How is the Elder Scrolls series views by Codexers?

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

I know Oblivion is kind of a meme in a lot of ways, but I've been getting into the series.

Compared to say Baldur's Gate, Diablo, or even I suppose tabletop RPGS, how is the Elder Scrolls series considered here on the Codex?

Also, why does it seem Arena and Daggerfall have been quietly buried by Todd Howard?

 

[Sigourn]

Codex loves Morrowind and Daggerfall.

I haven't played Daggerfall, but every multiplatform Bethesda game is bad or overrated.

Evidence.

 

[Serious_Business]

I got into Morrowind lately, it's actually really fucking cool. I never got into it before, even though I played on release, it never stuck with me that much. I couldn't tell you why, I guess I was playing NWN back then and after that I started looking down on Betheshda by default. But they really did something gold with Morrowind. Not only it was some kind of technological marvel for the time, but it also has this really incredible world design. As far as the gameplay goes, there's enough complaining about it not being very dynamic (walking simulator, quests being too formulaic and so on), but it's still peak open world. That is to say, you fuck around the sandbox. The modding adds to this of course. It goes very far, but I don't think the game needs much mods in the first place.

 

[Skinwalker]

Arena and Daggerfall are unplayable old.

Moronwind has some good parts, but is very flawed. It's also too old by now.

Oblivion destroyed CRPGs forever. I hate everything about it.

Skyrim was a merger of Oblivion and Moronwind, basically. Probably the best of the series, but still too quest compassy.

 

[Poseidon00]

I like the series better in theory than I do in practice. I had one enjoyable complete run of Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Skyrim, but I can't find it in myself to really enjoy them much beyond that.

 

[Old Hans]

I know Oblivion is kind of a meme in a lot of ways, but I've been getting into the series.

Compared to say Baldur's Gate, Diablo, or even I suppose tabletop RPGS, how is the Elder Scrolls series considered here on the Codex?

Also, why does it seem Arena and Daggerfall have been quietly buried by Todd Howard?

games like daggerfall and arena were the equivalent of a barebone tabletop rpg campaign book full of random dice roll tables and blocks of dry background information. where as Baldur's gate was a really fun adventure module

 

[Xorazm]

I asked a question ages ago to the general community about how and why the infamous Decline happened. There was a lot of discussion about different factors but what I found interesting was the amount of consensus that Oblivion was Patient Zero - where it all came together to start going the process of going downhill.

I'll admit to having mindless fun mucking about in Bethesda games (up until Starfield) but it broke my pure little heart to see what they'd done after Morrowind. I'd fallen in love with that game, sank my teeth and sucked the marrow, and how I was aching for more of that delicious taste of depth and richness and all I got was bland oatmeal instead.

You can add a bit of brown sugar (mods) to oatmeal to make it palatable but it's never going to compare to a Michelin Five Star Steak.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Compared to say Baldur's Gate, Diablo, or even I suppose tabletop RPGS, how is the Elder Scrolls series considered here on the Codex?

Morrowind was considered the Codex's top CRPG of the Year 2002, the Codex's #4 CRPG of the entire decade of the 2000s, and has finished in the top 10 of two later votes for best CRPGs of all time. Daggerfall also has a substantial number of Codex supporters, but less so Arena. After Morrowind, Oblivion is widely derided as a terrible game that brought consolization to CRPGs and had other pernicious influences, and Skyrim overall is probably considered as more or less the same quality as Oblivion but it varies by individual Codexer.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

From a storyfag perspective, lore used to be cool. And it is somewhat of a helpful crutch for Bethesda when coming up with the narrative design and worldbuilding of their games, but with each new iteration they just dumb it down further and provide a more vanilla version of TES rooted in pop culture (e.g. Nords in the lore which are weird and unique vs dimeadozen pop portrayal of fantasy vikings in Skyrim, Imperials and Cyrodiil in the lore vs LotR medievalesque ripoff in Oblivion). Don't have high hopes for the upcoming sequel tbqh.

 

[NecroLord]

Also, why does it seem Arena and Daggerfall have been quietly buried by Todd Howard?

Because he didn't play a big role in their development.
Though I wouldn't exactly call this a "quiet burial", but they have been standing in the shadows, so to speak.

Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind are the best games in the series, with my favorite being Daggerfall.
Morrowind has the best lore and the most unique setting that is not your typical high fantasy setting.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Also, why does it seem Arena and Daggerfall have been quietly buried by Todd Howard?

Arena and Daggerfall are both available on Steam for free; it isn't that they've been buried, but it seems that Bethesda Softworks long ago decided they wouldn't be able to receive any substantial revenue from these Underworld-style games,.

 

[Ryan muller]

They all suck, no exception

 

[BruceVC]

I know Oblivion is kind of a meme in a lot of ways, but I've been getting into the series.

Compared to say Baldur's Gate, Diablo, or even I suppose tabletop RPGS, how is the Elder Scrolls series considered here on the Codex?

Also, why does it seem Arena and Daggerfall have been quietly buried by Todd Howard?

