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[Imp the Dimp]

Just like Morrowind, I loved it when it came out, but both did not age well. But no way is Oblivion a 3/10. It offered such a great amount of freedom that was so rare back then.

Well, it had no levitation spell for one, so I don't see how it even surpasses Morrowind in terms of freedom.

 

[Arkeband]

How can you like skyrim if you didn't like oblivion? Both have shitty brainless "left-click spammy" combat, the worst animations, very bad ai, bugs and a very generic story.

The only redeeming factors are the good worldbuilding and maybe some side quests.

I'm talking about the base game not mods

I really dont get the high ratings for either games at all.

Because Macho Man Randy Savage Alduin OH YEEEEE snap into a slim jim so funneh xD saw it on <insert YouTuber here>

 

[Psychoward]

While I don't agree that it's a 3/10 I can't fathom why people prefer it over Skyrim.

 

[BeesEight]

Look, I just played Daggerfall and I'm currently playing Morrowind. No one in their right minds would ever complain because Morrowind has a smaller world. There is nothing valuable about the size of Daggerfall's world, it's terrible. You never even engage with it, because to walk anywhere is a fool's errand that takes forever for no good reason, since you can fast travel anywhere anyway. All dungeons, towns, and NPCs are completely interchangeable with each other except for main quest ones.

All the Daggerfall guild quests are randomly generated junk...I got to head of the mages guild by rejecting every quest they offered until they told me all I needed to do was defend the guild for 3 hours, hang out, kill a couple dudes. Same easy quest, over and over, to get to the head of the guild. Ridiculous.

I did this because most of the other quests involved going to the completely awful dungeons which are irredeemable in their mazelike design and size.

Nearly all the skills removed from Daggerfall were the fucking useless language skills that did practically nothing. They were supposed to let you talk to monsters to make them stand down and stop attacking, but why would you ever do that? Certainly not enough to justify, what, 9 skills?

Monsters and combat in Morrowind is vastly better than in Daggerfall too. There's just no comparison. I don't care if Cliff Racers are a little annoying, at least they aren't generic humanoids that shuffle up to you and bump into you over and over like everything from Daggerfall.

Whoa! You're incredibly right. A game made in 1996 really does have design elements that didn't age well at all! You're blowing my mind here.

I understand that context is a tricky thing but I was hardly arguing that Daggerfall is the second coming of Christ. It shouldn't have been really that hard to discern that my point is simply every Elder Scrolls game is flawed and that a lot of the criticisms raised against Oblivion are the exact same criticisms that can be levied against Morrowind.

I get that it's difficult to maintain a nuanced perspective on games that accounts for, you know, things like design atmosphere and historical consideration. If you think that Morrowind is amazing, that's great. But let's not lose focus that Oblivion isn't really that odd of an outlier when you take the entire series into consideration. Bethesda is constantly exploring new design directions and tweaking/removing/changing the way they do things. None of their products are flawless masterpieces but for the most part they're adequate to good creations. To claim that Oblivion is one of the worst sequels in gaming history is, as a poster well earlier in the thread claimed, either willful ignorance for effect or a sign that the person in question has played a very, very limited number of sequels.

 

[Khaos_Knight]

I still enjoy it....

Come at me.

 

[NewGame]

It is a pretty disgusting game. So much jank, terrible writing, horrid voice act(or)ing.

I swear the only reason it was liked was because it was brodudes first FP RPG and the were like "wooow". Trash game for trash tastes.

Of course Morrowind fans were disappointed. No more levitate no more fun.

 

[c0Zm1c]

You forgot those who played Daggerfall first (or, hell, Arena - though I can't see someone arguing in favor of that one). A lot of Daggerfall fans were pretty disappointed in Morrowind just as it seems Morrowind fans were disappointed by Oblivion.

It does seem like there's a pattern. Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game, and as much as I liked Skyrim I don't think it's good as Oblivion.

