» Fri May 27, 2011 10:46 am
RP? Buy Morrowind. FPS? Get Oblivion. They cater to different tastes, so the players develop a hatred for the other "camp" that doesn't play the same style game as them.
Morrowind is harder to get into, with a high initial failure rate at EVERYTHING, hostile attitudes from almost all of the NPCs, and a whole bunch of stuff out there that's a bit too tough to handle at low level. It's got far more detail though, a steadily growing list of topics for conversation as you go, more types or skills, armor, weapons, and everything else, and you can even equip a robe over your armor, with clothing underneath, all at the same time. Getting around is a matter of paying for transportation from a Silt Strider caravaner, shipmaster, or teleportation Guild Guide, which all fit seamlessly into the world, but destinations are somewhat limited. Combat is "stylized", and not as "thrilling" as Oblivion's, but works very well from a "RP" point of view that it's the result which counts. Your stats determine how well you do at everything. The "artistic vision" is unique and different, if you can upgrade the outdated graphics that represent it. If you can, get the PC version for mods and graphics improvements, as well as bug fixes (it's not perfect, I'll freely admit).
Oblivion is far more "beautiful" and action based, and your abilities as a player trump the skills of the character in most cases. You CAN'T fail, the game won't allow you to even try anything that's one point above your current skill level, and you succeed 100% of the time at anything that's at or below. Fast Travel lets you go anywhere from almost anyplace at the click of your map, which is fine because the heavy-handed levelling and scaling means that everything is pretty much the same as everywhere else, and having to do all that repetitive stuff along the way by walking there would be boring. As an action game, OB is great, but much more "shallow" than Morrowind, with a curious absence of "consequences". The most popular OB mods (MMM, OOO) make the game play a bit more like Morrowind.
I finished both games, but got bored with OB by about 1/3 of the way through, and only did the rest of the Main Quest out of a sense of "I need to finish this thing" before going back to MW.