For me it probably is a matter of nostalgia, Morrowind was just the first ES I played properly (I dabbled with Daggerfall but that game is a fucker) and Oblivion just didn't feel the same.
In terms of specifics I liked having Medium Armor, Short Blade etc, even though I can see why they were merged. I liked the level of unique armour and weapons in the game, something I felt was missing from Oblivion as well. I must admit though that Oblivion did combat better and the DB questline was the most fun I've had in either game.
I gotta say, I prefer Oblivion for two main reasons: Morrowind's entire world is brown, and the combat is terrible. Morrowind is superior in a great many departments, but those massive complaints really kept me from enjoying it fully. I might give it another go as I wait for Skyrim, though.
For one thing, Morrowind had a far better main quest, that actually made sense. In Oblivion, you are told by characters to get a move on, but you can ignore the main quest until you feel like doing it. In morrowind, the main quest is much more of a slow burner (and encourages you to join a guild as a "cover story"). Also the environments were much more other-worldly (City inside the hollowed out shell of a giant crab anyone?)
Ok, it's this thread again. But I think it's worth it to get into the discussion again, just because Morrowind is the greatest game of all time, at least for me (opinions, blah blah).
1. The setting. This can be broken down into several aspects:
a. The general themes: Colonialism, religious rivalry, Great House rivalry, factional rivalry, etc. Oblivion lacked a lot of these and therefore seemed 'unrealistic' because the political universe was just too empty of tension. I get the feeling Bethesda meant to put in more factions in Oblivion but ran out of time. There are some factions you can get titles in, but without any quests, they seem to be appendages that got lopped off as deadline approached.
b. The art design: Much more interesting variation in regions, much more interesting colours instead of the generic fantasy palette that Oblivion used, different architectural designs for the main houses, the dwemer ruins, the Imperials, etc.
c. Lore: I'm not a long-time fan of the Elder Scrolls back to Arena, so I might be uninformed/biased here. But I thought Vvardenfell benefited a great deal from having very different flora/fauna/cultural touchstones from our reality, whereas Cyrodil did not. There were a lot fewer generic fantasy creatures, replaced with things like Guar, Alit, Netches, Drugh, etc. There was also a totally alien Dark Elf cultural background, manifested in things like the Ordinators, the Temple, the Ashlanders, the Telvanni buildings. Oblivion was too high medieval and thus lacked originality in a certain sense.
d. In technical terms, at release Oblivion had much bigger problems with issues like pop-in of textures, which sort of ruined the fact that it had much better visuals than Morrowind. If you compare Morrowind against its competitors at release, versus Oblivion versus its competitors at release, I think Morrowind comes out ahead.
2. The side-quests: This links in closely with 1a. The fact that you had competing factions with overlapping spheres of gameplay (a guild and a great house specializing in magic, for example) meant that there was greater potential for conflict and rivalry. In a non-linear game, side-quests are the real heart of the story-telling, not the main quest. I think Oblivion lost sight of that truth and didn't put enough effort into making the side-quests an integral part of the lore, the pacing, the development of the main character, etc.
3. Better fast travel system/quest location system: Mark/Recall + Interventions + boats/silt striders/mages guild teleportation/fortress teleportation all meant that you had to think about how you were going to get somewhere, how you were going to get out with your loot, and what risks it all involved. God forbid a game actually making you think about those things nowadays. Important main quest dungeons were actually off the beaten quest and needed effort to reach. Many side quests led you to dungeons that were difficult to find. That meant you had to engage yourself in planning out how to get around the world, which goes on total autopilot in the latter Bethesda games (including FO3 and FNV).
Those were the main ones for me. Then, there were stupid little things like the Oblivion NPC-leveling system, which they acknowledged as wrong and fixed in FO3, right away.