 

[The Albatross]

I'm talking a 3/10 turd that would have gained little attention had it not been the sequel to Morrowind

I completely disagree with this. I'd imagine many of the people who's attention was grabbed by Oblivion didn't even know what Morrowind was... That's me. I had never heard of the Elder Scrolls games, having never played a PC RPG and not owning an Xbox, and I Oblivion's insane visuals (for the time) really grabbed me. I ended up enjoying most of the game.

You forgot those who played Daggerfall first (or, hell, Arena - though I can't see someone arguing in favor of that one). A lot of Daggerfall fans were pretty disappointed in Morrowind just as it seems Morrowind fans were disappointed by Oblivion.

Aye, and I remember after Skyrim had been out for a few weeks, people reamed it for only being fetch quests and not having the depth of side-quests like Oblivion, with the Thieve's Guild, Dark Brotherhood, etc., quests.

 

[FrontalMonk]

I always feel like people that hate on Oblivion ride the nostalgia train of Morrowind waaay too hard. I mean, don't get me wrong, I liked Morrowind. The setting was unique, the scale was incredible, and we will never get so many factions to have questlines for in an elder scrolls game.

But get the fuck out of here with all the "morrowind is the best shit ever" idiocy. When it came out, if you weren't rocking a beast of a machine, you had tons of fog like 15 feet in front of you because the game was an unoptimized, buggy mess. Shit, I couldn't even PLAY the game for the first couple years after the game came out because of a crash to desktop bug that would occur whenever you would open the door to talk to Caius Cosades. Once I did? They had the wherewithal to streamline a few things from the bullshit in Daggerfall, but all that really means is they made it so the combat, instead of being a mess of holding down the right mouse button and swiping in various directions to slash, pierce, or overhead swing made it just click to attack. You missed more often than you hit until your skill jumped up, making it a frustrating chore if you found a cool weapon that you didn't have like 75 skill in, and you couldn't get anywhere without getting chased by a thousand fucking cliff racers.

Enter Oblivion. Hey, there's a fucking block button here now instead of just hoping you had a high enough skill to randomly block an attack. What is this, skill perks? So I get a discernible benefit when I hit milestones of my skills instead of just hitting a little harder or more often? I can actually wander and explore where I want without worrying about getting jumped by a bunch of fucking daedra at level 3? Oh, and the game doesn't crash on me for no fucking reason 5 minutes after the intro cutscene? That's pretty cool. Oh and let's not forget about fast travel, because while everyone shits on it now, it was still done pretty damn well. You couldn't fast travel somewhere you hadn't been, and once you did it added convenience that made me want to actually play the game instead of traversing over the same damn paths 800 times.

Forgive me for drinking the haterade, but the constant "Morrowind > All" nonsense just always feels like nobody remembers what the game was like on release, and conveniently forgets about all the improvements that Oblivion actually brought to the table.

 

[UncleSporky]

Whoa! You're incredibly right. A game made in 1996 really does have design elements that didn't age well at all! You're blowing my mind here.

The year the game was made has nothing to do with it, there were tons of games in that era that had meaningful quest and dungeon design. Daggerfall doesn't get to hide behind age as an excuse. Because it did some things right, of course - the various magic schools and effects, the variety in equipment, alchemical items and enchanting, etc.

The bad was recognized as being bad at the time. Bethesda practically admitted its dungeons were too large and mazelike when Daggerfall's final patch added cheats to warp directly to a dungeon's possible quest locations.

Primarily I'm saying that even while one could argue that something is lost from each Elder Scrolls game to the next, nothing of value was lost in the transition from Daggerfall to Morrowind.

Except maybe the climbing skill. But I have levitation all day anyway.

 

[lethial]

It is a pretty disgusting game. So much jank, terrible writing, horrid voice act(or)ing.

I swear the only reason it was liked was because it was brodudes first FP RPG and the were like "wooow". Trash game for trash tastes.

Of course Morrowind fans were disappointed. No more levitate no more fun.

Lol listen to this guy...brodudes...trash tastes....grow up.

Game was good, not great. I had a lot of fun doing the side quests but main story was boring as shit.

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

It is a pretty disgusting game. So much jank, terrible writing, horrid voice act(or)ing.

