guilds were far less forgiving if you were not supposed to join them. And I bet it didn't messed up a bit how people perceived you. In Oblivion or Skyrim, no one ever cares about your allegiances, in Morrowind, it affects everyone in how they perceive you. Granted it doesn't work for the "mutual exclusivity" thing, but that's better than what Oblivion or Skyrim had. You can run into any Imperial city with Stormcloak clothes and people won't care.

Guilds are brought into the main quest, but the questlines are much shorter and less satisfying. In Morrowind, for the mages guild for example, you start out as the dude who's going to do the [censored] little errands, and you eventually climb the steps, needing to actually be a good mage in order to progress. There were more factions too. In Skyrim, it's like "oh, I'm a combat dude, what can I do? the companions..". In Morrowind, you have the fighter's guild, the imperials (which isn't even particularly specific to combat dudes, you can be a battlemage or spellsword), the imperial cult, even the temple. You're more like an adventurer? The Imperial Cult can be for you. You're a faithful servant of the empire who don't feel like doing mercenary work? You can only join the legion and have something to do. If you're a combat dude in Skyrim, if you the companions are not your type of stuff, well though luck. You're a dunmer mage? You can straight run to the Telvanni and never join the mages guild since they're pricks. Conversely, you can join the mages guild and never join Telvanni because your guild hates them. IF you do the main quest, you could go see Hlallu or Redoran instead.

Because it had more skills, more factions, your alignments affected how you were interacting with characters, the story was more political, STATS were more behind the gameplay.

Best. Argument. Ever. Surely most of the time spent in ES games was never by walking from point A to point B or reading, (in Skyrim's case listening which is far longer) or killing things. I still can't understand how people can't see it's more about flash and substance than ever before.

Clearly you must be particularly imaginative if you think Skyrim is so much better.

Seriously, that "it's all nostalgia" argument must die. Surely that's because of nostalgia people can go back to Morrowind and enjoy it almost, if not as much as before. Surely you NEED nostalgia in order to enjoy an ugly game with crappy animations.

Morrowind treated its players as intelligent advlts, or at least challenged them to be.

Exhibit A: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Elone%27s_Directions_to_Balmora

I could open every chest I came across in Morrowind as well. Ondassi's unhinging and the Latch Cracker scrolls came six-to-a-barrel for me.

Contradicting yourself much? That's a heck of a lot more depth than "Swing Sword/Spend Cash, skill up" (Or Use Alchemy, become Pun-Pun) in Morrowind.
Oh, there are still plenty of consequences. They just happen to be logical consequences.

... I hadn't even started the main Quest of Morrowind beside dropping off a package to some skooma-addict before becoming a "Master of Everything" in Morrowind

Actually, I never got any different treatment from others. EVERYONE was simply: "What do you need, Outlander? I'm sure I can't help you." Except the Ordinators, who were "We're Watching you... scum!", regardless of who I was or my standing.

When it comes to "Dynamic World" and "NPCs treating you differently based on allegiances/actions," Oblivion is the game that comes out on top, leaving both Morrowind AND Skyrim far behind.

The conversations between NPCs and their greetings to you are much more dependent on who you are, from "Look at the Muscles on You" to "The Chapel of Dibella in Anvil was attacked! The priests slain on the very altar of love!", "The Black Horse Courier"'s up-to-the-minute responses to your shenanigans, and "BY AZURA BY AZURA BY AZURA! YOU'RE THE GRAND CHAMPION! Can I lick your boots? Give you a back rub?

Nothing along those lines really made it into Morrowind, aside from stat-based combat. But even then, there was still a significant amount of emphasis on player skill in Daggerfall's combat, with tactical choices you could make with what attacks to use to vary your damage and accuracy. Timing was also critical in Daggerfall's combat. The only thing that wasn't was actual aiming.

Skyrim is about both, flash andsubstance. The world's far more alive than Morrowind's. There wasn't any change in Morrowind either: Everyone still remained 24-7 information kiosks that liked to talk about how grim Solstheim was.

