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Morrowind vs Skyrim objectively

abnaxus

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Only good dungeon in Oblivion was the one right after leaving the sewers in the beginning.
 

AW8

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Since the in-world fast travel in Skyrim is mostly stripped out, you are required to do a lot of walking in the early game because you haven't been anywhere yet. I found that to be grindy and just not very fun in such big doses. Then by the time the late game rolls around, your map is covered in icons and you're just a click away from almost anywhere.
Speaking of fast travel...

Imagine if Skyrim was a real RPG. You start as a nobody in Helgen. To the south are the Jerall Mountains and Pale Pass, which is a no-go. To reach civilization, you have to go north. The land is ravaged by civil war, dragon-serving undead scour the land, and dangerous predators growing unchecked have multiplied and made the forests a very dangerous place.

Now, depending on what character you've created in the very detailed character generator, you can tackle these threats in various ways. A mage might try the beasts, easier to command using the Illusion school. A warrior might attempt the battlefields, where bandits plunder the dead and the helpless. A thief might attempt to sneak past the Draugr or the bandits, as no one but a master thief could have a chance of getting by the perceptive predators undetected.

Or, if you've created a wimpy Imperial with an aptitude for commerce, you would already start the game with a pouch of gold coins in your belongings. You could then use that money to bribe the Imperial Wizard on site to teleport you to a city. Actually walking there, fighting through waves of hostiles on the way? Who do you take me for, a pleb? :obviously:

That's one of my favourite arguments for the removal of free fast travel and the importance of expensive fast travel stations in the world. If you focus on making money, you can actually roleplay a wealthy person, traveling between cities in the safety of your cart caravan/silt strider/teleportation magic instead of daring the dangerous roads by yourself.
 

DragoFireheart

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Limited fast travel, such as caravans and teleportation via magic (Mark/Recall) is fine.

Fast travel at will breaks the game. Being forced to get back to town in a weakened state makes a big difference in how the game can play out.
 

DalekFlay

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Most of Morriwnd's dungeons WERE small and simple. Most of Oblivion's were longer and more involved.
Did the length add anything to Oblivion's dungeons, though? Pretty much none of the dungeons gave you any kind of a feeling of progress because they were the same all the way through, loot, enemies and assets included. I guess you could say that entering a lengthy dungeon and finally emerging from it with all your potions gone and your weapons half-broken has a certain charm to it, but the fast travel system still makes it pretty bland compared to an Ashlands trip in Morrowind.

Oblivion's dungeons were also incredibly "flat" compared to MW in the sense that they gave you very few alternative ways to navigate them or approach combat, so the ostensible "complexity" was pretty much for nothing (it's not like you could actually get lost in them either). Usually the dungeons consisted of a bunch of low rooms with two or three different exits and a ton of boring corridors connecting them to each other, which did not give you much room for different approaches. Even Skyrim with its super-linear dungeons managed to do a lot more by often giving you interesting tactical options (such as high ledges, choke points or short tunnels that quickly took you from one part of the dungeon to another, allowing you to go John Rambo on your enemies by filling them with arrows while constantly changing your position), Broken Oar Grotto being one good example. Oblivion barely made any use of the third dimension.

That's... pretty much exactly what I said after the sentence you quoted. :P
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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You know what sucks about fast travel in TES games? Instant teleport with no interruptions. Fallout and Arcanum do it right: you walk over a map, you see your character icon walking over the map, you can discover locations that you pass on your way, and you can get into random encounters.

This is why fast travel sucks in Elder Scrolls.
In Arcanum, you actually travel over the world map when fast travelling.
If you take the train from Tarant or use the teleportation spell, you just reach your destination and that's that.

Fast travelling on foot and taking a means of transportation costs money or mana, but is much quicker and entirely different because they're two different things.
 

SCO

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They probably don't want to do the work of working out road rotes or making sure that a encounter doesn't happen in a bridge or besides it for that matter. If they had random encounters.
 

Luzur

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Since the in-world fast travel in Skyrim is mostly stripped out, you are required to do a lot of walking in the early game because you haven't been anywhere yet. I found that to be grindy and just not very fun in such big doses. Then by the time the late game rolls around, your map is covered in icons and you're just a click away from almost anywhere.
Speaking of fast travel...

Imagine if Skyrim was a real RPG. You start as a nobody in Helgen. To the south are the Jerall Mountains and Pale Pass, which is a no-go. To reach civilization, you have to go north. The land is ravaged by civil war, dragon-serving undead scour the land, and dangerous predators growing unchecked have multiplied and made the forests a very dangerous place.

Now, depending on what character you've created in the very detailed character generator, you can tackle these threats in various ways. A mage might try the beasts, easier to command using the Illusion school. A warrior might attempt the battlefields, where bandits plunder the dead and the helpless. A thief might attempt to sneak past the Draugr or the bandits, as no one but a master thief could have a chance of getting by the perceptive predators undetected.

