It's completely unreasonable. Oblivion was their starting point, not Morrowind, Arena or Daggerfall. They finished Oblivion and they drew up a laundry list of what they would like to do differently, what they would like to improve upon, from Oblivion, not Arena, Daggerfall or Morrowind.

Morrowind, Arena and Daggerfall do not even enter into the equation. The devs are attempting to make a better overall game than Oblivion. That is their ground zero. Adding any particular feature that may have been in a previous game does not equal a any sort of attempt to return to Morrowind.

I really don't understand what you're saying here. Perhaps you could explain this in a different way?

You make a very good point about the often un-acknowledged layers of choice, however i would make a counterpoint, that while there are many indications that skyrims social systems may offer more choice and superior open-word design to Oblivion, Oblivion had taken a step backward in this aspect from what was delivered in Morrowind.

Obviously I disagree that Skyrim should only be compared to Oblivion, hence why I included context of all of the TES series, but if we were to look at oblivion alone, assuming the hype comes to fruition it may indeed be overall more rather than less. When we look at something like Radiant Story however, we see something that is tainted with the misfortune of having Radiant in its name, which harkens back to the promise of Radiant AI, which was wholly over-hyped, and this makes me cautious.

Anyway, there is something do feel I should strongly criticize (one thing concerning a feature not exclusive to Skyrim, anyway). While people may jest about people overreacting to a lack of spellcrafting and the way people claim it, among other things, is a staple of the series, there is actually some truth to that claim. Back in 1994, when Arena was released, one of its most prized points was the fact that it had spellcrafting. Spellcrafting was, as far as I know, something very rarely, if ever, seen, before. It was a high point that some of the game's reputation was built upon and it was the snowball that started the avalanche, so to speak. That one shining aspect of customization in Arena, an otherwise RPG-lite dungeon-crawler/roguelike, was one of the earliest indications of the series' future customizable glory. To this day, there are still few games outside of Bethesda's that have attempted to allow spell-crafting. So, in a sense, it is a major, core part of the series and it is perhaps one of the most prominent examples of a beloved feature that spanned the entire series... up until now, anyway. I will be highly sad to see it go and I'd urge Bethesda to do whatever they can to make sure that fate is avoided.

I think you're worrying too much. Skyrim will be the best TES games yet.

First, thank you code2501, this is a very good read.

Second, what's wrong with you people who say "too long, didn't read it" ?! If you don't mind investing the 10 minutes to go through the points DON'T answer, for crying out loud. If you post nonsense one-liners, it only proves that you have the attention span of squirrels.

Anyway, I agree with most of the points. I only played Morrowind and Oblivion so far, but the "decrease" of sand is something that is very apparent. I'm still baffled, that birth-signs, classes and even attributes are removed.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I know that there are some hardcoe RPG-players, who do it all for the roleplay aspect of, well, playing a character they made up themselves with every stat number at it's right place. The like to "build" with the sand they are given, so to say. They want to invest a lot of time into that, too. You know, there are people who are just talented and can build beautiful "sand-castles".
However, the majority of people is not so talented. They are overstrained with too much basic sand. I'm one of them. I get tired if I have to do everything on myself in a game, monitoring every single skill is something I find boring and even exhausting at times.
That's why I like the approach Skyrim is taking: it already has beautiful prebuild sand-castles to begin with. You can just jump right in and play. And it also seems that there is still enough sand left to do your own thing, too.
But I also get the people who want to have control over every aspect of a game and especially their character - it's just something that doesn't matter to me as much as overall "feel" and "flavour" of a game.

Again, thank you for the great read!
cheers

Nope, Skyrim is improving the series and getting rid of bad features that hurt the game like the 8 attributes. Those were a mess and I'm glad we won't have to deal with them in Skyrim.

Since the days of Arena which made (at the time) ground breaking use of procedurally generated terrain, dungeons and quests to present players with the entire continent of Tamriel across which they could romp, the elder scrolls games have always been the epitome of open-world RPG design, with their sandbox features and freedom of play.