I'm not talking about the "ugly game with crappy animations". I'm saying that there's a "magic" irreplaceable experience with the first time you have an awesome experience that weights you in its favor, and the more time you spend with it, the more you start seeing the "Flaws" as "Benefits" and start filling in little gaps: Yahtzee Crowshaw has a serious case of this in regards to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, for example.

A lot of people have a very similar experience about their first spouse as well.


And a counter to exhibit A:
That's ONE OF the ONLY set of "Clear" instructions in the entire game, and rendered moot because it immediately puts a yellow dot on your MAP, MARKING the city's location.

to OP, because nostalgia is how people really compare games -.-

There were other ways too. Thing is, depending on your character, if you wanted to do a particular action, there could be other possibilities for you. If you're too crappy at lockpiting, you need to find someone who sells the scrolls (powerful enough) and buy them. You had CHOICES, there were several ways to do the same thing with a various difficulty and ease.

Except before doing that, you had to plan your character. You had to choose a combination of skills (or a class with certain combination of skills) depending on what your priorities were. Since there were more skills (and magic schools with more spells), the choices were harder. The difference with Skyrim, is that you choose who you are along the way step by step instead of right at the start. It kinda makes sense that you learn new fancy combat moves along the way, but it makes little sense that you start out as some "good in everything" kid who still doesn't know what to do in life.

I always love the alchemy thing because people presume it's problem. It isn't. In fact, it just means that you were clever enough to use some of the game and world mechanics to your advantage. Overpowered and underpowered classes are only realistic. Not everyone is equal and there are LOGICAL consequences to the class or combination of skills you choose. A certain combination means you can do x or y, while another combination means you can do z or t, when if you used a combination with skills included and both, you might be able to do x and z, but neither of y or t. You had freedom and you could experiment. Now, Bethesda gives us "essential NPCs" so they can take away the freedom of killing anyone and the consequences they can bring. They take out skills, spells, take out all the possible ways to get across the land, etc. They take more possibilities (and consequences) as more TES games are released. Just go over the Morrowind forum on threads about which character to make. You'll see more discussion and posts than on Skyrim or Oblivion forums. Because there's a lot of possibilities, and each possibilities don't work out the same way.

And because Morrowind didn't have logical consequences?

And I said you "probably finished the main quest" You still need to dish out a lot of money, which required you to play a lot of time, which meant your major and minor skills were high. If you "don't learn the ropes" by training the first levels for most minor skills, you fail most of the time at what you're trying. And it takes a [censored]load of time to be high skilled. Thing is, at that point, it doesn't matter. It works in a similar way in Oblivion and Skyrim, except in Skyrim you've already completed the main quest because there's far less quests and things to do.


I meant their disposition: http://uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Factions People might like you better and are easier to persuade if you're in a certain faction, while others might necessitate more bribing. But if you're good in speechcraft, you might have your trouble saved by simply using normal persuasion. Logical consequences to your alignments and class. Does Skyrim ever becomes as dynamic? Oblivion had people saying unique lines, but Morrowind affects the people themselves, and in turn how's your interaction with them. Get in a couple of factions, and the results pile up. Ha, it shows you're much better off with House Hlaluu if your in the mages guild, since both are in a friendly stance, when telvanni are hated enemies and redoran are hostile.


I'd rather hear ten thousand times "what, outlander", rather than "what is this fur... coming out of your ears" or "I used to be an adventurer, but I took an arrow in the knee" or "you seem like quite the alchemist" (how did you know?), "the gods gave you two hands and you use them both for combat, I can respect that" (how did you know?). The more elaborate the greetings are, the more I'm tired to hear them all over again and the more they don't make sense. Since Oblivion, the people of Tamriel seem very, very friendly. Like EVERYONE whom you walk by has something to tell you. I don't know, when I go to work and walk by someone, no one ever told me they got ants problem in their house, or they think I have nice shoes, or that they used to have long hair when they were younger, or that the mayor is a dike. And after my week, I haven't come across 10 strangers who told me the mayor was a dike.


