What’s Your Favourite post-Morrowind Bethesda Game ?

[JarlFrank]

New Vegas - oh wait it was made by a different company.

Nehrim and Enderal - oh wait those are total conversion mods made by independent modders.

Enderal is probably one of the best recent releases I've played tbh. I dismissed it as a fan project and I regret it, it's better than what a lot of companies with actual paid employees are putting out now.

Play Nehrim, it's their total conversion for Oblivion. The dungeon design in that one was even better I think.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Did you liked any post-Morrowind bethesda game ?

 

[Carrion]

I tried Nehrim briefly but couldn't stand it for more than an hour or two. I can appreciate the dungeon design and the amount of effort that was put into the thing, but it triggered my Oblivion PTSD with its Disneyland aesthetics, terrible writing and the world record attempt at blandness.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I tried Nehrim briefly but couldn't stand it for more than an hour or two. I can appreciate the dungeon design and the amount of effort that was put into the thing, but it triggered my Oblivion PTSD with its Disneyland aesthetics, terrible writing and the world record attempt at blandness.

play enderal

 

[Curratum]

I tried Nehrim briefly but couldn't stand it for more than an hour or two. I can appreciate the dungeon design and the amount of effort that was put into the thing, but it triggered my Oblivion PTSD with its Disneyland aesthetics, terrible writing and the world record attempt at blandness.

play enderal

I have it, played halfway in mod form, have downloaded the Steam release, keep dicking around instead of finishing it. For some reason I die A LOT MORE in the Steam release.

 

[Lutte]

Oblivion is terrible. [...]

Skyrim is good when you finally calm down and accept it for what it is.

I'll never understand this. Not one thing in Skyrim is even as remotely entertaining as Oblivion's DB questline or the shivering isles expansion. Magic was even more neutered and useless, setting took an even blander turn with the snownigger shit and how out of place certain things felt like the magic guild.
And you mentioned dungeons.. I'll leave this here

Fallout 3 is a better game than Oblivion

No.
Oblivion was decline but every step Beth took was made for the worse, every single time. They haven't made a better game than oblivion since oblivion, just as they haven't made a game better than morrowind since morrowind. Oblivion was a mediocre game and it caused a lot of butthurt on the codex, mostly the morrowind rapefugees who invaded, but as far as AAA garbage goes it's just that, average. It's nowhere near as bad as modern Beth. Writing is bad, but not -I want to rip my eardrums from hearing such insane shit- bad like Fallout 3 which had things like the kid city, the grown kid city, the fake vampire undergrounds, that infamous three dogs "intelligence" check etc.

 

[Wayward Son]

I really liked oblivion and Skyrim as a kid (8 for Oblivion and 11 for Skyrim).

 

[Sòren]

i didn't like any of them, but if i had to pick one, i would go for skyrim. i really appreciated that they tried to re-establish the awesome lore of Morrowind. it's a mess from a gameplay perspective tho.

 

[Lemming42]

Oblivion is terrible. [...]

Skyrim is good when you finally calm down and accept it for what it is.

I'll never understand this. Not one thing in Skyrim is even as remotely entertaining as Oblivion's DB questline or the shivering isles expansion. Magic was even more neutered and useless, setting took an even blander turn with the snownigger shit and how out of place certain things felt like the magic guild.
And you mentioned dungeons.. I'll leave this here

Oblivion is technically more complex than Skyrim in a lot of ways, but (for me at least) absolutely none of it comes off properly. To put it bluntly, Oblivion is still trying to be an RPG, and it doesn't work because it's an absolutely terrible RPG. Skyrim knows it wants to be an action game with stats, and it just about succeeds IMO.

