Morrowind vs. Oblivion [Lance-Corporal Jones vs. roy34543]

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

It had to happen! What's a fight club in a gaming forum without the inevitable Morrowind vs. Oblivion?

On the one hand we've got the third entry in the critically acclaimed The Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind, released in the year of our lord 2002 and having sold over four million copies since. On the other lies the fourth entry in the TES saga, Oblivion, released in 2006, selling 1.7 million copies in a month and hitting the three million mark by 2007.

I, Jones, will defend Morrowind, whilst my oponent, Roy will defend Oblivion. Our stance does not imply that the opposing game is in any way bad, but rather, that it is inferior to the other for the reasons we shall expose.

And now, unless my oponent should wish to make the first move, I shall make my opening move first thing tomorrow morning.

[roy34543]

Ok , I will try cover the areas that games are generally reviewed and criticized based on. It will however probably have some spoilers
I am also not going to debate on the "age" factor. Im debating on which is a better game, its age is entirely irrelevant.
Suggesting that you go on a website or walkthrough is acceptable, but its not a very good argument either.

Presentation : Morrowind comes off in my opinion as having poor presentation, you are without much explanation, coming off a boat . Soon you have to complete a census that lets you choose your class, and then you ..have to read a note telling you where to go and what to do but otherwise can do whatever you want?
Lets put it this way, it doesnt sound like the start of a an epic plot, and doesnt really get you engaged in the story , The game is relying on the open-world attraction to keep you in.
Thats not good, but not its not horrible eisther, but there is little in the way of a tutorial or explanation for what does what, In the start most players will miss most of the time and will not figure out its because they have lower proficiency with a weapon, magic looks useless because of low failiure rates that require hundreds of uses to get your proficiency up with so most players just end up hoarding artifacts and scrolls that do the job , making a mage-type class unattractive, and if you picked one rather unfortunate.
many enemies you randomly run across can and will kill you making you have to reload early on, there is usually not much warning for a difficult encounter.. it just comes out of nowhere and artificially increases the game length by killing you repeatedly with rarely giving you a chance to run away.
It also comes across as having a poorly designed map that doesnt tell you where anything much is except with blocky squares which can take you 5 minutes to get the mouse on just right to read the correct area.
You also move slowly initially, evem with the silt-striders, and its tricky to know how to get to your target sometimes and from which city, The directions are sometimes good, Sometimes obscure, sometimes misleading and/or totally wrong, but you haev to depend on them .
Oblivion in my opinion has better presentation, you are in a cell and are quickly escorting the king through the sewers, sure what you do is totally irrelevant, but at the start of the game you dont know that, and you feel your actually helping .
you are then told exactly where to go on the map to go to the next part of the main quest.
The map is one of the best improvements, Not only does it mark locations like any half-intellegent person would do, but you can also see what type of thing it is, wether its a building, inn , village etc. The compass is also very useful to find something your looking for (such as a dungeon to loot)
Early on in oblivion regardless of what you do, you will probably be able to get better at it, and then be able to kill your enemy with it, Morrowind practically requires 20-50 levels of training with skills just not be bored to death using them.
In oblivion its possible to die, but usually its not because of a random encounter but because you did something incomptently, or didnt come prepared, I have never been one-shotted in oblivion except maybe by some traps, but i still have died quite a few times.
The voice acting from everyone always helps the immersion , and some of the voice actors are pretty good, even if its the same voice actor repeated over several times.
In oblivion also NPC's move around and talk and it makes a big difference, in morrowind all the NPC's feel dead , just peering over the counter and occasionaly having a insulting or overly praising line for you depending on your personality.

Plot/dailogue : While I admit in many respects morrowind had some advantages to oblivion over this, I dont think it has them in everything. First of all voice acted dialogue is simply better, second morrowind just pours heaps of text-dailogue on you, you just get tired of reading through the long list of options that are usually the same when you just want to finish a quest with some guy. The text is quite small too, ive found myself squinting to see it. (not that thats related to this section)
But I also feel that most of morrowinds dailogue was good, it wasnt always believable, much of it was long and written in a fanciful or prolix tone that I doubt every single person in the world would be using, all the good dailogue and plotline was mostly spread across the main quest too. The guilds did have plotlines, but most of them were made up of individual quests that were bland and had bland dialogue and stories as well. most of quests were so literally "kill this guy" "clear this dungeon" "escort this person" with no flavour to them it literally felt like i was playing an MMORPG. There were a few gems among there yes, but they were tiny daimonds in a sea of sand. At least oblivion didnt tack on extra quests to make it longer , or when it did they were few and finished very quickly or had at least one unique and itneresting element to them.
it also seems a lot of the interest in the plotline is derived from the expansions which i havent played. but then isnt the shivering isle also one of the bethesdas masterpieces? isnt it a lot better in many respects then the original game with a much better story and characters?
And well , if youve read dune then morrowinds plotline sounds a lot like it. Mythical figure from another world or place rises to prominence among natives and kills ancient shared enemy. I mean oblivions was just around as deep as that, but to me at least it doesnt sound like morrowinds plot is so much better. Oblivions is basically figure from nowhere tries to stop otherwordly invasion from a mythical being claiming he was actually the original owner of the realm.

Gameplay: I think Oblivion wins out in a lot of respects here, First of all its simply funner to kill and shoot at things, the combat is a lot smoother and feels better. It streamlines things so you dont waste hours searching for something you cant find, or give up on a quest and go check a walkthrough as often, yes it does handholding, but usually only where its appropriate, there are still a lot of secrets to find and various things to encounter you cant without exploration, its just you only need to spend much less time to find these things.
Yes there is a degree of satisfaction removed because things are easier, but a lot of frustration is removed equally.
Morrowinds gameplay seems to fail in many ways , it generally forces you to spend a lot of time going somewhere or doing something, and about 90% of these tedious tasks dont at all give you a feeling of satisfaction , again most of the quests are very bland and lack originality, it would have been better if they just ripped off a few other plots like they did with the main quest. and if your not going to do fast travel ok, but for gods sake dont put in 2 or 3 seperate transporation systems that dont go into each toher to complicate it and then make it so that you can only go from one city to another city if youve already memorized the path, thats just stupid, Why cant your character automatically order a ride to the city and then to another in one button press? Most sensible travel agencies would offer a discount on such a thing if anything. The loot is somewhat unsatisfying as well, Generally you will just find steel at the start of the game and then kill a guard when your about level 15 and steal his indoril stuff which is more or less the best armor in the game. Then you can go around killing guards whenever you see them, Or more likely not, because guards never seem to notice you unless your right in front of them. even if you choose not to steal the indoril armor, you will probably find something of a high tier very soon and skip almost all the middling ones.

Graphics : Oblivion is obviously better in this department, but i have to say that the animations in morrowind are inexcusable even from a game back then. and i dont like the art style in either game much. At least theres more variation in the countryside and buildings/dugneons in morrowind, but thats the only point in its favor in that respect.

Sounds: Music in both games isnt much to speak of, but the sounds in oblivion are a lot better, and the annoying sound of cliff racers means that i usually clicked mute. At least fighting actually sounds like fluid fighting in oblivion . and not just same sounds being repeated over and over again like you put two steroes side by side and looped them .

Technical issues - Morrowind is by far worse here, ive fallen through vivec and the world a few times so far, and ive had several crashes and ive gotten stuck and been unable to move or commit to ANY action (even toggling collision doent help here) Oblivion had a few minor bugs but nothing nearly this serious. Ive also had one game-breaking bug where had i not cheated and checked the wiki what i should do, i would have had th emain quest stuck forever. (if your wondering what it is, I snitched to the census/taxes guy where the theif he was looking for was, This isnt actually game-breaking in tiself because you can get the theif to give you the info if you get his disposition high enough, but a fault in coding means you cant advance the quest after that)

Final summary: I think morrowind does a lot badly next to oblivion, It makes you walk long distances to reach your target, it has a poor tutorial and introduction , and except for the main quest most of the quests are rather bland, It allows you to get anything in the game whenever you want, which in some respects is great, in some others it means you can get the best gear and skip many tiers. it makes some skills very powerful (lockpicking comes to mind, if you know where to use it) and some very weak (destruction for example) and all of them hard to level up ..
Oblivion on the other hand simplifies things and reduces inconvinience and frustration , its quests are a lot more interesting and varied, its dailogue is vocie acted, it has better graphics, and getting better loot is a satisfaction felt many times, you dont just hop onto the best gear because you know where it is. Any class is more or less viable, some are easier then others but all of them are great when used correctly.

Edit: The mods can close this thread if they want to.

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

Hello Roy, let's get started! Good opening move with the presentation here:

Presentation : Morrowind comes off in my opinion as having poor presentation, you are without much explanation, coming off a boat . Soon you have to complete a census that lets you choose your class, and then you ..have to read a note telling you where to go and what to do but otherwise can do whatever you want?
Lets put it this way, it doesnt sound like the start of a an epic plot, and doesnt really get you engaged in the story , The game is relying on the open-world attraction to keep you in.

However, let's take some basic rules of storytelling into consideration -- should a good story provide an epic beginning to an epic plot? Surely, Oblivion's introduction, involving the emperor's escape through secret tunnels whilst stalked by assassins, may be quite rightly labeled as "epic", but this quality only serves to create an anticlimatic feeling in the future: you are left to go find a monk named like a French WWI general, are sent to find someone in a ruined city, close the gates of hell, and... do it over and over again for the rest of the game.

In Morrowind's introduction, on the other hand, you are given an icy, if not hostile greeting, but this is all part of a textbook hero's quest as often used in novels and short stories.

In this case, we are pitting a linear, naive storyline against a storyline of vastly superior quality, which has been written in accord with the archetypes of literature.

Thats not good, but not its not horrible eisther, but there is little in the way of a tutorial or explanation for what does what, In the start most players will miss most of the time and will not figure out its because they have lower proficiency with a weapon, magic looks useless because of low failiure rates that require hundreds of uses to get your proficiency up with so most players just end up hoarding artifacts and scrolls that do the job , making a mage-type class unattractive, and if you picked one rather unfortunate.
many enemies you randomly run across can and will kill you making you have to reload early on, there is usually not much warning for a difficult encounter.. it just comes out of nowhere and artificially increases the game length by killing you repeatedly with rarely giving you a chance to run away.

I always felt mollycoddled with Oblivion, to be quite frank, Morrowind's difficulty always gave me this bittersweet blend of challenge and frustration. The fact that the game is harsh and unforgiving to beginners grants the world a wild, hostile quality which ends up making the player tread carefully, especially in the beginning. In Oblivion, on the other hand, the player is relatively sure that he will prevail over anything the game can throw in his path.

It also comes across as having a poorly designed map that doesnt tell you where anything much is except with blocky squares which can take you 5 minutes to get the mouse on just right to read the correct area.

I must partly grant you this point, as the map is, indeed, ugly. It does have its virtues, nevertheless, such as being nearly entirely visible at all times. Oblivion's map, on the other hand, was a ginormous beast -- not that the landmass was all that larger -- which required several mouse scrolls to get from one end to another, and which only seemed to serve the purpose of hosting lame, generic fast-travel markers. And that is very poor game design.

You also move slowly initially, evem with the silt-striders, and its tricky to know how to get to your target sometimes and from which city, The directions are sometimes good, Sometimes obscure, sometimes misleading and/or totally wrong, but you haev to depend on them .
Oblivion in my opinion has better presentation, you are in a cell and are quickly escorting the king through the sewers, sure what you do is totally irrelevant, but at the start of the game you dont know that, and you feel your actually helping .
you are then told exactly where to go on the map to go to the next part of the main quest.

This slowness of movement is actually extremely rewarding, as it poses a challenge which may yield interesting possibilities. Take the initial journey, from Seyda Neen to Balmora. You may spend a few quid on taking the stilt strider, or you may walk. If you choose to walk, you'll find a wannabe-Icarus bloke falling out of the sky, several tombs which may yield interesting loot, and, according to the path you choose to tread, you may encounter a pilgrim, a bandit, some miners, an entirely different city...

On the other hand, you may take the stilt strider to Balmora -- but then again, you may go anywhere else, and catch a glimplse of different towns and different architectural styles. It gives the game a sense of vastness and an uncanny realism.

The map is one of the best improvements, Not only does it mark locations like any half-intellegent person would do, but you can also see what type of thing it is, wether its a building, inn , village etc. The compass is also very useful to find something your looking for (such as a dungeon to loot)

I always thought the map was a big blunder in game design. You simply can't make a map so exceedingly large without re-scaling it to fit the entire screen, which wouldn't have been too difficult a task if they hadn't nerfed the interface for console users. This map, taking up -- in an inefficient manner -- the entire screen, is updated in an absurd fashion; for instance, if I'm walking down the road quite nonchalantly and minding my business, I might get a note for "you've discovered ________" whereas I haven't even seen the bloody place. Furthermore, with my ugly Morrowind map, at a click of the hand I've got all my stats, equipment, and spells, whereas Oblivion requires closing the map and accessing the corresponding inventory or such, with an insane amount of clicks.

Early on in oblivion regardless of what you do, you will probably be able to get better at it, and then be able to kill your enemy with it, Morrowind practically requires 20-50 levels of training with skills just not be bored to death using them.