Not nearly as significant as of now. Now it's like there's no stat behind. And while Daggerfall had many more skills and an additional magic school than Morrowind, Morrowind still had more of those than Oblivion. Morrowind still has a much more RPG feel to it than Oblivion.

More alive? You gotta be kidding. Voice acting and radiant AI IS flash. People stay still at one place instead of standing still at 2 different places during the day. You reach Windhelm at night to deliver something, everyone will be doing the same thing as they always do at that time of the day. People will give you awkward comments with awkward (voice) acting, and when all is said and done and you leave, the same people will still doing the same thing until a certain hour, but then who cares since you're not there. And if you stay to observe their daily lives, you'll find them awkward and underwhelming, never to be bothered by anything that happens. Someone gets almost killed? None of the witnesses, not even the person will acknowledge anything. And there's much, much less things to do, how is that more alive? People feel like quest terminals: "hear my story, accept of refuse the quest" return "quest completed". You can't ask them about their backgrounds, you can't ask them about rumours, you can't ask them where to find a certain guy you're looking for, nothing. Otherwise, they act as history books. In Morrowind, the cities feel alive, you always end up doing something in the major cities, lots of quests and people to talk to. "but they all say the same thing". False. The redundant lines are always more obvious when there's more NPCs and when they have more lines. For every quest you have more details, and sometimes additional steps along the way. I think a good way to say it is: cities feel more busy. In Skyrim, people walk around, talk [censored] and stuff, have voice overs, but take that out and not much is left. People walked in Morrowind too, except they didn't go to bed when you were not looking.


Except the first experience ends almost before your first playthrough. I still manage to do a couple more of them and the game was as satisfying. Only the sense of wonder of a world opening to you was gone. And that's the case for EVERY game. Some game do get [censored]tier the more you play them (Mass Effect), but the more I played Morrowind the more I understood, the more I could put words to why I loved it. And you just can't pop up and say "FALSE, you don't really think it's a good game, it's just nostalgia!". But guess what even if Oblivion was not my first TES game, the first time I played it was the first time I played it. There was a sort of magic of being introduced in that vast world for the first time. But the more I played it, the more I saw glaring flaws, some that made certain aspects far less enjoyable than before. And these aspects were not more enjoyable in Morrowind because of nostalgia, but because they were better made and were more satisfying. Some other flaws that literally broke the game and made me take out the disc before I even started my game.


Except in this case I know what's ahead of me and how to get them without any problems, instead of being like "well I guess I should follow that road" "okay it turns North I want to go west" "okay it seems to not go where I want to go, let's just walk in a straight line" "okay there's a giant mountain in front of me, no obvious way around without going in an almost opposite direction, let's try to climb it" "wow, that was something, now let's go down" "okay, a damn river which I can't even swim across, WHERE is the bridge?!" "managed to get across, I'm still kinda far. Now, anything else like this if I go in a straight line?" Sometimes not only directions can get your life easier when you're doing an errand FOR someone, but it helps you get a sense of the place. It would particularly be helpful in Skyrim when there's no way to know where the big roads, how they connect, where are the bridges on the "map". Morrowind didn't show maps, the major roads were easy to follow and had clear indications. Also, you knew the only major geographical obstacle were foyadas and were clear on the map, as other more elevated areas, Skyrim was like a giant cloud and you wouldn't know at which point at the bottom of the mountain you'd be able to walk.

And the [censored]tiness of the instructions are quite overstated. Sure, a couple of them were harder to follow, but otherwise you were usually looking for the wrong thing, or read things that were not written. It's incredible the fuss the dwemer puzzle box made. So many people didn't even look in the FIRST room. It was your first MQ quest, did you really think we'd send you on a dangerous errand at the far bottom of a relatively dangerous dwemer ruin with locked doors, traps and all? Didn't you think the puzzle box was probably in the hands of a bandit, or stored in their appartments, rather than with a robot far down? Sometimes you only needed a bit of common sense. And it's only normal the instructions are not step by step... I mean, I was at most 13 when I first started playing the game, and my English wasn't all that good. Fortunately most words I didn't understand were ones related to the culture and politics of Morrowind, like "dissident" and the likes.

