Skyrim vs Oblivion vs Morrowind

[Lehcar]

How do you think they compare to each other?

 

Morrowind was a bit before my time, and I must admit I have not played it very much. Gameplay wise, I really didn't like it at all, particularly in regards to the combat system (dice-roll mechanics just aren't what I'm used to at all, so it really didn't work for me). In terms of story though, Morrowind really is absolutely riveting, and the setting is just so beautifully unique, totally unlike any other TES game. I hope they'll eventually do a remake; it would be so incredible rendered on a modern game engine.

 

Oblivion and Skyrim of course vastly improved in the gameplay department... though I feel the settings are not quite as striking as Morrowind's. Maybe because they're less "fantasy" worlds and more inspired by real life civilizations? Not to say they aren't rock awesome though! Oblivion's plotlines also seemed to lack the depth that Morrowind's had. I feel Skyrim greatly improved on this, though it wasn't quite as epic as Morrowind's.

 

Playing Skyrim after playing any of the previous games is pretty depressing though, seeing as the whole world has gone down the toilet. Seriously, the whole geographical region where Morrowind was set got nuked... that's tragic.

[CompanyOfGamers]

First of all, I am sorry for myself to not read your full text because; I feel tired a bit. I dunno much about TES Universe but, everybody can say that Skyrim's graphics is the best of theirs. Oblivion hasn't got so gloomy or dark world like Skyrim's according to some veteran players. That's all I know. But, you can also check this link maybe this is what you are looking for,

 

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Differences_Between_Morrowind,_Oblivion,_and_Skyrim

Edited July 26, 2014 by CompanyOfGamers

[Lachdonin]

Morrowind remains my favorite game of them all, despite the almost unplayable mechanics. The world, the story, and what few characters are more than drones make it one of the best RPGs made. It had some gloriously low points, like the damned whifflebat combat, but overall it, and the expansions, are fantastic.

 

Oblivion, on the other hand was horrible. The graphics are cartoony, the story was paper thin, the characters entirely boring.... Its only saving grace was the step forward in gameplay. Its horrible world design might have been passable if they had kept the Colovia and Nybanese distinction, but over all it was a disappointing butchered my of Cyrodiil. Shivering Isles was playable though, and I spent more time in it than the basic game.

 

Skyrim is... Weird. It has far better story ( if they are all somewhat rushed) and characterization, a more interesting world design, far better characters art, and more refined gameplay. On the other hand, removing spell crafting was terrible, the stories were rushed and the perks were poorly implemented (or thought out, not sure which). Overall I like it better than Oblivion and Arena, less than Daggerfall and Morrowind.

[notmyhome]

OK I can't contribute much towards Oblivion. Also never clocked a hundred hours on Morrowind. Still, I think I got some impressions from that.

First: The main quest was so much more laid-back.

Morrowind:"So you just arrived here on order of the Emperor and want/have to join the Blades? Naah, mate, no need to rush things, you'll get into the thick of things soon enough. Right now you should chill out at the pub, have yourself some sujamma, get to know a few Guild pals, and then we'll see..."

Skyrim: "ZOMG A FRIGGIN DRAGON!!!! RUN to Whiterun! The Jarl must know this immediately!" "We need you to get that Dumb Old Stone ASAP! Be back yesterday!" "ZOMG ANOTHER DRAGON GO KILL IT!" and so on. Where in that chain of events are you supposed to find the time to become Harbringer, Archmage, Listener, or Guildmaster? If I had been role-playing during my first Skyrim playthrough, I'd have been finished with the Main Quest by level 20, because you just don't delay doing something that urgent.

[nivea]

Morrowind will always be my favorite of the current TES games, I feel it is the most in depth of all three (not counting the MMO, but its a MMO I dont count it at all anyways) and gives you the most interesting experience. Characters are interesting and memorable, nothing was "toned down (aka dumbed down is the term people seem to use now) it had much more freedom and choice involved then Skyrim (since you can not turn down quests in Skyrim), and the world was vast and felt vast you could not travel from one end to the other in a couple days.

 

While it does have it downfalls (Graphics where on the back burner instead of story like it is now, and combat can be odd at times) I feel the good heavily outweigh the bad, even if there where not mods its still well worth the play through. But it DOES have mods and many amazing ones that helped pioneer alot of the mods in Skyrim/Oblvion, so get it and put in some graphic mods (even just a texture replacer will make a difference) and play it.

[Arkayjiya]

If you're talking strictly about enjoyment I can rank them easy: for me Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion

More in depth, I agree with most of what has been said. The combat mechanics in morrowind were aweful (although I think the RNG part fitted the magic very well, but not anything else), the persuasion system was broken, and those faces, oh god those faces, Fargoth will haunt my dreams forever.

