Poll: Morrowind Or Oblivion

[clintonius]

Personally I believe that Morrowind was a better release. Yet, Oblivion is a very close second. It is interesting how many people are on the fence reguarding this issue. Feel free to comment or ignore or whatever...

[Peregrine]

Morrowind by far. Pretty graphics are nice, but don't make up for the lack of character depth. Morrowind was an amazing game. Oblivion is a generic console rpg with some good features. No competition there...

[spectre25]

Morrowind by far. Pretty graphics are nice, but don't make up for the lack of character depth. Morrowind was an amazing game. Oblivion is a generic console rpg with some good features. No competition there...

 

Oblivion is not generic people don't spend 4 years developing something generic. Morrowind may well be better but i havan't played it so i don't know.

[Malchik]

I spent several years with Morrowind so it will not be easy to judge immediately. My first reaction is to say Morrowind for several reasons - the insane monster levelling system is a real turn off for me. I admit MW became too easy in the later stages but I could play at through with the difficulty slider maxed. Here when I reach level 6 or so I get killed at standard difficulty so often as to make it unenjoyable. I am not one who shirks a challenge but it really spoils it for me. I think the overexplicit journal entries treat me as if I were an idiot - and MW was hardly a mental challenge.

 

Also I have the usual ctds but this time they wipe out any auto or quick saved games and that can be very annoying indeed.

 

The graphics are pretty and some of the quests I have played show more imagination than their MW counterparts but at the moment I am inclined to say Morrowind. I will give it a bit longer though.

[thanateros]

Here when I reach level 6 or so I get killed at standard difficulty so often as to make it unenjoyable.

 

I wholeheartly agree, ergo, the reason why my Thief character is still level one, despite having all of his Major skill at Journeymen or higher. Oblivion, much more than Morrowind, limits you to having to be a rediculously efficient fighter in order to actually do any of the main quest, which is unfortunate to say the least. Although I agree that the quests are more interesting, the utter lack of character options stunts this game before you even leave the first dungeon. And I also don't like my journal making causal inferences at to how my character feels about a situation, i.e. (I think it would be a good idea if I go and see Y at X). Leave that part up to me. Interaction with the environment is just stale, no bredth, no intrigue as to what's going on. Although the AI is a vast improvement over Morrowind, they alone won't make the game for me, it's my character, which unfortunately, can't function at higher levels because for some reason having every bandit on the road running around with Mithril armor and enchanted weapons was somehow a good idea?

[Switch]

At the moment, I am inclined to say Morrowind. Oblivion is still great, and I'm enjoying it, but I agree with what Malchik said. The new levelling system is *very* poorly designed IMO. That alone is enough to put it a notch below Morrowind for me. And the idiot journal can be a little grating at times. Apart from that though, I do really like Oblivion. It definitely has a far more... consoley feel than Morrowind did though. And I personally don't think that's a good direction for TES to go in.

 

I may change my mind in future, though. As Malchik says I've been with the previous game for several years also so I'm a little biased at the moment. ^^

 

I do tend to see-saw. There are moments in Oblivion when I think "this is awesome". There are also moments when I think "Morrowind did this better". So ask me tomorrow and I might be the other way around on this one. :D

[batesmotel34]

At the moment I give Morrwind a slight edge since I really do like the setting a good deal better than the generic medieval Europe feel that Oblivion seems to have. I really do like the new AI and NPC interaction in Oblivion and I really have to admit that after completing Kvatch at level 12-13 it really did feel like my character had achieved something heroic. I don't think many or any of the Morrowind main quests fellt anything like that much of a heroic achievement. Maybe the final quests in the main story in Tribunal and Bloodmoon approach it. I will agree with others about the annoyance of the pop up instruction bubbles about what to do next and I'm not decided yet about the compass guidance. I think I do like the red hand cursor to show owned objects since it was often a pain in Morrowind figuring out which bed was safe to sleep in when in town or whther stuff sitting in a crate or barrel out in the open was put out with the trash or was soeone's prize dpossession. There it seemed to vary by town (or maybe when garbage pickup was scheduled).

 

My character is currently level 20-21 and not really much of a fighter. I'm low in the apprentice range with blade and closing in on journeyman level with Marksman. Conjuration is my highest skill (95) with Mysticism not too far behind due to using Detect Life almost constantly in dungeons. Destruction is at journeyman level and I deinfitely like how the touch range spells now can blast an opponent back a bit to get you some space and can be used while also blocking with a shield (which I'm not very good at anyway). The new dynamic magic regeneration does make running a magic based class a lot more feasible with some weapon skills (mostly Marksman in my case) as backup.

[clintonius]

I feel that the real issue with Oblivion, aside from that whole bizarre leveling thing, is that they tried to build a PC game off of a console platform. The opposite was true of Morrowind; it was originally designed for PC and they just crapped out a console version. What I'm hoping is that when the Oblivion patches and expansions are released, these issues will be addressed and fixed; just as the Game of the Year addition of Morrowind fixed alot of XBox issues. Keep your fingers crossed everyone. :unsure:

[Latholas]

ohnooo... here we go again,

on the battlefield forums everyone is screaming and whining about how BF2 seems to be bad.

that was just an example

now i think Oblivion is by far much better. Compare the environments in morrowind and oblivion.

morrowind:

-big fields with almost no relief and non realistic mountains that look like heaps of sand.

-'naked' planes with almost no vegetation and a roc or a plant here and there.

-dark,vast desert of ashes that give me depressions because they are in fact all the same over morrowind.

morrowind is a very good game but those statements above realle annoyed me, which is why i only used one area of morrowind which were the fields in the east which i dont remember the name.

Oblivion:

-Mountains(real looking mountains) and hills and valleys with awesome views (check screenshot)

-nice forests with much things to do and varied environments and sorts of vegetation.

-'Happy' sunny and nice forest regions which you wouldnt suspect of being attacked by daedra (which is why i have already forgotten the main quest completely)

Oblivion features more realistic things overall which makes me 'enter' the game very well,instead of morrowind where it was just a flat image in front of me with an arm holdig a sword)

Also the physics make you feel more that the place is realistic; like arrows lying on the ground instead of falling through it and dissapear.

the only thing is that i feel bad for peregrine because he wont be able to make pillow/coin castles thanks to the new physics cuz if he would just but bump in his construction it would be blown to bits.

 

[modernlegend]

Graphics aside IMO morrowind is the better RPG, If we are running on which is the better game it's still a close shave. Both the games are great as RPGs go, Oblivion definately has more feel to it, as far as the design of the cities is much more engulfing and the ability to roam in true fields regardless of how pretty or well constructed they are is pleasant, however...

 

Morrowind was a true rpg in that the skills were there in the forms that they should be, long blade / short blade and axe / blunt weapon for example, it was simply more involving, Radiant AI or no, which is IMO the only place morrowind lacks compared to oblivion in interactivity (people making noise while talking is lovely but makes not a blind bit of difference to me).

 

I'm still not honestly sure which combat system I prefer at the moment, Morrowind's slightly too easy even with difficulty sliders up or oblivions vaguely silly settings but good combat system other than the abilities given by the weapon skills.

 

As far as what the games did with what was available to the developers at the time, which allows one to ignore graphics, to me morrowind does come out as being the slightly better game.