Which is a great immersion-breaker. The fact that you can do just about anything -- revealed knowledge? -- and simply "get better" at it speaks volumes of this game's intention: not to discourage new, easily-frustrated gamers by actually forcing them to learn about things they don't know. It's only fair that if you are ignorant on a matter you should receive at least some basic instruction before teaching yourself. I couldn't simply throw a trumpet marine at you and expect you to know how to play it, let alone hold it! You'd have to go to a trumpet marine instructor a few times, get a knack of the basics, and then, if you should wish to give up on the instructor, teach yourself into the realm of unperishing mediocrity.

In oblivion its possible to die, but usually its not because of a random encounter but because you did something incomptently, or didnt come prepared, I have never been one-shotted in oblivion except maybe by some traps, but i still have died quite a few times.

The fact that only gross incompetence, as you aptly pointed out, may mean death in Oblivion is a great demotivator indeed. How many times has one tried to save and reload in Morrowind, only to realize that this foe or dungeon was just too powerful, only to return a few levels later and triumph? All that is a part of heroic fulfillment.

The voice acting from everyone always helps the immersion , and some of the voice actors are pretty good, even if its the same voice actor repeated over several times.
In oblivion also NPC's move around and talk and it makes a big difference, in morrowind all the NPC's feel dead , just peering over the counter and occasionaly having a insulting or overly praising line for you depending on your personality.

The fact that a handful of races involving roughly 1,000 people have got about six voices is perhaps the greatest inmersion-breaker of all. Furthermore, it has limited the amount of dialogue radically -- with two or three rumors being repeated ad nauseam throughout the game -- and used up an unhealthy amount of disk space which could have been better used. In Morrowind, on the other hand, whereas I must agree that conversations look like an Excel spreadsheet, there was enticement to talking to characters as they often had something more to say beyond "Rumors" and "[insert city name]".

Plot/dailogue : While I admit in many respects morrowind had some advantages to oblivion over this, I dont think it has them in everything. First of all voice acted dialogue is simply better, second morrowind just pours heaps of text-dailogue on you, you just get tired of reading through the long list of options that are usually the same when you just want to finish a quest with some guy. The text is quite small too, ive found myself squinting to see it. (not that thats related to this section)
But I also feel that most of morrowinds dailogue was good, it wasnt always believable, much of it was long and written in a fanciful or prolix tone that I doubt every single person in the world would be using, all the good dailogue and plotline was mostly spread across the main quest too. The guilds did have plotlines, but most of them were made up of individual quests that were bland and had bland dialogue and stories as well. most of quests were so literally "kill this guy" "clear this dungeon" "escort this person" with no flavour to them it literally felt like i was playing an MMORPG. There were a few gems among there yes, but they were tiny daimonds in a sea of sand. At least oblivion didnt tack on extra quests to make it longer , or when it did they were few and finished very quickly or had at least one unique and itneresting element to them.

About a dozen factions and guilds dwarf Oblivion's tiny Fighters/Mages/Thieves/Brotherhood quests, which, although sometimes quite good, are levelled and without any skill requirements -- meaning a mage can mage his way through the fighter's guild, or a fighter can fight his way through the mage's guild -- resulting in a chief of the fighter's guild who can't fight, or a chief of the mage's guild who can't cast a spell.

Furthermore, in Morrowind, factions were more often than not incompatible, and the sheer amount of them made you feel like you were part of the world. There were religious factions (Imperial Cult, Temple) mages' factions (House Telvanni, Mage's guild) stealth factions (House Hlaalu, thieves' guild, Morag Tong) fighters' factions (Imperial Legion, Fighters' guild, House Redoran) an abolitionist faction (Twin lamps) three vampire clans (Aundae, Berne, Quarra) and the ashlanders or the Blades themselves, which you may join as part of the main quest.

The amount of joinable factions makes you feel as if you are taking a part in every aspect of the world's life, whereas in Oblivion, you must stick to generic fantasy roles.

it also seems a lot of the interest in the plotline is derived from the expansions which i havent played. but then isnt the shivering isle also one of the bethesdas masterpieces? isnt it a lot better in many respects then the original game with a much better story and characters?

Better, perhaps; good, I don't think so. Whilst supposed to depict a mad realm, the game's utter lack of expressive character animations for speech and movement, and the -- how should I say it? -- tameness of the world (considering it's supposed to be stark-raving mad) was a huge letdown. The whole ending was also a huge lore-killer, and, finally, Sheogorath's fake Scottish accent made my ears bleed.

And well , if youve read dune then morrowinds plotline sounds a lot like it. Mythical figure from another world or place rises to prominence among natives and kills ancient shared enemy. I mean oblivions was just around as deep as that, but to me at least it doesnt sound like morrowinds plot is so much better. Oblivions is basically figure from nowhere tries to stop otherwordly invasion from a mythical being claiming he was actually the original owner of the realm.

Of course, I have read Dune and it's an excellent book; in fact, it's what we may call a trope-maker, as so many later plotlines sought to imitate it that there is a clear Duneian heritage.

Yes, roughly, both copy Dune, but which approaches it best? I believe Morrowind. Oblivion is your run-of-the-mill save the world storyline; you save the heir, face the big bad devils, bla bla, defeat them, end of story.

If we take Morrowin's nerevarine as muad'dib, the similarities are obvious, in particular in what regards the Ashlanders/Fremen. The character, unlike in Oblivion, has ups and downs, moments of heroic elatement (becoming hortator and nerevarine) and moments of humbling lowness (contracting the corprus disease, trying to mingle with the ashlanders, persecution by the Temple) which conform a good hero's journey. The hero's enshrinement, of course, comes with the cave of the Incarnate, in which he is finally confirmed as the true fulfiller of the prophecy.

In Oblivion there is no such doubt, no such moments of humbling. The hero is a hero, and he is one from start to finish. An oblivion-gate-closing hero.

Gameplay: I think Oblivion wins out in a lot of respects here, First of all its simply funner to kill and shoot at things, the combat is a lot smoother and feels better. It streamlines things so you dont waste hours searching for something you cant find, or give up on a quest and go check a walkthrough as often, yes it does handholding, but usually only where its appropriate, there are still a lot of secrets to find and various things to encounter you cant without exploration, its just you only need to spend much less time to find these things.
Yes there is a degree of satisfaction removed because things are easier, but a lot of frustration is removed equally.

You make a good and balanced critique on this point, and I must agree fully. There are pros and cons to the improved gameplay/handholding and this is a matter for the gamer to decide upon.

Morrowinds gameplay seems to fail in many ways , it generally forces you to spend a lot of time going somewhere or doing something, and about 90% of these tedious tasks dont at all give you a feeling of satisfaction , again most of the quests are very bland and lack originality, it would have been better if they just ripped off a few other plots like they did with the main quest. and if your not going to do fast travel ok, but for gods sake dont put in 2 or 3 seperate transporation systems that dont go into each toher to complicate it and then make it so that you can only go from one city to another city if youve already memorized the path, thats just stupid, Why cant your character automatically order a ride to the city and then to another in one button press? Most sensible travel agencies would offer a discount on such a thing if anything.

Well, it's clear the game doesn't mollycoddle you. Nevertheless, I believe the transportation systems were a game in their own, a tiny step asked from you to travel a long distance. I never thought it was much to ask, and it adds to the immersion nicely.

The loot is somewhat unsatisfying as well, Generally you will just find steel at the start of the game and then kill a guard when your about level 15 and steal his indoril stuff which is more or less the best armor in the game. Then you can go around killing guards whenever you see them, Or more likely not, because guards never seem to notice you unless your right in front of them. even if you choose not to steal the indoril armor, you will probably find something of a high tier very soon and skip almost all the middling ones.

One cannot begin to describe the frustration and absolute loss of immersion that results from levelled loot. A world in which only iron exists; when, all of a sudden, when mister X reaches level Y, steel begins to exist. Then, next thing you know, these gifted natives have discovered Z, &c. It's absurd. The world isn't supposed to revolve around the character. If the character can find some steel armour early on, good for him.

Graphics : Oblivion is obviously better in this department, but i have to say that the animations in morrowind are inexcusable even from a game back then. and i dont like the art style in either game much. At least theres more variation in the countryside and buildings/dugneons in morrowind, but thats the only point in its favor in that respect.

I must agree Morrowind was ugly from the very beginning, no question about that. Still, the variety of landscapes and architecture, which you aptly point out, are more than a point in favour: they are an integral part of the game's charm.

Sounds: Music in both games isnt much to speak of, but the sounds in oblivion are a lot better, and the annoying sound of cliff racers means that i usually clicked mute. At least fighting actually sounds like fluid fighting in oblivion . and not just same sounds being repeated over and over again like you put two steroes side by side and looped them .

Indeed, the sound has been improved, even though some ambient sounds in Morrowind set the scene nicely for several strange, outlandish regions, and the music was nice (until it started to bore). Oblivion's music wasn't much better, but yes, the battle sounds, for instance, were a definite improvement.

Technical issues - Morrowind is by far worse here, ive fallen through vivec and the world a few times so far, and ive had several crashes and ive gotten stuck and been unable to move or commit to ANY action (even toggling collision doent help here) Oblivion had a few minor bugs but nothing nearly this serious. Ive also had one game-breaking bug where had i not cheated and checked the wiki what i should do, i would have had th emain quest stuck forever. (if your wondering what it is, I snitched to the census/taxes guy where the theif he was looking for was, This isnt actually game-breaking in tiself because you can get the theif to give you the info if you get his disposition high enough, but a fault in coding means you cant advance the quest after that)

You mentioned that already in the other thread, which is surprising given that I've never had any serious bugs with the game myself. In Oblivion, on the other hand, I have experienced several bugs, one of which seemed to be a very annoying memory leak.

Final summary: I think morrowind does a lot badly next to oblivion, It makes you walk long distances to reach your target, it has a poor tutorial and introduction , and except for the main quest most of the quests are rather bland, It allows you to get anything in the game whenever you want, which in some respects is great, in some others it means you can get the best gear and skip many tiers. it makes some skills very powerful (lockpicking comes to mind, if you know where to use it) and some very weak (destruction for example) and all of them hard to level up ..
Oblivion on the other hand simplifies things and reduces inconvinience and frustration , its quests are a lot more interesting and varied, its dailogue is vocie acted, it has better graphics, and getting better loot is a satisfaction felt many times, you dont just hop onto the best gear because you know where it is. Any class is more or less viable, some are easier then others but all of them are great when used correctly.

Now that I have answered your particular posts, as an answer to your conclusions, I shall write a consistent comparison of my own in my next post. Stay tuned.

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

Right, here's my own comparative appreciation of both games. You'll notice I won't go for a classic game review critique covering all aspects -- as you have done, very professionally -- but rather, I'm going to strive for different criteria. Why?

Because, mainly when comparing two games of substantially different ages, it is obvious that one must find a balanced criteria which may serve to fairly compare them. Graphics, for instance, or other such aesthetic additions, are irrelevant as they are conditioned by the available technology; however, the design behind those graphics is extremely telling, as is, for instance, the storyline, the game world, or game lore mainly because the human minds behind these aspects have not evolved as technology has.

Therefore, I shall treat Morrowind and Oblivion as if the technical aspects were negligible and stick to the less-tangible aspects of these games. Let's start with

The game world

An interesting game world is crucial to a good adventure game, and designing an interesting game world is a task which requires a great amount of creativity and art rather than technical skill. Morrowind's gameworld is the island of Vvardenfell, a landmass surrounded by water and having a large volcano in its centre. Oblivion's gameworld is Cyrodiil, a nearly-landlocked landmass comprehending a valley (the Nibenay basin) and a semi-mountainous region sandwiched between a large river and a chain of mountains.

Already, the choice of landmass is far more judicious for Morrowind, as an island allows a finite world with natural boundaries, whereas Oblivion's world presents all sorts of difficulties in maintaining immersion whilst forbidding exit from the province.

Secondly, Morrowind's landscape is mainly flat, with a large volacno in the centre and small mountainous chains throughout the landscape, whereas Oblivion's lands are mostly flat, with mountainous chains on the northern and eastern borders. This also poses a problem: the need to circumvent the blighted lands in the centre involves moving along the circumference of Red Mountain, thereby creating a realistic, interesting system of land transportation, maritime transportation, magical transportation, and moving oneself. In Oblivion, all you must do is follow long, straight, linear autobahns ad infinitum, or choose the merciful choice, fast travel (not that there is anything to be found on the way!)

Already, we can see that physical geography is clearly in favour of the Morrowind choice. But a gameworld isn't just mountains and rivers. What conforms it?

Firstly, we may consider the ecosystems created by the designers. In Morrowind, it is obvious that the game designers did some work and brought us several very different regions: the swampy Bitter Coast, the lush Ascadian Isles, the grey, dusty West Gash, the rocky, maze-like Molag Amur, the sprawling Grazelands, the scarcely inhabitated Azura's coast and the rocky Sheogorad region, not to mention the blighted, hellish Red Mountain. Each and every one of these regions is idiosyncratic and clearly defined. Furthermore, when it comes to fauna, the Morrowind designers have also toiled to bring logical, outlandish creatures into the mix: from the huge, ant-like Kwama (whose eggs are an important staple of the local diet, and which are exploited extensively) to the peaceful Guars and Netches to the predatorial Alit or Kagouti or the annoying cliffracers, Morrowind's fauna is no less varied than its flora, with its Saltrice, Scuttle, Kresh weed, Hackle-lo, and a long &c. And the best thing is, these outlandish products are just what you find in peoples' kitchens, plates, &c. Everything makes perfect sense, for being such an outlandish world; food is provided by very numerous kwama "egg mines" ("miners", chaps who get the eggs from the "anthill") the big slave-plantations in the Ascadian Isles, and a number of small farms throughout the landscape.