I can't agree with you on the setting. Skyrim's setting provides a fine backdrop for the player's adventures, is visually appealing, and individual dungeons provide memorable snippets of lore and worldbuilding, even if it never feels like it's tying together into a cohesive whole. Skyrim shows much more respect for the TES setting than Oblivion, I'd argue, and it does genuinely feel like it's connected to the world established by Daggerfall, Redguard and Morrowind. Oblivion is just an ass-looking version of Middle Earth with nightmarishly garish colours, with no relation to the Cyrodiil we'd read about in the other games, and no interesting factions (I didn't like the Dark Brotherhood questline personally, so that leaves me with the endless parade of Counts and Countesses who do nothing at all).

That dungeon comparison chart doesn't translate into the dungeons being fun to play. To illustrate the point, Daggerfall's dungeons dwarf anything in Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim in terms of both scale and complexity, but they're often no fun to play through. Skyrim's dungeons are more like rollercoaster rides (terrible analogy but it's the best I can think of) through a pre-planned series of traps, enemy ambushes, visual setpieces, usually some kind of backstory to uncover, and almost always some kind of boss fight at the end with unique spells or weapons or dragon shouts. Oblivion's dungeons are more expansive with more to explore, but exploration is no good if it's the kind Oblivion offers - trudging through samey copy/pasted corridors full of the same three types of HP-bloat level scaled enemies for some uniformly shitty loot.

Oblivion was decline but every step Beth took was made for the worse, every single time. They haven't made a better game than oblivion since oblivion, just as they haven't made a game better than morrowind since morrowind. Oblivion was a mediocre game and it caused a lot of butthurt on the codex, mostly the morrowind rapefugees who invaded, but as far as AAA garbage goes it's just that, average. It's nowhere near as bad as modern Beth. Writing is bad, but not -I want to rip my eardrums from hearing such insane shit- bad like Fallout 3 which had things like the kid city, the grown kid city, the fake vampire undergrounds, that infamous three dogs "intelligence" check etc.

Don't worry, I'll make no attempt to defend any part of Fallout 3's writing whatsoever. I think it's better than Oblivion because the dungeons feel closer to Skyrim's sort of dungeons I described above, the world map can be interesting to explore (especially the downtown DC area, which is very visually striking) and the combat was wisely made more FPS-like than RPG-like (though it's still fucking shit). VATS was a bad design decision and exists purely to cover how unplayable the regular combat is, but it's a still up from Oblivion's HP-bloat nightmares.

 

[deuxhero]

Oblivion's dungeons don't even work. They're made of the same dozen rooms arranged in randomized order. It doesn't take long at all before you notice this, especially since many of the pieces are quite distinct.

 

[MWaser]

What is this bullshit kind of "pick your poison" question? Only vote for bad games? No thanks.

Oblivion is barely playable, the most fun I had with it was trying to level up without becoming weaker, which I can't call good in any way when I'm actively trying to fight against game mechanics because they're just so shit. Although magic comboes were kind of nice, at least because casting was way faster than Morrowind so the stacking of magic weakness/elemental weakness chain spells actually worked.

Skyrim is a real mess, the deletion of attributes and the gimmicky and nonsensical level ups made it much more difficult to plan things through for character optimization, the magic was butchered to be stupid and boring, and the UI without mods is practically unusable - I've never once quit a game in 5 minutes from when I started playing because the menu UIs was just that awful (quit it until I got a UI mod for it, that is). The questlines got even more ridiculous and I was rolling eyes out of my head during Winterhold College, it really has a lot of stuff that wants to be cool but fails to do so.

Fallout 3 is okay if it's your first step ever into that kind of games, it was somewhat nice to have a game where you get to gunshoot and level up at the same time, but it's also filled to brim with stupid shit, and once the novelty of the RPG shooty gameplay (which back then at least was not something you saw much of) runs out then you're not left with much of anything. I didn't even bother with the DLCs after the main quest which I think says a lot about the game's novelty running out fast. And nowadays that Fallout NV exists there is literally no reason to ever play Fallout 3 unless you like to make comparisons of decline.

Didn't play any others.

 

[glass blackbird]

FO3 is the best thing Bethesda made after Morrowind. Not a good game, still, but it's better than everythnig else they've tried to do

 

[Carrion]

Oblivion's dungeons don't even work. They're made of the same dozen rooms arranged in randomized order. It doesn't take long at all before you notice this, especially since many of the pieces are quite distinct.

