But I think, for the most part, Bethesda succeeded in that compromise. They could have implemented it better, obviously, I think the level scaling needs to be drastically improved from Oblivion in the next game (but not, as some people have argued, completely removed), and I'd like to see the "hand-holding" features be toggleable, but I think fast travel/the quest arrow was a great way for people who want, as you put it, "a 10-minute, linear level, followed by loading screen then an option to play the next level or quit for the day", the chance to experience a really great game that they otherwise might never have played, and who maybe, just maybe, having gotten a taste of the Elder Scrolls series, will move on to Morrowind and Daggerfall so they can come to the forums and argue about how casual Oblivion was. I think making the games more inclusive is a good thing, because they are completely unique and unlike anything else on the market, and everyone who's able to figure out, at the very least, Oblivion's setup, should be given a chance to experience them, no matter whether they play for two hours every day, or whether they play for twenty minutes a few times a week between getting home from class and leaving for work.

I thought an M rating was bascially 13 and over.

I thought the casual player would be a 8-18 year old who play lots of video games, but games that only last 40 hours or less. These people might be like racing sims or FPS games where they don't usually have as much depth as a TES games does. Or they could be like Diablo games where the enemies die whithin a few hits and get loot right away.

M is 17+. T is 13+.

You're right.

And, in fact, I believe Morrowind does the same thing (eases linear gamers into the great world of sandbox gaming) because I was a linear xbox gamer before trying Morrowind. In fact, I'm not so much bothered by Oblivion's accessibility tweaks.

It's not the fast travel the bothers me, it's the cumbersome, tedious wilderness (which Fallout 3 actually improves upon, so I'm not worried, I just like running my mouth).

It's not the quest marker that bothers me, it's the lack of any alternative (I always had to make my quest active now and then just to check the marker and make sure I was going in the right direction). If NPCs simply mentioned some landmarks to look for along the way, like the Pale Pass quest, I'd be content.

Then, there were the other little things:
-certain dungeons would be totally devoid of loot or life, or locked and in need of a special key
-a bed in an empty cabin in the middle of nowhere would be marked as owned
-yadda yadda yadda

It's certain things like that, that didn't make Oblivion bad, but they made me miss Morrowind. And, since Morrowind is essentially the same thing, anyway, I just went back to Morrowind. And I play any more modern game for an hour whenever I need my physics and violence fix. Not that that's what Oblivion is all about, but that's the biggest thing Morrowind is lacking.

My fear is that there is a thin line bewteen "deep, engaging, thought-provoking, yet also user-friendly RPG" and "beginner's guide to RPG gaming," and I think Oblivion was sitting right on the border. One bad trend that Fallout 3 didn't really fix, though, is the way they make their RPGs totally forgiving, now.

I don't think the possibility of failure should be a deterrent for any gamer.

Yes I agree totally with this.

I've seen a lot of gamers go nuts over Oblivion. They've never seen anything like it, and it won Game of the Year. Morrowind seems to lie forgotten at the bottum of a recycle bin. Its like, Hello people, this is the FOURTH installment of the Elder scrolls, not the first and only. On its own, Oblivion is good, but as part of the series it comes up short.

Onto system wise. Level scaling. Did you know that when you find a uniqjue item in Oblivion its stats(for the rest of the game) are dependent on your level? I just learned this recently. Its why all these super-rare items that are supposed to be awsome(Dawnfang/Duskfang, Thornblade, etc) svck compared to the standard(daedric, iron, steel, etc). This is BULLCRAP. I was so mad when I found this out. Thornblade should be better than elven but come up short to glass, but depending on when you get it, it is worse than steel. Dawnfang/Duskfang should be just plain awsome, but its not. If Bethesda doesn't want players to have a super powerful weapon at the beginning of the game, then make it hard to get.
Enemies, rats should be easy at the start of the game and then super easy as you level up. They just stay at easy though. Even when weilding a daedric spear in Morrowind it still took two hits. Your average every day bandit is NOT going to get stronger as you are. They should stay at their same fur equipment and low skills. I remember whatching my brother at lvl30 fighting a mountain lion. It took a while for the thing to go down. WHY? If you are the ultimate warrior why isn't this mountain lion dying at the sight of you.
The past few weeks I've been defending Oblivion, but now after discovering the game-killing faults of Oblivion, I've had a change of heart.
End of Rant
Combat.

Combat has been bad for both Morrowind and Oblivion. Its like an FPS with swords. BAD combination. It should be more like the Legend of Zeldas or Fables, but it should stand apart from these as well. Often I switch to third person when fighting, its way more cinamatic. In the end, I want a targeting system like that which is in both the afformentioned games. This is a MUST have for any new Elder Scrolls.