Much of this design was secondary to the original development goals for Arena, and while the approach was initially met by gamers with limited sales, the game itself became a cult classic with month on month growth in units sold.
Melee combat itself used a novel active movement approach, which had players slashing side to side with the mouse or using thrusting and blocking movements.

Arena contained a magic system that encouraged emergent game play, with spells like Wizard Lock, Passwall, Pitfall, Earthwall and Levitation, which all could be used to limit or enhance your freedom to move about in the world, making the terrain a non-static affair. In addition to this there was a “spell creation tool” that allowed players to combine up to 3 effects in one spell and modify the parameters of those effects which gave literally thousands of spell options.

Whilst game play in Arena was primarily about dungeon runs, the game also included a modest set of systems for town/city adventures, with thievery and village gossip.
The novel sandbox approach had won over many fans.



In the elder scrolls follow-up, Daggerfall, the world itself was physically smaller, though still enormous and the game systems had been refined and built upon.

Daggerfall featured 34 skills, from combat (weapon based skills and special skills like dodging, backstabbing and critical strike) to skills with magic. Movement based skills (swimming, stealth, running, jumping and climbing) and utility skills (medical, lock picking, pickpocket) conversation skills (streetwise, etiquette, mercantile). There were even a range of skills in dealing with various monster factions (Draconic, Nymph, Centaurian, Daedric) which were used to simulate language, lore and handling.
The class system had been enhanced with the feature of players designing their own class along with choosing its major/minor skill combinations.

The magic system had the spell maker that existed with Arena, but built upon this with enchantment of items and player alchemy and doubled the number of spells to 100.

A reputation and faction system was designed, and both vampirism (with vampire hunters) and lycanthropy (two forms, werewolf and wereboar) were included.
Daggerfall whilst smaller geographically, was more developed than Arena in almost every way.

The main quest story, whilst there, could effectively be ignored and the player was free to play hundreds of character concepts within the regions of Highrock and Hammerfell. From a scum of the earth rogue, who stalked the streets of the cities looking for a mark, to the classical knight that completed quests and parlayed diplomatically with the nobles, from a nefarious nosferatu, stalking the land at night with supernatural strength, to a scholarly sage, that studied arcane lore and nature alike to craft ensorcelled artefacts and dubious brews.

Both Arena and Daggerfall used 3d graphical engines that were for their time quite advanced.

Battlespire and Redguard were both non-open world games. As standalone adventures, they drew upon the lore and many of the systems used in previous TES games, but were not designed as open world games.



The next TES game to use open world design was Morrowind which had many critics, and yet many more fans.
Morrowind, set on an island off from Tamriel, maintained true to many of the systems and design principles that made Daggerfall. The game world had again shrunk in size, with a focus on creating more hands on environments rather than the heavy reliance on procedurally generated terrain. Procedural generation was still used, but development tools allowed touch-ups and more intentional design. The graphics engine itself was a step up in realism, and to this day continues to be enhanced by community members to present a visually stunning world.

The number of skills in Morrowind had been reduced down to 27, which still granted players some considerable flexibility in character concepts, however made several skills much more generic in nature. Most notably Speechcraft, Security and Athletics. Combat skills around armor/weapon types still existed, but gone were skills in backstabbing and critical strikes, becoming a sub effect of the stealth system.

The stealth system had been somewhat enhanced and while Morrowinds social/societal setting was vastly different to that of daggerfall, there were still stories and non-scripted opportunities to play the social miscreant or dubious thug.
Magic in Morrowind had some minor tweaks, enchantment, spell creation and alchemy still existed, though the system for alchemy had been expanded upon greatly. There were 139 different spell effects that could be combined and tweaked, however by this stage some spell effects such as those that created or removed walls were gone due to the new engine that was being used.

Vampirism and multiple vampire factions existed and Lycanthropy (werewolves only) was added with the bloodmoon expansion.