I swear the only reason it was liked was because it was brodudes first FP RPG and the were like "wooow". Trash game for trash tastes.

Of course Morrowind fans were disappointed. No more levitate no more fun.

Making game breaking spells in Morrowind was fun, I agree, but you're missing the boat. The reason these games are made, why they sell so well, is because they provide a sense of adventure. Maybe that's not why you play them, I don't know.

 

[mnannola]

Oblivion had amazing Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quest lines. Those quest lines alone are enough to make it a good game.

The AI in it wasn't all they said it would be, but it was still pretty amazing, probably one of the best open world AI implementations still to this day.

The graphics were pretty damn awesome in 2006. Best looking game on the X360 at it's release and one of the major reasons that system sold like it did.

It had Patrick Fucking Stewart.

Was it as good as Morrowind? Probably not. Was it the worst sequel ever? Come the fuck on.

 

[AuthenticM]

I wish Bethesda would release a definitive edition of the game for PS4 with Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul included in it. It's not as if it would be a legal nightmare to do so: the guy who has the rights for it works for Obsidian now.

 

[Chris R]

Morrowind is one of my favorite games of all times, only make Oblivion that much more disappointing.

Friends who never played Morrowind and who are just now getting into PC games enjoyed Oblivion though, they just didn't know any better at the time.

 

[PseudoViper]

Finally! I thought I was the only one who thought this...

 

[SparkTR]

I'm not a WRPG fan but it's weird how the perspective on this game has shifted so much over the years (mainly since Skyrim released). I remember it was the first "big" gen 7 release and the game that prompted a lot of people to buy 360s. It was a GotY contender in an otherwise strong year months after it made its impact too.

Oblivion was very hated at release by many old school RPG fans, there was a big divide between the mainstream press and the those communities at the time. Say what you want about the game as whole, Oblivion's RPG mechanics and structure was pretty brazenly dumbed down and the old crowd was not happy about that.

This RPG Codex review was talked about A LOT after the games released, and garnered enough attention to cause Bethesda to blacklist the website due to the negative talk it was generating. Hell, it became a cliche in those older RPG communities to bash Oblivion, because so many new members used that obvious topic to demonstrate their 'knowledge' about the genre despite never having played any cRPG post 2003.

 

[Psychoward]

Oh and let's not forget about fast travel, because while everyone shits on it now, it was still done pretty damn well. You couldn't fast travel somewhere you hadn't been, and once you did it added convenience that made me want to actually play the game instead of traversing over the same damn paths 800 times.

Forgive me for drinking the haterade, but the constant "Morrowind > All" nonsense just always feels like nobody remembers what the game was like on release, and conveniently forgets about all the improvements that Oblivion actually brought to the table.

I haven't even played Morrowind but your statement about fast travel is wrong, you could fast travel to any of th major cities without visiting them.

 

[mkenyon]

There are 2 kinds of people. People who played MW when it came out first. And people who played Oblivion first.

People who played MW first like me were doomed to be disapointed by Oblivion. Others got to experience Oblivion in ignorant HD bliss.

What about me? Daggerfell was my first RPG love. I put hundreds of hours into it. I also put hundreds of hours into Morrowind.

I also really enjoyed Oblivion, and my enjoyment was increased after all the great mod support was out

 

[Maybesew]

I agree with this. I hated oblivion so much that when I tried ESO and it started out in what seemed like an oblivion-esque environment, I immediately shut it off.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Oblivion was very hated at release by many old school RPG fans, there was a big divide between the mainstream press and the those communities at the time. Say what you want about the game as whole, the Oblivion's RPG mechanics and structure was pretty brazenly dumbed down and the old crowd was not happy about that.

This RPG Codex review was talked about A LOT after the games released, and garnered enough attention to cause Bethesda to blacklist the website due to the negative talk it was generating. Hell, it became a cliche in those older RPG communities to bash Oblivion, because so many new members used that obvious topic to demonstrate their 'knowledge' about the genre despite never having played any cRPG post 2003.

The "old crowd" isn't really happy about anything ever, save games which specifically change as little as possible from whatever imagined high point in the past these people have chosen.