I liked being able to place a book on a table in Morrowind without Havok deciding it would look better on the floor on the other side of the room. I also liked being able to walk by a table and not have everything on it go flying around like I hit it with a baseball bat.

I liked Daggerfall's character creation, and I liked how fast travel in Daggerfall had implicit consequences.

I liked Morrowind's verisimilitude which Oblivion rather inexplicably lacked almost entirely (but that Fallout 3 possessed greatly, so figure that one out...)

I like Oblivion's graphics and it's stealth...beyond that vanilla Oblivion is completely unplayable for me personally without some heavy moddage.

Another thing, the Epicness of quests.

Quests that are to epic, remove choice and morality, otherwise the Lore for the next game is compromised. In Oblivion, if you were given the choice to help Martin or Mehrunes Dagon, we would have two drastically different Tamriels on our hands. Bethesda always said, you could be a hero or a villain right? But in order to expirience Oblivion fully you HAVE to be a hero. Morrowind had less of this, but it was still there. The only thing a Villain can do in Oblivion is join the Dark Brotherhood. Even the theives guild is to moral, you end up a hero to the beggars.

They call it Black and White Morality, but in Oblivion it is just White morality.

THANKFULLY, in fallout 3 this was changed. You finally had Good, Neutral, and Evil.

Well, I think Fallout always had good, neutral, and evil.

But, I remember, when Morrowind came out, people were commenting that you could only be the good guy in the main quest. So, in response, they made Bloodmoon, which had a good and evil path in the main quest and in the joinable faction they added.

Then they forgot again in Oblivion, lol. So, in response, they made Shivering Isles, which had an evil or good path to choose.

Then, I think they forgot again, but the Fallout universe just compelled them to incorporate karma.

I agree with you, it would be nice to side with Mehrunes Dagon, but it seems you are always the hero or reluntent hero. Yes you can be evil and dispicable, but in the end, you save the world.

The thing in Oblivion, is everything is White as you said. I didn't join the Dark Brotherhood because of what it stood for. The only reason why I joined it? So I can kill a certian person I didn't know you could. So I was shocked that I didn't feel so bad doing Dark Brotherhood quests because these people did deserver to die. So even when you are bad, you are doing good. I didn't like that.

I wanted to feel good about myself and the choices I make. If I did something I didn't agree with, like killing someone I didn't like, I should still feel bad about it, but I didn't So my charcter was never truley evil since he didn't do anything really bad.

Shivering Isles was one sided, too. In terms of Madness vs Order, NOT mania vs dementia. Because both mania and dementia are bad and good. You are Either a Maniac or You are Demented, both sound pretty bad.

Shivering Isles is just as restrictive as vanilla Oblivion. It just looks nicer with uninque Fauna and Flora. Interesting Architecture and Two very distinct areas. It is quite easy to tell where you are without a map.

I didn't like the assignments Lucien was giving me, so I set out to kill him.

But, alas, he was essential.

So, that's when the imagination workaround came into play.

After I kill Lucien, he gets back up and smiles at me.

"Oh, sorry, I thought you were what's her face, I'll go murder her now."

Embarrassed, I rush out of the tower. On my way out, Lucien says, "oh hello."

(I pretty much had to roleplay a demented loon, so Shivering Isles worked out)

True immersion.

I consider myself Demented in some ways. Yet I am always a good guy.

Also, I killed someone by accident and so Lucien came to my bed in Mania(I was doing the Mania side for this playthrough).
He said "I HAVE NO GREETING", and all I could do was say goodbye.
He just stood there and wouldn't move, so I killed him. Now he lies dead beside my bed in the house of Mania.
I was so happy I killed that sadistic bastard.

I was actually thinking. How hard would it have been to have something like this possible:

If you don't like the assignments you go to face Lucien. If you decide to talk to him about it, it will just lead to him attacking you for being insubordinate, so either way you have to kill him or do his work.

After he dies, you can either leave the guild behind or return to the guildhall. Whether you tell the truth or lie, they don't trust you anymore and become hostile.

OR, if for some reason you are compelled to do so, you can return to the spot where the letters were being left and notice that they're still being placed there. Then you can come back in a week and use stealth to find out who's really leaving the letters. Then you can fight him and expose him for his crimes and blame Lucien's death on him and be the hero.

I think, if all those choices aren't plausible, at least having a few quick alternatives available would be more than doable without much extra work.

This is the kind of thinking against protocol that Morrowind got me used to and that Oblivion surprisingly prevented almost completely.

EDIT: @x_death: maybe he was sent to assassinate you, but was, then, captivated by your beauty and his heart grew three times bigger and he was speechless

That's the point. Neither one is truly good or truly bad. You were hoping for a happy sparkle rainbow insanity that doesn't carry any negative connotations?