With Morrowind, gamers were given a modern take on the elder scrolls open-world design, with the tools to customise characters and play in a culturally unique and breathing world. Most importantly Morrowind was released with a development toolset which allowed players to tweak or completely re-design the game world and many of its systems.

Morrowind did receive criticisms of poorly scripted events and having a main quest that could be effectively completed within minutes. However most agree that the open-world design of Morrowind was solid and the scale of character concept options were largely maintained from Daggerfall.



In 2006, and after two expansions to Morrowind, the next chapter of the elder scrolls was told with Oblivion.

Oblivion again presented an improved graphical engine however the province of Cyrodiil failed to capture much of the high fantasy feel of its predecessor. Where the geography of Cyrodiil was smaller again than the landmass of Morrowind, the attempt at blending the diverse cultures of Tamriel also didn’t quite work, and most of the province felt generic.

In addition to the art style, the 3 dimensional freedoms previously exhibited in level design of Morrowind was lacking in Oblivion, primarily due to the removal of all forms of levitation. Dungeons became much more linear and “on-the-rails” in their design. Matching this design shift, quests while largely optional still, were more limited in the ways they could be completed.
Choices with character design were once again reduced with a reduction to 21 skills. Weapon and armour choices were reduced and weapon/armour skills streamlined with the long and short blade skills from Morrowind being merged into blade and spear and medium armour removed altogether.

The magic system was re-worked with only 62 spell effects, compared to the 100 effects in Arena and 139 effects in Morrowind. Enchanting was limited to items only, and spell scrolls could no longer be produced by players. Though scrolls still existed in the game, players could not reasonably role-play a scribe.
Lycanthropy was not included, and there were fewer factional conflicts that the player could engage in. Radiant AI, which was intended to provide more lifelike action from NPC’s provided little more than pathing/animation schedules, making the promise of less wooden NPC’s a hollow one.

One area where Oblivion did build upon Morrowind was with the stealth system, which had its mechanics much improved with regards to light and noise sensitivity.
Overall, even after the shivering isles expansion and several DLC, Oblivion offered less freedoms than Morrowind, and whilst popular in its own right, Oblivion received a wide range of criticisms from fans that were use to successive TES chapters expanding upon the scope of the open world RPG design.

After defining open world RPGs as a sub-genre, was Oblivion removing some of the sand from the sandbox? Or was it just the case that fans were so use to growth in scope that less of anything or even failure to enhance felt like less freedoms?



And now comes Skyrim.

Whilst unreleased, it is not reasonable to directly compare the open world or RPG features of Skyrim to the previous TES chapters. However, at this point quite a bit of detail has been confirmed around Skyrims design.

We know that the graphical engine has again been vastly improved.

We know that the land mass of Skyrim is comparable to Cyrodiil in Oblivion, but that it has been designed to “feel” larger due to obstacles of terrain.

We know that attributes, which affected various sub-attributes, have been removed. Does this make some character concepts un-buildable? Can we play a fast(speed) weakling(endurance), can we build an ugly/offensive(personality) sage(wisdom)? How do we tell the game world what our character is, will the AI know how to react to my role-played character?

We know that skills have been reduced to 18, however there are now perk trees attached to each skill. Many of the removed skills were merged but some appear to not exist at all, particularly the mobility skills. Will this affect freedom in how we interact with the world? Can we still play the character of an agile acrobat, or a healthy soldier that is use to fast-marching across the continent without rest? If there are less mobility options will this mean dungeon design is more linear again than Oblivion? Is their less choice in dealing with the world in non-violent ways?

We know that classes, either predefined or custom no longer exist in the sense of primary/secondary skill focus. The new design implies that you are what you use. Does this mean role-playing a character concept requires more intention from a player? Without a class name, and set of primary skills to remind us of the characters concept, will characters require more attention to define? Will sequential characters be doomed to becoming defined only by those skills we gravitate towards each time we start with a new character?