As a long time RPG fan, I find it best to ignore literally everything that comes from that crowd.

 

[UncleSporky]

They had the wherewithal to streamline a few things from the bullshit in Daggerfall, but all that really means is they made it so the combat, instead of being a mess of holding down the right mouse button and swiping in various directions to slash, pierce, or overhead swing made it just click to attack.

Morrowind still has this. You move and attack in different directions to use the weapon's chop, slash, or thrust damage range. In practice many people turned on the option that all weapons would just use their best attack.

Enter Oblivion. Hey, there's a fucking block button here now instead of just hoping you had a high enough skill to randomly block an attack.

Honestly this is just a matter of design differences. Is the player successful based on the player's skill, or the character's skill? A lot of modern games are really incongruous about this, but at least Morrowind was consistent. Sometimes your spell fails. Sometimes you fail to create a potion. Sometimes you fail to repair your armor with that armorer's hammer. Sometimes you fail to pick the lock. These are all based on percentage chances that stem from your stats and skills.

It's odd to me that we demand to hit in combat when it looks like we hit, but we're ok with sometimes failing speech checks or barter checks or creating potions or whatever. I think there's a time and place for both kinds of design, though. Outright missing when you think you hit is a bit much, but I would have no problem with dealing minimal damage when I lack skill in a weapon.

 

[spekkeh]

It's not even a sequel, but yeah put me in the Daggerfall > Morrowind camp. The games kind of got progressively worse until Skyrim, which is the best one yet. Bite me. Oblivion had a boring main campaign that I could never push through, but you can't seriously call it ugly, at that time it blew pretty much everything away and was open world to boot.

 

[Aaron D.]

Friends who never played Morrowind and who are just now getting into PC games enjoyed Oblivion though, they just didn't know any better at the time.

Yeah, that's not condescending.

No one who played Morrowind could possibly have enjoyed Oblivion on it's own merits (like me).

Everyone else was just too dumb to know the difference.

Got it.

 

[Baron_Calamity]

I've played every Elder Scrolls game released as they were released. Hated Morrowind, loved Oblivion. In fact I've really enjoyed every Elder Scrolls game except Morrowind. To be fair, I had trouble enjoying Skyrim as well. I think after Fallout 3 came out and became my favorite Bethesda RPG of all time, I'm having trouble getting into fantasy setting,

 

[SparkTR]

The "old crowd" isn't really happy about anything ever, save games which specifically change as little as possible from whatever imagined high point in the past these people have chosen.

As a long time RPG fan, I find it best to ignore literally everything that comes from that crowd.

They're fickle and cynical but they pick out good RPGs when they see them. Passing on Pillars of Eternity and Siege of Dragonspear but embracing stuff like Underrail and Shadowrun: Dragonfall doesn't really conform to your view. They tend to go to stuff that do interesting things with cRPG mechanics. Oblivion was about as stagnant or regressive as you could go in terms of mechanics.

 

[Chris R]

Yeah, that's not condescending.

No one who played Morrowind could possibly have enjoyed Oblivion on it's own merits (like me).

Everyone else was just too dumb to know the difference.

Got it.

I wasn't speaking for everyone, just me and a few others I personally know. And Oblivion wasn't 100% garbage, it was just a let down for ME in the gameplay, graphics and UI departments, most of which are fixed via mods now.

 

[Aaron D.]

I wasn't speaking for everyone, just me and a few others I personally know. And Oblivion wasn't 100% garbage, it was just a let down for ME in the gameplay, graphics and UI departments, most of which are fixed via mods now.

Fair enough.

 

[Nesther]

It's almost up there with Fable or Spore, iit was just a massive disappointment coming from Morrowind.
Sadly unlike with Fable or Spore, it's an unpopular opinion to have.

 

[UncleSporky]

I haven't even played Morrowind but your statement about fast travel is wrong, you could fast travel to any of th major cities without visiting them.

In Morrowind? No...you don't have fast travel like you do in Oblivion and Skyrim. You pay to use silt striders or boats, or mage's guild teleportation, or your Mark and Recall spell. Outside of that you can walk, or levitate, or water walk and use rivers/oceans as monster-free highways.