I think they should take a little more time on the next games. Bring back things that worked, because sometimes streamlining is not the best option. Work on the little things, and have 5-6 people actually really explore and play the game thoroughly as soon as it's playable, but before release, and see what works, what doesn't, what could use improvement, what needs more options, etc. I really think more development time should have been there for Skyrim, but it was rushed, and while fun, wasn't the absolute best it could be.

This is not a rant, just my opinion.

I agree, OP, but the people who like Morrowind, like you and me, etc... are the minority. The majority of people nowadays who play games prefer action/adventure games. And if Bethesda wants to keep making lots of money, they need to cater to the broadest demographic. It's disappointing to me but it's true. They are, after all, a business.

wrong, The majority of the people who play skyrim are the people who can accept change and wanted those changes after oblivion. Bethesda is a company who actually listens to their fans. See after OB people were screaming about the leveling system they were upset about a small cast of voice actors and alot of other systems. people modded those on the PC version, bethesda took in the info about the systems and made them better and smoother with a better lvling system, larger cast of voice actors better combat, lvling system etc. BUT giving us these things also took a toll on the game itself with either less text options and/or disposition and quest length.

I hate when people claim somting is mainstream because of how people percieve games as a whole. Skyrim If anything is unique and not mainsteamed, sure they tried somthing new, the've added to things to make them better but it aint mainstream. See the TES are never the same, each game is unique in multiple ways giving us somthing new and fun to try and play.We would not be comparing games if they were the same. would you say the fable series is mainstreamed? no each game is unique, sure 3 was bad and 2 got rid of almost everything in 1 but each game presents itself with somthing new to be played. however I would say Halo, CoD, Zeldas, Mario, WoW, guitar heros, rock bands, Battlefields, and sonics, are all forms of mainstream becuase they are always the same on release. another example is FF13, fans of the series thought it was mainstreamed because of how linear the game was. But are they not following their own game rules? is it not different from other FF games? its unique, and not mainstreamed.

i could go on and on proving my point. but what im getting at is that people jump to comclusions about a product because of other products. people use the Term mainstream without truely understanding. As a closeing Statement, How many games DURING the time morrowind were released were UNIQUE but never made it into the next generation of gaming?

Well... I guess the question is "What is a good starting point" for character power. Skyrim starts a lower point than previous games.

So, you have a fetish for meaningless numbers? Disposition meant almost Nothing in Morrowind. In Skyrim, it's still there, but not directly influenceable - And getting a high disposition with someone in Skyrim is more useful than it ever was in Morrowind or Oblivion.


... While the people in Morrowind WERE quest terminals, instead of acting like them. And your comment on "The cities feel more busy" is the nostalgia I'm talking about: The signficance of little things build up over time as you're exposed to them. The cities in Morrowind are little more than static dioramas, while the schedules and idle activities in Skyrim actually gave them more depth: Shops are closed on the weekend, there's a distinct "Working day." The world in Morrowind is a corpse.

Am I the only person here that's begun thinking Fallout 3 is the best RPG Bethesda's pulled off recently? I mean, I loved Oblivion and I'm really enjoying Skyrim (and the Elder Scrolls world is a fantastic setting), but Fallout 3 draws people into the world far better than Oblivion or Skyrim. The dialogue options, wide variety of gear, hand-placed weapons to make exploration more worthwhile, cities that contained quite a few quests...

Part of me thinks they need to use Fallout as a guideline for Elder Scrolls VI.

As it stands:

Elder scrolls = more dungeon crawling, fewer RPG elements. More content, lower quality.
Fallout = Quality > quantity. Immersion and NPC interaction are the main points of focus, action takes a back seat.