We know that weapon/armour choices are limited types that were present in Oblivion, however they can now be dual wield. 3rd person perspective has been polished and killing blows take control of your character for cinematic flair. Whilst demonstrations of general combat appear smoother, will the abrupt “killing blow takeovers” interrupt immersion? Will there be sufficient weapon/armour choice to make melee characters feel fresh or will each melee character just feel like a variation of the last?

We know that unarmed combat is no longer a skill, but not what this means for bar-fights or the feasibility of unarmed combat as a fighting style. Can monks and brawler character concepts still effectively be role-played, or are they no longer an option?

We know that NPC interactions are now affected by Radiant Story, which purportedly introduces much more flexibility in the manner NPCs react and interact with the player, as well as make quest designs more dynamic. Will this work, or will we get results similar to Radiant AI, which promised us a breathing world and delivered windup mannequins?

We know that magic use has been fully redesigned, with spells being wield in the casters hand like orbs, and there is some interaction between the left and right hands for some spells. We also now know that Bethesda do not expect there to be a system of spell creation in Skyrim, at least not at launch. Will there be enough variety to satisfy players with magical options to interact with the world, is it more choice or less? Does the inability of players to design spells that combine multiple effects limit the player or set them free?

We know that birth-signs are not set at the birth of the character; rather characters can switch to the sign of their choice at any point by visiting locations in the game. Is this freedom to evolve our characters or a lack of definition on whom our character really is?

We know that skills of crafting have been expanded upon. Alongside Alchemy, Enchanting makes a return to the series and artisan crafting of weapons and armour is now a skill open to players. Are we making items only for our own use or can we establish a business? Can we affect the world’s economy by producing items as well as loot-[censored]?

We know that Relationships with NPC’s are intended to be more evolved and meaningful, with the design of companions and romantic relationships. Will this be a more mature type of interaction than mannequins on auto-follow, will our characters be able to interact physically in more ways than simply taking a sword to them?

We know there are child npc’s populating the world. Being an often asked for feature, will this new feature make the world feel more real, or will arguably necessary limitations on player interaction with them break immersion or make negatively affect the aspect of choice that open-world design heavily draws upon?

We know that the main story-quest requires your character to be a “Dragon-born”. Is this a carrot, a stick or a rail that we cannot remove ourselves from? Will we constantly be called “Dovakhiin” by NPC’s who expect us to save their world, or will we be able to re-play the game as an anonymous beggar, or travelling merchant for whom the dragon attacks are nothing more than dangerous disruptions to their trade routes?



From my current perspective, Skyrim has some obvious improvements along the lines of open-world RPG design, there are some design choices that may or may not work out, and then there are some obvious gaps where the design of Skyrim will reduce choice and openness of play.


At this point, months from release, there is a fair amount we know about Skyrim, and there is even more that we do not know. Will the game be a more open and free RPG than Oblivion, or Morrowind, or Daggerfall for that matter, or will it feel like a more restrictive, smaller and less flexible world to role-play in? Until release we will not really know. What are your thoughts?

Sure they have "dumbed it down" a bit since originals, but really most of the stuff they have taken out or merged was unnecessary, and some of it just limitation from current hardware. I know its ages away, but for the next elder scrolls hopefully they will just use a modified skyrim engine, not worry about all the tech and graphics and just make a more diverse complicated game.

I don't think the question was "Is skyrim svck compared to earlier TES?".
Rather my post was setting context for discusion on TES as an series of open-world RPG's, and the extent to how the design has changed over the series. At the end I talked about what we know of design in Skyrim in context of open-world RPG's.

Really of all the questions I raised, you answered none of them.

To be fair Skyrim is looking to be very sandboxy(?).

We can help/mess with a towns trade export which causes price changes on items. One thing I'm definitely trying with this is I'm going to find a mining town, kill all the workers of a mine, take all the ore for myself, make weapons/armour and then sell them to the town at an increased price because they can no longer mine metal I can't wait to see the amount of things that can be done with this.

