Morrowind was massive decline and should be considered as such

[Lonely Vazdru]

if you played Daggerfall on release and as the rest of the '90s rolled by and games got better and better you start to think "what would a sequel to Daggerfall be like now?" You hear about Morrowind, you eagerly anticipate it, finally it releases and while it did well when it comes to worldbuilding it also diminished or outright abandoned a lot of Daggerfall's ideas. To a Daggerfall fanatic, Morrowind was to them what Oblivion or Skyrim was to a Morrowind fanatic.

My experience exactly.

 

[Zanzoken]

Morrowind’s main quest is one of the best cRPG stories, if not the best one of them all.

I'd say Morrowind is my personal favorite cRPG story of all time.

The main quest in the game is good on its own, but it's really just the final chapter of the broader Nerevar epic. And it's all the little details of the larger narrative -- from the disputed events at Red Mountain, to the emergence of the Tribunal Temple, to the suppression of the Dissident Priests -- that really make the world so believable and satisfying.

 

[NerevarineKing]

Morrowind’s main quest is one of the best cRPG stories, if not the best one of them all.

I'd say Morrowind is my personal favorite cRPG story of all time.

The main quest in the game is good on its own, but it's really just the final chapter of the broader Nerevar epic. And it's all the little details of the larger narrative -- from the disputed events at Red Mountain, to the emergence of the Tribunal Temple, to the suppression of the Dissident Priests -- that really make the world so believable and satisfying.

I love the part where they give you different accounts of the Battle of Red Mountain written by different groups each with their own biases. It's stuff like this that makes everything so believable.

 

[Shadenuat]

Azura is a liar and cannot be trusted.

if you played Daggerfall on release and as the rest of the '90s rolled by and games got better and better you start to think "what would a sequel to Daggerfall be like now?" You hear about Morrowind, you eagerly anticipate it, finally it releases and while it did well when it comes to worldbuilding it also diminished or outright abandoned a lot of Daggerfall's ideas. To a Daggerfall fanatic, Morrowind was to them what Oblivion or Skyrim was to a Morrowind fanatic.

My experience exactly.

That's not unique for Bethesda or any other developers. Bethesda in particular though drops everything new they try even if fixing it was a problem of putting a bit more effort into it.

The hated Oblivion had radiant AI things like NPC greetings. Everyone laughed at them, but if you categorize NPCs by their social rank and re-construct the system so dialogues would be based on such variables, add more banter and more types of dialogue than just greet-bark-goodbye it might have worked. But I take it was completely dumped in favor of scripted dialogue where NPCs just repeat the arrow to the knee joke.

The gamer reaction to anything experimental if its flawed is so overwhelming that developers just like anyone else prefer to play it safe now. Fallout 1 had mutants conquering cities, but they removed them. Cain afaik said he would never add a timer to a game ever again.

Look at "most hated gameplay elements" thread. A lot of stuff there is purely arbitrary.

 

[luj1]

I love the part where they give you different accounts of the Battle of Red Mountain written by different groups each with their own biases. It's stuff like this that makes everything so believable.

the unreliable narrator. Shame so few works use it

 

[mondblut]

as the rest of the '90s rolled by and games got better and better

...what?

 

[mondblut]

So all things considered it's just as likely, if not more, that the PC is simply a very capable imperial agent that happened to be at the right place at right time rather than the reincarnation of a god-king of old

I guess the PC in Fallout isn't really the Chosen One either, since he gets the boot at the end instead of marrying the overseer's daughter and inheriting his chair.

 

[OSK]

So all things considered it's just as likely, if not more, that the PC is simply a very capable imperial agent that happened to be at the right place at right time rather than the reincarnation of a god-king of old

I guess the PC in Fallout isn't really the Chosen One either, since he gets the boot at the end instead of marrying the overseer's daughter and inheriting his chair.

The Chosen One is the grandchild of the PC in Fallout 1.

 

[alyvain]

The discussion of whether Nerevarine is a chosen one seems more or less meaningless because it is left ambiguous in the game, without much for you to get your teeth in.

You are not the Nerevarine. You are one who may become the Nerevarine. It is a puzzle, and a hard one. But you have found some of the pieces, and you may find more. Do you choose to be the Nerevarine?

TES lore, while its coherence is probably overstated, often alludes to concepts like "mantling", applied to chosen ones and CHIMmed dudes, and generally tends to indicate that all the mythical and sacred stuff happened not quite the way it happened, because the world is shaky to the core, when not only time and space, but causal relations as well do not stay in one place. Apparently, formal logic doesn't really apply to the in-lore matters. That's why "loremasters", who try too hard to make sense of the things that happen or alluded to in the games, tend to comically miss the point.