Didn't even have to read past the Title and Subtitle to say I totally agree with you, OP. (But if course I DID read the OP )

Although I agree, I'm not going to hold my breath. The fact of the matter is, the majority of players do not like complex games anymore, but rather streamlined, hand-holding games like Skyrim. Because they're easier and require less thinking. More people = more $$. No way in hell will Bethesda ever return to the days of complete character control, choice and freedom. It just won't happen, mark my words.

[quote name='Cosmar' timestamp='1323555608' post='19728200']
Didn't even have to read past the Title and Subtitle to say I totally agree with you, OP. (But if course I DID read the OP )

Although I agree, I'm not going to hold my breath. The fact of the matter is, the majority of players do not like complex games anymore, but rather streamlined, hand-holding games like Skyrim. Because they're easier and require less thinking. More people = more $$. No way in hell will Bethesda ever return to the days of complete character control, choice and freedom. It just won't happen, mark my words.I have no idea what this mythical Morrowind game everyone seems to be remembering is... and yes, I have a game with the title with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on the cover ([src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/MorrowindCOVER.jpg"]Looks like this[/url]), but it doesn't seem to have ANY of the depth or complexity that people on this board seem to be going on about. What you seem to be talking about seems vaguely familiar when I play that game, but nowhere near as mediocre as the game I have.

As far as "Complexity" goes... I play Dwarf Fortress. Now, that's a game with Absolute Freedom.

By the time my main character in Morrowind reached level 6, he was the head of the Mages Guild and had completed the central quests of Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon. Class skills are needed only for leveling up.

I guess it depends on your definition of nothing. It could affect your wallet quite a bit, if you're not good at persuasion. Sometimes I couldn't spend money on that fancy sword I was eyeing because I had to bribe someone for a quest. But I guess numbers are meaningless if the effects are now thrown out of the screen.


Because they were standing still? I'm not saying Morrowind NPCs weren't quest terminals, but they felt less like ones. You may find it subtle, and sometimes I may not word it well because it's hard to explain, but Morrowind's NPC annoyed me less. And no, it's not nostalgia.

I really don't get your nostalgia thing. Little things ARE important. They pile up. In Skyrim, it's all about the big things, and what do you have besides them?

Radiant AI doesn't give more depth. The only good thing it brings is NPCs going to bed. Otherwise most of the day they spend it at the same place, sit, or walking the same predetermined path. Most of the time you don't even witness the radiant AI acting because you're not there or you're not doing something else. When you're in the tavern drinking mead, sure some guy who was walking outside most of the day may go to bed, but who cares about that guy you didn't even met? Their schedules end up underwhelming as some of the NPCs basically do nothing all day long, or they end up being VERY awkward, with everyone urging to tell you some random comment when you walk by. "Ah, you seem like an alchemist", "ah, you use your two hands for your weapon", all that [censored] is only fluff. The more they try to make the NPCs realistic, the more it's easy to let out annoying or awkward flaws. It was embarrassing at times in Oblivion. Have you tried dropping weapons or doing certain things/quests with certain NPCs around? NPCs standing still is less realistic, but there's no "contradictions" or weird things. Bioware can make "game of the year" or "10/0" games with NPCs standing still or walking the same predetermined path. It's no open-world games, but that doesn't really make a difference. You don't need that to make the world feel alive. As I said, they could only keep NPCs going to bed at night.

