Why we remember Morrowind as the best

[bolivor]

I started with Morrowind on xbox. the fact that i could walk into a random house and steal the forks from the table was mind blowing to me at the time. I spent an entire summer vacation playing that game, and never once did anything relating to the main story. Before school started back up again i decided i should grind my way through the main story line. It only took a quest or two before it stopped being "grinding" and sucked me in. I even used the map that came with the game, where some locations names were written with daedric language, and matched them up with locations i had found in the game to decipher the daedric alphabet. I decoded the alphabet and then tried to use it to read one of the spell scrolls. Turns out it was just gibberish. No other game has sucked me in like that. I thought Oblivion was awesome, but i pretty much had the standard complaints everyone else has. I didn't really get in to the story though, it seemed more like Martin's story, and you were just the random bad a$$ that happened to be in the right place at the right time. I'm still playing through Skyrim, I keep starting new characters to try out different aspects of it, so it might be awhile before i can give an informed opinion.

 

I apologize if this post comes off as a rambling rant. English is my native language, I just went to public school. :wallbash:

[Elrumel]

Everyone thinks giants are bugged in Skyrim. I say they found a new way to use the Scroll of Icarian Flight.

Now it's a big fuss to talk about -flying arround- but i already did the same thing back in old game Morrowind.

 

People who thinks magic in morrowind sucked didn't comprehend the simplest idea of magic just like Skyrim didn't.

What happened to good old teleporting ? mark and recall ? Water Walking ? Night eye ? Flying ? Levitating ? Burden ? Slow falling ? Feather ? Spell making ? Elemental resists ? locking ? unlocking ? reflect ? Absorb ? silence ? Blind ? chameleon ? Swift swim ? detect key ? detect enchantments ? Curses ? Blights ? Dispels ? cure diseases, poisoning, paralyze, blights ? What in the earth happened to fortify attack / attribute / skill ? damn... it doesn't even even conjure up a simplest of helmet or armor for cold nights...

But i'm sure it's much more important to enchant fire weapons and shoot lightnings and fireballs out of your... your... mouth.

 

what happened to the idea of levitation in buildings instead of using stairs ? what happened to the idea of big giant flying rock prison which is impossible to escape? What happened to the giant mushroom cities ? tree cities ? mud covered settlements ? tented civilizations of ugly creatures -rieklings? a hell of a big magical castle made out of snow ? Where are the cities built on the water surface at feet of a god whose living among them and devoted it's name to him which is even big enough to lose track of time while jumping one canton to another and sneaking in severs?

now everywhere looks like Caldera and all dungeons are crypts or dwemmers built near mountains.

 

what in the earth happened to stilt riders ? what happened to Netch -big jellies flying around ? Where are the kwamma mines ? kwamma eggs ? mudcrab merchants ? rich scamp merchants ? pack guars ? ogrims ? winged twilights ? dreugr ? what the hell happened to lovely smexy golden saints that we all fear to go near them ?

yeah, i quess. They just extinct and evolve in to the chickens and oxes.

 

please do tell me for the sake of a spark of genious ; what happened to the signs which we couldn't even understand it's language at first sight and ask for help around town for directions ? What happened to honest barterers ignoring you when for they fear if you would try to trade moon sugar or skooma and get their hands on trouble ? How can we become arch mage without any study of spell making or let alone flying and to be able to (if not barely) cast only flame spell? What happened to the habbit of naming gold coins to Septims? Broken gears over time ? chance based speechcraft and taunting -wasn't it for the sake of enjoyment when we swear in the face of an orc and let the guards silence him? what happened to understanding of athletics to outlast 10 year old kid and being capable of ninja jumps with acrobatics? For sanities sake ; where are the spears?

But no. now it's only about damaging dragons by standing still and raising shields to it. not even chance to dodge.

 

Yes; i admit Skyrim is a wonderful game which is a real bless for all of us. Yes i admit i'm playing Skyrim non stop since 11.11.11 and realy enjoying it. Yes i admit there are jaw breaking enhances to almost every aspect of gameplay since morrowind/oblivion and importing bioshock ( even tho not better spells ) actions to TES series. But we must understand, Even tho on the same world, Morrowind and Syrim are far different games as they have different understandings for fantasy game. And sadly Skyrim feels more cliche on my part for only creatures there to face are trolls, some undead bunch, some regular beasts and well known dragons. The only things in game that keeps me going is questing, for i love TES lore therefore i realy appriciate the Skyrim in this matter and also beautiful game engine that makes the game look unbelievably beautiful.

[Lachdonin]

In a discussion about this very thing with a friend today, i realsied the one point where Morrowind really shone, and which marks it as better than either Oblivion and Skyrim. Characters. How many characters from Oblivion or Skyrim stick out enough to remember? And i'm not talking recurring characters like the Daedra, i mean independant, contained characters.

 

Who can forget Casius Coscades, the Blades operative who starts you on your journey? Or Divath Fyr, the 4000 year old mage who not only has a pimped suit of Daedric armour, but works with you to cure the Corprus disease? Or Yagum Bagrum, the last of the Dwemer? What about Vivec, the half-skinned god of Vardenfel? Almalexia and King Helseth of Mournhold?

