wow, that was well described. I always felt like playing an early sequel to oblivion when playing fallout 3, but not in a bad way. More like "hey, thats how you should handle leveling.
Indeed Leveling will good or even better than in Fallout 3.

Michael Kirkbride, a contractor at Bethesda, and the guy behind all the cool lore, called Skyrim "a return to form that is both the best of Morrowind and the best of Oblivion." So thats what I voted for.

There was a video (i think it was the BGS tour?) where you could see the main menu or something like that where that dragon appeared.
When going to elderscolls.com you saw it as a loading icon...
But i could be wrong and it just indicates "Elder Scrolls" and has nothing directly to do with Morrowind...

I know I'm in the minority here preferring Oblivion to Morrowind, but your poll kind of assumes I agree with you opinions of the games. I don't want to get into a debate about the merits of both games, but I personally would like to choose option 2 in your poll as I think Skyrim is going to be set in a less fantastical world than Morrowind and actually be more like Oblivion. But your poll adds on your own opinion about Oblivion so at the moment I have voted something else.

I don't think the music is Morrowind as much as it is Elder Scrolls. You see, the most recent three games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) all share the same sort of underlying theme. I also believe that Todd Howard mentioned this during the GI Podcast.

You′re right, i changed it a bit.

Morrowind is not the roots of the series, byt yes, Skyrim looks like blend of good things from Morrowind and Oblivion.

Good find! The only question now is, what he means with "best".
But i think it′s not hard to figure out what′s the quality stuff of both games...

I think in most cases, we can safely generalise on which is which. There'll always be exceptions, but the vast majority of people would, for example, agree that Oblivion's character animation and combat are superior to Morrowind's. And considering the source in this case (Michael Kirkbride), I'm willing to accept that he knows better than I do what constitutes "good" or "bad" lore, as implemented in an Elder Scrolls game. Although I'd very likely agree with him in any case.

Apart from the Oblivion [censored] cryers, and Morrowind cryers...

I would say:
1) Oblivion was the epicless game of the series,
2) Morrowind was the step in the wrong direction...having some back tracking, its right and wrong. Technology limtation made them to have to reduce scope as visual where taking more importance than tale and gameplay, which is more and more true as years passes (unfortunatly). Had they continued Daggerfallesque setting Bethesda would have floudered.
But this is starting to change, especialy if Crysis new engine is able to handle the terrain they are boasting. Then i would absolutely love to see tamriel gradually building itself into a whole continent again like Arena. Simulators engines like DCS also covers more space than what Bethesda can shake a stick at, and they are getting better and better visualy, while being ingame and not photoshops layers like Hawks FSX, Microsoft flight sim and etc
3) Oblivion had many problems all due to crappy design, they centered around maximum action minimum RPG. And it gave what it gave. Sucess is due to console having a unfullfiled demand for true sandbox.
4) That being sayd, staying on TES ground only, they seem to have understood what strenght Morrowind has and Strenght Oblivion had and are combining them both. Even if it seems we will be threated like tards again.(unkilable NPC, no way to fail mission and the like, take my hand and lead me to the right place features like.)
5) They also are bringing Fallout principles that where succefull (i didn t like FO3 but thats my problem)

In the end they are throwing FO3, Morrowind, Oblivion in the mixer....lets wait and see what taste it will have.
I have mixed feeling, as i see Diablo, MMO features creeping in for the sake of sells.

Morrowind ripe:
Uncomon settings
Interesting tale (i hope)
Epicness

Oblivion ripe:
Combat system

FO3 ripe:
You tell me cause i don t know

MMO, Diablo ripe:
Perks skill tree and the like.

I don't understand why some things that have been in both Morrowind and Oblivion now get treated as if they're typical Morrowind trademarks. I mean, the dragon symbol was in both games, but most of all: The main theme is not any more a slight variation of Morrowind's theme than it is of Oblivion's theme.

Morrowind introduced some things to the canon and the world of TES, just like Redguard did and just like Oblivion did. These things will most likely reappear in each new game because when they were created, they were created not simply for that ONE game, but for the series. From Redguard on, they knew what they were doing in regards to lore, and they actively tried to make the series recognizable with things like the dragon symbol, birthsigns, the opening theme, the ten different playable races, the Blades as one of the driving forces in each main quest and so on and so forth.

It really turns my stomach to have such a franchise as COD compared to Bethesda's games. Don't do that. I'm not voting until that is rescinded.

I just want to say, those two don't mean Morrowind, silly. Those two mean Elder Scrolls. If you listen to the theme's for all three games they are the same riff. Its the theme for the series. Like the Mario theme for the... well, Mario series. The drums are part of the theme as well. If they get around to making an Elder Scrolls VI, it will have the same melody too.

