I'll answer for him, avoiding Oblivion and System Shock (which I have not played).
Certainly. I am always willing to read a thoughtful response.
- The character creation of Fallout, Fallout 2, and especially Arcanum, have much more of an impact on the game than Morrowind's could ever hope to. This is because leveling up in Morrowind is a rather easy task (and indeed, you become a God by the end of the game), and because there's no noticeable difference between Morrowind's choice of gear contrasted to that of the three games I mentioned. In essence, Morrowind's "character building" boils down to one choice: do you want to play boring Morrowind, or do you want to break Morrowind by becoming a spellcaster with alchemical knowledge? If you play Morrowind as a melee fighter, you may as well play a game with good melee combat, or one that makes different skills feel different.
True. That said, I think Morrowind's skill system could be much more interesting if you would be capable of forgetting skills you're not using frequently enough. That way it'd be possible for you to develop your character organically by playing the way you desire (something Morrowind attempts to emulate, by increasing your skill by doing). In my opinion this is Bethesda's biggest fault: not trying to refine their system further, rather than attempting why they did in Morrowind.
- Morrowind's quests aren't anywhere near as replayable as those of FO1, FO2, F:NV, and Arcanum's. So not only do you have to deal with emotionally dead characters, but you also have to deal with quests that don't really offer multiple ways to complete them. And, what's more, usually the multiple ways to complete them don't offer anything in the way of "writing", the way quests do in the games I mentioned. What does this mean? That Morrowind's "multiple" ways to solve a quest don't really affect the story of the quest. A stark contrast compared to siding with Gizmo vs Killian in Fallout, or killing the Legion/delivering the Legion's message/attacking the Mojave Outpost in New Vegas. All multiple ways to solve a quest successfully, all leading to different stories.
True. This is a problem, because the narrative is separated from the game's systems, and this is another huge miss on Bethesda's part: instead of coming up with a system that creates narratives on its own they kept their way of forcing a hand-crafted narrative onto the game. And with the amount of stuff (the ground there is to cover) they simply weren't capable of allowing the player in their games to really experience emergent gameplay or allow for player's choices outside of stuff such as creating your own spells/items and what skills you level up faster than others.
The problem with Morrowind's settlements is that they are bigger than they are useful. Most NPCs in these settlements, I kid you not, roughly 75% of them, may as well not be there. This wouldn't be a problem if they were rightfully pushed back as background characters as many RPGs do (NPCs in all games I mentioned before have basic "barks" that tell the player "I'm not important, move on"). However, because you can interact so much with Morrowind's NPCs, it makes it even more obvious that they are filler. After asking questions about 20 different topics to a given NPC, you would expect something that made them stand out from the rest.
You are correct, but I am not going to fault Morrowind for this one. Yes, most NPCs are a filler, but they do their job of making the world look more alive, similarly to how NPCs' routines in Skyrim made them feel more alive. If you really want to make each NPC to be truly unique then you'd have to make the game's world smaller as a result, and Morrowind was already scaled down compared to Daggerfall. And most RPGs have NPCs whose only job is to "be there", even if they are not interactable.
Because Morrowind's skill system affects chances of success and nothing else. This is fine in an isometric game, but as a first person game where you are forced to spam left click (not right click, btw, but that was OP's mistake) you would hope that you would be doing something else once you reach 90 Long Blade or shit like that. Look at Gothic: different skill levels meant that the game played differently. Piranha Bytes could have been content with simply making your attacks do more damage, but they weren't.
True, but I was able to forgive Morrowind for "you do everything by clicking left mouse button", because developing the skills by doing skill-related tasks (despite everything sharing the same button) was a refreshing change from "you must kill a dragon in order to increase your lockpicking skill". I think the only skill I didn't enjoy in Morrowind was stealth (and pickpocketing, which was bugged if I recall correctly). I agree Gothic was great in how things worked (after you got used to "tank controls"). However, Gothic did put A LOT of emphasis on the "action" part. Morrowind didn't. I feel it's important to point out this distinction.
and ask: why, oh why did Bethesda think that something as retarded as "aim your mouse in the direction of your enemy" was such a high IQ task that they felt the need to shoehorn traditional RPG combat mechanics (dicerolls) where you tire your left finger out when they could have simply done something much more, or else, keep Morrowind isometric and let combat be automated like it is in nearly any other RPG?
I am unsure why you keep mentioning the isometric perspective, especially with how poorly animated the characters were (which, as you said yourself, was clearly visible even in first person). I liked Morrowind's first person perspective, because it increased the immersion for me. I agree that melee combat could have been more interesting than it was. I always saw it as a missed opportunity. That said, the way it was done resulted in a curious blend of an action game and an RPG, which made Morrowind stand out for me as a result. I guess I have a soft spot for "experimental" games.
WHO THE FUCK CAN FIND THIS GAME'S COMBAT FUN, WRITING ENGAGING, AND WORLD INTERESTING TO EXPLORE? I expect Reddit (no offense intended) to think like this much like how they praise Skyrim as the best game ever, but not the Codex.
I wouldn't say that Morrowind's combat was "fun". More like "it did its job". The writing wasn't "engaging", but it was "serviceable". As in: good enough to not stop me from exploring the world (despite the rather crappy dialogue system). And the world was interesting to explore, because it was different enough to want me discover more stuff about it. It's not "the best game ever". Some may even say it is not very good/enjoyable, but at least for me it was interesting enough to keep playing it. A lot. As a result I still like it to this day, despite it flaws.