In Cyrodiil, on the other hand, the fauna and flora are as bland as it gets. When I visited the US once, I precisely stayed near Bethesda (Rockville, Maryland in fact) and I can tell you that the trees and plants in Oblivion are just like Bethesda. Looks like the chaps at Bethesda softworks didn't go very far! The fauna isn't any better: a mix of your run-of-the-mill bobcats, wolves and deer (carefully levelled; it's a known facts bobcats only started to exist after Mister Player reached level 6) Apart from that, their ecosystem is about as illogical as it gets. There are about one or two tiny half-arsed farms throughout the map to feed a number of enormous cities populated by no-good yuppie petty bourgeois types.

Let's get started on the cities then, shall we? Or should we say the settlements, in a broader sense?

In Morrowind, settlements are of very variable shapes and sizes. There are several large cities (Balmora, Ald'ruhn, Sadrith Mora, Vivec, Gnisis) followed by medium-sized towns (Caldera, Pelagiad, Vos, Suran, Mar Gaan, Molag Mar, &c...) and small, run-down villages (Gnaar Mok, Ald Velothi, Hla Oad, Tel Fyr, Dagon Fel, Khuul, and a long &c), not to mention the large ashlander camps, or the smaller camps of exiled ashlanders. And the beauty of it is, every one of those towns have some interest. Some of the smaller towns have got useful transportation or small quests, the bigger towns have got their array of shops, institutions and interesting personalities, others are located in interesting or hostile regions.

In Oblivion, you've got eight somewhat generic cities (Anvil, Skingrad, Chorrol, Cheydinhal, Bravil, Bruma, Leyawiin and the Imperial City) all ruled by a lord who lives in a castle which looks like every other lord's castle, and everybody's happy. And beyond those cities, good luck. You may find a "village" or so (Borderwatch, Blankenmarch, Pell's gate and such), being a set of a few houses with no dialogue at all. In fact, those villages are so useless, they are often only there for a single quest which justifies their existence. I should say 90% of Cyrodiil's population is composed by yuppies. Yes, well-off people who don't seem to have to work much for a living, own a quiet shop or inn, or just spend their time in the guildhouse and are happy. Then, there are one or two standard beggars per city (who trick you with their sickly voice only to boom THANK YOU, KIND SIR! in an athletic, manly tone after you give them a coin). One wonders why there are beggars, as there is no lower class at all. There are no politics beyond the counts, no nobility beyond the counts, nothing. The only "knights" you'll find are the comical "knights of the thorn" and the perhaps even-more comical "knights of the white stallion". Where are the working classes? Where is that overwhelming majority of miserable peasants, feeding those cities? Where are the endless fields of grain? Peasants can give extremely interesting scenarii, as was shown greatly by The Witcher, in which both urban and rural medieval settings were poignant, terrible, and grimly realistic (in a fantastic sort of way). In Cyrodiil, rather than the packed, overcrowded, squalid, disease-infested places that fortified cities were (there is nothing more overcrowded and fetid than a fortified city) in which dozens of people packed into single houses, you have a nice, airy city with huge empty spaces and gianormous three-story dollhouses for people to live in. Puh-leaze!

Let's now have a look at architecture. In Morrowind, architecture (and urbanism in general) were dealt with excellently and never failed to impress. From the familiar, homely Imperial-style buildings, we go from the eastern-like mud-brick Velothi buildings, the gnarled zoomorphic redoran structures, the ramshackle shacks of the bitter coast, the towering Tenochtitlan-like Vivec, the crazed mushroom structures of the Telvanni or the Ashlanders' tents. All these different forms of living are seamlessly integrated into the game and may be seen as perfectly logical and functional, with outlandish but interesting household appliances such as blue lamps and such.

In Oblivion, they chose a more conservative path and simply varied architectural styles a bit, to the point in which you may find one city looks more like medieval England, another like medieval France or yet another like Germany or Spain. But they're still dollhouses, and boring ones at that.

Beyond the cities, the difference is further accentuated. Cyrodiil is very much like a theme park full of amusing ruins and dungeons; unfortunately, none of them is unique and they all have been made with a similar, unvaried tileset. In Morrowind, the buildings and ruins out there are varied and special. You may find different caves, dungeons, towers and such, but they're not generic: you may chance upon a slave traders' cache, and free the slaves, thereby aiding the abolitionist movement. You may chance upon a wizard's tower guarded by magical beasts, or you may even chance upon the lair of a few vampires. The dwarven ruins, in particular, are quite interesting, and an entire sub-quest of the game is finding out what happened to this lost civilization. It is clear that in Oblivion, they tried to reproduce this with the Ayleids, but seeing that the Ayleids were, it seems, producers of dungeons for players to have fun in, I've never been the least bit interested about who or what they were.

As for lore, Morrowind once more takes the cake. The island of Vvardenfell is one big lore package, and there is so much to learn, it's dizzying. The developpers worked their arses off to produce an insane amount of books for the game which amounted to thousands of pages, and it shows. From the religion to the customs, traditions and history of the land, there is a vast world to explore. Sure, it's not all that original, but it certainly beats Cyrodiil (hey! let's make cloned generic cathedrals and call them "temples of the Nine!") which was just a pastiche of medieval Europe with swapped names. Morrowind is a foreign, hostile place in which you do not fit in; you may even find yourself empathizing with the other "foreigners" in the game, whose way of thinking and acting is far less outlandish than that of the natives. In Oblivion, everyone's nice and happy and without a care in the world, despite the fact that daemons are invading and the emperor is dead without an heir. No wonder Cyrodiil is commonly described as Happytown!

Furthermore, there are interesting, if not always necessary, places in Morrowind: the daedric ruins are interesting and well done, and far more realistic than a lone shrine with a few cultists standing around it (where do they live?) and the existence of landmarks such as the Fields of Kummu, Mount Kand or sacred relics in temples add welcome immersion to the game.

That's it in what regards the game world for now. I step down, and await your answer.

[roy34543]

I guess ill do the rebuttal first.

However, let's take some basic rules of storytelling into consideration -- should a good story provide an epic beginning to an epic plot? Surely, Oblivion's introduction, involving the emperor's escape through secret tunnels whilst stalked by assassins, may be quite rightly labeled as "epic", but this quality only serves to create an anticlimatic feeling in the future: you are left to go find a monk named like a French WWI general, are sent to find someone in a ruined city, close the gates of hell, and... do it over and over again for the rest of the game.

Perhaps its true it creates an anticlimatic feeling later on as very little seems to happen right after, I did feel that after the whole hand over the amulet thing the plot got , at the very least, some excellent action and well made quests to it. You end up going through a battle for a city , Into a giant oblivion gate on (well frankly, not so frantic) timer trying to stop a giant siege machine, You then go and infiltrate a cult and see them opening to another world, follow them in , If i remember correctly have to do a task for a deadtra (This is the one "humbling" moment actually) and it ends on a epic note with a giant battle between the avatar of akatosh and mehrunes dagon.

In Morrowind's introduction, on the other hand, you are given an icy, if not hostile greeting, but this is all part of a textbook hero's quest as often used in novels and short stories.

Sometimes it is and sometimes ti isnt, To be honest its not really that the idea is bad, its jsut they presented it badly. telling you to read a note doesnt carry much emphasis. I forgot about the note until I was 5 hours into the game.

In this case, we are pitting a linear, naive storyline against a storyline of vastly superior quality, which has been written in accord with the archetypes of literature.

Are we? Morrowinds plot for much of the time is actually one of the things thats presented well (through dailogue) But I dont think its that impressive. And while oblivions story is quite typical and linear, its not really naive , It just lacks any interesting twists or suspense.

I always felt mollycoddled with Oblivion, to be quite frank, Morrowind's difficulty always gave me this bittersweet blend of challenge and frustration. The fact that the game is harsh and unforgiving to beginners grants the world a wild, hostile quality which ends up making the player tread carefully, especially in the beginning. In Oblivion, on the other hand, the player is relatively sure that he will prevail over anything the game can throw in his path.

But some seemingly easy quests can kill you, finding a quest that tells you to go kill some bandits can be a suicide mission even if theyre only wearing steel armor or worse.
It again, Is not presented well. Oblivion more or less circumvents the issue by rarely giving you access to difficult opponents until your ready to face them, but ive seen many games with difficulty ratings that work very well . Yes a difficulty rating is immersion breaking, it also immensely cuts down on frustration. I remember how many people were ranted about how ETW removed the whole "Good-bad offer" thing in diplomacy a while ago.

I must partly grant you this point, as the map is, indeed, ugly. It does have its virtues, nevertheless, such as being nearly entirely visible at all times. Oblivion's map, on the other hand, was a ginormous beast -- not that the landmass was all that larger -- which required several mouse scrolls to get from one end to another, and which only seemed to serve the purpose of hosting lame, generic fast-travel markers. And that is very poor game design.

No its poor interface design, And frankly while i admit oblivions interface is horrible, I dont think the map of all things was that bad when you got used to it. It was generally very clear whereyou were at a glance once youve been playing the game for a few hours, you pay the price with it being very big, but its generally worth it. Morrowind is very good for telling you the general area , or the entire map . Oblivion made a decent compromise with it being in between .
The markets i have to say are a good thing. If i had a map i used frequently i would mark it. Why do you think a GPS is much more popular then spoken directions these days? Sure youd have to be a good cartograph, but basic skills in that were common for adventurers in the real world and in fact is a great skill for anyone to have if they plan to travel often.

This slowness of movement is actually extremely rewarding, as it poses a challenge which may yield interesting possibilities. Take the initial journey, from Seyda Neen to Balmora. You may spend a few quid on taking the stilt strider, or you may walk. If you choose to walk, you'll find a wannabe-Icarus bloke falling out of the sky, several tombs which may yield interesting loot, and, according to the path you choose to tread, you may encounter a pilgrim, a bandit, some miners, an entirely different city...

I dont think this makes sense. How does slower movement make the game more rewarding, increasing the speed of walking by 50% would have alleviated a lot of long walks, and youd be able to explore all the same. In fact i have had it suggested to me in the other thread to just go find the boots of blinding speed ASAP

On the other hand, you may take the stilt strider to Balmora -- but then again, you may go anywhere else, and catch a glimplse of different towns and different architectural styles. It gives the game a sense of vastness and an uncanny realism.

Or you could talk to a few people and have those "ugly map markers" of the city or town shown for you (well not always, but a lot of them will show up after a bit of talking)
Actually i have to disagree with you on the vastness thing, Being an island and all morrowind quickly feels like its lsing its vastness, there will always be a lot to explore there, but about 10 hours in you feel the area is actually very managable.
If you play oblivion first too, you probably wont be impressed at all. But then i guess daggerfall fans would say the same about both .
And with the uncanny realism i must disagree too, the whole point is being drawn into a fantasy world, Morrowind draws you into a fantasy world, and oblivion draws you into something a bit like the real world today but with medeival technology , magic and a few magical creatures and races.

I always thought the map was a big blunder in game design. You simply can't make a map so exceedingly large without re-scaling it to fit the entire screen, which wouldn't have been too difficult a task if they hadn't nerfed the interface for console users. This map, taking up -- in an inefficient manner -- the entire screen, is updated in an absurd fashion; for instance, if I'm walking down the road quite nonchalantly and minding my business, I might get a note for "you've discovered ________" whereas I haven't even seen the bloody place. Furthermore, with my ugly Morrowind map, at a click of the hand I've got all my stats, equipment, and spells, whereas Oblivion requires closing the map and accessing the corresponding inventory or such, with an insane amount of clicks.

as a PC gamer of course, im always annoyed when for some reason something is changed to fit console users instead of a design that would be comftorable on the PC, and next to morrowind and oblivion of course it shows that morrowinds interface is less clunky , though oblivions is very livable, at least you can figure out where everything is in a heatbeat.
But i still think the compromise they made with the map is a good thing and not bad, I would have liked it scaled about 30% bigger, but overall a map showing the entire game-world with tiny fast travel icons would have been a bad thing.
I do disagree the morrowind interface for spells is better though, morrowind jsut seems to discourage spells, For example at one point i picked up a few 6th house amulets, About 10. So every time i wanted to click a spell i had to wade through a list of them appearign. and they all do the same exact thing, oblivion was better in this respect with the icons , big text and easy to understand list and sub-menus.

Which is a great immersion-breaker. The fact that you can do just about anything -- revealed knowledge? -- and simply "get better" at it speaks volumes of this game's intention: not to discourage new, easily-frustrated gamers by actually forcing them to learn about things they don't know. It's only fair that if you are ignorant on a matter you should receive at least some basic instruction before teaching yourself. I couldn't simply throw a trumpet marine at you and expect you to know how to play it, let alone hold it! You'd have to go to a trumpet marine instructor a few times, get a knack of the basics, and then, if you should wish to give up on the instructor, teach yourself into the realm of unperishing mediocrity.