 

Morrowind had characters which, 10 years on, still stick in my mind, and most of whom i would love to see again. I can't say the same for either Oblivion or Skyrim, with the notable exceptions of Paarthunax and Odavhing.

 

 

On another note, there was a lot less handholding in Morrowind, at least in terms of the main story. In Oblivion, by the time you rescue Martin you know whats going on. In Skyrim, you find out about the Dragonborn after the second real quest. In Morrowind, you were left being pulled along by various factions, with no real knowlege of what was happening until Azura finally appears to you and explains things, 2/3rds of the way through the main story (Which was longer than the main, companions and Mages story combined in Skyrim).

[HoovesDerpy]

Alright, lets see if I can take off these nostalgia goggles to give a less 'hurr durr the past wus best' type answer.

 

The graphics were s*** back then compared to now - The mods made the graphics comparable to Crisis....

 

The story was amazing by default and most quests were unique and engaging in their own ways - Similar to some Oblivion quests, however it seemed like Oblivion contained a lot of 'Fodder' quests only intended to keep you playing or to push certain objectives (I understand the guilds quests were similar to that, however I saw those more as jobs, where as in later installments they were seen as quests)

 

There was only some off handed voice acting, not everything was spoken as it was written in the dialog box - I never saw this as an issue, and in fact I always thought it to better than having everything spoken for you. This helped with immersion in my opinion, and it made the lives of modders easier as they didn't have to voice act their character's/quests in order to create content that didn't seem lacking what the main game had initially

 

The world was huge and each place was unique (mind the few off hand dungeons that were similar to one another)

 

The expansion packs added amazing content and even new play modes (such as werewolves)

 

The game had a ton of different skills and a class system - While I saw the class system as unnecessary, the sheer amount of skills available to chose from was astonishing, and each one made a visible impact upon your style of play. You skills also affected what you could and could not participate within, such as certain ranks in the fighter's guild requiring a certain level in a skill.

 

The game was challenging to almost all players - It had a difficulty slider that actually changed much of how the game was played, and for those truly amazing players who felt little challenge at even the highest difficulties there were mods out there to challenge them further

 

You didn't have your own homes - There were mods that fixed this, and you could actually just stay anywhere you liked. Kill the owner of a house, take his key, live in his house

 

Barrels were actually containers - You cannot imagine my fury when I learned they were not containers in Skyrim. Ugh, I can't wait for that mod

 

There were so many bugs that some places of the game were unplayable, and clipping was a major issue at times - I can safely say that every single bug in that game was weeded out that could potentially harm your game play via the unofficial patches made by modders. There are no game breaking bugs left in the game, and many of the smaller and generally unnoticeable bugs have also been fixed

 

The world was open, the only thing you had to load up was indoor cells.

 

Oblivion had some of these traits as well, don't get me wrong, and with the modders out there I'm sure as s*** that they could create a game on par with Modded Morrowind. They also advanced in many places. The combat system became more... I suppose true. If your blade was within range and your mouse over the person, you hit them. In Morrowind that didn't happen. You could swing all you like, but good luck hitting someone if your accuracy wasn't high enough to match their agility. That was another issue in Morrowind that I believe has been fixed by mods (the better combat mod specifically) They had great voice acting, however their text wasn't as thrilling as Morrowind's was, and for me that broke immersion.

 

Oblivion also seemed less free in your choices, as you couldn't kill everyone you wanted. For instance, in Morrowind you could kill Caius Cosades and totally wreck the main game play. You would get a handy message telling you that you just f***ed the main quest line, but you could do it. Another thing is that you were never forced to play the main game, and that the other quest lines out there weren't reliant on you doing something in the main quest as it is in Skyrim (you can't solve the issues with the civil war unless you get help from the Jarl of Windhelm, and you can't do that unless you enact the part of the main quest line that deems you Dragonborn whether you want to roleplay that or not).

 

 

Now, if you look at the games in their vanilla state with no additions or modifications other than official patches and expansions, then I would say (in my opinion now) that Morrowind is the best, with Skyrim hot on it's heels (I think when the patch comes out that fixes the majority of the rest of these bugs still present, then it will be on par with Morrowind in almost every aspect besides text based immersion). Oblivion always feel behind in my books, mainly for the lack of immersion present and the inclusion of required characters that you absolutely could not kill unless you altered the game.

 

If you look at the modded games, then it is (in my opinion once again, I wish not to force it down anyone else's throat either.) Morrowind, Oblivion, and then Skyrim. Morrowind's mods were breathtaking and unique in almost every aspect. Oblivion's mods were truly amazing as well, however they weren't as unique as Morrowind's seeing as Morrowind's were the first and Oblivion's truly great ones had many aspects that Morrowind's had as well, which is to be expected as the generations progress and learn from their predecessors. Skyrim's modding community and mods as a whole have yet to truly kick off. There are already some ambitious as all hell mods being planned, and some already in the works, so I have high hopes that Skyrim will be able to overtake Morrowind in that department as a whole with it's own new slew of unique mods that totally alter the game as we know it and bring back many of the precious things from Morrowind, such as text based immersion that was sadly lost in Oblivion.