This.

Skyrim will not be like MW or OB in almost any way, the uniqueness is something that does not make it more like Morrowind, it makes it more unique. The music is the same because it is the same composer with no imagination. Skyrim and MW cannot really be compared in any way, the things that even the slightly resembles MW in Skyrim are all things that are not MW specific. Propheties is not something MW is not unique in and all the other stuff as well. I voted, Skyrim will be Skyrim, because that is true.

So far, I'm seeing a number of small graphical and thematic "acknowledgements" to MW, but it looks like a lot, if not the majority, of gameplay will be derived from Oblivion and FO3.

As for "better", I consider that a very awkward way to put it, since OB intentionally broadened the TES fanbase with an influx of combat-oriented (or other non-RPG traditionalist) players, creating two seperate fan "groups" with only a "fair" amount of overlap. What works for one may not work for the other, so "better" is a two-sided issue. If Bethesda somehow manages to walk the top of that fence between them and satisfy BOTH parties, THEN it's clearly "better".

Regarding Fearless Hero's comment about OB's combat being "clearly" the better of the two games, I feel that MW and OB were each "half an answer". MW was a better system for "resolving encounters" in a RPG environment, because it relied heavily on the character's stats, rather than your own. The animations were awful, although it felt more "direct" to me than OB's "delayed" actions and animations. OB was a better "action-oriented" combat system, both because of its better animations and its heavy reliance on player skills and reflexes, but the game penalized characters for "playing to their strengths" and rewarded using your Minor skills more than your major ones; the lack of variety and the "auto" perks made most of the character diversity irrelevant from a RP viewpoint (the combat perks for the different weapons all did the same thing). I'm really hoping that the devs can produce a "hybrid" combat system that is strongly affected by character skills, but is still "exciting" for combat-oriented players.

Until there's more "hard" info on Skyrim, I'm not willing to call it "better", "worse", or even "different", but my suspicion is that Bethesda will try a bunch of new things, along with a number of OB elements and a few minor "tidbits" to appease the more rabid MW extremists.

ok is anyone else confused by the "the theme is like morrowinds" ??

did any of you actually play oblivion??? it also had that theme!

I think alot of what we been told is PR. There's does seem to be few things that they talk about that are pointed towards morrowind fans and if all they say about game is true then game will be the best TES ever.

In the end we will get something like a good looking Fallout/Oblivion's love child, that spent alot of time grandma & grampa Morrowind's house, hearing about how great it was back in the day........ "Fast travel?!? back in our day, we had to walk 3 miles up a hill, next to a lava flow, just to buy some bloat"..... "levitation! hell that was legal in my day, boy did we some good times levitating about"...... "Exploits you ask? yeah exploits were great until those self-righteous glass house stone throwing nay sayers with no self control got thier way."

In the latest trailer you can see the player running with wild shaking camera (even if it isn′t ingame, but it′s said that you can sprint)
You can see your hands in first person doing special moves stabbing someone in combat. Needless to mention the fight against the Dragon.
Yeah there may be many other games where you can do the same, but its my own personal feeling which it reminds me most of, and that is somehow COD. So i wont rescind that, but i added a reason why i feel about it that way..
But it′s not bad for me. I love that dynamic stuff. If the fights against Dragons are like in the trailer, i′ll just love it.

The problem I have is with your acquainting of Action with visuals. To me Action is a game play mechanic that ties your abilities to that of your character and in TES this is a secondary layer on top your character's abilities which makes it an Action/RPG hybrid.

COD on the other hand is pure Action because there is no character ability, it's all you. I understand why you made the comparison I just don't like it and fortunately for me, voting in every poll is not something I feel I have to do so I'll just shut up now and move on.

Except that in Skyrim the player knows all about that in advance.

I think that Skyrim will have some good parts from Morrowind and Oblivion, but also some of its own. I doubt I can not be reminded of other TES games when playing a TES game. Even in Oblivion, there were rumours about cliffracers and Dunmer saying "muthsera" that reminded me of Morrowind. The lore of the series itself will remind me of previous games, unless it has changed incredibly over 200 years.

Did anyone watch the http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/01/14/the-sounds-of-skyrim.aspx Video number 4. We're not even 1 minute in (almost, at 0:58) when Lampert says "The Elder Scrolls theme ... that first premiered in Morrowind." It is the Morrowind theme. They intentionally used it again.

Nothing you said, makes any sense. <-- That especially doesn't, make any sense. Maybe you should think about, if it makes any sense, before you put commas, in random places.

I think Skyrim will be its own game, not bound by the differences between Morrowind and Oblivion, but rather by the similarities between the two.

Yeah that REALLY svcked hard.