Personally I wouldn't say Oblivion was bad. That's a little harsh for a game that accomplished a lot. I had a lot of fun with the game, spent over a hundred hours playing it. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a subset of Elder scrolls fans that prefer Oblivion to Morrowind & Skyrim.

Graphics really don't matter much to me except for Daggerfall, which I've tried to get into, but the 2D sprites physically make me dizzy.

Thing is, however, when a game is reliant on mods in order to be good - what does that then say about said game?
Don't get me wrong, Oblivion was a good game, but saying that 'well you obviously haven't played 'xxx' mod' doesn't say very good things about the base game itself. As you're implying that you need to changing core aspects or add things in order to make the game better - or worse it needs those things to be playable.

Exactly... as a 360 player...I bought it in 2006... put it away for a year...tried it again... came to these forums and cried like what we are seeing now from many people, put it away again...then finally in 2008 was able to play through it enough to at least enjoy my time.

I know a lot of Morrowind fans didn't like for their own reasons but for me coming from MMOs and having the most fundamental of RPG elements broken was real tough.

There is a whole bunch of stuff that determines immersiveness. 'Graphics', sure though they are close to the bottom of the list.. You could have real world quality graphics but if there are game play elements that keep interrupting the flow it counts for diddly squat. Like wise it is possible to become completely immersed in games that have no graphics to speak of at at all (text based).

I bought Morrorwind and Oblivion... but didn't enjoy both games. I am more a "Gothic" player (very famous RPG-series here in Austria/Germany). But Skyrim... WOW... i am speechless! This game is awesome!

Most people will probably say Skyrim.

On THIS FORUM, most will probably say Morrowind (they are however the minority)

I won't say Oblivion was a bad game. It was quite decent. Then again, it had its flaws - similar dungeons, horrible voice acting, and bland combat to name a few.

Of the three, I'd rate Skyrim the highest, followed by Morrowind and lastly Oblivion.

Oblivion is one of the best games i've ever played. I love it

Oblivion rocked. I love that game.

I played Morrowind when it was first release (it was just as buggy and glitchy as Skyrim is today - shock horror), I loved it played it for hours.
The same can be said for Oblivion, I got it on release. Loved it too, though it quickly set in that there just wasn't as much too it as there was with Morrowind.

I got Skyrim basically on release and love it as well.

I will say how ever, if Morrowind had the combat system of Oblivion and Skyrim. There would be no contest. That is the only reason I cannot play Morrowind.

Because Oblivion was a dumbed-down version of Morrowind, with only graphics as a superior point, and was on the whole completely destroyed by insane level scaling ?

Morrowind had a MUCH better plot, much more actual freedom, more personnality and no f*cking "the whole world level with you, making leveling and exploration pointless".

Idiots will use the "nostalgia" argument, as they always do every single time someone doesn't jump into the "it's newer so it's better" bandwagon, but don't be fooled - it's not because you prefer a certain type of design that you're wearing rose-coloured glasses, it's just that it's easier to pretend someone "live in the past" than it's to accept his arguments are actually right.

oblivion wasnt bad, but coming off of morrowind it was horribly bland. it was more of modding template than anything else; once you mod it to your hearts content oblivion was freakin amazing. but vanilla... everything starts to blur together visually, it was very good looking graphically, but had no style at all, especially since cyrodiil was supposed to be a jungle and the imperials were supposed to be roman-esque. i was expecting jungle romans. i was disappoint. the imperials had no culture, no personality, no nothing. in morrowind the architecture and different cultures were on display everywhere you went, from giant adobe ziggurats to giant hollow crab skeletons to magic trees to imperial forts to ashlander camps... you get the idea. then we get to cyrodiil, and everyone and everything is just so much generic medieval fantasy. you cant give us morrowind then just go back to bland and boring...

at any rate, im immensely glad skyrim has its own style and so much more variety than oblivion.

Like i have said many time, Morrowind is just a dumbed down version of Daggerfall with only better graphics, Daggerfall has everything done better, the quests, the lore, the characters and even the combat. < insert the other part of your post here >

I don't hate Oblivion, only things i don't like with it are that its graphics and AI was nerfed so xbox could run it and it is too generic, thankfully Shivering Isles fixed 1 of those problems.

I've played modded Oblivion and oblivion for maybe 100 hours in all, but it just diddn't work for me. Even with mods, it felt empty, and i lacked the sense of exploration and being in another belivable world that I had in Morrowind.
Morrowind I've played for 300-500 hours (no clue). But Morrowind is old. Very old - even heavily modded the quests are still damn simple and there's a bit too much walking, compared to todays games.
Still Morrowind is a close second to Skyrim for best TES game - and thats even if it came out today (in modded form ofc).

1. Skyrim
2. Morrowind (modded)
3. Oblivion (HEAVY modded)
4. Daggerfall

Oblivion was great for its time and generation, it was the best looking game in 2006. Skyrim was rushed into this generation of consoles for some quick $$$ and as a result feels lacking graphically and as a RPG. It just doesn't bring anything revolutionary where TES gameplay is concerned. Better combat? Sure, if you are playing an axe swinging meathead (or should I say meadhead? LOL) Shouts? Shouts are just spells. Character customization? Uhh...

I don't buy into the "generic fantasy land" argument against Oblivion. Skyrim is like a sad grotesque version of Scandinavia, and it looks more like Siberia than, say, Sweden.

for me Skyrim > Oblivion > morrowind

having that said there were compromises made from each game evolving to the next that I wasnt very fond off (such as the lack of spellcrafting from oblivion to skyrim), but the good stuff added in always far outweighted them.

