I don't care what anyone says (that's not entirely true), Morrowind is the most superior of the ES games. Don't get me wrong, it has problems and I do still love Skyrim (for some reason). However, I always get completely immersed in Morrowind, more so than the others. And personally, that's what I'm looking for in these games.

I like this, very comprehensive. I'm surprised Vanilla Morrowind's winning though, as much I as love it and as grossly underrated as I think it is, it was great for it's time but it can't compete against skyrim unmodded today

I am still really suprised at vivec, and also yes i agree with Spunk and Sparkle morrowind plus five mods is better than skyrim but morrowind vanilla is not.

Wow that's pretty overwhelming with Vivec. Though it probably is *one* of my favourites too. What I'm surprised at is how far the Imperial CIty came, that place was drab and a nightmare to get around in. (also laggy)

You could say the same thing about Vivec you know.

Agreed.

Best Vanilla Game: Skyrim. As much as I love Morrowind it has way to many problems with its map, combat, economy, NPC directions, and just about everything else, still playble, just not as good as Skyrim vanilla though.

Best Thieves Guild: Skyrim, with Morrowind pulling a close 1.25. Oblivion always ranks last in my opinion becuase of the "white-knight" mentality every guild had. Skyrim's just edges out above Morrowind's becuase it has an actual plot through it, and not thrown in at the last moment like Morrowind's. Oblivion's "we must steal from the rich, give to the poor, and stop corruption" Robin Hood BS was so lame.

Best Fighters Guild. Same as above, Oblivion is worst becuase of white-knight BS, and Skyrim's barely edges out Morrowinds becuase of the plot focus.

Best Mages Guild. Same as above.

Best DB: Again, same as above, with the expction that Oblivion's DB was by far the most plot-hole filled BS ever written, next to Skyrim's thieves guild.

Best Daedric quests: Skyrim easily becuase of the way most of them were interweaved with the rest of the world, insted all of them being "find shrine, give offering, do quest, return for reward"

Best MQ: Morrowind, Dagoth Ur was just such a fun villian.

Best DLC/expansions: I would actually tie Morrowind and Skyrim, if we include Dragonborn. Both Bloodmoon and Tribunal were crazy short, with most quests being able to be completed in just a few mintues each. Skyrim's DLC offer far longer questlines, but Morrowind has nostalga on its side.

Best WW/VP: Skyrim, with Dawnguard. Morrowind's Vamires and werewolves had to many negative side effects, aka 99% of the people in the game outright refusing to talk to you, to make them fun.

Interesting take form above.

What kind of plot holes are in the Ob DB? Not doubting you or anything, but can you expand on that?

My main problem with oblivion is that the guilds made no sense at all.

Mages guild: Why was necromancy, something that had been legal and tolerated for ages, in everywhere but Morrowind, suddenly banned by the new Arch-Mage? did necromancers kill his parents? did he know Mannimacro was coming back? Did a Necromancer take a wizz in his coffee? That question is probably the single most important one in the entire mages guild questline, and it is never answered, or given any explination beyond "he just did".

If Necromancy had never been banned, then Mannimarco would have never had the ability to recruit all of the now banned Necromancers into his army, and thus had an army he could have possibly used to take over Cyrodiil. Mannimarco's entire plan, and thus the entire questline, rests on an action that really has zero explination within the game world beyond "he just did ban it". The only convieable reason I can see to ban necromancy is to create a cliche "good mages trumiph over evil necromancers" storyline. Which is stupid, becuase Necromancy isn't some generic evil thing in Elder Scrolls.

Not to mention Mannimarco goes down in like 3 hits, this is guy who became a GOD, this guy who goes down in 3 hits? not even ancanno was that weak.


Dark Brotherhood: This questline just start off totally wrong. First off, you get contacted after killing an innocent person. When I killed the person I did to start the questline, it was because I wanted to rob them, now, I get the point they were trying to make that the DB contacts random murders, but the way it was implimented in-game requires way to many assumptions to work as it does. As it is presented in-game the DB contact just about everyone who kills a "innocent" person ever, which includes any sort of robbery gone bad. Which given that the elder scrolls is set in a mid-evil ages like era, things like that probably happen a lot, so they must be contacting TONS of people, which makes them not really that secrative, or having high standers, something the DB always should have.

