• Morrowind on #7 and Daggerfall on #35 . the website that likes to throw around "decline" puts Morrowind above Daggerfall .
Because Morrowind it's indeed a huge incline over Daggerfall. It was never well explained how Morrowind brought so many incline perspectives with THAT development team, some members of wich becoming key people in later games development with all the casualization and simplification... It's a mystery...
Morrowind offers less than Daggerfall in every aspect, therefore it is major decline.
No. Morrowind is extremely more complex than Daggerfall. I highly doubt that you played Daggerfall and specially Morrowind extensively if you say that. Morrowind offers FAR more content than Daggerfall (original/new/different content in game mechanics, questing, world building or other miscellaneous content).
you can learn the language of giants and talk to them instead of mindlessly killing them
WTF? Did you played Daggerfall at all?
Daggerfall's "language skills" were a bluff, a disappointing waste of a promising idea.
You don't "learn the language of giants" and less "talk to them" in Daggerfall, you simply have a pacify creature spell in a bunch of useless skills, and actually you must kill (well approach them at least, with them obviously attacking you repeatedly) hundreds of creatures to "learn their languages aka make some creature types less hostile without dialogue at all".
The calm creature spells in Morrowind did exactly the same than Daggerfall language skills without all the dissapontment of don't "talk with giants" at all...
And indeed its not Daggerfall but Morrowind, the game that allows you to talk with some monsters if you pacify them, some of wich have unique dialogue, and even services hidden by their initial hostility.
the gameworld is much much bigger
Yes... And not. The landscape, the worldmap, the number of locations are bigger, but the actual content in the gameworld is extremely inferior as I'm going to explain later. But what some people (NOT Daggerfall fans at all usually) tend to ignore when talk about Daggerfall world's size it's that 99'9 % (probably more) of Daggerfall map is an inmense randomly generated and barren landscape with NO content at all: no quests, no locations, no treasures, only some minor random encounters with ultrarepeated enemies and other minor exceptions and the same rocks, trees and bushes again and again, there is no game content in Daggerfall wilderness (outside "locations").
the towns feel like actual towns
The biggest cities in Daggerfall (8-9) are similar in area to Vivec and the npcs, dialogue, quests, enemies, interactive items or building/interiors diversity are extremely superior in Morrowind cities, towns and villages. Morrowind's settlements design is a scaled one as the rest of the game world, Vivec or Ald'Ruhn are representations of much bigger cities, but still there are very similar in size to Daggerfall supposed 1:1 scale settlements (Vivec to biggest cities, Ald Ruhn or Balmora to DF's towns, Seyda Neen or Maar Gan to small DF villages), which is very indicative... and together, MW settlements include far more npc archetypes with far more dialogue (unique or shared), more different services, more items to trade or interact, more quests or in a worldbuilding perspective, more building types, more social complexity, more little non directly gameplay related world details, more diverse and unique interiors, etc.
I also feel that Daggerfall or Sentinel areas are huge cities in comparison with tiny settlements that most games offer, but even the first time that I played DF 20 years ago, when "unique" handcrafted big worlds were so rare, I noticed the extreme level of reuse in game content just because the size of the world wasn't followed by similar addition of "more content".
I don't feel Daggerfall settlements more credible, alive, finished or complex than Morrowind's at all. And the size in DF big cities don't help to this consideration but the opposite.
Morrowind has shinier graphics, less boring NPCs and the dungeons aren't an absolute nightmare. but other than that, Daggerfall wins.
No. Morrowind has far more features than made it much mor complex than Daggerfall.
1. In a quantity perspective (more
different content to experience): Morrowind has more quests (near double), more factions, more services, more animals and monsters, more weapons, armors (and armor and weapon types skill dependant) and clothes, more ingredients, potions, beverages, more unique npcs, way bigger dialogue count (with extremely bigger unique dialogue count and far more shared dialogue lines also), more spells and spell types, more equipment slots, more diseases, more books or notes, more dungeon types, more architecture diversity, etc...
2. In a quality context, besides the Morrowind uniqueness and diversity in every perspective that add itself quality over reusing Daggerfall style we can describe some superior features in TES III:
-Morrowind has an extremely more rich, complex and rewarding exploration than Daggerfall: with sligthly more movement possibilities, much more content finding dependant of these different movement possibilities, a complete directions system as no other game, more diverse and world integrated fast travel, more uniqueness and diversity in loot, dungeons, enemies or combat and better and more complex landscape design. Morrowind is an exploration experience firstly. There is no contest in this regard and is not only superior to Daggerfall or follow-the-arrowkyrim but to any other game. Still there are codexers than can't enjoy MW exploration as many others can't enjoy Planescape writting or Wyzardrys party management. But MW exploration it's objectively the best (if most complex, rewarding, challenging, interactive and diverse means the best), better than Gothics, Ultimas, M&Ms or Wyzardrys by a year light.
-The complexity, detail level and subtleness of MW's worldbuilding is the second feature in with TES III excels as no other virtual world. The society and nature are deeper and more diverse than in most other games: Deeper factions or fast travel services with more worldbuilding around them, more non gameplay directly linked details (as the already several times explained in the codex example of daedric texts in MANY world objects with meaningful messages in english), more subtle dialogue and book mentions (with many world existing details only subtly mentioned, useful hints about the world or social-natural realities,etc), the consistence between different "factions" philosophies and ways of life and their material reality (for example the architectures of the Great Houses) or a landscape design way more dense and convoluted than any other virtual world.
-The writing and quest script are not brilliant in general (there are excellence exceptions) but is good enough and far, far superior to Daggerfall's.
-MW has also a more complex hand to hand combat system with far more possibilities and factors ruling the success: Daggerfall has one attack type more, but the damage range is linked with these 4 types with bonuses and penalties -instead three different ranges in MW for every attack type with the linked specialization in some weapons, with relevance of time pushing the button, condition, etc- a complex damage system in real time combat, but not as much as Morrowind's, besides damage, DF lacks weapon speed relevance, there is not fatigue -and weapon weight influence in it-, there is not weapon deterioration, there are less spell effects to enchant weapons/armors, there is not significative weapon reach level difference, Morrowind weapons or armors materials/styles are far more diverse in the damage/protection range, etc... With balance, less easy OP, and better enemy AI, Morrowind combat could be brilliant... but it's
decent enough as it's is anyways, fun and one of the most complex of real time ones.