And by "busy", I mean the quantity of things to do. It's no nostalgia the amount of quests I can do or lines I can read. In several of my games, I was felt I was ALWAYS returning to Balmora, doing different things depending of my characters. The characters are all standing stones or walking the same paths, but the cities felt alive in a different way. Heck, I'm not the only one who noticed Oblivion felt dead, and it's not nostalgia. Skingrad was alive with movement, but dead otherwise. Radiant AI is only the "eye candy". Dawnstar doesn't feel any more alive than any Morrowind city because people walk around and say random comments, there's only 2 quests and most people have nothing to tell you! And the voice acting is only there to give us less NPC, less dialogue and less detailed quests. In Skyrim, it feels as they purposely made some quests shorter so they could give us as much as possible. And is it me, or most of the time the NPCs talk so [censored] slowly? If you just saw Alduin, you bet you're not going to make sure even an hearing-impaired will hear you. The voice acting is better than in Oblivion, but it's not miles better. No voice acting for dialogues is much better, that way not even tiny details can annoy you and make you suspend your disbelief even more than no voice acting; and that's true for radiant AI too. I'd rather see someone standing still, than appearing like a [censored].

And seriously, stop attributing everything to nostalgia. I can understand we don't see eye to eye, but you have to understand we don't like the same things and all. Some people attribute the love for Halo CE to nostalgia, and I can without any problems say that the level designed HELPED the game for x or y reason, rather than being annoying. You're inventing things to explain why people like certain things as if it wasn't possible without nostalgia, that's just stupid an arrogant.

I think you have just intercepted between Radiant AI and NPC schedules (which was a feature in Oblivion). ALl your points suggest the NPCs doing the same thing, walking around, making random comments, being awkward, which is determined by their NPC schedule. Because I have not seen how the NPC schedule list works, its hard to say how exactly they are set up. In Oblivion everything was timed. On Monday at 1am until 7 pm NPC does X, from 8 pm till 12 am, NPC does Y. This is not Radiant AI, this is the NPC set schedule, which seems to be made up for the townsfolk in Skyrim.

Radiant AI is more as, you drop an item, NPC in range sees item drop, does NPC care Yes > No NPC picks up item, brings it back to you. Or NPC dies in combat, X NPC related takes over shop. Other attributes could be the director that dictates random events like from LEft 4 Dead. Walking down roads and being ambushed by a witch fighting her atronach, Bandit groups, Thieves, a raided Caravan. This is what made Skyrim so much more dynamic then Morrowind. In Morrowind, you walked down the road, fought the same unit which is designed to spawn there and get to town X. In Skyrim, when you walk down a road, you might see nothing, or you might fight 3-4 enemies. You arent sure. They game builds a world which emulates a world not rootated around the player but at the same time playercentric. It designs events that already happen to have the player investigate. Morrowind had none of this.

I credit Morrowind with its Story's depth, character depth and execution of the main quest. It forced you to travel accross Morrowind to gather the support you need to defeat Dagoth Ur from Sadrith Mora in the East to Balmora in the West to Vivec in the SOuth and the Ashlanders in the north. Morrowinds story was involving. However, the game does not compare to the significant advances made to the combat system, NPC AI, encounters, dungeon design and visuals. ALthough I love Morrowinds story and I see the deoth it has, it really isnt the "best" of the series. Its aged like any other game and its taking on what is golden to this generation, whom want more action then story, Its trying to appease everyone but it wants more action.

You argue based on a personal belief and that is why you will never win this argument. You might think its better and 100 other people might, but there are 100 pthers that will disagree with you. You might as well stick to what you know and stop this crusade against Skyrim, because every day these posts come up and people have to come again and again to defend what, by its own right, is still a great game, you actually make me hate Morrowind just a little more because its turned into the ORPG standard, just like how WoW became the MMO standard. Stop using Morrowind as your [censored] and accept that not everyone agrees with you.

Diosys, it works both ways. Just as OP can never win his argument based on personal belief, you can never win your argument for Skyrim either.

And I don't get why people keep ranting against the "meaningless" numbers. Those numbers were not meaningless in the least. They allowed you 100% control of every tiny single aspect about your character ever. You alone could decide exactly how strong he was, how smart he was, how fast he was, how good of a talker he was.

And the disposition meant a lot more in Morrowind than it does in Skyrim, in fact. If you weren't able to raise certain people's disposition in Morrowind, via sweet-talking them, intimidating them, bribing them, etc. (which could be done to ANY npc in the game world, at ANY time, which is not even close to being the case in Skyrim), they might refuse to help you in the main quest, and stuff like that. Back then, Speech actually meant something.