Aside from that, Morrowind had more options, magic was more entertaining, and of course it was a masterpiece imersion-wise. The art, the musics (and sounds in general), the main quest was completely awesome. The way you discovered all this mythology and your part in it was incredible. I will always remember the first time I entered the wise woman yurt.. Oh and the "villain" and his house were excellent. He had a real personnality and motivations. The guild were less scenarized too but if you paid attention you'd understand how some seemingly innocent missions were related to, for example, the thief/warrior guild feud and the fact that not every job had to be related to some secondary main story was cool and imersive too.

Another thing Morrowind did well is to have a lot of room for interpretation, inconsistensies or outright lies in its story and mythology.

Oblivion had some strong points too: the graphics were extremely good, some quest were originals and entertaining, some storylines too (brotherhood and particularly the thieves guild... /love) the combat was better and more accessible. But apart from that it was average to bad. The graphics were good but the art was uninspired. It was bright and coloured with a bland environment in term of art and relief), They did make an effort to give each town its personnality but it wasn't enough plus the cities had to be enclosed. In term of gameplay, the auto leveling system was a complete disaster, destroying any semblant of balance for characters that were not enough combat oriented, destroying the imersion with their glass armored bandits, destroying unique items by auto leveling them and destroying creature variety by making low level one too rare.

Simply by its presence, the fast travel condemned some categories of quests and scripts on top of tempting weak-willed players that would still like to roleplay. The density of points of interests was also a little ridiculous, borderline theme park.

But one of the weakest point was the main story. It was such a step back that even as enthusiasm and forgiving as I was due to my youth I could not enjoy it. To this day I have yet to complete it a second time (which is also true for skyrim, but that's mostly due to the insane strength of moded dragons and the fact that I want to complete the DLC before the main quest).

If you add to this the removal of a lot of options in term of weapons and spells (they tried to make the game more balanced but they didn't succeed and removed a lot of enjoyable elements in the process, a complete failure in this again).

Oh I forgot about The Shivering Isled, that expansion was totally awesome.

Oh and the interface is bad. Very very bad compared to Morrowind UI.

Finally, Skyrim has not a very good main quest either but it's better than Oblivion's because...

1) Dragons

2) it's better anchored in the mythology of the province

3) the plot is still more interesting (it was cool to discover that -spoiler- Alduin actually had never stopped destroying the world but was just sent in the future) even if it's not great

Skyrim had some options removed to but it wasn't as bad (except for the spell creation removal, that was really sad T_T)

Skyrim autoleveling isn't perfect (f****** unique weapons) but it's incredibly better than Oblivion's

I really liked the idea of ditching completely the primary/secondary skill system. It fits more with the philosophy of "learning by training" and it was a fundamentally flawed system anyway.

the combat was improved further (I always play an archer, its gameplay was bad in Morro and Oblivion, and the combat feels nice enough for me to try a heavy fighter in this one)

But it's imersion-wise that Skyrim destroy Oblivion. The world feels inspired again, dungeons are better crafted, the relief is great and for the first time they did not completely failed at making the character's heads! And the imersion part is particulary important because that's the hardest thing to fix with mods. Skyrim is a great base to install mods on.

I think my greatest problem with skyrim (and it's something I don't think was nearly as bad in Oblivion) is the way the quests are organized. Most of the non radiant ones send you everywhere in skyrim instead of concerning some local problem. I can understand it coming from the civil war or main quest but for most other it's just a very bad idea. It destroys the feeling of an gigantic open world by making you fast travel (or carriage travel) everywhere, often for a simple letter. The geography would feel much more important (and the imersion would be reinforced) if most of the quest had been local with a few that send you elsewhere. This is not without problems too (the quest hub organisation in MMORPG is certainly not an example to follow) but it can be corrected by not having every quest accessible the first time you enter a city (each quest could have different triggers like reputation, advancement in another quest like the main one, criminal activities...).

Oh, and the interface is even worse than Oblivion.

PS: whoever invented the invincible NPCs probably doesn't deserve to die, but it was still the most god-aweful idea in history. I understand that console gamer can't fix their game, but let them assume their mistakes or give them some of our commands to fix their game! It's certainly not an ideal solution but immortal NPCs... That's just abominable in this type of game.

[Aneksunamun]

I see this topic is pretty old, but it's too hard to restrain myself. Talos and moderators, forgive me.

