It Wasn't just that morrowind filled in some gaps, you learn about dwemer history (While in Oblivion i learned NADA about Aylieds), and the entire MQ was built around the lore. In Oblivion i saw none of that, nearly zero lore building aspects except for certain key points in side quests.



HOW could you complain about Morrowinds padding during later section of the Main Quests and rate Oblivion as the top story for fun/gameplay wise when the entire MQ for oblivion was padded, with heaps of Oblivion gates. Even during the fourth and fifth trials in the Morrowind MQ (Hortator and Neravarine) the quests still felt different. after my third Oblivion gate i restarted the entire game and didn't touch the MQ for months.



one thing, have you seen Morrowind 2011? the BEST mod compilation across every game ever made, i looks sooo good

Your whole post is amusing, but that little bit right there gets the prize for most ludicrous falsehood in the forums. Honestly

Oblivion suffered from a case of very poor integration of it's lore books with quest lines. Morrowind gave the pc several direct opportunites to read, while Oblivion failed to imply there was reading to do. Still, Liminal Bridges and other works do a lot for explaining things. There's also the Remanada, (Sancre Tor is a womb!) and other works which shed light on Cyrodiil's weirder historical figures. Not to mention the Knights of the Nine DLC, which was superb simply for giving us all that stuff about Pelinal.


Three oblivion gates aren't much padding compared to having to trek all across morrowind for the fourth and fifth trials. It was a pain in my ass to do and made simply killing vivec a lot more tempting. I had fun going through the occassional oblivion gate so long as I didn't do too many in a row. I had fun plaything through the Kvatch, Bruma, and Great Gates. I did not have fun getting four tribes to name me nerevarine and three houses to name me hortator. That was boring and unenjoyable. Now, if you enjoyed those parts of the Morrowind MQ and and didn't enjoy oblivion gates at all, well then we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.


I haven't bothered with Morrowind and Oblivion for about a year now. Daggerfall all the way.

I love Remanada (see my signature). Have you read the Battle of Sancre-Tor and Rislav the Righteous, as well? Those two are also among my favorites. Anything on the Ayleids is also pretty nice.

Yeah, both Rislav the Righteous and the Battle of Sancre-tor are good books.

I also highly cherish my copy of Report: Disaster at Ionith, Immortal Blood, The Doors of Oblivion, and the entire Beggar/Thief/King/Prince series. Then there's The Legendary Sancre-Tor, Daughter of the Niben, Cleansing of the Fane, Magic From the Sky, The Last King of the Ayleids, The Argonian Account Volumes 1-4, the Entire Song of Pelinal series, the Adabal-a, Ahzirr Traajijazeri, History of the Fighter's Guild, The Refugees, The Warp in the West, etc. I highly beg to differ to the person that slanders my Cyrodiilic collection.

No. Just...no.

Firstly, if you're going to post a topic like this, at least explain your point. Otherwise you're just setting up an argument between the hoards of rabid fans on these forums.

Secondly, I'm going to explain why I believe Morrowind is better than Oblivion (even though nobody is going to read through this junk). Firstly, the world and the atmosphere. I always felt that Morrowind was a more enjoyable world to explore and learn about, as opposed to Oblivion. Morrowind was full of mystery and wonder. I still haven't found everything in Morrowind, where as I feel that I've found everything, and done everything in Oblivion. To add onto that, Oblivion (for the most part) wasn't that much fun to explore. Sure, the dungeon diving was fun, but getting to the dungeon was boring. Adding to the whole "world" thing, Morrowind as a world felt unique and it was fun to learn about. I still love reading books, and even reading the NPC dialogue in Morrowind. I love learning about the world. Oblivion's world was boring.

Also, combat. I've gone back and played Morrowind as a combat-oriented character for the first time...well, ever, recently. The combat isn't as bad as some people would have you believe. Things typically die in a few hits, and the stronger characters, while they may have the ability to kill me in about five hits (even through my Dwemer armour) still go down relatively quickly. Along with that, the whole 'dice-roll' mechanic works fine. As long as you have a decent skill in the weapon you're using, the combat works fine. Now, onto Oblivion's combat. Was it an improvement over Morrowind's? Visually, yes it was. No longer did your sword fly through enemies. However, this created the problem of enemies taking forever to die. I'd much rather a combat system where I hit less, for greater damage, than a system where I just keep spamming the trigger.

Leveling was better in Morrowind, because lol at OB's level scaling.

The Main Quest was better in Morrowind. Seemed far more epic, and better paced to me. It began slowly, but it got more and more urgent as the questline moved along, which is what made it so interesting. it wasn't until the very end that things hit the level of urgency that Oblivion always had, and I like that. Oblivion, no the other hand, began quick and ended quick. It was kind of monotonous. Morrowind's MQ was more interesting, too. There was a lot more mystery, intrigue and shades of grey, rather than Oblivion's straightforward MQ.

Factions. Morrowind had more, but Oblivion's were written better and had more interesting questlines. Not exactly a point in the favor of either, just something to take note of. Oblivion's may have been more engaging, but Morrowind had much more variety.

Morrowind wins, I think.

Edit: Knights of the Nine is [censored] amazing, though. Holy crap, I love that questline and the lore behind it. Ten thumbs up. It's about on-par with Morrowind's Main Quest, in my opinion.