Or, if you've created a wimpy Imperial with an aptitude for commerce, you would already start the game with a pouch of gold coins in your belongings. You could then use that money to bribe the Imperial Wizard on site to teleport you to a city. Actually walking there, fighting through waves of hostiles on the way? Who do you take me for, a pleb? :obviously:

That's one of my favourite arguments for the removal of free fast travel and the importance of expensive fast travel stations in the world. If you focus on making money, you can actually roleplay a wealthy person, traveling between cities in the safety of your cart caravan/silt strider/teleportation magic instead of daring the dangerous roads by yourself.

Nah, Bethesda wont make it like this ever, that would just throw off the console crowd.

You know what sucks about fast travel in TES games? Instant teleport with no interruptions. Fallout and Arcanum do it right: you walk over a map, you see your character icon walking over the map, you can discover locations that you pass on your way, and you can get into random encounters.

This is why fast travel sucks in Elder Scrolls.
In Arcanum, you actually travel over the world map when fast travelling.
If you take the train from Tarant or use the teleportation spell, you just reach your destination and that's that.

Fast travelling on foot and taking a means of transportation costs money or mana, but is much quicker and entirely different because they're two different things.

Once again, nowadays people who cant be bothered to read things like dialogue without someone famous hollywood actor voicing it for them, you really expect them to sit and look at a dot moving across a map?
 

abnaxus

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You know what sucks about fast travel in TES games? Instant teleport with no interruptions.
Instant teleport in Daggerfall was fine because you needed to earn it by means of a high rank in Mages guild.

In Morrowind it's available to any newbie n'wah as long as you dish out the shekels.
 

JarlFrank

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You know what sucks about fast travel in TES games? Instant teleport with no interruptions.
Instant teleport in Daggerfall was fine because you needed to earn it by means of a high rank in Mages guild.

In Morrowind it's available to any newbie n'wah as long as you dish out the shekels.

In Morrowind it's okay because you pay for it.
I was talking about Oblivion and Skyrim that had the easy "open the map, click on a discovered location, arrive there without interruptions" fast travel, not Morrowind's "find a service and pay for it, or use divine/almsivi intervention, or use mark and recall" system of FT.
 

CrawlingDead

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Morrowind hands down. That is not to say it wasn't without it's flaws, but it certainly improved over the many many flaws present in Daggerfall, while retaining much of what made Daggerfall great, including political intrigue, guild conflict, a decently mature storyline, and a much more cohesive character creation system.

Daggerfall was big and generic. Quests were contrived. Dungeons were both great and flawed at the same time. Much of the skills in the game were useless. I could go on and on about Daggerfall. Now I do like the game, but as opposed to many other RPGs from the same period, it was pretty mediocre. I believe Morrowind changed this for the better, introduced a much more cohesive open-ended world a la Might and Magic along with complete interaction and not so bad characters and quests.

Oblivion and Skyrim on the other hand -- they're fun, much in the same way killing random people in GTA is fun. But I don't look to GTA for a solid roleplaying experience, much in the same way I don't look for it in either Oblivion or Skyrim. To be honest, it feels like a big slap in the face. When I'm done 'having fun', and thinking about where the series has gone in the last 10 years, it's downright depressing. The truth of the matter is this -- "I'm not the target audience for this game."

But I'm fine with it. They just wont get my money, and I wont play their games anymore. In a sense, I am no longer an Elder Scrolls fan, but I'm a Morrowind fan. I am a Daggerfall fan.

A company like this though, they don't last very long. The thing is, a niche audience is typically a faithful one. Bethesda is trying to appeal to a crowd that is like a temperamental girlfriend who's not ready to settle down just yet.
 
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A lot of Morrowind's dungeons are simple, but then you stumble onto the special ones that have more charm than anything in Oblivion (save SI's better moments). Like the Ancestral Vault busted into by the inhabitants of a nearby Daedric Temple (surprise death), or the cave where an Altmer researcher has Scamps unearthing the tomb of a Mage Lord, some of the more busted up Dwemer Strongholds, etc.


Granted a couple of them are a grind and a half. Oh my god the endless goblins. Does Mournhold somehow not have an accomplished exterminator?!
 
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I think my favorite dungeon in base Oblivion is Rockmilk Cave. Generic two-area affair, but chock full of Marauders and Black Bow Bandits who hate the ever loving crap out of each other. Every time I was anywhere near the area I would stop by and go into sneak mode, watching how this newest incarnation of the battle went. Sometimes if one side started steam rolling I'd assassinate the strongest performer and see if that changed anything. Crazy levels of loot and a town nearby for you to dump it in.



Invariably I'll find Mazoga the Orc dead in there, it's only a matter of how long for that playthrough. Stupid girl.
 