The way I saw Shivering Isles was you could be the demented artist geniuses or the emo wrist-cutters. I actually enjoyed myself because I chose the evil path, but then I usurped the bright, happy duke, in an attempt to unite both sides. But, then the dark people were all mad at me.

And my room was a mess because of the physics, but it's ok, because I'm craaaaazy. I had tons of those hats from the Jygglag followers strewn all over the place. I had a good time in Shivering Isles.

I actually think, overall it provided enough alternative paths to allow creative freedom. If I can suspend my disbelief with having to really contrive a dreamed-up workaround, for the majority, then it's a fun time.

Eating to much greenmote I see, on his way to assassinate me he must've stopped in the kitchens for a bite.

Sorry about berating you on any topic of Morrowind vs Oblivion. Mainly on the ones of Essential Characters and Unaccessable areas, I agree now that essential characters should be removed and Unaccessable areas should only be limited to areas that MAKE SENSE.

I don't remember being berated.

These are some of the fundamentals that split people though, so it's understandable if you get angry.

As long as there is some sort of attempt to make workarounds, even if it is just a quick sense of closure that having the whole guild expel you or go hostile would provide, then how hard would it be:

essential NPCs toggle: killable or unkillable

quest items toggle: sellable and droppable or stuck in inventory

Or how hard would it be to make a quest item highlighted in green like in Daggerfall, derrr

And, if a quest item is on a corpse you neglect to loot and then it disappears, which happened to me once in Morrowind, you can simply inform the questgiver that the belt he wanted has vanished from the mortal sphere. That could at least provide some closure and make the next quest available.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp a ESRB rating definitions, under M it actually says 17+ but that's because of different country rules. Some countries also use a http://www.pegi.info/en/index/id/33/ system. For example my copy of red dead has a big fat "18" in the corner.

I don't think that would be a useful definition of a casual gamer, I mean there are games with huge depth that don't last long at all. In the gaming industry and in general gaming culture, a casual gamer is a person who do not spend a lot of time/money with gaming. This is why people talk about the Wii cashing in on the casual market, because they've managed gain a lot of mothers and old people, notice that the learning curve for a wii controller is effectively zero, given that you use motion, something which everybody learned as a baby, only now with Kinect and Playstation Move, are microsoft and sony actually catering to the casual market, they are trying to lower the barrier of entry required for enjoyment on a console.

I actually think kids a some of the least casual gamers, I mean when I was a kid, I was obsessed with gaming, I was like an eternal sponge, always hungry for more. Kids also actually care about the whole hardcoe image, it's all about standing out from the rest, being one of the cool kids, *gasp* being hardcoe. Mature gamers as far as I know, really don't give a [censored] about image, they play for enjoyment. watch out for mistaking Casual gamers with playing casual games though. The Nintendo systems almost only had casual games, but the hardcoe crowd was enormous.

First of all, I would like to say that I enjoyed both Oblivion and Morrowind. I have Daggerfall, but have so far found the controls to be frustrating. I am quite used to WASD for my movement, and I'm not comfortable enough yet with the default controls in Daggerfall to be sure that I'm not messing something up by moving them around. That's my fault, and I'll get around that (one of these days).

Secondly, as far as Oblivion being for "casual gamers," I think what happened here is that Oblivion was the first game that was designed explicitly for consoles, and the PC version was the afterthought. Because of the distinct limitations of consoles (controllers), and the number of gamers who would be unfamiliar with this type of game, it was intentionally dumbed-down. It was an experiment, and I think it's pretty clear they went a little too far for those of us who have played any of the previous games on PC. That doesn't mean Oblivion can't be enjoyed, or that it was a bad game, but there were compromises that some of us were uncomfortable with. I hold a great deal of hope that Bethesda will listen (with a grain of salt in some cases), and take these things under advisemant. I personally think it will be very difficult to please the PC gamers if the game is going to be designed with the consoles in mind (primarily), but I could be wrong. I would love to see the PC version be the be-all-end-all version, and the consoles be ports, but those days are probably long gone. Farmville rules the PC gaming roost. But that is another rant.

As far as the topic at hand, both Morrowind and Oblivion have done some things right and some things ... less than right, shall we say? Anyway, Morrowind definitely had great atmosphere, as far as I'm concerned. A great example of this, I think, is my cousin (who played Morrowind on Xbox, but was primarily an Oblivion player through and through). He married a girl from Taiwan, and recently visited her family there. When he returned, he spoke of it reminding him very much of Morrowind. He said it had a very alien feel to him, but was fascinating at the same time. This is what I got out of Morrowind. No matter what, I was an outlander because this place really had its own way of doing things, and although I could become comfortable with that, I was always going to be a little bit of a stranger in a strange land. After all these years of playing, Morrowind still never fails to make me feel this way. Oblivion, unfortunately, looked much like my backyard. I live in Missouri, and there are trees everywhere. I never got that alien feeling that I enjoyed so much in Morrowind.