Secondly, the optional objectives have no real purpose within the context of the mission. Dropping the moose on the dudes head to make it not look "suspisious" becuase his realtive wanted to move into his house, without people beliving that he had his uncle killed, could have easily been achived by simply staging the place as if it was a house robbery gone wrong. As for the quest WHODONEIT, why does it matter that I kill them apart, no one is going to beleft alive to know, which further makes doing it pointless as the DB has no way of knowing if you told the truth about it or not. Comparitivly, the optional objectives in the DB in Skyrim make sense. Hiding the gourmet's body makes it take longer for them to find and identify who he is, thus enabling you to pass your disguse off better, killing commander Maro's son in-town lets the fake conspriacy be found out about earlier letting your plans advance faster. Oblivion's optonal objectives frankly made no sense as anything but silly gags the developers put in to the make quests slightly more difficult, the offered nothing to the story behind the murders, nor the overall story of the questline.

And while on the subject of story, the entire story of Oblivion's DB was broken, like mad.
-We are told that the DB has bases in every major city in Cyrodiil
-We are told that the DB belives there is a traitor in the Cheydenhal base
-The traitor, as we later find out, lives in Anvil
-The traitor never once makes an appearance in the Chyedenhall base
do you see the problem with that? Why is it that the DB leadrship belives that there is a traitor in the Cheydenhall sanctuary when the dude has never been there, in fact, lives in Anvil, and the DB has a base in Anvil? Frankly, the only connection between the tratior and the Chyedenhall base is that the Cheydenhall base is the only one that the devlopers bothered to put in the game. Everything about the reasoning behind the purge of the Cheydenhall base makes no sense given the known information about the DB.

Furthermore, after the purge, there is zero reason for anyone to belive the traitor still lives, and none of the dead drop quests give any hint to that you migh be killing the wrong people. Then, out of nowhere, Lucian comes at you and claims you have been killing the wrong people. Where was the build up, where was the hints, where was the even slightestest indicaton that this would happen? there was none. Everything that happened after the purge really had zero build-up, or any logical reason to it. So the purge itself really makes no sense, we are given zero indication that the traitor might have lived, then we get flored with somne revalation that the tratior is still alive, despite there being zero previous evdience/indication for it, and then what we learn about the traitor makes the entire reasoning behind the purge seem nonexistant.

The entire DB questline feels like something Bethesda rammed in at the last second becuase they realized they needed to give the guild a reason to exist beyond "its here so you can kill people as part of quests". Its full of logical gaps, terrible assumptions, and unexplained, and frankly unexplainable, reasoning.


The Thieves Guild: My entire problem with the thieves guild can be summarized as follows "since when was the thieves guild robin hood?" the answer? never. Everything about the "we have to help the poor" was so very un-thieves guild like that it was frankly silly it was ever concieved. The thieves guild wouldn't use the poor for information, becuase the poor arent allowed in most places, places that people actually discuss private information in. A thieves guild would do something like was done in Skyrim, use rich, influental people, who have acess to this kinda information. the entire "help the poor" people deal was nonsense that was obviously created to mimic the overly used, and terrible cliche, "robin hood" fantasy. Which the Theives Guild is not.

On top of that, everything about the ending of the thieves guild had very little to do with the guild itself, it was all about helping the Grey Fox get HIS life back, not helping the guild as a whole. All the stealing, and the framing of the guard Lex, was to fuffil the Grey Fox's own personal desires, and petty revenge plans. The Oblivion thieves guild wasnt about the guild, it was about being the Grey Fox's personal whipping boy.


Fighter's guild: the problem I have with them, is that they lack depth in thier motives, everything that the fighters guild does is becuase of justise, or because its the "right" thing to do. they act like the most holy of holy paladins. they are white-knights defined, and it makes them lack any sort of character or personality. The Morrowind and Skyrim Fighters guilds were corrupt, consulted with Daedra, and/or were Werewolves. they had some sort of motive beyond simple justice, thier actions eixsted out of something more then some altruisting need to do the right things, and becuase of it, they actually had personality.