Xathrodox86

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Both of these games have horrible storylines and player-npc interactions. I'd rate Skyrim higher, even if for the sake of combat and lots of cool mods that help to improve the game.
 

Dreaad

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:hero:
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Morrowind has a metric shit ton of mods that work magic on the game, and you'll find a great deal more faction and questing mods than you will for Skyrim. It was the first TES title to really explode when it came to user created content.
 
Last edited:

Roguey

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I'm not reading 20 pages of this thread, but I did check out Morrowind to see what the buzz was about and now have an informed opinion. In one sentence: I liked Skryim more in just about every way.

Attaching a RNG with a chance of failure on literally everything is obnoxious. I didn't bother to reload though, except once near the beginning because I was only given two flame scrolls and I'd be damned if I'd lose one to a bad roll.

When it comes to combat, it shares the same problem as the Witcher in that it's almost purely strategy: you get good damage/to-hit stats and necessary items, and you win. There was only one battle in the main quest that required me to be a bit more dynamic (the one against the mage and his two guards; I had to sneakily murder an innocent NPC downstairs who was in my way so I could then shoot at the guy from the top of the stairs, run downstairs into the bedroom and take potshots as they came down and ran towards me. Sujamma and paralyzing arrows were used of course).

And on a related note, interiors in Morrowind are way too cramped (with too many places big enough for only one person to go through), and the exteriors feel really barren. Ancient hardware limitations.

Additionally, when it comes to a game like this where there are dozens of scrolls and potions and magic properties, a list inventory is superior to a grid.

"Do you want to travel at a reasonable pace or do you want to hit things in combat" is a terrible choice to have to make.

Thanks to Tribunal and an assassin attack, I had the second best light armor in the game at level 2 at no cost, though honestly it didn't feel like it made much difference.

What I did enjoy: the investigation aspects of many of those early and mid-game quests. Talking to people and getting directions to other people was fun (up to a point), and something not really present with modern Bethesda.

However, they went too far. After the prison break, the main quest takes a downturn with having to wander all over the place tracking down 18 or so people for their damn votes. I also wasn't too fond of "go to an island, clear it out, come back, then escort someone back to the island."

One of the mods I was using broke Bolvyn Venim (I don't know which one, the only gameplay altering stuff I used was the unofficial patch, the code patch, and the least-intrusive script tidy). He was unhittable with arrows. I even made sure by temporarily cheating my marksman skill up to 100 (agility already was maxed). Thankfully I was able to kill him with four of those dread aoe arrows you can buy from one of Bethesda's official add-on merchants. I'm including this here so someone in the future can find it via search if they run into the same problem.

I didn't see what the big deal was about cliff racers until the midgame when I was forced to manually travel a lot more. And cliff racers in the endgame area, really? What purpose do they serve there except as annoyance?

I didn't bother with Tribunal and Bloodmoon content because from what I've read, they're high-level damage sponge combat crawls. I'm also only level 11. I only did the main quest, a good chunk of House Hlaalu content, and a few other things here and there.

Skyrim fixed the things I complained about above, which is why I like it better. :) After so many years, Bethesda finally made something approaching good.
 

Lhynn

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I'm not reading 20 pages of this thread, but I did check out Morrowind to see what the buzz was about and now have an informed opinion. In one sentence: I liked Skryim more in just about every way.
Not surprised, skyrim seems more like your kind of game.
 

Shadenuat

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When it comes to combat, it shares the same problem as the Witcher in that it's almost purely strategy
It is, but then with Skyrim it's reversed - there is almost no strategy, it was replaced with barebones, super primitive twitching that even console action games from 90's laugh at.

And with RNG and hitting and "Bloodlines sucks because my guns skill is 1", really, what is more challenging - a system where you have to at least understand why you can't hit, or a system where you hit all the time and you don't need to understand how to do bigger damage? Even weapons and rewards in Skyrim are level scaled for that.
 

Roguey

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t is, but then with Skyrim it's reversed - there is almost no strategy, it was replaced with barebones, super primitive twitching that even console action games from 90's laugh at.

I used potions and poisons quite often in Skyrim. They drown you in 'em. I also agree with Bethesda's decision not to make it a terribly demanding action game. It'd be awful for first person melee, and a constant struggle would be going against the mood they're trying to set.

And with RNG and hitting and "Bloodlines sucks because my guns skill is 1", really, what is more challenging - a system where you have to at least understand why you can't hit, or a system where you hit all the time and you don't need to understand how to do bigger damage? Even weapons and rewards in Skyrim are level scaled for that.

I don't view character-creation-as-an-unspoken-difficulty-slider as a thing for which to strive.
 

Mozg

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Both have perfectly worthless combat that's exactly good enough to keep your "Why the fuck am I even playing this garbage? I'm uninstalling" reflex from triggering, but Morrowind lets you flea-jump and the environments are much better.
 

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