Kvatch, Bruma, and ?Imperial city? were the only ones i actually did when i picked up the game. However, the MQ implied you had to do all the other main city ones, Skingrad, Leyawinn and whatnot. After doing the Kvatch one, then told to get reinforcements from other main cities. So i went to Leyawinn and did that, then to Anvil, and was like, i gotta do this for every city? and now that i started the main quest Oblivion Gates spawn in the middle of the wilderness too? well , RESTART. The amount of oblivion gates that opened (sure they were optional, but the whole game implied that you HAD to do them) is a far worse padding than what Morrowind ever did.

The only part of the Hortator quests which is terrible is the Telvanni, and only because they are all over the place. Hlaalu were either inside Vivec, or just around it, Redoran were ALL inside the big shell in Ald'Ruhn. With morrowinds fast travel (ie. boating it around telvanni, silt striders to ald'ruhn, whatever to Vivec) made it last no more than a half-hour per faction (maybe an hour for telvanni, the stupid tower mages)

Number one advantage of being the Telvanni Archmagister. All you need to do is rock up into Aryon's tower and have him give you the robe. As for the other houses, that's pretty much spot-on. The Hlaalu were all around the Ascadian Isles, and Redoran were all under Skar. The Ashlander trials, on the other hand, are an absolute chore. The Ahemmusa and Zainab trials really svcked, although the Erabenimsun trial isn't too bad. Escort quests svck.

The argument of padding in Oblivion is interesting, and I can see merit for both sides. On one hand, you were only actually required to close three Oblivion gates, which is rather fun if they're spaced out enough. on the other hand, it was implied that you would have to close the other seven gates, and they did have a tendency to pop up in the most inconvenient spots in the countryside, svcking away twenty minutes of your life each time. It was even worse if you got one of the large Sigil Keeps from the Tower Portal.

I'd argue that Morrowind did have slightly more padding the Oblivion, but I always felt obligated to close every Oblivion Gate I saw, which just made the Oblivion Main Quest tedious.

The only quest for the fourth trial (camps) that i found tedious was the Zainab. with the Telvanni bride. but luckily i play on PC and used console commands (open console, click on her, setspeed 300, setathletics 300, walk from Vos and done before you know it) but it was still a unique quest.

Erabenimsum was easy. Ahemussa wasn't bad, kill everything.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts about Morrowind vs. Oblivion.

Here's how I rate each game on a scale of 1-10.

Story line:
Morrowind: 8
Oblivion: 6

I didn't really like the story line in Oblivion. It just seemed too...I don't know. It didn't appeal to me.

Gamplay: Combat
Morrowind: 3
Oblivion: 7

Morrowind's Combat was horrid, however Oblivion's could use improvement.

Gameplay: Quests
Morrowind: 7
Oblivion: 6

Oblivion would have gotten a lower rating if it hadn't had the exciting and fun quests like "Whodunit?" due to the quest marker and how easy they where. Morrowind's quests made you explore and use your brain since they didn't show you where everything was. I really liked that about the game.

Items:
Morrowind: 9
Oblivion: 7

The cut out a lot of artifacts that I liked in Oblivion. Morrowind also had armors that varied with Cultures.

World:
Morrowind: 10
Oblivion 7

I loved the cultural differences in Morrowind that weren't present in Oblivion. In lore there are huge differences between the Colovians, Nibenese, and other sub cultures of Cyrodiil. However in Oblivion none of this was evident and everyone seemed to act like they were all neighbors in a way; there was no cultural difference between the different regions.

Overall:
Morrowind: 9
Oblivion:8

Both are great games and I still play both of them. However I still feel that Morrowind just had something that Oblivion didn't.

In my opinion...

Things Morrowind did better than Oblivion:

• City design
  
• Dungeon design
  
• Player freedom / sense of exploration and discovery
  
• Levelling system
  
• Stats / all the RPG stuff
  
• Character customization in terms of item variety
  
• Storyline
  
• Side-quests / factions
  
• Lore / sense of culture
  
• Dialogue
  
• HUD (only because the compass markers in Oblivion were lame)
  
• Fast-travelling

Things Oblivion did better than Morrowind:

• Wilderness design
  
• Combat
  
• Character creation
  
• AI / NPC behaviour
  
• Graphics
  
• Soundtrack
  
• Inventory (pretty bad, but Morrowind's was worse in my opinion)

As said in my first post, Morrowind is the better vanilla game overall in my opinion, though it's not as one sided as people make it out to be. Oblivion definitely improved the series in some important areas.

When mods are taken into consideration, it's a lot harder for me to separate the two.

Sorry, but this is absurd. The Oblivion MQ consisted almost exclusively of the same scheme of closing Oblivion gates over and over and over again. The individual quests in which you actually did something else are negligible. Plus you didn't even get to make your own decision as to how to do things - you were simply to work your way through Martin's laundry list, which he didn't even make you privy to...he simply revealed it one after the other. What Oblivion did was railroading of the worst kind.

The MQ in Morrowind was not only more epic in you actually being the main character instead of a lackey, it was BY FAR more diverse than that of Oblivion.

I enjoy both games, for their differences. I enjoy Morrowind more, because there are so many mods that make the experience far different every time.

I know it is a great game because when I fire it up, I have absolutely no idea how many hours, days, weeks, months, or years I put into the game, because I live it, as the immersive game is was made to be.

For some folks, it's the destination. For others, it's the journey.

Congratulations, you have succeeded in internet 101: presenting opinion as fact! And no, there isn't a defining factor that is the end-all. It's all just opinions.

Daggerfall > Oblivion > Morrowind