But its ridicolous to assume you cant learn yourself, obviously all these trainers cant have learned from trainers themselves can they? Or if they have those trainers cant have learned by themselves to a long line of trainers?
Besides that though, except for magic which doesnt exist, almost all the skills in morrowind are extremely easy to have the basic hang of, and hard to master, Lockpicking a chest isnt that tough. poking someone with a spear is easy. Its the finer points that take effort to learn.
The only exception i can think of is alchemy, but thats more of a knowledge and caution based thing opposed to skill based thing.
To make it clearer, none of the skils in morrowind are really comparable to a complex intstrument, Its not major surgery were talking about here, (well .. Not in the medical sense anyway ) theyre all intuitive skills you should get better at intuitively .

The fact that only gross incompetence, as you aptly pointed out, may mean death in Oblivion is a great demotivator indeed. How many times has one tried to save and reload in Morrowind, only to realize that this foe or dungeon was just too powerful, only to return a few levels later and triumph? All that is a part of heroic fulfillment.

I meant incomptence as in , being AFK from the keyboard , not focusing, not bringing in health potions or poison. relying on spells with an enemy that drains mana and so on. (honestly the only time that oblivion fails at this is in the arena. You do at some point come upon a difficulty curve that rises very high at one point, which can get you killed very fast , and theres no running away from the arena)
In morrowind though this can happen even if you have brought a lot of health potions and come prepared in every possible way.

The fact that a handful of races involving roughly 1,000 people have got about six voices is perhaps the greatest inmersion-breaker of all. Furthermore, it has limited the amount of dialogue radically -- with two or three rumors being repeated ad nauseam throughout the game -- and used up an unhealthy amount of disk space which could have been better used. In Morrowind, on the other hand, whereas I must agree that conversations look like an Excel spreadsheet, there was enticement to talking to characters as they often had something more to say beyond "Rumors" and "[insert city name]".

But it was usually the same thing, sometimes i asked someone in the vain hope their text would be different about say, Vivec. It was almost always the same..
i dont think the same voices is that much of a immersion breaker, Its very easy to ignore if you get sick of it as none of the voices are particularly unpleasent.
And yes most characters dont have much more then rumors and info about the city, but they dont need more, Frankly in morrowind abotu 50% of the dailogue options were directions , 10% where generic for everyone, and another 20% were added by association (like all the priests having dailogue about say, the saints.

About a dozen factions and guilds dwarf Oblivion's tiny Fighters/Mages/Thieves/Brotherhood quests, which, although sometimes quite good, are levelled and without any skill requirements -- meaning a mage can mage his way through the fighter's guild, or a fighter can fight his way through the mage's guild -- resulting in a chief of the fighter's guild who can't fight, or a chief of the mage's guild who can't cast a spell.

I think thats perfectly fair, a guild after all, Is a community of trademan banding together, a leader of a guild of shoemakers is most likely the one with the most buissness and social acumen , as opposed to the person who makes the finest shoes and has worked his entire life at it. Guilds expect results - They shouldnt care how it comes about, or at least not after youve more or less cleared every contract they have and more.
And the guilds all felt different in oblivion, In morrowind a lot of guilds felt pretty much the same, The houes were not that diffeerent , The fighters guild was mostly kill people or creatures (how it should be) but the morrowind equivalant of the assasins guild felt almost exactly the same .
Mages guild was mostly about collecting stuff. Mages really never use magic do they?they just need you to go deep into a dungeon to collect something. (not really different from oblivion, but at least you felt like you were fighting magical enemies in oblivion)
theives guild. Well with all the theiving in morrowind it automatically feels sort of lame, but the oblivion final quest for the theives guild was so epic it made topped every other quest in the entire chain (more or less)
Morrowinds guild was basically either taunt a guy and make him kill you (Isnt that really immersion breaking? I mean you can walk into everyones house, taunt them, get them to attack you, and then clear an ENTIRE TOWN IN THE EXACT SAME FASHION!)

Furthermore, in Morrowind, factions were more often than not incompatible, and the sheer amount of them made you feel like you were part of the world. There were religious factions (Imperial Cult, Temple) mages' factions (House Telvanni, Mage's guild) stealth factions (House Hlaalu, thieves' guild, Morag Tong) fighters' factions (Imperial Legion, Fighters' guild, House Redoran) an abolitionist faction (Twin lamps) three vampire clans (Aundae, Berne, Quarra) and the ashlanders or the Blades themselves, which you may join as part of the main quest.

Only two guilds were incompatible, Fighters and theives guild, and its perfectly possible to have them compatble if you know how.
The twin lamps, Vamprie factions, and ashlanders feel tacked on, and you can hardly feel the blades are a faction in any sense, its just one skooma addict and a few trainers for the entire game.

The amount of joinable factions makes you feel as if you are taking a part in every aspect of the world's life, whereas in Oblivion, you must stick to generic fantasy roles.

I didnt really feel that. You felt like a contract mercenary in morrowind. You do a job and you get paid, you dont generally feel your doing something "for" the guild.

Better, perhaps; good, I don't think so. Whilst supposed to depict a mad realm, the game's utter lack of expressive character animations for speech and movement, and the -- how should I say it? -- tameness of the world (considering it's supposed to be stark-raving mad) was a huge letdown. The whole ending was also a huge lore-killer, and, finally, Sheogorath's fake Scottish accent made my ears bleed.

They aimed it around being extremely amusing, not being "mad" and im glad they did.
If youve ever heard of bipolar disorder, they aimed it more like that, a person with bipolar isnt exactly inssane , its just theyre mad at everything at one moment and crazy happy another (Dementia and Mania)
I loved the fake scottish accent though, it just fit him so nicely Apparantly his avatar in front of mortals is always like that of a well-dressed buissnessman. and then you find he wants to skip rope with your intestines.

Of course, I have read Dune and it's an excellent book; in fact, it's what we may call a trope-maker, as so many later plotlines sought to imitate it that there is a clear Duneian heritage.

Even frank herbet thought it was way overrated as one of his series, he thought it was a bit cliche.

Yes, roughly, both copy Dune, but which approaches it best? I believe Morrowind. Oblivion is your run-of-the-mill save the world storyline; you save the heir, face the big bad devils, bla bla, defeat them, end of story

cant honestly say oblivion copied dune..But i can say that morrowind i feel was a good imitation yes, but still an imitation. They could have taken quite a few more liberties had they wanted.

If we take Morrowin's nerevarine as muad'dib, the similarities are obvious, in particular in what regards the Ashlanders/Fremen. The character, unlike in Oblivion, has ups and downs, moments of heroic elatement (becoming hortator and nerevarine) and moments of humbling lowness (contracting the corprus disease, trying to mingle with the ashlanders, persecution by the Temple) which conform a good hero's journey. The hero's enshrinement, of course, comes with the cave of the Incarnate, in which he is finally confirmed as the true fulfiller of the prophecy.

In Oblivion there is no such doubt, no such moments of humbling. The hero is a hero, and he is one from start to finish. An oblivion-gate-closing hero.

Yes .You are rambo-style in oblivion, but that more or less fits in with the story of you being prophecied in the emperors dream to save the empire. your obviously an exceptional individual.
Now im not saying it was a good idea, oblivions story could have been WAAAY better. But id also like to say that it was a bit like an action movie and they designed it around that theme. Noone complains superman rarely has moments of humbling (apart from him being lactose intolerant.. Or something) and yet not many people would say that superman comics have a bad plot, its just a different style.

At this point id like to also point to the side-quests many of the stories there were interesting , I really liked the one where you jumped into a guys dream to find the elements of his mind.

Well, it's clear the game doesn't mollycoddle you. Nevertheless, I believe the transportation systems were a game in their own, a tiny step asked from you to travel a long distance. I never thought it was much to ask, and it adds to the immersion nicely.

it isnt much to ask, but it gets frustrating if you dont feel like consulting a list. Here i again point out that it was difficult to center your mouse around a square on the map so you can view the name, which only made it more frustrating until you memorized everything.

One cannot begin to describe the frustration and absolute loss of immersion that results from levelled loot. A world in which only iron exists; when, all of a sudden, when mister X reaches level Y, steel begins to exist. Then, next thing you know, these gifted natives have discovered Z, &c. It's absurd. The world isn't supposed to revolve around the character. If the character can find some steel armour early on, good for him.

Its not "just" leveled loot though, Theres a lot of random objects and quest items you can get at any level.
I do admit a pretext for leveled loot wuld have been better though, or locking out only the best loot until high levels but making most of the medium-ish armor available at any time.

I must agree Morrowind was ugly from the very beginning, no question about that. Still, the variety of landscapes and architecture, which you aptly point out, are more than a point in favour: they are an integral part of the game's charm.

which is widely made negligible by the inferior graphics, a sword in oblivion looks more appealing and more full of detail then a entire house in morrowind.

You mentioned that already in the other thread, which is surprising given that I've never had any serious bugs with the game myself. In Oblivion, on the other hand, I have experienced several bugs, one of which seemed to be a very annoying memory leak.

Guess its just bad luck then. Still i find a lot more people complained about technical issues then with oblivion.
of course techncial issues dont affect the actual quality of the game. but i thought it was worth mentioning as i did lose a few hours worth of time just because i got stuck in the ground.

Wow this took quite a wile, ill be answering the next post soon. you can answer this if you like.

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

Perhaps its true it creates an anticlimatic feeling later on as very little seems to happen right after, I did feel that after the whole hand over the amulet thing the plot got , at the very least, some excellent action and well made quests to it. You end up going through a battle for a city , Into a giant oblivion gate on (well frankly, not so frantic) timer trying to stop a giant siege machine, You then go and infiltrate a cult and see them opening to another world, follow them in , If i remember correctly have to do a task for a deadtra (This is the one "humbling" moment actually) and it ends on a epic note with a giant battle between the avatar of akatosh and mehrunes dagon.

It had its good points, but overall, it isn't memorable at all. To be quite frank, I once completed the main quest on level 2 and it's quite possible. In fact, during my first run, I ended up rushing through the game, not performing the quests for having fun but rather to get to the ending as quickly as possible. And as for anticlimax, you've served me a big one: the battle of Bruma itself! How anticlimatic is that? The fate of the empire is at stake and you get a handful of policemen and a few peasant Nord types in furs.

Sometimes it is and sometimes ti isnt, To be honest its not really that the idea is bad, its jsut they presented it badly. telling you to read a note doesnt carry much emphasis. I forgot about the note until I was 5 hours into the game. Are we? Morrowinds plot for much of the time is actually one of the things thats presented well (through dailogue) But I dont think its that impressive. And while oblivions story is quite typical and linear, its not really naive , It just lacks any interesting twists or suspense.

I agree mostly here.

But some seemingly easy quests can kill you, finding a quest that tells you to go kill some bandits can be a suicide mission even if theyre only wearing steel armor or worse.
It again, Is not presented well. Oblivion more or less circumvents the issue by rarely giving you access to difficult opponents until your ready to face them, but ive seen many games with difficulty ratings that work very well . Yes a difficulty rating is immersion breaking, it also immensely cuts down on frustration. I remember how many people were ranted about how ETW removed the whole "Good-bad offer" thing in diplomacy a while ago.

I can relate to that, but I remember it fondly. I remember an easy quest for the legion which involved rescuing a pilgrim from some nomad ashlanders near Ald Velothi (I think). Unfortunately, the Ashlanders were far too strong for me and every time I tried to get her out through strength either I or she got killed. But here comes the good part: I said what the heck, I'll pay the fellow off and get my money back later. And sure enough, many levels later I chanced by, killed them all, and looted my 100 septims back off the chief's corpse.

That's what it's all about -- knowing when you're beat, when to fight and when to run. I think it's a great element in a game as it forces players to be both humble and rational.

No its poor interface design, And frankly while i admit oblivions interface is horrible, I dont think the map of all things was that bad when you got used to it. It was generally very clear whereyou were at a glance once youve been playing the game for a few hours, you pay the price with it being very big, but its generally worth it. Morrowind is very good for telling you the general area , or the entire map . Oblivion made a decent compromise with it being in between .
The markets i have to say are a good thing. If i had a map i used frequently i would mark it. Why do you think a GPS is much more popular then spoken directions these days? Sure youd have to be a good cartograph, but basic skills in that were common for adventurers in the real world and in fact is a great skill for anyone to have if they plan to travel often.

That's my gripe. Morrowind had two rather decent levels for a map -- very far away (extremely vague) or close up, which worked well in unison. Oblivion's "far" map is good enough, but its "close" map was night useless as it should have been zoomed out a bit. Whereas I do agree maps should be marked, it should have been implemented in a different way -- for instance, allowing the player to mark things himself, and perhaps to access them with a spell. A spell would have been far less lame than Fast Travel.

as a PC gamer of course, im always annoyed when for some reason something is changed to fit console users instead of a design that would be comftorable on the PC, and next to morrowind and oblivion of course it shows that morrowinds interface is less clunky , though oblivions is very livable, at least you can figure out where everything is in a heatbeat.
But i still think the compromise they made with the map is a good thing and not bad, I would have liked it scaled about 30% bigger, but overall a map showing the entire game-world with tiny fast travel icons would have been a bad thing.
I do disagree the morrowind interface for spells is better though, morrowind jsut seems to discourage spells, For example at one point i picked up a few 6th house amulets, About 10. So every time i wanted to click a spell i had to wade through a list of them appearign. and they all do the same exact thing, oblivion was better in this respect with the icons , big text and easy to understand list and sub-menus.

