Vault Dweller said:
Naked Ninja said:
I'm beginning to think I need a tinfoil hat to properly appreciate the standard Codex viewpoint.
Or to play Daggerfall.
You know, about two months ago I obtained a copy of Daggerfall and have been playing it almost every day since. I've finished the game's main quest with one character, taken another character to the point where I could quite easily finish the main quest with him if I wished, and am playing the game through yet a third time with another character, this time with severe disadvantages to make the game much more difficult. It's a fantastic game, and I don't see myself getting tired of it anytime soon. In my opinion, it's by far the best game in the Elder Scrolls series, and one of my favorite RPGs, period.
That said, I do nevertheless think that Morrowind is a good game. If you ask me, it's a little unfair to judge it against Daggerfall, because both games definitely emphasize different things and are focused on different aspects of gameplay. Each has its share of good points and bad points. Daggerfall is more of a dungeon crawling sort of game, with its sprawling, eerie dungeons and large variety of challenging enemies to test your mettle against. It boasts a much stronger character creation process than subsequent games in the series, with the option to empower or cripple your character with many different advantages and disadvantages that also make it more or less difficult to advance your skills respectively. This, along with the greater number of different skills to choose from and the division of skills into primary, major, minor, and miscellaneous, allows you much more freedom to create truly unique characters that each offer different gameplay experiences. There were more opportunities to roleplay your character, with many different factions and guilds that you could choose to do quests for, and the option to choose which quests your character is and isn't willing to take, with little real consequence, not to mention the freedom to choose who benefits from your actions in the main quest.
Much of Daggerfall was random content, but it was random content done, for the most part, anyways, very well. You never knew what quest you were going to get next from whatever noble you may or may not have chosen to work for, and dungeons could hold many dangerous surprises. It was not uncommon to run into vampire ancients and daedra lords at level four that could easily kill a level twelve character. One of my favorite Daggerfall moments was when my low level assassin-type character had to sneak past a vampire ancient that had taken up residence in a small corridor that led to the exit of the dungeon I was in. Daggerfall was often, at least until you reached about level 14 or so, a very challenging game.
NPCs were even more lifeless and robotic in Daggerfall than in both Morrowind and Oblivion, but that was forgivable because the sheer quantity of NPCs wandering about added a lot of atmosphere to the game. There could be hundreds of NPCs going about their business in major cities, not to mention all the cows, pigs, cats, dogs, horses, and camels lying around making their respective sounds. Cities in Daggerfall were repetitive, but they had a lot of atmosphere, and Daggerfall is the only RPG I have ever played where the cities truly felt like they were cities. How many buildings, exactly, did Daggerfall or Wayrest or Sentinel have? I don't know, but I would say that there must have at least been a hundred.
Daggerfall has a lot of things over Morrowind, that is true. But there are two areas where Morrowind clearly excels, and that's exploration and world-building/lore. There is little to no incentive to explore in Daggerfall, as the unimaginably vast wilderness is largely desolate, with only the very rare monster wandering the wastelands aimlessly, or more accurately walking in place in the middle of nowhere. There is little reason to stray from the kingdom of Daggerfall, where you begin the game, and go to the other kingdoms in the Iliac Bay, save for roleplaying reasons and to complete the main quest. They're all pretty much the same, save for different wall textures here and there and a Redguard population in the Hammerfell provinces. I suppose that some of the capital cities of some of the provinces also have fewer guilds and services than Daggerfall, but that's hardly an incentive to go to those places. From a gameplay perspective, there's just little reason to really explore the Iliac Bay.
If you go into one of the many public libraries scattered across the Iliac Bay or into one of the libraries of the various Temples or the Mage's Guild (provided that you are a member and have the privilege of perusing their libraries), and read some of the literature there, you will find that High Rock and Hammerfell are quite interesting and diverse places, with their own unique histories and cultures. The problem is, you don't really see much of that in the game. The population of the Iliac Bay is, for the most part, rather homogeneous, with only superficial differences in clothing and skin color and minor variations in architectural style or, more often, merely the wall textures of the houses.
By contrast, Morrowind is a gorgeously hand sculpted world that provides players with a real incentive to explore the gameworld. Although the dungeons are significantly smaller and less challenging than in Daggerfall, this time around they are more detailed and interesting, with areas that feel genuinely lived in, and often you will find a dungeon that has its own storyline that is completely unrelated to any quest. Now, that isn't to say that there aren't a lot of fairly boring dungeons in Morrowind. There are, believe me. But there are enough interesting things to find in the various dungeons scattered around Vvardenfell to make it worth one's time to look for them all.
Then there's the art design and the lore, which are, to my mind, absolutely superb. Most of that fantastic lore that you read about in the Morrowind section of the Pocket Guide to the Empire that comes with Redguard is more or less realized in Morrowind. For the first time in an Elder Scrolls game you actually get to
see some of those cool things that you read about in the books lying around in the game and in the Pocket Guide to the Empire. Ashlander tribes, slave markets and plantations where Khajiit and Argonians work themselves to death, Dwemer and Daedric ruins, Great Houses and silt striders...all of those things that I read about are realized in the game. It's a truly rewarding, and yes, fun, experience to find these things in the game. Say what you will about the gameplay of Morrowind, but there's no denying that it's a well-designed (if lifeless at times) world.
Oh, and it's probably also worth mentioning that playing a thief-type character is a lot better in Morrowind than it was in Daggerfall, in my opinion. In Daggerfall your pickpocketing skill basically only allowed you to filch somewhere between one to five gold pieces a time from the townspeople, with a fairly high rate of failure, I believe. Houses had little of value to steal, and it was almost impossible to steal something from a store. It was nice that you could evade guards by climbing the walls and jumping across buildings, though, and I liked that you could debate or lie your way out of prison, not to mention the fact that your reputation in the region goes down after you commit a crime, even after you've spent your time in jail and I think even if you're found not guilty (?). As someone has mentioned previously in this thread, though, thieving skills were put to much better use in Morrowind, as you could actually steal things from stores and there were actually things worth stealing.
For my part, I definitely prefer Daggerfall to Morrowind, and think that it is the better game. It definitely has more replay value, I think. In the future, I see myself playing Daggerfall a lot more than I see myself playing Morrowind, simply because the gameplay is (for the most part, with a large exception noted above) so much better. I like them both, however, and I think they appeal to different types of gameplay. At the moment, I feel more like playing Daggerfall, with its greater challenge and more in-depth character creation. But, some months from now, my mood may change and I may feel like delving once more into Morrowind and exploring that superbly designed world (though this time with a lot more mods, probably!). I don't think I ever did explore the northwestern area of Vvardenfell completely...
FCOM pwnz! :D