Oblivion starts you with fast travel to all major cities, i.e. you just open the map and click the city and boom, you're there. Skyrim starts you with no fast travel locations, the best you can do is pay for a horse and cart to other cities to get them added to your map for later fast travel. Both of those games give you map-based one click fast travel that Morrowind does not have, though.

 

[GavinUK86]

I don't know about it being the worst sequel in history but it was a horrid game. Just absolutely awful. I played it for a few hours and just gave up because it was so rubbish.

 

[Sephzilla]

Oblivion is one of the worst sequels in gaming history

Are you sure about that?

 

[FrontalMonk]

I haven't even played Morrowind but your statement about fast travel is wrong, you could fast travel to any of th major cities without visiting them.

Okay, I was mainly thinking of the POIs, the caves and whatnot, but you're right there.

Morrowind still has this. You move and attack in different directions to use the weapon's chop, slash, or thrust damage range. In practice many people turned on the option that all weapons would just use their best attack.

True, on both counts. It was there, but I don't think I've ever met a single person who didn't use the "best attack" option.

Honestly this is just a matter of design differences. Is the player successful based on the player's skill, or the character's skill? A lot of modern games are really incongruous about this, but at least Morrowind was consistent. Sometimes your spell fails. Sometimes you fail to create a potion. Sometimes you fail to repair your armor with that armorer's hammer. Sometimes you fail to pick the lock. These are all based on percentage chances that stem from your stats and skills.

It's odd to me that we demand to hit in combat when it looks like we hit, but we're ok with sometimes failing speech checks or barter checks or creating potions or whatever. I think there's a time and place for both kinds of design, though. Outright missing when you think you hit is a bit much, but I would have no problem with dealing minimal damage when I lack skill in a weapon.

I just feel like the idea of bringing in a button to block is such an obvious move to make that when it happened I was happy but also a little dumbfounded. I was like "why hasn't this always been here?" Like, in Morrowind, if I have a shield equipped but my block skill is low, I would be fine with it blocking but me still taking some damage, just not as much...but I distinctly remember having it only block some of the time, which was irritating as all hell.

 

[hypostatic]

OP nailed it.

Morrowind was (at the time) one of the greatest gaming experiences. Oblivion was a joke of a sequel. It was a chore to complete.

 

[SeanR1221]

I thought Morrowind was super confusing on the xbox.

I played for a few hours, got frustrated and traded it in.

Oblivion? That came out my freshmen year of college and we used to have lots of guys rotate in and out of the dorm to play.

This one time, a guy pissed my roommate and I off (we caught him stealing petty stuff) so I took his goofy wood elf, dropped all his loot in an oblivion tower, and walked him to the other side of the map and saved the game.

 

[UncleSporky]

I just feel like the idea of bringing in a button to block is such an obvious move to make that when it happened I was happy but also a little dumbfounded. I was like "why hasn't this always been here?" Like, in Morrowind, if I have a shield equipped but my block skill is low, I would be fine with it blocking but me still taking some damage, just not as much...but I distinctly remember having it only block some of the time, which was irritating as all hell.

For block in particular, had there been a block button in Morrowind then it would've been done in that Morrowind-y way where most of the time the block would fail until you got your skill up. Honestly I think I like it better that blocking is ALWAYS attempted whether I'm pressing a button or not, because most of the time I'd forget to press the button. Just go ahead and block for me if my skill is high enough, game, thanks!

 

[RoboGeorgeForeman]

I always feel like people that hate on Oblivion ride the nostalgia train of Morrowind waaay too hard. I mean, don't get me wrong, I liked Morrowind. The setting was unique, the scale was incredible, and we will never get so many factions to have questlines for in an elder scrolls game.