I agree, but perhaps instead of framing the map into that tiny frame they should have made it take up a larger part of the screen, thus maintaining a level of detail (I would scale it out about 20%) without the need for futile scrolling. As for the magic interface, I agree somewhat, but Oblivion's enormous, clunky spell buttons, which only allows a few to be on screen at once, also gets terrible once you've got more than a few. The categories are a good idea, but as they've gotten the silly idea of putting cryptic hieroglyphs instead of words I often had to consult the manual to see which is what.

But its ridicolous to assume you cant learn yourself, obviously all these trainers cant have learned from trainers themselves can they? Or if they have those trainers cant have learned by themselves to a long line of trainers?

That does tend to be the case, skills are passed down from one person to another. As for the chicken or egg thing, it is really a non-issue: an art or skill starts off primitive, and is refined and improved by further masters.

Besides that though, except for magic which doesnt exist, almost all the skills in morrowind are extremely easy to have the basic hang of, and hard to master, Lockpicking a chest isnt that tough. poking someone with a spear is easy. Its the finer points that take effort to learn.
The only exception i can think of is alchemy, but thats more of a knowledge and caution based thing opposed to skill based thing.
To make it clearer, none of the skils in morrowind are really comparable to a complex intstrument, Its not major surgery were talking about here, (well .. Not in the medical sense anyway ) theyre all intuitive skills you should get better at intuitively .

I hardly think so. Have you ever fenced? Combat is a very complex thing, unless you want to just poke the enemy (proceed at your own risk!) as is lockpicking or (hypothetically, of course!) magic. So unless you get a "lockpicking for dummies" book to tell you how and where to start, I still think some basic introduction to the matter would be necessary for any development to take place in a skill.

But it was usually the same thing, sometimes i asked someone in the vain hope their text would be different about say, Vivec. It was almost always the same..
i dont think the same voices is that much of a immersion breaker, Its very easy to ignore if you get sick of it as none of the voices are particularly unpleasent.
And yes most characters dont have much more then rumors and info about the city, but they dont need more, Frankly in morrowind abotu 50% of the dailogue options were directions , 10% where generic for everyone, and another 20% were added by association (like all the priests having dailogue about say, the saints.

A typical character, say, in the Imperial City would have about three lines of dialogue: one pertaining to the Imperial City, one about Rumors, and one about a quest.

Here I've opened my TES construction set and we're going to have a look at the dialogue options of Meldor, a citizen of Balmora. He's got:

Altmer
Background
Bacola Closcius
Bad people
Balmora
Balmora Fighters Guild
Balmora Mages Guild
Balmora Temple
Bosmer
Cammona Tong
Citizen of the empire
Dura gra-Bol
Fighters Guild
Foreigners
Fort Moonmoth
Foyada Mamaea
Guild guide
Imperial cult
Imperial guilds
J'Saddha
Latest rumors
Little advice
Little secret
Morrowind lore
Murderer's description
My trade
Nalcarya of White Haven
Nerevarine
Ondres Verano
Outlander
Price on your head
Ralen Hlaalo
Recall the Legions
Services
Stilt strider service
Someone in particular
South Wall
Specific place
Thieves Guild

Phew!

I think thats perfectly fair, a guild after all, Is a community of trademan banding together, a leader of a guild of shoemakers is most likely the one with the most buissness and social acumen , as opposed to the person who makes the finest shoes and has worked his entire life at it. Guilds expect results - They shouldnt care how it comes about, or at least not after youve more or less cleared every contract they have and more.

Not at all. A guild is meant to preserve and transmit the knowledge of the guild, ensure fair prices and high quality (as was decried by Adam Smith). The guild master has gone up through the ranks of the guild, from apprentice to journeyman to alderman, through skill. He may not be the best, but he is a shoemaker.

In oblivion, you can be master shoemaker without even knowing how to make a shoe.

And the guilds all felt different in oblivion, In morrowind a lot of guilds felt pretty much the same, The houes were not that diffeerent , The fighters guild was mostly kill people or creatures (how it should be) but the morrowind equivalant of the assasins guild felt almost exactly the same .

I always thought they had very different flavours; true, the missions weren't all that original, but there was a great difference between the Legion and the Fighters' Guild. Also, I disagree: the Morag Tong (assasins guild) was quite special in that you could kill the person in broad daylight and then just show the guards the writ of execution! An interesting touch.

Mages guild was mostly about collecting stuff. Mages really never use magic do they?they just need you to go deep into a dungeon to collect something. (not really different from oblivion, but at least you felt like you were fighting magical enemies in oblivion)
theives guild. Well with all the theiving in morrowind it automatically feels sort of lame, but the oblivion final quest for the theives guild was so epic it made topped every other quest in the entire chain (more or less)

Here I must agree. Thieving was lame in Morrowind, and vastly improved in Oblivion. Still, I didn't really like the fences system. Why should a bloke in Bruma know that the plate you stole in Leyawiin is stolen?

Morrowinds guild was basically either taunt a guy and make him kill you (Isnt that really immersion breaking? I mean you can walk into everyones house, taunt them, get them to attack you, and then clear an ENTIRE TOWN IN THE EXACT SAME FASHION!)

Duellists used to do that all the time: taunt a fellow and kill him in a duel (unless they got killed themselves!). Also, if you lack strong speechcraft, you'll fail at that method. Personally, I think it was a good way of making speechcraft useful, as it's usually a very underrated skill.

Only two guilds were incompatible, Fighters and theives guild, and its perfectly possible to have them compatble if you know how.
The twin lamps, Vamprie factions, and ashlanders feel tacked on, and you can hardly feel the blades are a faction in any sense, its just one skooma addict and a few trainers for the entire game.

Incompatible as such perhaps, but about everybody would hate you in the guild. The bonuses you get in disposition are as strong as the penalties you get with some other guilds. In fact, if you're high enough in enemy organizations, the members of another guild may very well enter the "I don't want to talk to you" state (0 disposition).

I didnt really feel that. You felt like a contract mercenary in morrowind. You do a job and you get paid, you dont generally feel your doing something "for" the guild.

Well, it certainly felt like that for some guilds, especially in the early phases. Some other guilds/factions had very interesting rules, such as the Telvannis, with which you could basically kill anyone as long as you don't get killed yourself!

They aimed it around being extremely amusing, not being "mad" and im glad they did.
If youve ever heard of bipolar disorder, they aimed it more like that, a person with bipolar isnt exactly inssane , its just theyre mad at everything at one moment and crazy happy another (Dementia and Mania)

I guess I'm a bit biased here, as I suffer from OCD and it's not at all like what they portray in the Mania part. In fact, I'd have put OCD in dementia, as for me and many other OCD sufferers, it's just a spiral of dread and anxiety. In any case, I assume this is more a question of personal preference.

I loved the fake scottish accent though, it just fit him so nicely Apparantly his avatar in front of mortals is always like that of a well-dressed buissnessman. and then you find he wants to skip rope with your intestines.

Well, he definitely was better than the vanilla Sheggy, who just had a whiny annoying voice. He wasn't that bad I guess, he just could have been much better.

Yes .You are rambo-style in oblivion, but that more or less fits in with the story of you being prophecied in the emperors dream to save the empire. your obviously an exceptional individual.
Now im not saying it was a good idea, oblivions story could have been WAAAY better. But id also like to say that it was a bit like an action movie and they designed it around that theme. Noone complains superman rarely has moments of humbling (apart from him being lactose intolerant.. Or something) and yet not many people would say that superman comics have a bad plot, its just a different style.

Yes, but Superman can hardly be considered on-par with Dune. Superman's a bit of fun, but it's ultimately quite shallow.

At this point id like to also point to the side-quests many of the stories there were interesting , I really liked the one where you jumped into a guys dream to find the elements of his mind

You got me there, I must agree some side-quests were pure gold. It's a pity there were so few, though. They could have thrown in a few more lower-quality sidequests, just for filling.

which is widely made negligible by the inferior graphics, a sword in oblivion looks more appealing and more full of detail then a entire house in morrowind.

I do think it would be good debate etiquette, though, to waive graphics to some extent when comparing games with a four-year gap between them.

By the way, I forgot to mention the strongholds! Am I the only one who loved that in Morrowind? It's practically an all-new small settlement appearing on the map! I found that the process of building it, recruiting people, and such far more appealling than the Oblivion "buy a house, buy furniture, call Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and decorate it with a budget of under £500".

[roy34543]

Im guessing ill do the next part enxt.

The game world

An interesting game world is crucial to a good adventure game, and designing an interesting game world is a task which requires a great amount of creativity and art rather than technical skill. Morrowind's gameworld is the island of Vvardenfell, a landmass surrounded by water and having a large volcano in its centre. Oblivion's gameworld is Cyrodiil, a nearly-landlocked landmass comprehending a valley (the Nibenay basin) and a semi-mountainous region sandwiched between a large river and a chain of mountains.

Already, the choice of landmass is far more judicious for Morrowind, as an island allows a finite world with natural boundaries, whereas Oblivion's world presents all sorts of difficulties in maintaining immersion whilst forbidding exit from the province.

Well thats debatable, mountains blocking your way arent really any more strange then the fact that the whole island is isolated and never had any boats coming and going to it except to a few islands and around the island itself. not to mention you cant swim beyond the island
But due to technical limitations they have to have something like this, a landlocked mass is just less convinient then an island. but they cant have the same thing every time

Secondly, Morrowind's landscape is mainly flat, with a large volacno in the centre and small mountainous chains throughout the landscape, whereas Oblivion's lands are mostly flat, with mountainous chains on the northern and eastern borders. This also poses a problem: the need to circumvent the blighted lands in the centre involves moving along the circumference of Red Mountain, thereby creating a realistic, interesting system of land transportation, maritime transportation, magical transportation, and moving oneself. In Oblivion, all you must do is follow long, straight, linear autobahns ad infinitum, or choose the merciful choice, fast travel (not that there is anything to be found on the way!)

I cant see much difference with oblivion and morrowind in this respect. Maybe morrowind was more circular (which i wouldnt say is correct, its just every city is linked to the nearest other cities, and there arent any in the center of the map except maybe ghostgate if you count it) but oblivions map requiring you to move around is hardly any different, Just ebcause it doesnt ask you to take a boat doesnt mean you cant fast travel to another city and pretend you took an dirgible.
Besides the game gives up realism for convinience, and is much the better for it.

Already, we can see that physical geography is clearly in favour of the Morrowind choice. But a gameworld isn't just mountains and rivers. What conforms it?

Firstly, we may consider the ecosystems created by the designers. In Morrowind, it is obvious that the game designers did some work and brought us several very different regions: the swampy Bitter Coast, the lush Ascadian Isles, the grey, dusty West Gash, the rocky, maze-like Molag Amur, the sprawling Grazelands, the scarcely inhabitated Azura's coast and the rocky Sheogorad region, not to mention the blighted, hellish Red Mountain. Each and every one of these regions is idiosyncratic and clearly defined. Furthermore, when it comes to fauna, the Morrowind designers have also toiled to bring logical, outlandish creatures into the mix: from the huge, ant-like Kwama (whose eggs are an important staple of the local diet, and which are exploited extensively) to the peaceful Guars and Netches to the predatorial Alit or Kagouti or the annoying cliffracers, Morrowind's fauna is no less varied than its flora, with its Saltrice, Scuttle, Kresh weed, Hackle-lo, and a long &c. And the best thing is, these outlandish products are just what you find in peoples' kitchens, plates, &c. Everything makes perfect sense, for being such an outlandish world; food is provided by very numerous kwama "egg mines" ("miners", chaps who get the eggs from the "anthill") the big slave-plantations in the Ascadian Isles, and a number of small farms throughout the landscape.

Cyrodil is the imperail province , Its supposed to have imperial things, a lto of things in the game do not make sense unless you assume theres a human faction just like us somewhere, and there is. and its cyrodil.

You might say its a lack of originality but its a lot of things, sticking to the lore to bethesda isnt exactly important, but they wont break it if its just as easy for them not to.

its not that there isnt some variation in the landscape, it does get more hilly sometimes, has more trees, has more of a certain plant or whatnot, tis just doesnt stray much from what youd probably see outside your window over the year.

In Cyrodiil, on the other hand, the fauna and flora are as bland as it gets. When I visited the US once, I precisely stayed near Bethesda (Rockville, Maryland in fact) and I can tell you that the trees and plants in Oblivion are just like Bethesda. Looks like the chaps at Bethesda softworks didn't go very far! The fauna isn't any better: a mix of your run-of-the-mill bobcats, wolves and deer (carefully levelled; it's a known facts bobcats only started to exist after Mister Player reached level 6) Apart from that, their ecosystem is about as illogical as it gets. There are about one or two tiny half-arsed farms throughout the map to feed a number of enormous cities populated by no-good yuppie petty bourgeois types.