I liked that the world in Oblivion wasn't static. I liked that shopkeepers went to bed at night. I liked that people tried to live lives outside of what I was doing. However, the level we met in Oblivion was already hit by Shenmue on the Dreamcast years before. By this time, we should have been able to go a little farther. I know Oblivion's world is a tad larger than Shenmue's (a great game, by the way, if you've never played it--the sequel on Xbox never lived up to its potential), but we're also dealing with much better hardware and storage options. Bethesda should be setting the bar, not hitting Yu Suzuki's bar from 10 years ago.

I agree that Morrowind's fast travel was better than Oblivion's. To me, this should be self-evident.

I also disliked the way Oblivion treated your level. Both in the way artifacts would be scaled to the level you were when you got the item (the whole purpose of an artifact is that it is going to be more powerful than regular items! Come on!), and in the way that a high-level, battle-hardened character has the same, if not more difficulty in dispatching the random baddies you run across while going from point A to point B. I know this was some attempt to address the complaints that Morrowind was too easy, but that solution can be described as "inelegant" at best. A character with tons of experience and training should find it easy to dispatch some random highwayman. That's one of the bonuses of being high-level. If there are no rewards for achievement, then there is little drive to go forward. I don't mind struggling at 1st level. I don't want to continue to struggle at 50th level, too. I get enough of that in my job, thank you very much. I play games for enjoyment, not for aggravation.

I agree with losing the lockpicking mini-game. I know nothing about picking locks. My character does, however. Let him. I do like how Oblivion added darkness as a factor in sneaking. It only makes sense. Fargoth wasn't being very sneaky, and neither am I when I'm "sneaking" around in broad daylight. A good pickpocket might still be able to lift your wallet under the noontime sun, but you're probably going to be aware that he's there. You'll just miss the actual pick. But getting away with murder will be a little more difficult in all that daylight.

I didn't like how, in Morrowind, if I was caught committing a crime, every guard in every town across the whole island instantly knew who I was and what I had done. Not even in this age of instant communication across the globe and "America's Most Wanted" would that be even remotely realistic.

What happened to levitation? OK, I've used the console to engage the noclip, so I'm aware of what the cities look like from above. This is an example of something that was done for the consoles, isn't it? We needed the cities, which are notorious framerate hogs, to compartmentalize, so as to minimize the FPS hit. I get it. Inelegant, at best. Levitation in Morrowind wasn't perfect, I'll grant you that, but I'd rather see that imperfect solution recreated, rather than just ditched outright. And I am aware of everyone's love for climbing in Daggerfall. I'll get there. I promise. As yet, I still have no experience with that. But it sounds like a really neat idea.

Last, I understand the character generator in Oblivion was designed to give more options, but this is one where I feel like maybe dumbed-down is a more workable solution. Just give me a vast array of ready-made faces like in Morrowind again, and let the modders expand on them. Otherwise, I spend too much time fiddling with sliders, and then I eventually get frustrated and start hitting "random" until I see something that is somewhat agreeable and select that.

There are, of course, other things that I could speak on at length, but I've already written too much as is. My wife is asking what I'm doing, typing so much, and she's never played either game, so I just don't want to try to explain it to her. Also, she just drank from a can of Pepsi that I flicked a booger into earlier, and I can't talk to her knowing she just drank a booger. And I'm not even going to tell her.

A dislike for both Morrowind and Oblivion: The player leveling system.

We need to get rid of this system where people are encouraged to artificially raise skills they don't use before leveling up to be able to get +5 attribute bonuses on level up. It's ridiculous. I'd rather see them take the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=2030 route, maybe with the option to put 2 points in one of the attributes of choice yourself so that people still have the sense of accomplishment with a level up screen and some choice, but no more attribute multipliers, please.

I want it to be both ways, up and down. Just like when you enter a prison and you lose some skills points because of no training. Same for whole game. Attributes can be automatic I guess but I like the level up screen.

Actually, http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/704/704726p1.html. America's age rating confuses me. It was only put up due to accidental modable only nudity.

Teen = 13, right?

If so the game was specifically created to stay in the "Teen" rating. The fact that it was specifically created for 13 year olds emphasizes the fact that Oblivion was actually aimed towards young players. I seriously don't get why or how you can deny literally everything wrong Oblivion, like this.

If you decide to deny this fact, I'm not even going to bother carrying on. It's ridiculous to even try.

But Morrowind was rated Teen as well (and was rated for gamers 11+ in the UK). Mature themes and deep gameplay mechanics don't influence the rating, gore and six do. Just because a game can tell a story without excessive blood/six doesn't mean its a game for little kids.

http://pffffft.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/morrowind-cover1.jpg