But get the fuck out of here with all the "morrowind is the best shit ever" idiocy. When it came out, if you weren't rocking a beast of a machine, you had tons of fog like 15 feet in front of you because the game was an unoptimized, buggy mess. Shit, I couldn't even PLAY the game for the first couple years after the game came out because of a crash to desktop bug that would occur whenever you would open the door to talk to Caius Cosades. Once I did? They had the wherewithal to streamline a few things from the bullshit in Daggerfall, but all that really means is they made it so the combat, instead of being a mess of holding down the right mouse button and swiping in various directions to slash, pierce, or overhead swing made it just click to attack. You missed more often than you hit until your skill jumped up, making it a frustrating chore if you found a cool weapon that you didn't have like 75 skill in, and you couldn't get anywhere without getting chased by a thousand fucking cliff racers.

Enter Oblivion. Hey, there's a fucking block button here now instead of just hoping you had a high enough skill to randomly block an attack. What is this, skill perks? So I get a discernible benefit when I hit milestones of my skills instead of just hitting a little harder or more often? I can actually wander and explore where I want without worrying about getting jumped by a bunch of fucking daedra at level 3? Oh, and the game doesn't crash on me for no fucking reason 5 minutes after the intro cutscene? That's pretty cool. Oh and let's not forget about fast travel, because while everyone shits on it now, it was still done pretty damn well. You couldn't fast travel somewhere you hadn't been, and once you did it added convenience that made me want to actually play the game instead of traversing over the same damn paths 800 times.

Forgive me for drinking the haterade, but the constant "Morrowind > All" nonsense just always feels like nobody remembers what the game was like on release, and conveniently forgets about all the improvements that Oblivion actually brought to the table.

It's probably that I waited so long to play Morrowind that I actually like it as much as I do. I didn't have to deal with the launch bugs or having a ridiculous PC to play it. Hell, I didn't play the game until after Skyrim and I love it waaay more than either Skyrim or Oblivion.

Also it wasn't so much fast travel that I had a problem with, it was the blindly follow the quest arrow to objective crap. I miss having to ask for directions and find the location on your own (except for a couple cases were it was ridiculously cryptic).

The skill perks were ok I guess, but they didn't really compare to all the cool spells, enchantments, and weapons that they stripped out. Although I will say, HtH was fucking terrible in Morrowind so the improvements made there were one of the things I liked most in Oblivion.

I also loved the fact that you could run into enemies waaaay beyond your skill level, but if you were smart you could often sneak or find some other way through and get awesome loot that might either give you a fighting chance or a ton of money early. I hate that Oblivion made loot completely level based. It killed most of the joy I got from exploring, and nothing was dumber than seeing everyone wear top of the line armor. What's so cool about Deadric or Glass armor if every bandit is wearing it?

All in all, they're both fun games, but I found a lot of the changes made in Oblivion disappointing when I went back and played it.

 

[King Boo]

i don't agree. morrowind is a good unique game, but i had a lot more fun playing oblivion.

 

[Random Painted HIghway]

Loved it at the time on both 360 and pc, aged to the point I can't stand playing it now. Right alongside fallout 3 and borderlands for games greatly surpassed by their same generations equals to the point of rendering the first game unplayable.

 

[UncleSporky]

I hate that Oblivion made loot completely level based. It killed most of the joy I got from exploring, and nothing was dumber than seeing everyone wear top of the line armor. What's so cool about Deadric or Glass armor if every bandit is wearing it?

Heh...Morrowind is the same way, in terms of loot being level-based. You don't run into random bandit NPCs wearing glass armor but stuff you find in containers definitely is leveled. When I started out, all crates and barrels had crappy loot, iron daggers, low level spell scrolls, petty soul gems. A few levels ago, crates started having stuff like greater soul gems and Ekash's Lock Splitter scrolls of open 100 points. I just got to the level where grand soul gems are showing up.

Crates and barrels all reroll their contents if you leave and return, as long as you don't interact with them. If you check a Seyda Neen crate at the beginning and don't take anything from it, you can go back at level 50 and get awesome stuff from it.

 

[Gucci Messiah]

You are so Edgy.

It's a good game.

Excellent commentary right here, glad to see 4chan memes have invaded GAF.

Seriously, at least put some effort into your post besides calling somebody "edgy" just because they have a different opinion.