The few farms in the game would actually be enough to feed all the people in the cities.But they cant cram in a realsitic amount of citizens into the world so we have to assume everything is scaled, including the farms.
at least its not like fallout 3 where the food is obviously taken from supermarkets closed down 200 years ago right?
Most of the fauna is that youd find in reality is found in oblivion, But I believe it was meant to inspire a feeling of our world against the deadric one, A invasion from another place.
Its very difficult to get attracted to morrowind as a place that you feel your emphatic about, Its the bleak land of a dummer. if the story had given you a choice of battling dagoth ur or helping him, i feel the latter would have been chosen more often then the former.

Let's get started on the cities then, shall we? Or should we say the settlements, in a broader sense?

In Morrowind, settlements are of very variable shapes and sizes. There are several large cities (Balmora, Ald'ruhn, Sadrith Mora, Vivec, Gnisis) followed by medium-sized towns (Caldera, Pelagiad, Vos, Suran, Mar Gaan, Molag Mar, &c...) and small, run-down villages (Gnaar Mok, Ald Velothi, Hla Oad, Tel Fyr, Dagon Fel, Khuul, and a long &c), not to mention the large ashlander camps, or the smaller camps of exiled ashlanders. And the beauty of it is, every one of those towns have some interest. Some of the smaller towns have got useful transportation or small quests, the bigger towns have got their array of shops, institutions and interesting personalities, others are located in interesting or hostile regions

I think this ties in with most of morrowind having "more quests, less interesting quests" yes every town of the many towns has at least one quest, but just as often as not its a fetch or fedex quest.

In Oblivion, you've got eight somewhat generic cities (Anvil, Skingrad, Chorrol, Cheydinhal, Bravil, Bruma, Leyawiin and the Imperial City) all ruled by a lord who lives in a castle which looks like every other lord's castle, and everybody's happy. And beyond those cities, good luck. You may find a "village" or so (Borderwatch, Blankenmarch, Pell's gate and such), being a set of a few houses with no dialogue at all. In fact, those villages are so useless, they are often only there for a single quest which justifies their existence. I should say 90% of Cyrodiil's population is composed by yuppies. Yes, well-off people who don't seem to have to work much for a living, own a quiet shop or inn, or just spend their time in the guildhouse and are happy. Then, there are one or two standard beggars per city (who trick you with their sickly voice only to boom THANK YOU, KIND SIR! in an athletic, manly tone after you give them a coin). One wonders why there are beggars, as there is no lower class at all. There are no politics beyond the counts, no nobility beyond the counts, nothing. The only "knights" you'll find are the comical "knights of the thorn" and the perhaps even-more comical "knights of the white stallion". Where are the working classes? Where is that overwhelming majority of miserable peasants, feeding those cities? Where are the endless fields of grain? Peasants can give extremely interesting scenarii, as was shown greatly by The Witcher, in which both urban and rural medieval settings were poignant, terrible, and grimly realistic (in a fantastic sort of way). In Cyrodiil, rather than the packed, overcrowded, squalid, disease-infested places that fortified cities were (there is nothing more overcrowded and fetid than a fortified city) in which dozens of people packed into single houses, you have a nice, airy city with huge empty spaces and gianormous three-story dollhouses for people to live in. Puh-leaze!

Right now, Id like to mention were still talking about a fantasy world.
First of all, the imperials are the richest, and have conquered all the other provinces. They dont "need" to work hard for their food because its all sent over from the places they conquered, they have big houses and are prosporous for the most part due to their conquests.
And its a fantasy world, They could grow crops with magic, they could also need much less. But obviously theres food on most peoples in the games plate (and they generally eat it too! The poisoned apple was just a stroke of genius)
and theyre tricky to find, but just because theyre not everywhere theres definatly a couple of estates run mostly by slaves or poor workers in oblivion.

Let's now have a look at architecture. In Morrowind, architecture (and urbanism in general) were dealt with excellently and never failed to impress. From the familiar, homely Imperial-style buildings, we go from the eastern-like mud-brick Velothi buildings, the gnarled zoomorphic redoran structures, the ramshackle shacks of the bitter coast, the towering Tenochtitlan-like Vivec, the crazed mushroom structures of the Telvanni or the Ashlanders' tents. All these different forms of living are seamlessly integrated into the game and may be seen as perfectly logical and functional, with outlandish but interesting household appliances such as blue lamps and such.

In Oblivion, they chose a more conservative path and simply varied architectural styles a bit, to the point in which you may find one city looks more like medieval England, another like medieval France or yet another like Germany or Spain. But they're still dollhouses, and boring ones at that.

I agree but again, theyre humans and they use human forms of architecture,its pretty varied but overall its a kind of house a human would live in. It fits in morrowind maybe, but a tower you need to levitate in or a giant shell in oblivion would just look out of place.

Beyond the cities, the difference is further accentuated. Cyrodiil is very much like a theme park full of amusing ruins and dungeons; unfortunately, none of them is unique and they all have been made with a similar, unvaried tileset. In Morrowind, the buildings and ruins out there are varied and special. You may find different caves, dungeons, towers and such, but they're not generic: you may chance upon a slave traders' cache, and free the slaves, thereby aiding the abolitionist movement. You may chance upon a wizard's tower guarded by magical beasts, or you may even chance upon the lair of a few vampires. The dwarven ruins, in particular, are quite interesting, and an entire sub-quest of the game is finding out what happened to this lost civilization. It is clear that in Oblivion, they tried to reproduce this with the Ayleids, but seeing that the Ayleids were, it seems, producers of dungeons for players to have fun in, I've never been the least bit interested about who or what they were.

Bah the quest to find the dwemer was just for the lulz and you know it.

But i disagree that theres much variation in morrowinds dungeons, there isnt. there are also a few unique oblivion dungeons if you come across them llike sideways cave. Its just minor variations were talking about here.
But i feel the fact even most of the dungeons for the main quest/side quests in morrowind are fairly dull is a big disappointment.

As for lore, Morrowind once more takes the cake. The island of Vvardenfell is one big lore package, and there is so much to learn, it's dizzying. The developpers worked their arses off to produce an insane amount of books for the game which amounted to thousands of pages, and it shows. From the religion to the customs, traditions and history of the land, there is a vast world to explore. Sure, it's not all that original, but it certainly beats Cyrodiil (hey! let's make cloned generic cathedrals and call them "temples of the Nine!") which was just a pastiche of medieval Europe with swapped names. Morrowind is a foreign, hostile place in which you do not fit in; you may even find yourself empathizing with the other "foreigners" in the game, whose way of thinking and acting is far less outlandish than that of the natives. In Oblivion, everyone's nice and happy and without a care in the world, despite the fact that daemons are invading and the emperor is dead without an heir. No wonder Cyrodiil is commonly described as Happytown!

There are still a fair amount of books to read about lore in oblivion if you want, but the truth is that theres less lore, but if i wanted lore i could also go read the elder scrolls novel.
and yes everyones happy in oblivion, why not? The invasion hasnt exatly gotten to them yet, it would be fairly annoying if they just moped "oh no the king is dead!" all day. At the very least i would say its inverted in morrowind, where everyone insults you repeatedly until you get a high personaltiy, in oblivion they act cordial until they dislike you.

Furthermore, there are interesting, if not always necessary, places in Morrowind: the daedric ruins are interesting and well done, and far more realistic than a lone shrine with a few cultists standing around it (where do they live?) and the existence of landmarks such as the Fields of Kummu, Mount Kand or sacred relics in temples add welcome immersion to the game.

That's it in what regards the game world for now. I step down, and await your answer.

There are interesting places in almost every game, but i have to say in this respect i think even if morrowind is better then oblivion overall, fallout 3 has them both beat.. Every location has something interesting about it.

(sorry if i may not be able to answer for a few days from today, ill try to do the next part in a few hours)

[roy34543]

It had its good points, but overall, it isn't memorable at all. To be quite frank, I once completed the main quest on level 2 and it's quite possible. In fact, during my first run, I ended up rushing through the game, not performing the quests for having fun but rather to get to the ending as quickly as possible. And as for anticlimax, you've served me a big one: the battle of Bruma itself! How anticlimatic is that? The fate of the empire is at stake and you get a handful of policemen and a few peasant Nord types in furs.

Well the level system is sort of out of whack, they assumed that "perfect leveling" (that is , reaching the highest level with the most stats) would be incentive enough to push people to bed at the right time, but if you dont want to you can go on infinitly and never level up.
And frankly from morrowind that had almost no sequences with other NPC's fighting alongside you, id say oblivions screen with a few dozen enemies and allies .
And if you do a few side-quests you actually get a lot more people fighting alongside you. It feels a bit more epic for me because i did most iif not all of them i suppose.

I can relate to that, but I remember it fondly. I remember an easy quest for the legion which involved rescuing a pilgrim from some nomad ashlanders near Ald Velothi (I think). Unfortunately, the Ashlanders were far too strong for me and every time I tried to get her out through strength either I or she got killed. But here comes the good part: I said what the heck, I'll pay the fellow off and get my money back later. And sure enough, many levels later I chanced by, killed them all, and looted my 100 septims back off the chief's corpse.

I thought that was cheap, that NPC's keep all the money you give them (in both games actually) so you could bribe them to like you as much as you want and then kill them later and take the money back. Is it realistic in a sense? maybe. But it makes giving someone money feel like it doesnt have much impact.
of course its only made worse by the immense amounts of money you have slushing in morrowind most of the time unless you train often, which if your a good enough player to get through the initial parts of the game you probably wont be doing much.

That's what it's all about -- knowing when you're beat, when to fight and when to run. I think it's a great element in a game as it forces players to be both humble and rational.

Theres a difference between challenge and frustration, Its very possible to give you a fun scenario that you die 5 times in and truimph eventually , buts its much easier to give you a scenario you die once in and come back 5 levels later and beat it with one click.
Which one is better? because i think oblivion clearly does better in this, its not that it isnt challenging(especially if you ramp the difficulty up) , its just you can come back with a few extra potions a few minutes later and finish it with a bit of extra strategy.
As to humble and rational, well it doesnt really. it forces a player to be very cautious with saves , but I would say little else.
and there are situations where you can do something immensely risky for a really good reward in oblivion, such as trying to kill umbra and take its sword, but umbra wont attack you automatically.
there was one time where i was pissed off with oblivion however, one where you had to "jump" into a painting and had to kill some paint trolls. One could get stuck there from the insanity that are wierdly coloured trolls.
Other then that though, difficulty was much easier to gouge in oblivion if it existed, and it was uncommon with great rewards, in morrowind however it was everywhere, you could just run around the countryside and find a few dummer mages that fire a few magic spells at you and you get insta-pwned. And these are practically naked dummer mages mind you.

That's my gripe. Morrowind had two rather decent levels for a map -- very far away (extremely vague) or close up, which worked well in unison. Oblivion's "far" map is good enough, but its "close" map was night useless as it should have been zoomed out a bit. Whereas I do agree maps should be marked, it should have been implemented in a different way -- for instance, allowing the player to mark things himself, and perhaps to access them with a spell. A spell would have been far less lame than Fast Travel.

I have to agree in the sense, but i cant honestly say morrowinds map worked well in unison, i mostly just resorted to guessing around the zoomed out map and using the close one to see if i missed any hard to see entrances.
And marking the map yourself, yeah that should really be added except for major /quest locations. I remember by the end of the game you have so many markers trying to figure out where a new one was added was near useless.

I agree, but perhaps instead of framing the map into that tiny frame they should have made it take up a larger part of the screen, thus maintaining a level of detail (I would scale it out about 20%) without the need for futile scrolling. As for the magic interface, I agree somewhat, but Oblivion's enormous, clunky spell buttons, which only allows a few to be on screen at once, also gets terrible once you've got more than a few. The categories are a good idea, but as they've gotten the silly idea of putting cryptic hieroglyphs instead of words I often had to consult the manual to see which is what.

agree about the map. I would say the magic system is fairly good though as long as you dont buy every spell you come across. however a delete spell from spellbook option was desperatly needed - some spells become useless eventually.

That does tend to be the case, skills are passed down from one person to another. As for the chicken or egg thing, it is really a non-issue: an art or skill starts off primitive, and is refined and improved by further masters

But were talking about easy to learn the basics, and hard to master (for most of these skills) so by logic it should be inverted, raising the early levels should be extremely easy, raising later ones very hard. but its merely super time consuming for later, and very hard with the basic levels. .

I hardly think so. Have you ever fenced? Combat is a very complex thing, unless you want to just poke the enemy (proceed at your own risk!) as is lockpicking or (hypothetically, of course!) magic. So unless you get a "lockpicking for dummies" book to tell you how and where to start, I still think some basic introduction to the matter would be necessary for any development to take place in a skill.

In the start your mostly fighting bandits and some sort of ant thing. You "do" just have to poke at it. Lockpicking isnt really easy, but its intuitive once you figure out how to do it , especially with easy locks.
Magic is hypothetical, so i couldnt say .
And really, you start with every skill at around 5(or well. most of them) so you do have basic instruction apparantly, but its only at about 20-30 for most skills they become effective, 50 for combat skills, and ...Much higher for magic skills.

A typical character, say, in the Imperial City would have about three lines of dialogue: one pertaining to the Imperial City, one about Rumors, and one about a quest.

its not neccasarily a bad thing. Why would you want to ask him more if hes not relevant?