Daggerfall had huge, sprawling dungeons that didn't really make any practical sense but were fun to explore because of their scope and the fact that it was actually possible to get lost in them. Morrowind took the opposite approach, having generally smaller dungeons that first and foremost made sense within the setting — sometimes a cave was nothing more than a simple home for a mage or a group of bandits living in there. Oblivion was a mix of the worst aspects of both games, with none of their strengths.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Oblivion's dungeons don't even work. They're made of the same dozen rooms arranged in randomized order. It doesn't take long at all before you notice this, especially since many of the pieces are quite distinct.

Daggerfall had huge, sprawling dungeons that didn't really make any practical sense but were fun to explore because of their scope and the fact that it was actually possible to get lost in them. Morrowind took the opposite approach, having generally smaller dungeons that first and foremost made sense within the setting — sometimes a cave was nothing more than a simple home for a mage or a group of bandits living in there. Oblivion was a mix of the worst aspects of both games, with none of their strengths.

most daggerfall dungeons are broken

 

[new fucking guy]

Oblivion just for the silly AI and Shivering Isles. It also had some cool design, Gray Cowl of Nocturnal being the high point.

 

[sullynathan]

I won't lie, it's difficult going back to play Bethesda's games. There's like a large huddle to cross till it gets good.

 

[Quillon]

Skyrim. Just the premise of the game is pure gold... dragons returning, you are dragonborn with all the cool shit comes with it, there is a civil war going on + classic ES shit, guilds etc. a game with that premise at the hands of competent RPG writers would have sold at least 20 million copies, aaand it sold as much with poor implementation of all that premise somehow

How would bethesda top that in the next ES? I imagine they'd just continue with a dragonborn MC.

 

[markec]

Any person to claim that Oblivion is anything but garbage is a retard.

 

[Starwars]

I tried hard to get into Oblivion but there was just no way. Beyond the "open world seduction" which is easy to get lost in for a time, it's just so... bad.

Personally I thought Skyrim was a huge improvement even though they continue to flush the RPG stuff down the shitter. The world was a lot more interesting for one. I had a ton of fun with it though once I was done, I couldn't really stand to go back to it anymore.

The Fallout ones shall not be spoken of.

Skyrim would be my choice.

 

[undecaf]

Bethesda’s Fallouts are full of shit. So is Oblivion. Skyrim is a decentish walkabout sim and a sack full of wasted/unused potential.

That’s just comparing them to each other. In general, they’re all pretty bad to their own degrees.

 

[Reinhardt]

Morrowind was shit too.

 

[Doktor Best]

Heavily modded SkyrimVR is good mindless fun. Together with Skyrim Requiem and Endereal this makes Skyrim the best post Morrowind Bethesda game i suppose.

Still not a big fan of it. I just cant shake the sublimal feeling of dissapointment over wasted potencial whenever i play it.

 

[cherry blossom]

Daggerfall's dungeons dwarf anything in Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim in terms of both scale and complexity

Correct.

but they're often no fun to play through.

Incorrect. Liquidation agents dispatched.

Daggerfall dungeons are serious business. You can't go into a dungeon as if going on a walk in the park like in other games. You don't just happen upon one and go "oh look, a dungeon, let's see what's inside". They require deliberate preparation and travel and each is its own adventure. Some of the best dungeoneering fun there is.

Dungeons have been in perpetual decline since after Daggerfall. The formula wasn't taken further and developed.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Morrowind was shit too.

Only good part of Morrowind was the lore/world.

 

[volklore]

Probably Oblivion's shivering isles addon. Followed by skyrim. I really tend to really love my first 60 hours of TES games. Past Morrowind (evem MW is to an extent), TES are just LARPing sandboxes. So usually I tend to get one really good playthrough out of them which is nice enough. I rarely go back to them even with mods.