Choice seems to be more important now. A lot of the previews show instances where there are quite a few choices around a situation, the Whiterun guard for example, could be bribed, intimidated or killed (maybe even more options would be available with high speechcraft/perks?) to gain access to the city.

Taverns can be used to have brawls or get NPCs pissed. In one preview a player got the bard in the tavern to play a song so that the NPCs would sing along and drink more, eventually getting drunk to the point they were passing out, letting the player easily pickpocket them.

New NPC A.I. looks promising, they now react based more on their relationship with you. One good example Todd gave was barging into an NPCs house at night who doesn't know you will get you arrested, but doing it to someone who you have a good relationship with might instead offer you to stay for the night and help yourself to their food.

Radiant Story also takes advantage of this. One example was a generated quest where someone you have annoyed who wants to get back at you has kidnapped an NPC you have a good relationship with to lure you into a trap. NPCs might also tag along with you if you become friendly enough with them, I'm even going to play an assassin character who charms people into liking him, then takes them out into the wilderness, kills them and takes their stuff so that the town will not know who is doing the killing. Other interesting things include dropping valuable items on the floor and seeing how they react, some might fight over it, some may even try and sell it back to you, or someone who likes you will pick it up and give it back. Also NPCs who dislike you might challenge you to a duel in the streets.

So yeah it's looking pretty promising on the sandbox side of things.

Here's my answer

The series has evolved since Arena, Daggerfell went another step further, then Morrowind came out.

Morrowind had I think 27 skills instead of Daggerfell's 34 skills, now some people would say dumbing down, I would say they are getting rid of stuff that doesn't make sense gameplay wise and heading in that direction. Morrowind was a good game but it's combat was horrible I mean dice roll, really.

Next we had Oblivion and the series improved. Oblivion had 21 skills in comparasion to Morrowind's 27 but some skills were combined like Long Blade and Short Blade into just Blade, Medium armor got cut but some of it went to light armor. Oblivion's combat was a huge improvement over what the series has done so far but Oblivion had problems big ones. Level scaling was a mess, item scaling was horrible, Attributes interfered too much with Leveling, I could go on and on. Then Shivering Isles came out and showed us that you could improve the world, although it still kept a lot of the things that troubled Oblivion. To this day Oblivion is still my all time favorite game and I tend to ignore the mess that Oblivion has by not stepping in it. I say [censored] the attributes and go my own path. If my character only has 70-80 in strength by level 25 then so be it.

Next Skyrim comes out and a huge jump from what Oblivion did. The combat is further improved, we now have duelwielding, and we have a left hand and a right hand, no longer are we restricted to typical attack button, block button and spell button. We then went down from 21 skills to 18 but man the changes have been great. Enchanting is back, Blade and Blunt have been combined and catagorized, One Handed and Two Handed. Mysticism is gone but oh well no big deal. The biggest change is the leveling no longer do we have level depended attributes, they are now independent of the leveling process. Can't forget about Perks that's the other thing, perks now catagorize the skills into a skill tree where every skill has a certain amount of perks and every level you get a perk. The other new thing is Dragonshouts which are super powered up Racial Powers that you can spam and the wait a certain amount of time like 60 seconds. I could go on and on about Skyrim but I digress you probably know enough about Skyrim and what's good and bad about it.

I read everything, and I must say you have summed the TES series evolution up EXTREMELY well.

In my opinion TES has been declining as an RPG since Oblivion. It has become more "on rails" in every aspect, except maybe combat (even so, there were far less weapon types to choose from and less unique weapons).
Oblivion was an action game with RPG elements catering to the casual crowd (which is also mostly console based).
Skyrim seems to have improved on many superficial elements, such as animation, models, textures, draw distances, etc. But it seems to have narrowed down the open endedness of many TES features. Many skills were removed, birthsigns, spears, crossbows, throwing weapons, hand-to-hand, attributes, jumping, levitation, etc. It is obvious by the way that it is being marketed that it is not for the TES fanatics.