Here I've opened my TES construction set and we're going to have a look at the dialogue options of Meldor, a citizen of Balmora. He's got:

Ill say what i think theyre basically, see how many of them are useful
Altmer
General- for every altmer or some dummers
Background
General - for every character
Bacola Closcius
Directions
Bad people
directions for a quest
Balmora
Bit of directions about balmora
Balmora Fighters Guild
directions
Balmora Mages Guild
directions
Balmora Temple
directions
Bosmer
General - for every bosmer or some dummer
Cammona Tong
directions.. if you have high disposition anyway
Citizen of the empire
general lore (finally)
Dura gra-Bol
directions
Fighters Guild
directions
Foreigners
Sort of lore.
Fort Moonmoth
directions
Foyada Mamaea
directions
Guild guide
directions
Imperial cult
directions
Imperial guilds
directions
J'Saddha
directions
Latest rumors
Lots of things
Little advice
Little secret
above two are advice . Which for some reason always look awkward in the chat list.
Morrowind lore
lore again
Murderer's description
quest.
My trade
general - for every character
Nalcarya of White Haven
directions
Nerevarine
general lore
Ondres Verano
directions
Outlander
sort of lore, about a copy of foreigner.
Price on your head
related to theives guild
Ralen Hlaalo
directions
Recall the Legions
Not sure?
Services
explanation for obvious services and directions
Stilt strider service
directions
Someone in particular
directions
South Wall
directions
Specific place
directions
Thieves Guild
directions, and since hes in the theives guild maybe a bit of lore

double-Phew!

how much of that isnt directions though? its mostly directions for the most part.

Not at all. A guild is meant to preserve and transmit the knowledge of the guild, ensure fair prices and high quality (as was decried by Adam Smith). The guild master has gone up through the ranks of the guild, from apprentice to journeyman to alderman, through skill. He may not be the best, but he is a shoemaker.

In oblivion, you can be master shoemaker without even knowing how to make a shoe.

In practice the guilds will take anyone who gets the job done. the only one thats really strange is the mages guild, where you get along without casting a spell, but for the rest? who cares how you assinate someone, how you fight to finish a contract, or how you steal something?
And even the mages guild isnt that wierd, after all , consider how much you did for them, you killed their biggest threat and got named archmage by the previous archmage. what more do they want?

I always thought they had very different flavours; true, the missions weren't all that original, but there was a great difference between the Legion and the Fighters' Guild. Also, I disagree: the Morag Tong (assasins guild) was quite special in that you could kill the person in broad daylight and then just show the guards the writ of execution! An interesting touch.

Well yeah it was an interesting tiwst at first. but it was very much the same after one or two times.

Here I must agree. Thieving was lame in Morrowind, and vastly improved in Oblivion. Still, I didn't really like the fences system. Why should a bloke in Bruma know that the plate you stole in Leyawiin is stolen?

that is rather strange. I guess its gameplay balance.
Would have been better if stolen items only fetched a fraction of the price, because they look "used' or "suspicious" and a better mercantile skill would have made you get more (make the mercantile skill useful for gods sake!)

Duellists used to do that all the time: taunt a fellow and kill him in a duel (unless they got killed themselves!). Also, if you lack strong speechcraft, you'll fail at that method. Personally, I think it was a good way of making speechcraft useful, as it's usually a very underrated skill.

Yeah but a whole TOWN? I mean you can just walk to every single damn person and fight him to death and steal their stuff (which i believe, was considered extremely dishonourable even if you killled someone in a dishonest fight, let alone in a duel!) and noone cares?
It just had to be dropped, you shouldnt be able to kill whoever you want whenever you like .
I thought it led to a bit of lack of quest variation too. Sometimes you had two options, taunt and kill someone, or face a huge fine and guards if you dont.

Incompatible as such perhaps, but about everybody would hate you in the guild. The bonuses you get in disposition are as strong as the penalties you get with some other guilds. In fact, if you're high enough in enemy organizations, the members of another guild may very well enter the "I don't want to talk to you" state (0 disposition).

high personality and reputation fix all.
and bribes. especially bribes.

Well, it certainly felt like that for some guilds, especially in the early phases. Some other guilds/factions had very interesting rules, such as the Telvannis, with which you could basically kill anyone as long as you don't get killed yourself!

well didnt really do the telvanni quests (i want with house hlaalu, wish i knew they were a theiving guild first, even though strangely they mostly had "kill" quests)
But in oblivion the rule if you can kill anyone.. as long as noone sees it.
In morrowind the magic guards will find out even if they never enter the house and peer at you or very very slowly try and chase you.At least in oblivion they have to see the body, Morrowind circumvented it by placing a gaurd in every place of any value.

I guess I'm a bit biased here, as I suffer from OCD and it's not at all like what they portray in the Mania part. In fact, I'd have put OCD in dementia, as for me and many other OCD sufferers, it's just a spiral of dread and anxiety. In any case, I assume this is more a question of personal preference.

no offense, but obsessive compulsive disorder (if thats what you mean) is rather different then bipolar disorder.

Well, he definitely was better than the vanilla Sheggy, who just had a whiny annoying voice. He wasn't that bad I guess, he just could have been much better.

I thought he was awesome. have you seen some of his quotes?


Why not? Something has to work. Once, I dug a pit and filled it with clouds. Or was it clowns? Doesn't matter. It didn't slow him down. To be honest, it wasn't the best idea. And it really began to smell. Must have been clowns. Clouds don't smell bad. They taste of butter! And tears."

Yes, but Superman can hardly be considered on-par with Dune. Superman's a bit of fun, but it's ultimately quite shallow.

Its a different approach to the same thing, telling a story. Ultimatly oblivions story fell short, but that it was based on more of an action theme doesnt mean its bad.

You got me there, I must agree some side-quests were pure gold. It's a pity there were so few, though. They could have thrown in a few more lower-quality sidequests, just for filling.

I always wish for more too, though theres always a limit. I thought the quest amount was pretty good though. A lot of the fun in the game is trying to get the best stuff, As in oblivion its definatly a possibility to get deadric gear and enchant it, as opposed to morrowind in which you could theoretically get deadric armor and upgrade it. but it was immensely difficult to get a good enchantment, you would need to make potions buffing your intellegence to 500, and enchantment to 5000. obviously an exploit, Or at the very least extremely hard, and making alchemy quickly replace enchantment , after all whats one more potion compared to getting another skill to 100?
Ultimatly though, im happy they included good sidequests and cut out the dull ones, If i want dull quests ill go play a korean grinder MMO. If i want a quest to clear 10 caves i can write it down myself and do it without an NPC giving me an arbitrary reason like collecting power shards for his new fistcuffs.

I do think it would be good debate etiquette, though, to waive graphics to some extent when comparing games with a four-year gap between them

Maybe, i still think its a factor.It can certainly increase immersion and enjoying looking at the game itself.

By the way, I forgot to mention the strongholds! Am I the only one who loved that in Morrowind? It's practically an all-new small settlement appearing on the map! I found that the process of building it, recruiting people, and such far more appealling than the Oblivion "buy a house, buy furniture, call Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and decorate it with a budget of under £500".

I dunno. I wasnt that impressed . I did love getting a nice piece of loot, and dropping it on a podium in the house(not in relation to the debate, go try out the kvatch rebuilt and or kvatch aftermath mods for oblivion, they both have you go around rebuilding kvatch, If you like that building new cities kind of thing)

Thats it for now. Im tired

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

Excellent answers Roy, which expect, I should hope, an excellent rebuttal!

Let's get to the task at hand...

Well thats debatable, mountains blocking your way arent really any more strange then the fact that the whole island is isolated and never had any boats coming and going to it except to a few islands and around the island itself. not to mention you cant swim beyond the island
But due to technical limitations they have to have something like this, a landlocked mass is just less convinient then an island. but they cant have the same thing every time

Well, the fact that boats never came was because Vvardenfell was blockaded due to the blight. Still, I do agree they couldn't always have made an island, but if they'd stuck to a coastal province (such as, in fact, any other province than Cyrodiil!) they would have had a far greater natural border.

Cyrodil is the imperail province , Its supposed to have imperial things, a lto of things in the game do not make sense unless you assume theres a human faction just like us somewhere, and there is. and its cyrodil.

You might say its a lack of originality but its a lot of things, sticking to the lore to bethesda isnt exactly important, but they wont break it if its just as easy for them not to.

its not that there isnt some variation in the landscape, it does get more hilly sometimes, has more trees, has more of a certain plant or whatnot, tis just doesnt stray much from what youd probably see outside your window over the year.

Lore kill! Cyrodiil was supposed to be a rainforest. And the Imperial City was supposed to be..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Refayj's famous declaration, "There is but one city in the Imperial Province,--" may strike the citizens of the Colovian west as mildly insulting, until perhaps they hear the rest of the remark, which continues, "--but one city in Tamriel, but one city in the World; that, my brothers, is the city of the Cyrodiils." From the shore it is hard to tell what is city and what is Palace, for it all rises from the islands of the lake towards the sky in a stretch of gold. Whole neighborhoods rest on the jeweled bridges that connect the islands together. Gondolas and river-ships sail along the watery avenues of its flooded lower dwellings. Moth-priests walk by in a cloud of ancestors; House Guards hold exceptionally long daikatanas crossed at intersections, adorned with ribbons and dragon-flags; and the newly arrived Western legionnaires sweat in the humid air. The river mouth is tainted red from the tinmi soil of the shore, and river dragons rust their hides in its waters. Across the lake the Imperial City continues, merging into the villages of the southern red river and ruins left from the Interregnum.

Well, that settles it for lore kill, doesn't it? Furthermore, it's a lore kill that is not necessary. In fact, it has changed what could have been a fascinating province into a dull, boring, pseudo-medieval theme park!

The few farms in the game would actually be enough to feed all the people in the cities.

You don't say! I'm a country man meself, and I can tell you that the farms in Cyrodiil would barely maintain the families that farm them, especially considering that they're small-scale seasonal crops (such as the ubiquitous melons, which should be harvested, precisely, at this very time of the year!) which are pretty low-yield.

But they cant cram in a realsitic amount of citizens into the world so we have to assume everything is scaled, including the farms.

But it isn't scaled, it's atrophied.

at least its not like fallout 3 where the food is obviously taken from supermarkets closed down 200 years ago right?

Touché!

Most of the fauna is that youd find in reality is found in oblivion, But I believe it was meant to inspire a feeling of our world against the deadric one, A invasion from another place.
Its very difficult to get attracted to morrowind as a place that you feel your emphatic about, Its the bleak land of a dummer. if the story had given you a choice of battling dagoth ur or helping him, i feel the latter would have been chosen more often then the former.

Well, Arrakis is a bleak, horrible place as well, but it makes for a jolly good story, doesn't it?

Right now, Id like to mention were still talking about a fantasy world.
First of all, the imperials are the richest, and have conquered all the other provinces. They dont "need" to work hard for their food because its all sent over from the places they conquered, they have big houses and are prosporous for the most part due to their conquests.

Just because a country is rich doesn't mean its inhabitants are rich and don't need to work! Sending over food is extremely costly, especially through land routes (during the early modern age, sending wheat, say, from Truro to London was more expensive than bringing it from Poland!) which, by the by, don't exist? Where's the road to the other provinces? There aren't any! There isn't any possible realistic commerce for that matter. And furthermore, having food brought from afar was, more often than not, a drastic measure, used in cases of famine.

Let's go back on the people part, shall we? When a country gets rich, it doesn't mean everybody is rich. Many African oil-producing countries are filthy rich, and yet the vast majority of the population lives in the most abject poverty.

And its a fantasy world, They could grow crops with magic, they could also need much less. But obviously theres food on most peoples in the games plate (and they generally eat it too! The poisoned apple was just a stroke of genius)
and theyre tricky to find, but just because theyre not everywhere theres definatly a couple of estates run mostly by slaves or poor workers in oblivion.

Two estates, in fact, with nobody working them, only some rich type living in them. They only exist for quests. As for the magically growing food, it would be a valid argument if there were any reference of it in the lore!

I agree but again, theyre humans and they use human forms of architecture,its pretty varied but overall its a kind of house a human would live in. It fits in morrowind maybe, but a tower you need to levitate in or a giant shell in oblivion would just look out of place.

Oh, indeed, but within the spectrum of "human" buildings we may find great variety, which is what I'm saying they delivered rather poorly. They merely copied existing styles more or less and pasted them in the game, whereas they could have inspired themselves upon those styles and made something different, more outlandish, more shocking. After all, Cyrodiil isn't Europe!

Bah the quest to find the dwemer was just for the lulz and you know it.

Yes, I must admit. Still, nice meeting Yagrum Bagarn eh?

But i disagree that theres much variation in morrowinds dungeons, there isnt. there are also a few unique oblivion dungeons if you come across them llike sideways cave. Its just minor variations were talking about here.
But i feel the fact even most of the dungeons for the main quest/side quests in morrowind are fairly dull is a big disappointment.

Oblivion's dungeons are generated with a (rather limited) tileset and, despite the fact that Morrowind's dungeons may not have been something to shout about, the "mass produced" feel of Oblivion's dungeons is undeniable. Why are there so many identical forts, with identical insides, and identical monster fellers living inside them?