OP, I have never played Oblivion so I can't really chime in too much but I remember hearing a lot of the complaints you mentioned from friends. Still, most people I know thought it was a flawed yet good game at the time.

 

[Meowster]

It's certainly better than Skyrim...

 

[SpartanN92]

Oblivion is my 2nd favorite game of all time

 

[vladdamad]

Gotta disagree. Tried the last three Elder Scrolls games over the past year and Oblivion was the one that I enjoyed the most. Sank 50+ plus hours into that game and didn't even start the main quest. Sure, it may not be mechanically interesting, but the atmosphere, world, and writing around the quests is just delightful. I can understand how coming from Morrowind, and being used to the darker tone would be jarring but I actually really enjoyed the lighter tone here. Skyrim, on the other hand, I didn't enjoy at all, all the tasks felt a lot more repetitive and the context in which you were doing them wasn't all that interesting.

 

[thechristoph]

I have hundreds of hours each into TES3, 4, and 5, and I think they're all fantastic games.

There are things about TES3 that just can't be done in 4 and 5. Levitation would break everything about those games. Really, you could break 3 with it. But in a way, that's what old school CRPGs were about; having the tools to break the game and have a lot of fun with it. 4 and 5 are much more directed (you'd be a fool to say linear), and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a different type of design.

TES3's limitations were hidden by the enhanced sense of freedom that things like Mark and Recall and Levitation gave you. The game world was a chessboard with all the pieces glued down. The improvement that 4 made to the illusion of a living world was amazing.

 

[smudge]

I played Morrowind on release and it never grabbed me, I could see its appeal but I just wasn't interested at the time. I was excited for Oblivion but thought it was rubbish when I eventually played it. Not 3/10 bad though. I loved Skyrim though and have since played Oblivion with mods which was great, I do not have a desire to play Morrowind though.

People revere Morrowind as some all time classic, but I think if you didn't like it at launch then that opinion will not be changed.

 

[Hesemonni]

If only had they ditched the level scaling. I could live with loading screens when entering cities, but level scaling...whoever thought that was a good idea? Actually, is there even a single reasoning FOR level scaling?

 

[kswiston]

They're fickle and cynical but they pick out good RPGs when they see them. Passing on Pillars of Eternity and Siege of Dragonspear but embracing stuff like Underrail and Shadowrun: Dragonfall doesn't really conform to your view. They tend to go to stuff that do interesting things with cRPG mechanics. Oblivion was about as stagnant or regressive as you could go in terms of mechanics.

My issue with the RPG Codex crowd is that they value game mechanics (and difficulty to some extent) above pretty much everything else. On its own, that would be fine. However, that paired with the condescending attitude that anyone who may have other priorities is a braindead mouth breather or Johnny-come-lately dudebro who clearly hasn't played their much better games makes me ignore any valid points they may have.

I typically just turn the difficulty down in open world CRPGs, because I don't really give a shit about combat. I play strategy games if I have the itch to play something strategic. In rpgs, I am all about exploration, and maybe character progression. The Elder scrolls might not have this down perfectly (character progression can be uneven, and there are way too many dungeons that aren't really worth exploring/looting), but they do give you that sense of open ended exploration that a lot of games lack.

 

[Jams775]

I don't know if somebody else mentioned it yet but I feel that Bethesda's RPG mechanics are fundamentally flawed and should have been reworked in Morrowind. (I'm not a smart guy or I'd probably do a video about it with graphs and stuff to explain it) You were only able to choose a couple of play styles in Arena and Daggerfall that would make the game tolerable. Which was very disappointing seeing as how they gave you so many options. Those other options would usually make the game incredibly hard or unplayable.

Instead of reworking how the mechanics fundamentally work by changing the formulas for leveling and re imagining what skills should be what, etc they just polished out tons of content from DF to Morrowind. Then again in Oblivion and again in Skyrim.

I don't know how to really explain it well, hopefully somebody knows what I'm talking about that could maybe explain it better than I could. But in essence, all the games are equally bad due to the RPG mechanics behind the games that haven't really changed since Arena.

 

[Steel]

I've seen much worse sequels. Oblivion was fun enough.