Oblivion was well recieved. A few were disappointed with it, but they were a minority with a loud voice - nothing else. The exact same thing happened when Morrowind got released and it's happening now with Skyrim. It's a psychological thing - you can't please everyone.

Oblivion introduced many things into the Elder Scrolls that we simply couldn't live without today. It's the lack of these things that makes going back to Morrowind so hard. For instance the AI. The NPC's wander around and end up in situations all on their own. In Morrowind they just stand in the same spot all the time.

People say Morrowind is immersive, moreso than Oblivion. To each their own, but after playing Oblivion I found Morrowind's world incredibly dead and pale. Not so much because of lore issues, which were fantastic, but more because of the fact that the world itself was kinda dead. The shops were open 24/7 for instance, with the shopkeeper always standing inside waiting for a customer. I can't remember any NPC's going home for the night either. They just kept on standing wherever. And Morrowind's lackluster dialoge system didn't do much to help things. Do you guys remember it? I can't really think of a more dull system right now, and there might not even be one.

So trust me, even Morrowind had it's flaws even if fewer will acknowledge it because of nostalgic reasons. Don't get me wrong, Morrowind is probably the game I've played the most out of these three (it's obviously not Skyrim - yet) and I love it. The world, even if it isn't bigger, feels somewhat bigger. Mostly because it had a different fast travel system, the character speed was slower and there were cliffs and mountains in your path. And a shoreline (shorelines help to add a sense of grandness to a world).

Oblivion fixed many things that weren't that great about Morrowind. But it also took some stuff away. Enchanting was no longer a skill. Spears, medium armor and some other skills went away. No more crossbows.

But out of all the things I see Oblivion being critizised for, I believe only the Level Scaling being the one I personally find bad (but oh, is it bad). This was most likely introduced to people complaining about how easy Morrowind was (you could beat everything in the game by level 15 more or less and take into consideration that in Morrowind, there were more skills and more levels. So a level 15 Morrowind player equals roughly a level 10 Oblivion or Skyirm player). Still, I cannot play Oblivion without a mod like OOO to get rid of the Level Scaling.

The point is, don't let anyone think that one single of these games have been flawless or NOT derided once it came along.

From what a lot of you are describing, I really got to play Morrowind, lol. Especially since I could care less about graphics.

Everything in Oblivion was the same, and the world didn't have any logic to it. All the dungeons used pretty much the same tiles, none of the NPCs were particularly interesting (except for that Orc assassin!), and gameplay decisions like autolevelling killed it.

I would actually rate Skyrim and Morrowind equal to each other. While Skyrim has lost some spreadsheet stuff, it still retains that fresh feeling of Morrowind (especially with compass/quest marker off). The only thing I wish they did was flesh out quest instructions for ALL quests; it seems like only the first main quest had something where people gave you directions. Everyone else just says, "Let me mark it on your map," or else they just tell you to go to location x, and nothing else besides that.

Yeah, a generated environment better than a hand-made one, right :rolleyes:

Simply repeating an argument doesn't make it also true for the different context you're using it.
Though it's true they removed some points that were rather cool, it's pretty obvious you're just trolling and ignoring how Morrowind had actually MUCH more personnality and real point of interest than the bland auto-generated wastes of Daggerfall.

Enviroment wasn't had made because of hardware limitations at that time. Most morrowind fans here think that it is the ultimate best game ever (which it isn't) and then they bash every other game (for no reason). Seeing posts like that makes me angry, i hate elitism and Morrowind elitists are one of the worst of that kind. Its not a bad game, neither is Oblivion but it saying that Oblivion is just a dumbed down version of Morrowind is just as stupid as saying that Morrowind is just a dumbed down version of Daggerfall.

Also GJ understanding my point in the first post, hopefully you get it this time.

I liked Oblivion a lot. Given it had its flaws, especially the boring main story, the fact that at some point you just had every item available because every bandit was wearing it as well and the dungeons were slightly repetitive.
However Oblivion did a few things right, and still is for me the best open world rpg in history because it allowed you to go everywhere and do everything while still keeping a bit of balance to make it challenging (till one point as above). And that combined with mods that fixed the other parts made it an excellent game.

Skyrim might get there too, but so far the only great thing about it is the graphics and the idea. The rest needs to be fixed by either Bethesda or mods to make it as captive as Oblivion.

The only things i really liked about morrowind was the variety of landscape, and it felt like the world was bigger than morrowind, this is probably because you could not fast travel in morrowind (only silt striders, which go only between major cities), but morrowind felt like a bigger world and more diverse, and personally, i prefer giant mushrooms rather than similar looking forests

As for skyrim vs. oblivion, its hard to say, they are almost very different, i mean of course they have their rpg aspects, but they feel like different games, it might be because skyrim is much more cinematic than oblivion, also skyrim has dungeons that look more diverse than oblivion, oblivion just had all of them look the same.

a few more complaint about oblivion: NO BEARDS!! WHA??? AND POTATO FACED PEOPLE !!!

Oblivion was better than Skyrim. You will not hear me say otherwise.

All the Elder Scrolls games have been different enough to provide a fresh experience.

Morrowind-Alien feeling, harsh.
Oblivion-Fantasy.
Skyrim-Realistic (In comparison to previous ES games)

I never hated on Oblivion they all have their faults. Just like any game.