There are still a fair amount of books to read about lore in oblivion if you want, but the truth is that theres less lore, but if i wanted lore i could also go read the elder scrolls novel.
and yes everyones happy in oblivion, why not? The invasion hasnt exatly gotten to them yet, it would be fairly annoying if they just moped "oh no the king is dead!" all day. At the very least i would say its inverted in morrowind, where everyone insults you repeatedly until you get a high personaltiy, in oblivion they act cordial until they dislike you.

Ha-ha! Gotcha! Nearly all of those books were ripped from Morrowind and previous games!

As for the happytown thing, I still think it is inexcusable, and, if anything, disregarding the fact that there is no place in the world where everybody's happy, it only adds to the disbelief and to the anticlimax factor. Look at Gothic 3, for instance. There you had a recently occupied, war-torn country. Some people were miserable, others outraged, and some just profited off the situation. Oblivion has got a "terrible" invasion which isn't terrible at all. In fact, it's only a big fiery gate thing or two appearing and Baurus, the jive lorica segmentata samurai, telling you the world is going to end, and everyone urging you to make haste.

There are interesting places in almost every game, but i have to say in this respect i think even if morrowind is better then oblivion overall, fallout 3 has them both beat.. Every location has something interesting about it.

Quite, you're right there. Fallout 3 takes this round.

Well the level system is sort of out of whack, they assumed that "perfect leveling" (that is , reaching the highest level with the most stats) would be incentive enough to push people to bed at the right time, but if you dont want to you can go on infinitly and never level up.

Yes, that's a problem with both games, though in Oblivion, if you level up poorly you'll be penalized, which is ridiculous. In fact, levelling up in Oblivion can be detrimental and game-breaking.

And frankly from morrowind that had almost no sequences with other NPC's fighting alongside you, id say oblivions screen with a few dozen enemies and allies .

You mean those NPCs who proceed to get right in front of you just when you land a blow, and suddenly hate you and want your guts? True, there weren't many in Morrowind, but in Oblivion they weren't that hot. Kvatch was OK, but the "battle of Bruma" should have been called the "brawl of Bruma" or the "scuffle outside a Bruma tavern".

And if you do a few side-quests you actually get a lot more people fighting alongside you. It feels a bit more epic for me because i did most iif not all of them i suppose.

True, though they all get lost with the bloody fast travel.

I thought that was cheap, that NPC's keep all the money you give them (in both games actually) so you could bribe them to like you as much as you want and then kill them later and take the money back. Is it realistic in a sense? maybe. But it makes giving someone money feel like it doesnt have much impact.
of course its only made worse by the immense amounts of money you have slushing in morrowind most of the time unless you train often, which if your a good enough player to get through the initial parts of the game you probably wont be doing much.

Well, in Oblivion bribing is also the best method (better than the retarded minigame, whoever thought up that silly idea?) only the money somehow disappears. Which is cheaper? I don't know, I think if I give a bloke a a few thousand septims, I can expect he won't have spent it all in one place!

Theres a difference between challenge and frustration, Its very possible to give you a fun scenario that you die 5 times in and truimph eventually , buts its much easier to give you a scenario you die once in and come back 5 levels later and beat it with one click.
Which one is better? because i think oblivion clearly does better in this, its not that it isnt challenging(especially if you ramp the difficulty up) , its just you can come back with a few extra potions a few minutes later and finish it with a bit of extra strategy.
As to humble and rational, well it doesnt really. it forces a player to be very cautious with saves , but I would say little else.
and there are situations where you can do something immensely risky for a really good reward in oblivion, such as trying to kill umbra and take its sword, but umbra wont attack you automatically.
there was one time where i was pissed off with oblivion however, one where you had to "jump" into a painting and had to kill some paint trolls. One could get stuck there from the insanity that are wierdly coloured trolls.
Other then that though, difficulty was much easier to gouge in oblivion if it existed, and it was uncommon with great rewards, in morrowind however it was everywhere, you could just run around the countryside and find a few dummer mages that fire a few magic spells at you and you get insta-pwned. And these are practically naked dummer mages mind you

Well, imagine you're an aspiring adventurer who happens to be nonchalantly walking around the countryside, when your typical naked dunmer mage sees you and says to himself, "look at that poor feller, he's only level 2! I could fry him with a fireball right now, but I'll give him a chance and nerf myself into oblivion" (pun intended). Umbra is one example, but how many more examples like that can you find? In Morrowind, you can find Eltonbrand in some cave, Umbra in the mountains, the masque of Clavicus Vile in some tower, Illkurok in some Dwemer ruin... Not to mention the hunt for the elusive complete daedric suit of armour!

In the start your mostly fighting bandits and some sort of ant thing. You "do" just have to poke at it. Lockpicking isnt really easy, but its intuitive once you figure out how to do it , especially with easy locks.
Magic is hypothetical, so i couldnt say .
And really, you start with every skill at around 5(or well. most of them) so you do have basic instruction apparantly, but its only at about 20-30 for most skills they become effective, 50 for combat skills, and ...Much higher for magic skills.

Well, 5 is, what we might say, an utter ignorant, the absolute zero. Which is more than comprehensible taking into account that certain types of people haven't learnt certain things. A thief may be excellent at lockpicking but illiterate. A mage may be a great spellcaster but only know that you bring the sharp pointy bit of the sword towards the enemy.

its not neccasarily a bad thing. Why would you want to ask him more if hes not relevant?

What if I'm feeling geeky and I want him to tell me about some lore or stuff? What if I heard the word outlander and wanted to know what it means? We're both veterans and we know everything about it, but if a newbish player should like to get some information on this world he's arrived in, he should be able to ask for it!

Ill say what i think theyre basically, see how many of them are useful
Altmer
General- for every altmer or some dummers No, it's specific to Balmora. He tells you about the Altmers there are in Balmora.
Background
General - for every character
Bacola Closcius
Directions It's about some feller, actually
Bad people
directions for a quest
Balmora
Bit of directions about balmora
Balmora Fighters Guild
directions
Balmora Mages Guild
directions
Balmora Temple
directions
Bosmer
General - for every bosmer or some dummer
Cammona Tong
directions.. if you have high disposition anyway
Citizen of the empire
general lore (finally)
Dura gra-Bol
directions More like information on a person
Fighters Guild
directions
Foreigners
Sort of lore.
Fort Moonmoth
directions (more like lore)
Foyada Mamaea
directions (more like information and geography)
Guild guide
directions Lore, information
Imperial cult
directions Lore
Imperial guilds
directions Lore
J'Saddha
directions Information about a character
Latest rumors
Lots of things
Little advice
Little secret
above two are advice . Which for some reason always look awkward in the chat list.
Morrowind lore
lore again
Murderer's description
quest.
My trade
general - for every character
Nalcarya of White Haven
directions (a trader in Balmora)
Nerevarine
general lore
Ondres Verano
directions
Outlander
sort of lore, about a copy of foreigner.
Price on your head
related to theives guild
Ralen Hlaalo
directions
Recall the Legions
Not sure? Lore, sort of
Services
explanation for obvious services and directions
Stilt strider service
directions (also, lore and information)
Someone in particular
directions
South Wall
directions
Specific place
directions
Thieves Guild
directions, and since hes in the theives guild maybe a bit of lore

double-Phew!

how much of that isnt directions though? its mostly directions for the most part.

I've added a few things to your list. In any case, you may see that if a player wants to know about something, he can! That's the beauty of it! You're not subjected to a random silly phrase. You can actually learn about what you want to learn!

In practice the guilds will take anyone who gets the job done. the only one thats really strange is the mages guild, where you get along without casting a spell, but for the rest? who cares how you assinate someone, how you fight to finish a contract, or how you steal something?
And even the mages guild isnt that wierd, after all , consider how much you did for them, you killed their biggest threat and got named archmage by the previous archmage. what more do they want?

That's absurd. In Morrowind, with skill requirements, it was much better. Let's say I beat Kasparov at chess by punching him in the face and scrambling the pieces. I'm not a chess player, I'm a boxer masquerading as a chess player! I may have beat Kasparov this way, but would anyone acknowledge me as a chess player?

I think the only guild with which it would work is the Dark Brotherhood. Mages, Thieves and Fighters guild are too intimately connected with precise skills (casting magic, fighting, and stealing) to be concerned with "just results". I can't become a fencing coach if I've won all my victories by shooting the opponent, Indiana Jones-style!

that is rather strange. I guess its gameplay balance.
Would have been better if stolen items only fetched a fraction of the price, because they look "used' or "suspicious" and a better mercantile skill would have made you get more (make the mercantile skill useful for gods sake!)

That's a good idea. In general, the whole fences idea isn't bad, but only certain items (unique items) should have to be fenced, unique or very expensive things which would be recognized as stolen.

Yeah but a whole TOWN? I mean you can just walk to every single damn person and fight him to death and steal their stuff (which i believe, was considered extremely dishonourable even if you killled someone in a dishonest fight, let alone in a duel!) and noone cares?
It just had to be dropped, you shouldnt be able to kill whoever you want whenever you like .
I thought it led to a bit of lack of quest variation too. Sometimes you had two options, taunt and kill someone, or face a huge fine and guards if you dont.

It's easier in Oblivion. Pick a fight with the guards. Make sure a guard hits someone (another guard, or a citizen). Watch them murder each other. Clean up the mess. Town wiped out.

As for that, well, yes, maybe it was unbalanced, but it wasn't always possible to pull off with a low speechcraft skill. And as I said, it makes this underrated skill useful.

well didnt really do the telvanni quests (i want with house hlaalu, wish i knew they were a theiving guild first, even though strangely they mostly had "kill" quests)
But in oblivion the rule if you can kill anyone.. as long as noone sees it.
In morrowind the magic guards will find out even if they never enter the house and peer at you or very very slowly try and chase you.At least in oblivion they have to see the body, Morrowind circumvented it by placing a gaurd in every place of any value.

Hlaalu are sort of corrupt/thieving/speechcraftey/backhanded/arse sorts. AND they've got CRASSIUS CURIO! The oddest character ever to hit a video game!

True, the Morrowind problem, mainly, was that people didn't cross doors, and they solved it in a somewhat cheap manner. Still, in Oblivion the guards were universally decried as psychic and it had to be fixed in a mod. Hardly speaks well of the starting product!

no offense, but obsessive compulsive disorder (if thats what you mean) is rather different then bipolar disorder.

But there WAS one OCDer, somewhere in Mania. The woman who did stuff compulsively, you know?

I thought he was awesome. have you seen some of his quotes?


Why not? Something has to work. Once, I dug a pit and filled it with clouds. Or was it clowns? Doesn't matter. It didn't slow him down. To be honest, it wasn't the best idea. And it really began to smell. Must have been clowns. Clouds don't smell bad. They taste of butter! And tears."

Well, it was a bit funny, but most of the time you could tell they were trying hard to make you laugh, which was a bit lame. Also, for someone threatening to rip off heads, he never actually killed anybody in his entourage or such. I did like the execution thing though, dropping you from a thousand feet in the air!

Its a different approach to the same thing, telling a story. Ultimatly oblivions story fell short, but that it was based on more of an action theme doesnt mean its bad.

You must still admit, Oblivion's story was cliché and cheap. Morrowind's also was a bit cliché and cheap, but the exotism and the extra effort they put into creating an original environment gives it extra points. Oblivion is just your stereotypical hell, long-tailed demons and all.

I always wish for more too, though theres always a limit. I thought the quest amount was pretty good though. A lot of the fun in the game is trying to get the best stuff, As in oblivion its definatly a possibility to get deadric gear and enchant it, as opposed to morrowind in which you could theoretically get deadric armor and upgrade it. but it was immensely difficult to get a good enchantment, you would need to make potions buffing your intellegence to 500, and enchantment to 5000. obviously an exploit, Or at the very least extremely hard, and making alchemy quickly replace enchantment , after all whats one more potion compared to getting another skill to 100?
Ultimatly though, im happy they included good sidequests and cut out the dull ones, If i want dull quests ill go play a korean grinder MMO. If i want a quest to clear 10 caves i can write it down myself and do it without an NPC giving me an arbitrary reason like collecting power shards for his new fistcuffs.

There are always exploits, and Oblivion is no exception. Also, the lack of sidequests made the game feel empty and dead. I couldn't stand going into villages which were 100% void of interest! For instance, Borderwatch only exists for Sheggy's burning dog quest. Well, you go to the village, and all you get are generic greetings and such. Same with places like Applewatch or Lord Drad's Estate. It's cheap to make places and people if you're just going to use them once.

I dunno. I wasnt that impressed . I did love getting a nice piece of loot, and dropping it on a podium in the house(not in relation to the debate, go try out the kvatch rebuilt and or kvatch aftermath mods for oblivion, they both have you go around rebuilding kvatch, If you like that building new cities kind of thing)

So they actually got around to finishing Kvatch rebuilt? That's good, I thought that mod was dead! By the by, aside from the debate now, did you see that crazy bloke on Youtube who's got his Morrowind house full of loot? Scary...

Anyhow, your turn!

[roy34543]

Im guessing ill have to concede defeat here, because I no longer have the time to continue debating (well at the moment anyway )

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

You've been a good debater, and this has been a very fun debate. +rep, and thank you!