You know what the cool thing about this whole deal is?

For those who prefer Morrowind to the newer games, you can keep playing Morrowind. And not only can you keep playing Morrowind, you can play Morrowind in the provinces that the new games are set in. With the huge modding projects such as Tamriel Rebuilt, Project Cyrodiil, and the Skyrim Project (forgot the name of this one), us Morrowind players can go to the same provinces and enjoy similar stuff with the same gameplay and content that Morrowind offers to us.

So, while Bethesda continues to make more games that diverge from the RPG gameplay that made previous Elder Scrolls games great, we can just keep playing Morrowind for as long we wish to.

There, problem solved. Those that like Morrowind style gameplay, can keep playing Morrowind and still enjoy the other provinces. Those that like the newer gameplay, can spend $60 and play an action game. Now everyone is happy.

I love Morrowind, but I think you're forgetting one thing: Dragons.

Seriously, whenever they appear I always seem to be totally off-guard.

Lower? On the contrary, Skyrim very much gives me the feel that my character is inherently more badass than 90% of the citizens of Tamriel. At level one, the most basic bandits could still be dispatched with a couple of attacks - and no, I was not playing as a fighter character. I was a mage swinging blindly with a dagger, on expert difficulty. I shudder to think how these bandits managed to make a living prior to hem meeting me, considering they don't seem like they could overpower anybody. There are plenty of more challenging enemies as well, which is good, but I personally feel as though my character started off on a higher tier than they did in MW/OB.

I liked the frontier feel of Vvardenfell, where you could never tell which NPCs have had past experience with a blade or may be an incredibly powerful magic user. Sometimes even the most decrepit, elderly woman would pull out a sword and hack you to pieces. It gave you a sense of where your character existed in the hierarchy and made you feel as if you constantly had to improve. In Skyrim there's relatively little for you to gauge your skill against if you aren't constantly hanging out in dungeons, except for dragons.

Disposition in Skyrim doesn't seem to leave much of an appreciable effect on NPCs, either. Even less so now that you usually only ever get to modify it through a few specific lines of dialog or by running errands for them.

I don't understand all of the number hatred around here. I want to feel completely in control of my character - I know it's a might bit unrealistic in a way, but that's how I preferred it. Skyrim's descriptions frustrate me to no end in this regard - all of these percentages, things being "twice as effective"? I feel frustrated having to stand around shooting Magelight at a wall whilst trying on different enchanted items, because I can't tell which effects stack and there's no place in the game's menus to just get a definitive listing of all cumulative active effects and modifiers on your character.

Oi. im glad to find i am not alone on this concept, i was just hopping over to the forums to post my remarks concerning they're losing me with skyrim. It isn't just the freedom morrowind had, the many more things to see/do/join, and not even the horrid "plot of no thought" I will refer the current state of the elder scrolls world to.

It is aesthetics. I feel nothing with the audio/music of skyrim compared to morrowind. The scenery... dude I can walk outside to see that crap. Ya, you aced the mountains, looks real. thats cool, and ya i want picture quality graphics but I dont want generic unimaginative landscape.

what the makers should do is stop frantically trying to fix all of skyrims bugs (cause thats not the problem), and send a team over to help with the oblivion project The Lands of Solstheim Vvardenfell and Mournhold - SoVvM br3 by The SoVvM Team

or create the next game oriented around morrowind again.

future - dark elves have lost everything, and I bet they are pretty ticked they have to deal with the discrimination of being Mer all on account of the Thalmor on top of that. how bout a game where the dark elves regroup to knock those annoying school girl high elves the hell out.
or
past - Play a character over the course of the War of the first counsil. witness all thee events that happened revolving around the original Nerevar/Tribunal/Heart of Lorkhan/Tiber Septim

The exploration music is taken right out of Morrowind. Seriously, its Morrowinds exploration music.