I love all the ES games, you must use Mods but they can provide hundreds of hours of entertainment

My favourite game is Daggerfall but you must play Daggerfall Unity with a good mod collection

And I havent played Skyrim yet but with mods its also excellent. There is a dedicated thread on Codex around Skyrim mods like Requiem

 

[Konjad]

TES I: Arena - meh, maybe at the time it was okay, but I played it too late
TES II: Daggerfall - cool tech back at the time, gets boring after a while due to all random generation, better just keep to main quest
TES III: Morrowind - cool atmosphere, generally alright and worth to give it a playthrough, cool lore, crap combat
TES III: Tribunal - Boring dungeon crawling with crap Morrowind combat
TES III: Bloodmoon - Interesting and atmosphering expansion, probably the best TES part
TES IV: Oblivion - decline overall, but still has some interesting quests and combat is better, avoid main quest at all times, destroyed all lore
TES IV: Shivering Isles - a bit too bizzare, but it's just more of Oblivion
TES V: Skyrim - Oblivion but with anything interesting removed, complete cliche fantasy borefest

 

[Butter]

There's not much to add to what others have already said. Daggerfall and Morrowind are the best. Arena is decent but Daggerfall surpassed it in every way. Battlespire is a cool dungeon crawl but is probably the jankiest game I've ever played. Everything else is not worth your time.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Skyrim was a merger of Oblivion and Moronwind, basically. Probably the best of the series, but still too quest compassy.

Skyrim is a huge step back from Morrowind. Skyrim has very little in the way of a character system. In fact, even Morrowind was a step back from Daggerfall, but there's still quite a bit there. Skyrim definitely drops the most of the character system, and the fall off is pretty major.

TES III: Morrowind - cool atmosphere, generally alright and worth to give it a playthrough, cool lore, crap combat

I'm not quite sure why they decided that you could attack a monster, have the sword swing which visually hit the monster, and it consider it a miss because of a dice roll. Instead, use the dice roll to scale the damage using an exponential scale converted to a percentage, then use that percentage for the "To Hit" sound's volume.

but still too quest compassy.

I still think Morrowind could have benefited from a quest marker, but no where near as hand-holdy as Skyrim is where it will lead you directly to the quest target. Show me which cave you're talking about, but not exactly where the item or monster is in that cave. Skyrim compass marker stuff was more like clairvoyance than it was "Let me mark this on your map." The latter is fine, and even preferable to having to go up to each cave or crypt or house and read whatever text pops up that matches your quest log until you find the right one. "Let me mark it on your map" also makes more sense than someone fresh off a boat knowing the name of every crypt, cave, and cranny in Vvardenfell.

 

[Konjad]

WHERE IS THE DWEMER CUBE, WHERE THE FUCK IS IT

 

[JarlFrank]

Arena and Daggerfall are unplayable old.

Moronwind has some good parts, but is very flawed. It's also too old by now.

Arena and Daggerfall are perfectly playable in DOS Box. Daggerfall has a Unity port that makes it perfectly playable on modern systems and even expands the game.

Morrowind is great, one of my favorite games ever. Yes, it does have some flaws, but it's perfectly playable. Nothing about it is "too old". In fact, its age is a boon, as its user interface is much much MUCH better than anything made nowadays. It's actually designed for mouse & keyboard! It has resizable and moveable windows you can arrange however you want - inventory, character stats, world map. Oblivion and Skyrim have such bad interfaces there's a dozen mods to fix them; no such mods are needed for Morrowind.

 

[JarlFrank]

BTW these are the real canon Elder Scrolls sequels. Every Bethesda game from Oblivion onward is bad fanfiction. This is the real deal:

https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/
https://www.project-tamriel.com/welcome

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Tried playing all of them expect for Arena. Quickly reached a conclusion that they're completely not for me. I guess I do see the appeal, though.

Oh, and codex absolutely loves nu-TES. 100+ h playtime for Skyrim on Steam is a standard.

 

[Gandalf]

Nicest part of some of the TES games is being able to walk, interact with and explore the vast world and see it through the first person view view, I think. It's like being teleported to the fantasy medieval times and experiencing everything in real time. It remind me a bit of LARPing. There was this YouTube video in which a guy screamed "firebolt" (or something like this) and threw a thing which was supposed to be said "firebolt". I think TES games has some similarities in that matter.

 

[ind33d]

morrowind has a new lease on life thanks to steam deck, i wouldn't be surprised if modders start revisiting older games now that they're portable

arena is just unplayable though

 

[Dr1f7]

MW and Daggerfall are classics and will always be worth playing at least once or twice. Well idk maybe M&M series is better and invalidates those. But MW has a huge modding scene so there's that

Ok look, Oblivion is a good example of a game that was good for its time but has been outclassed so much at this point it's not really worth playing. People have nostalgia for the game but in current year, the ONLY redeeming quality is Jeremy Soule's music, which you can just listen to without playing the game.

BTW oblivion was also where bethesda started getting rid of 'fun' things like levitation/huge attribute boosts/mark recall/fleshed out spellcrafting so that's a big reason why the game doesn't hold up, the devs were like "we don't want you to have fun!"

Skyrim is just garbage; really the last 'decent' game bethesda released was FO3 (and like oblivion, that was only really good 'for its time'), you're totally safe to ignore everything from bethesda post-fo3 they've been invalidated by devs like fromsoft

 

[Gargaune]

Feeling a strong urge to reinstall the Gothic games...

 

[JarlFrank]

Oblivion is a good example of a game that was good for its time

No it isn't, it was complete shit when it came out.