 

[prengle]

i am aware that morrowind was a harbinger of great, seemingly irreversible decline, but i like it so fuck you...

 

[Falksi]

Hexen 2. That's fun too.

 

[Brujoloco]

Sorry but no ... Morrowind is such a great game and I also enjoy Daggerfall .

They are two very different games and comparing one to the other is like comparing Star Wars to Star Trek personally, they each have their own niches, flaws and great moments.

The only game I never liked in the series was Oblivion, mostly due to the aesthetic which is usually my main gripe with games, beyond mechanics or internal logic.

I think the issue with people bashing morrowind is that they see bethesda games as a continuum, but when you move farther in the mental viewscape they all are pretty much unique games that have a basic lore thread in common but not much else between them.

Its like the jump from Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 . They are truly different games within the same universe but each has a unique approach, even if for me the real Fallout 3 was New Vegas, that is just saying within the constraints of FO3 there could be much much more.

 

[Brujoloco]

as the rest of the '90s rolled by and games got better and better

...what?

I mean ... yes and no but ... yes

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

They are two very different games and comparing one to the other is like comparing Star Wars to Star Trek personally, they each have their own niches, flaws and great moments.

Speaking of Star Wars and Star Trek, I guess you're the kind of guy who doesn't compare the new movies to the original ones and dutifully accepts that each has their own "merits".

 

[Brujoloco]

They are two very different games and comparing one to the other is like comparing Star Wars to Star Trek personally, they each have their own niches, flaws and great moments.

Speaking of Star Wars and Star Trek, I guess you're the kind of guy who doesn't compare the new movies to the original ones and dutifully accepts that each has their own "merits".

Nope, sorry, I am Despecialized edition guy , forgot people add the drivel that happened with Jar Jar and EVERYTHING afterwards as "Star Wars" .

What I meant was that within the continuum of games in the Elder Scrolls , Daggerfall is completely different to Morrowind and this does not make one game better than the other to me, it just makes them pieces of a big jigsaw that is The Elder Scrolls, something I cannot say with the disjointed set of movies labeled as Star Wars that have come out in the past years with flying Leias, Swolos and even funny comic relief aliens that are secretly sith lords no one knows anything about, perhaps other people can see it , but me? nope.

Personally between the two I love Morrowind, mod it still today and am an active member of the modding community, find it superior to all other Elder Scrolls Games and yet, appreciate and love Daggerfall as well.

People bashing on it, besides some specific points that boil down to taste, do not know or do not care about the plethora of new mods for it that make modern modded morrowind an even better Elder Scrolls Game and that a simple 5 minuter modding work nullifies any if not all of their complaints regarding the game.

I do not feel the need to bash Morrowind to make Daggerfall better (and viceversa), they are both equally good games and I played both when they were new. The Aesthetics of Morrowind are truly unique in all other elder scrolls games and superior to all others to my tastes and that is what made me feel stronger attachments to it. When I played both I was still the same nerdy lonely guy living in a basement with almost no friends, trapped in a third world country with no prospect of ever leaving , but when Daggerfall made me have fun Morrowind on the other hand simply transported me to a truly Alien , unique and amazing fantasy setting.

Most of my mods for Morrowind just focus on making yourself feel more lost within Vvardenfell and I did not get this resonance with Daggerfall.

But again I have to confess I am a fanboi, and please, do not generalize on my statements, perhaps using star wars and star trek was a bit much, consider them now as "Apples to Oranges" hehe

Cheers!

 

[Sweeper]

and everything hand-crafted.

But this counts for a lot. For all the mechanical complexity Daggerfall had over Morrowind, those randomly generated dungeons made me want to blow my brains out.

 

[Tye]

You mean you don't like spending two hours trying to find the one werepig that fell down through the floor and onto the set of Car Boys?