Oblivion's fighters guild was simply dull, and very one deminsonal, it falls into the same trap the Oblivion Mages Guild does in that its some hyper-cliche black/white morlaity faction where al lthe good guy are mery sue good, whose only real flaw is that they are too good, and all the badguys are just total dikes.

The same applies to the blades in Oblivion, but thats another story entierly.

I have no idea why Oblivion gets so much hate. I know Morrowind was more free and varied...but Oblivion was most advanced in series in many ways, for sure more advanced than Skyrim. I find it awesome that in Oblivion NPC's had simulated conversations between each other (yea sometimes sounded ridiculous .. so what??) that was making world so much more alive. In Skyrim it's gone, replaced with few scripted quest stuff that keeps on repeating. In Oblivion NPC's had different face expressions depending on how much they like you...again gone in skyrim. In Oblivion, NPC's were changing their clothes for sleeping time while in Skyrim they just stay 24/7 in their huge plate armors. In Oblivion...eh I could go on and on, about such things as spellcrafting (and literally hundreds of spells!) quests and dialogs that were actually fun (skyrim = courier simulator that takes itself too seriously) etc etc.
In shortcut, I believe Oblivion deserve more praises than Skyrim. However I do agree that Morrowind was probably best (thanks to the interestng enviroment and freedom)

Oblivion does deserve more praise.

I agree with a lot of your criticism of the stories, but the above is incorrect. You missed the clue, but it was there. The phony dead drop quests were written in a completely different "handwriting font" than the ones from Lucien. (And in a different writing style, as well.)

I didn't like the idea of "optional bonuses" in either game. Why would a professional organization pay you extra for doing work that seems essential to job?

One would think that if you didn't hide the body of the gourmet, you simply wouldn't get paid at all.

I agree they shouldn't be optional.

I looked up the notes on UESP, but since its a wiki it all has the same text font, so I cant really see how they were wirrten diffrently, but I will take your word on it. Though I really dont see a difference in writing style, all of them are in the same "wahahaha im super evil crazy blood cultist" style that all DB memebrs had.

Its optional because hiding his body, or not, wouldnt change the outcome of the mission.

No one knows he is the gorumet, so not hiding his body just makes people think someone killed a random Orc guy, all hiding his body does is make it harder to find, and thus make it take THAT much longer for them to identify who he might be.

Really? I felt that there was considerably more formality in the way L.L.'s notes were written. In any case, yes, there was a distinct change in the font.

Wehn I read them I just assumed LL was going to be the "real" traitor, and then the questline was going to end with some master vs apprentence showdown or something.

Other than the drop notes thing, I pretty much agree with your assessment of the DB story.

Story isn't a Bethesda strength, unfortunately. If their main quest stories were anywhere near the quality of their open worlds, they'd be fabulous. As it is, they provide an adequate framework for player-made story (one can easily elaborate upon the thin plots as one role-plays.) A number of quite good fan-fictions have been written based upon the sketchy framework the games give us.

You don't have to. Here are http://morrowind4kids.com/pseronwyrd/Screenshots/Oblivion_NoteFonts.jpg.

Thanks. Yes, the Lucien Lachance dead drop orders use the font on the right. The Mathieu Bellamont dead drop orders use the font on the left.

I still hold and enjoy Morrowind true, but in all honesty I have to admit that while a vanilla Morrowind was good, a modded Morrowind is so much better. Even taking graphic enhancers aside (Better Bodies and the like) things like the LGNPC mods, Neoptolemus' MCA series, Emma's Lokken, those who added the various landmasses like the Morningstar Islands and such, added so much that even playing a full 7 hours a day you would still not hit everything that was available to enjoy. Just in the dialogue alone, to get conversations as opposed to just generic "Well Met, Outlander", is gold.

Agreed. I didn't vote vanilla morrowind even though the game modded is better than the other two modded.

Anyone else want to vote on this?

If there was "best game including add-ons" I'd probably have to go with Skyrim now that Dragonborn has been released.