Why does every generation of modders deem it necessary to port Morrowind over into the newest game, when the lack of pixel shaders, bloom, color correction, chunky specular maps, oversaturated lighting, plasticine facegen heads and sprite trees (these two more for OB) make it stylistically superior to Oblivion and Skyrim in every conceivable way? Is it to afford the new cohort of TES fans who jumped on the bandwagon with Skyrim to run around Vvardenfell like an idiot with gameplay that isn't even remotely extensive enough to paint the original content in a flattering light?
I guess that's how the progressive incrementalism of decline works. Some thirteen year olds pirate Morrowind, run Skywind, kill some cliff racers and brag about how they're such worldly and knowledgeable fans of the games without ever having to see what the series used to be really capable of. Morrowind isn't a perfect game by any means but it depresses me to think that the reason people complacently accept things like the fifth-grade level dialogue writing and world-building in Skyrim is because they aren't aware that a higher level of quality can be achieved.
Be completely fucking honest with yourself, the only good dialogue in Morrowind was few and far between, and the characters with it can be counted on one hand. Mistress Dratha, The Dwemer you meet in Tel Fyr, Crassius Curio, Dagoth "Motherfucking" Ur, and Vivec. The decent stuff could be counted on both hands. That other stuff and the king of Morrowind, Barenziah, Caius Cosades, and maybe Almalexia.
The strength of Morrowinds writing was never in it's dialogue writing, if you want strength in that go play Planescape, or Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Morrowinds strength was in world building, IE, creating a believable system of lore, philosophy, religion and government through the descriptions in texts. In that regard it's similar to the Ultima series.
More than that, to call Morrowind a good game, requires a degree of non-thought that I call progressive delusionism. It's a good game if you ignore the fact that there are large stretches without anything really interesting to do or look at because default view range is so short it restricts your vision in a completely unrealistic manner even for fog. There are complete and utter gaps in balance that lend themselves to a style of play that leans heavily on exploits. To the point where you can unintentionally break the game by doing accidental things. The combat system is utterly sucky to the point where button mashing with a heavily enchanted weapon is the prime method of combat at high levels. Control is taken away from players more often than not, in the form of a block you can't control. A dodge you can't control and a hit you can't control. The dungeons in Morrowind only feel larger than skyrims because on average you have a walk back, not saying it's a bad thing, but comparing the average dungeon in Morrowind to Skyrim. You'll find they more resemble closets to Skyrim's bathrooms. That's not to say it's not without it's benefits, the spaces that are fully realized are generally realized in a slightly better way than Skyrim. The spartan look of Morrowind generally gives a better appeal than Skyrim, which can't seem to settle on desolate or epic as it's main them. More than that the tunnels in morrowind that are closed off generally look like actual tunnel ends rather than tunnels that have randomly collapsed.
In essense weighing the points, skyrim comes in just under Morrowind and above Daggerfall and Oblivion in total quality, with a few explainations.
Skyrim
Pro's
Better combat as the meat of the game means that the general gameplay flows together better.
Dragon fights are better than cliffracers or really anything Morrowind had to offer combat wise, and while they could get annoying sometimes, "GOD DAMN IT, (Plunk, arrow launch) WHY ARE YOU (Plunk arrow launch) SLAUGHTERING (crack crackle, lightning sounds) THOSE VILLAGERS! (plunk, crack crackle) " They were an interesting opponent to fight the first few times, which is more than anything in Morrowind could say.
In general they've come far enough that unmodded the game aesthetically looks better than Morrowind. While sometimes it confuses it's theme, Morrowind did that as well to a somewhat lesser extent(Looking at you Grazelands and West Gash).
Hard enemies tend to remain hard, but that could just be the mods I'm using. I know beating a group of giants still feels epic. particularly if I use every tool in my arsenal rather than just burst dpsing them down.
Cons
The addition of voice acting fucking things up, while Voicing Acting is alright, the direction could be a lot better and running into Latino/Spanish guards out front of Whiterun is always a little funny after you've placed the accent.
Nothing really is added to the lore and it seems like massive steps have been taken to avoid really pinning down any lore. It's kind weird seeing the same old books 300 years down the line, when you'd think you'd be seeing a lot more new ones. They really should try and hire Kirkblade again, see if bribery works, because that was the only point where they were putting out good and prolific lore.
The game railroads you a lot, and assumes you are the dumbest entity in the game half the time. Not really going to comment more on that here.
Really though Skyrim is a game I flipflop on week by week. With mods it actually becomes really bearable. I seriously just wish there was a mod that reduced HP bloat. Both on the players part and on the NPC's part. Dark Souls has taught me the joy of enemies and players with very low HP bloat. Beyond things like subbosses and bosses. Which can bloat all they want they are meant to be like that. Honestly it's looking like I'm going to have to make this myself. But after how my Fallout:NV mod turned out, I doubt I have the testicular fortitude to actually do that. And I just know the moment I intend to release it, I'm going to get preempted by some other douchebag. Every other mod I've made it's happened like that.
(TYPERING AT 2 AM IS TEH HARD WHEN IS SLEEPING PILLZ WILL EDIT TOMORROW)