 

(Another thing I would like to note here is that I am not saying Skyrim's voice acting is better than Oblivions, I am only downplaying Oblivion because it was the first to introduce it, and in the Vanilla game it wrecked immersion for me)

 

So in conclusion I have to say that Morrowind is currently my favorite of the three presented here. As a whole package, the mods and vanilla game+expansions make it a juggernaut of the gaming world. It is immersive beyond all doubts once you've fixed your own particular quirks within the game by adding your own mods, and it is nearly never ending so long as the community behind them continues to create such interesting content. The stories are unique and almost every character is different in their own ways. Oblivion has fallen short for me because it introduced many concepts I disliked greatly and it killed the text based immersion. The modding community was less creative with their mods and instead chose to create mods similar to Morrowind's (once again it's kind of hard not to have done that seeing as the sheer amount of mods made). Skyrim has so much potential, and I've grown used to the quirks in Oblivion that caused it to be so low in my books that Skyrim has sadly inherited, so I do not fault it as heavily as I should for having them.

 

I'll just stop typing now, I'm sure that while this all makes sense in my head as I type it, the more I type the less coherent I am becoming...

Edited December 4, 2011 by HoovesDerpy

[uruku7]

I played Morrowind for a long time. I had it on X-Box, so no mods for me. I've played Skyrim for not so long and it is already stale, and I likely won't play it much until there are some serious mods out there.

 

Morrowind had character, and that's been pointed out in many ways here. Skyrim, to me, does not. Very few enemy types, the overall design is cheesy and unimaginative in my opinion. Like, the dragons look pretty good, but they look like cheesy regular old dragons, and aside from texture, they all look very similar. I was wowed by a bull netch once, but not these dragons. The characters are very bland and I like many could go on for longer than anyone cares to read.

 

I think Skyrim was hastily made and hyped for some quick cash, in a sweatshop where no one has ever heard of Elder Scrolls.

 

Overall, Skyrim has a very casual, pick up and play feel, in comparison to it's predecessors. Little thinking is required, your hand is held, you're pushed along. Some people like that, I do not. I loved the, what the hell is going on?, feeling Morrowind instilled.

 

Dovahkiin, "Some guys made me yell at dragons. What do you do?"

 

Nerevarine, "I don't even know where to begin..."

Edited December 8, 2011 by uruku7

[Busted11290]

I started with Morrowind, but honestly I liked Oblivion more. Might be cause I did not do my quest on Morrowind, just ran around killing everyone and everything. But, Morrowind is what really got me into TES so for that I thank it. And like others have said I would like to see some features from the older TES games put into Skyrim.

[dark47]

Remember your first car? Hell yeah! Remember your first lover? oh HELL YEAH! He, he. The first of anything I always remember fondly. Probably the same thing here. My first real RPG was Daggerfall, and it was my introduction to using magic, so of course I look back at it as "da bomb". But to say I'm bored with Skyrim or even disappointed with it would be silly of me. Hell, I've got over 100 hours into my first character and I haven't left Whiterun as my base yet. Seems everyone in town has something for me to do - and I just ran into Meridia's statue (or shrine or whatever it is), so it looks like my first Skyrim Daedric quest begins.

 

I'm in awe of these new computer games - hell, I'm in awe of these new computers. He, he. And I'm enjoying the fun I'm having now. That's not to say I'm selling short the fun I had in the past (either with or without a computer. He, he).

[Scarsunseen]

Proudly wearing 'dem rose tinted glasses is a trend today!

 

 

True.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a325/Godheads_Lament/rosetinted.jpg

[Blu02]

I started with Oblivion, which catched my interest because it was an RPG made for first-person view (FINALLY). Tried Morrowind because everyone is praising it, but I really hated the gameplay and dead world (Say what you want about Radiant AI, but it does add a lot to the cities and dungeons), so the little interest I had about that game kinda died instantly and I have never looked back.

 

But on the other hand, Morrowind-lovers often liked the Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion, because it had a lot more interesting design to it compared to imperials classic style. That however bored me to death for some reason, and I never finished the expansion because of that. I guess I simply just like the classic styled castles, forests and mountains of both Oblivion and Skyrim.

 

The main stories of the games doesnt interest me much at all. I'm just in it for the sandbox :D

[JechtStrife109]

The thing I liked most about Morrowind is that when I started it, I just wanted a decent set of armour and to go exploring in search of treasure or legends and stuff.

That's when I became immersed in it, I found there was more to the game than decent armour and strong weapons.

There was the challenge of killing every mother****er that tried to kill me!

It wasn't until I reached the ghost fence until I realised there was actually a main story to follow to get to this bit.

The two main things I didn't like about Morrowind was the slow as sin running you seem to start off with (snails pace!!)

the other thing was the journal, how I didn't know which quests I completed or not