It won't be the Morrowind/Daggerfall reincarnation that most long time fans want. It won't even be a good RPG, but it will probably be a great action game and will sell millions.

The real TES is dead.
Heres to hoping that a different more talented studio, with leaders who actually understand what made TES so brilliant, will create a worthy successor.

In the elder scrolls follow-up, Daggerfall, the world itself was physically smaller...

What do you think of the points made about Radiant Story or the depths of social interaction that might be present in Skyrim? If Skyrim could capture the feeling of being imersed in a living world, with lifelike and diverse NPC's and interactions would you consider it even something of a return to the soul of Morrowind or Daggerfall?

I read everything, and I must say you have summed the TES series evolution up EXTREMELY well.

In my opinion TES has been declining as an RPG since Oblivion. It has become more "on rails" in every aspect, except maybe combat (even so, there were far less weapon types to choose from and less unique weapons).
Oblivion was an action game with RPG elements catering to the casual crowd (which is also mostly console based).
Skyrim seems to have improved on many superficial elements, such as animation, models, textures, draw distances, etc. But it seems to have narrowed down the open endedness of many TES features. Many skills were removed, birthsigns, spears, crossbows, throwing weapons, hand-to-hand, attributes, jumping, levitation, etc. It is obvious by the way that it is being marketed that it is not for the TES fanatics.

It won't be the Morrowind/Daggerfall reincarnation that most long time fans want. It won't even be a good RPG, but it will probably be a great action game and will sell millions.

The real TES is dead.
Heres to hoping that a different more talented studio, with leaders who actually understand what made TES so brilliant, will create a worthy successor.

What do you think of the points made about Radiant Story or the depths of social interaction that might be present in Skyrim? If Skyrim could capture the feeling of being imersed in a living world, with lifelike and diverse NPC's and interactions would you consider it even something of a return to the soul of Morrowind or Daggerfall?

No.

Pardon my lack of comprehension, but it sounds like you saying skyrim has different systems to Oblivion, some of which you see as better?

Ok, but to pick up on some of the things you mentioned;
Do you think the combat changes will enhance the open-world roleplaying? Yes, I will agree that we will lose some options but the game is still going to be great
How does reducing the number of attributes and skills affect your ability to play varied character types? It doesn't I can still Roleplay a character however I want whether they are a mage, Warrior, Thief or a hybrid character, etc.
Does it improve the sand-box design of the game to have your character less defined at the start of the game? No but we are better off at end game because our builds are different and not the same.
What is it about the mechanic of picking perks that makes it superior to the abilties that were unlocked through skill progression? I wouldn't say it's superior, just another type of system. I will say that the perks allow us to add a huge amount of customizable options to our characters.
What makes removing attributes like strength and speed in favor of only 3 a better choice for an open-world RPG, rather than allowing the player to chose where to place attribute points as was previously the case with TES games like Daggerfall? I don't know if sliming down all the attributes was the best option but I have no problem with the 3 that we currently have. The problem in the previous games with Attributes is that they interfered too much with leveling, I liked how Fallout 3 did Attributes. You selected them at the beginning, made a couple of changes if you wanted your character to have more Strength, intelligence, agility, etc, and then went and played the game. Attributes didn't interfere with leveling but were a base system that determined how good you were at certain things and what you could do. I would've loved for a Fallout 3 type attribute system in Skyrim but sadly they didn't go down that route. It's not bad though I'm glad Skyrim's attributes don't interfere with leveling but I would like to know what all 3 effects of the attributes are. We know what Health is, Magicka and Stamina but what are their full effects that's something that I'm waiting on.

I don't wholly disagree with your view, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts on these design changes and why you think its an improvement for an open-world RPG.

Took a while for someone to pick up on this. Nice job.