 

Skyrim is beautiful. I played it the first of all three and one of the first RPGs I played ever and I was in awe when I first launched it. It's been years and I still stop playing just to admire its beauty. It has beautiful landscapes, cities and characters. I loved every bit of it, and I still do. The Dark Brotherhood questline was my absolute fave back in times when I didn't know anything about faction's history in Cyrodiil and was constantly wondering about "who the heck is that Matthieu Bellamont that the blue see-through guy is trying to tell me about all the time". Well, to break all the "first-game-nostalgia" stereotype, I can say that while I'm an adoring fan of Skyrim (pun intended, I've put 689 hours into my first char and 8 (gonna be a long journey) into my current one, not counting my long-deleted level 19 Redguard guy and level 23 Dunmer, who probably took at least 200 hours together), I enjoy Oblivion more. I thought that was just a flavour of novelty that surrounds every new game you try, but after 62 hours of playtime with my Altmer Hero I can assume that that is probably not the case. I have ton of mods for Skyrim, nothing immersion (my, how I hate that word) breaking, and I have four for Oblivion, namely water retexture (my one and only huge dissapointment in vanilla Oblivion) and camping mod, and also two mods made by me. I enjoy making mods for Oblivion more as well, but still, even in almost vanilla state as I have it now, it is very enjoyable for me. With all the clutter, clothing, armor and magic variety it has, I don't feel Oblivion needs any mods at all. Somehow it is very special to me. The macabre atmosphere, the feeling that something is about to happen around any corner, the lush grass without FPS drops, a gazillion of vibrant flora types (I felt my horse was looking at me as if I was a loony while I was running around gathering flowers) and its cities. With all my love and respect for Skyrim architecture, I remember how my jaw dropped when I first saw Skingrad.

 

If you take all three games, Morrowind is the most unique. I've started playing it a couple of months ago and I fell in love with it at the first sight. I didn't even have to get used to ugly NPCs. The moment that guy tossed me out of the boat and I looked at Morrowind's landscape and ocean (these reflections, how were they even able to do something like that back then :blink:) I realised that I'm gonna love this game. My Morrowind setup is still in pristine state with only a magicka rageneration mod. Touching a look of it is a no-no for me, I think changing the graphics of such an old game that still looks so great now is blasphemy. :D However, in my opinion, Morrowind is a pure perfection if you play as a peasant, or travelling monk, or pacifist or whatever, because combat system is a huge pain in the butt.

 

All in all, despite I love all three games, Oblivion is my most favourite one, because for me Oblivion is Skyrim and Morrowind meeting halfway. Interesting clothing and armor system (I quite like my pants and my shirt being separate and not a monolith, thank you), beautiful, even though more conventional landscapes, combat highly improved comparing to Morrowind, better-looking NPCs, and skills and crafting that are not yet simplified like in Skyrim. Many people complained about leveling, but I read the article about efficient leveling and abandoned the idea completely, let my character level as he wishes and never had problems so far (no, I don't play on highest difficulty, because I don't see the point in it if the game is challenging enough for me). And one more thing. Shivering Isles. That DLC is a total win. I still haven't decided whether I like Skyrim's Dragonborn or Oblivion's SI more. And Dragonborn is worth a whole separate game for me.

Edited October 2, 2015 by Aneksunamun

[fraquar]

Problem with Skyrim is simple. Essentially, you are guided to the Main Quest from the start - and once the Dragons are out of the bag everything else gets put on hold. Seriously, what good is persuing to be the Thieves Guild Grandmaster when in doing so the world will end and I don't get to enjoy it? Am I supposed to think the Dragons will simply wait for me to pursue/enjoy my every whim and put them on perpetual hold?

 

The kick in the balls is that even without pursuing the Main Quest, you cannot settle the Civil War problem because they TIED it to the Main Quest. Try handing Balgruuf the axe that Ulfric sent you to without first opening the Dragon issue - it's impossible.

 

What good is an open world when the Main Quest is essentially putting you in a closed world environment - once the Dragons are out of the bag you really only have one option - pursue that quest to it's finality.

[Lachdonin]

Problem with Skyrim is simple. Essentially, you are guided to the Main Quest from the start - and once the Dragons are out of the bag everything else gets put on hold.

 

How is that different than Oblivion? In Skyrim, as soon as you're out of Helgen, you can go anywhere, you don't have to follow Hadvir/Ralof. You don't need to do anything with Dragons for hours, just head towards Falkreath instead of Whiterun.

 

In Oblivion, the Emperor himself gives you the single most important artefact in the Empire, and says 'Find my son, and save the world', before you even get out of the tutorial dungeon. You're given the score board, told the urgency and handed very clear marching orders right from the start.

[fraquar]

You can't go anywhere as soon as you leave Helgen. Two reasons:

 

1) You have a guy who either helped you escape (and you owe him) or you helped him escape, which means you need to see him to his final destination safely. It's the very least two compatriots would do for each other.

 

2) It's a DRAGON. Childrens tales no more, you've seen it with your own eyes.

 

Every time I have a play through, I have to IGNORE there was ever a Dragon there. Even then, like with the Civil War quest, the game keeps reminding you - dude, you haven't set the Dragons free yet - no more Civil War for you!!!!!

Edited October 2, 2015 by fraquar