 

[Vormulak]

Yes you read it right, i mean every words.
This game was the first game in the elder scrolls that got rid of features and stuff.Instead of improving daggerfall and adding stuff, this game threw everything out of the window.
In total, Morrowind got rid of:

1. Skills:Orcish,Harpy,Deadric,Medecine,swimming,climbing,critical strike,Backstab,Centaurian,streetwise,SprigganThaumaturgy,Nymph,Orcish,Dragonish,dodging, Giantish,etiquette,Impish. A total of 19 skills removed in Morrowind only .3x times more skills removed between Daggerfall and Morrowind than Morrowind and Oblivion.
2. Main quest: Choices and consequences removed in Morrowind
3. NPC: No longer sleep, no longer answer you if they accept you in their houses. You can no longer ask for work.
4. Factions: 18 factions removed from Daggerfall, Temple factions gone, Knightly orders gone. Factions can no longer dismiss you and factions can no longer refuse you if you have a bad reputation.Faction reputation
5. Dungeons: hidden doors, traps, complexity.
6. Wereboar
7. Daggerfall 9 vampire Bloodlines-> 3 vampire bloodlines Morrowind
8. Witch covens
9. Court: debate or lie
10. Political entities
11. Cities can no longer ban you
12. 20 shrines in Daggerfall -> 11 Shrines in morrowind
13. Music that changes considering the mood
14. In daggerfall 2 hours OST -> 50 minutes in Morrowind
15. Banks, ship, letters of credit, carriage,horse,Bracers,and other items.
16. Character creation, edit reputations, deep background, you can no longer edit advantages and disadvantages.

The only things that morrowind has upon daggerfall are alien setting and everything hand-crafted.
2 steps forward 16 steps backward, and it goes downhill since morrowind.

You're right but Daggerfall wasn't anything special to start with, also tacking more bullshit on to make the game more autistic doesn't improve the experience.

 

[cvv]

OP is correct in almost every single point but he's missing one crucial thing.

Morrowind did away with procedural generation, the nasty cancer on the swollen rectum of videogaming. Daggerfall was the best TES game in almost every way. But none of it mattered because it was procedurally generated.

It's like if you're smart, funny, charming, have a beautiful face and body and smell nice....but you've got a massive schlong swinging between your legs I'm NOT gonna sleep with you.

 

[His Dudeness]

I dunno OP, I played it when it came out and it was pretty great.

I had an asassin with high atlethics that jumped from roof to roof, it reminded me of batman.

 

[V_K]

Morrowind did away with procedural generation, the nasty cancer on the swollen rectum of videogaming. Daggerfall was the best TES game in almost every way. But none of it mattered because it was procedurally generated.

Damn, how many more times will I have to correct this bullshit? Only side - as in, optional - content in DF is procedurally generated. All the main quest dungeons, all the capital cities and all the parts of the main quest are completely handcrafted. And given their size, I wouldn't be surprised if there's actually more handcrafted content in DF than in MW in terms of sheer hours.
And then again, the handcrafted dungeons in MW are actually worse than procedural dungeons in DF because they're all so linear and boring: no teleporters, no shafts, no switches.

 

[cvv]

Morrowind did away with procedural generation, the nasty cancer on the swollen rectum of videogaming. Daggerfall was the best TES game in almost every way. But none of it mattered because it was procedurally generated.

Only side - as in, optional - content in DF is procedurally generated.

Meaning a handful of handcrafted nuggets in a vast sea of procedurally generated garbage.

I don't remember the details anymore, I played this shit once 20 years ago and never again, but I know many of the great features OP is mentioning are actually tied to the side content. Like the whole faction system - a p. big part of the game. Progressing within your chosen faction is all about grinding procedurally generated quests and dungeons. I even think that's what ultimately broke me.

 

[V_K]

Like the whole faction system - a p. big part of the game. Progressing within your chosen faction is all about grinding procedurally generated quests and dungeons. I even think that's what ultimately broke me.

You'd have a point here if faction quests in MW were any good. They're not. They're neither more creative, nor more detailed than DF's procedural quests. The only difference is that you can't repeat them. I would even argue that DF's procedural setups are more varied than MW's handcrafted ones.

 

[cvv]

Like the whole faction system - a p. big part of the game. Progressing within your chosen faction is all about grinding procedurally generated quests and dungeons. I even think that's what ultimately broke me.

You'd have a point here if faction quests in MW were any good. They're not. They're neither more creative, nor more detailed than DF's procedural quests. The only difference is that you can't repeat them. I would even argue that DF's procedural setups are more varied than MW's handcrafted ones.

I only played Morrowind once, long time ago, but I still remember liking one of the elven house questlines (racist mages or some such). Motherfuckers lived in tall houses without stairs so you had to fly to them or some shit. Those were the days when Bethesda still employed people with entertaining ideas.

 

[Justicar]

I only played Morrowind once, long time ago, but I still remember liking one of the elven house questlines (racist mages or some such). Motherfuckers lived in tall houses without stairs so you had to fly to them or some shit. Those were the days when Bethesda still employed people with entertaining ideas.

Name one character from that questline without using uncle google. Characters in Morrowind were so bland I only remember Vivec because he was levitating in his sex fort.