I was introduced to the Elder Scrolls through Oblivion, I eventually came to love it, got all the achievements for it and in my eager anticipation for Skyrim I picked up a copy of Morrowind a few months ago. As far as I can tell it is quite a bit like Oblivion (obviously with worse graphics and animations but those can be forgiven if the gameplay and story are superior). I've had a lot of trouble getting into it, the quest are hard to do and using the journal to find out what you need to do is horrible, I have like 40 pages of random finished and unfinished quest, with no real way to discern where I need to go for a lot of them. The NPC's don't talk, sure there might be a lot of them but they all pretty much say have the same lines in each town.
Alright, here's the thing: fully-voiced dialogue, improved gameplay/interface, and graphics/animations? Those are things that happened because Oblivion was a sequel on a next-gen console quite some time after its predecessor. And those aren't areas were people consider Morrowind to be superior to Oblivion.
Shotgun Guy said:
Personally, I think this might be a case of nostalgia, you like it more because you remember it more fondly and that colors your current opinion of the game.
Here's the thing: you judge a game by how much fun you have playing it. A fair number of people had more fun with Morrowind than they did with Oblivion. They didn't play Oblivion and then go back and play Morrowind. They played the latter when it was first released, and then the former when it was released.
Shotgun Guy said:
I'll admit Oblivion wasn't perfect, especially having to shut those gates, ugh. But what they added just seems to go so above and beyond what Morrowind had. So, in your opinion which is better? Why do you feel that way?
Watch the Zero Punctuation of 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution.' It'll help a good deal. Because, quite simply, it relates a lot to this subject.
If you released Morrowind and Oblivion side-by-side, never having released either before, Oblivion would curbstomp it, because it makes Morrowind look like a piece of shit. That's what a game using the latest technology of 2006 will do to a game built on the latest technology of 2002. Criticizing it on those grounds is like criticizing Casablanca because they filmed it using "inferior" black-and-white cameras instead of modern HD cameras.
And to be frank, you'll never really understand why many people liked Morrowind more than Oblivion. Because you weren't one of those people: it would've required you to be playing Morrowind back in 2002, and then picking up Oblivion in 2006. It has nothing to do with your condescending remark about nostalgia: it's a matter of knowing that standards don't change retroactively for past achievements.
I don't, I could barely get though afew hours of playing before it felt like razors slicing my eyes. There was so much wrong in that game that for me I could never pick it up again, and I can't ever watch others play it.
Lol at OP complaining that NPCs say the same thing in every town in Morrowind. At least you don't have to listen to them blather to each other. Anyway, what Matthew94 said, including the part about playing Oblivion first. Total playtime for Oblivion: ~10 hours. Playtime for Morrowind: ~110 hours.
theonecookie said:
at least tell me that the stupid strider can be used as a taxi before I run of and die in the wilderness trying to get to the first questmarker
EDIT This isn't nostalgia, I played TES III after TES IV
More quests
More guilds
Better plot
Longer plot
Plot actually gives useful items
Varied areas not just forest and frosty hills
Cliff racers
The use of text means there is at least 4x the dialogue
Quest Arrow doesn't hold your hand throughout the entire game
More Spells eg flying
More items and type of items
You can't get the the top of each guild with 1 class (oblivion my swordsman became the leader of the mages guild, can't happen in TES III without proper skills)
You can fight and kill gods for the lulz
There are no unkillable characters
Loot isn't random and doesn't scale to your level
The whole world is alien and not 1/2 normal animals like TES IV
Better fast travel system
Good world politics
Maybe I'll add more later
EDIT Get the GOTY version for an oblivion style journal which is essential.
The only things that seem superior to me personally are the alien environment.And obviously the 'more quests/guilds/etc.' thing,but that should go without saying.And Shivering Isles takes the whole "Alien Environment" to the extreme,so that doesn't even really count.Everything else just seems like your personal preference.Also,I think the NPC level scaling was a good idea,but poorly implemented.
Nope Morrowind is one of the few games that isn't about nostalgia goggles, the problem with Oblivion is it's just a generic fantasy game, not really a TES game, Daggerfall and Morrowind both contain a lot of back-story, alien art design ect where as Oblivion is generic Tolkein hack n slash. Don't get me wrong Oblivion can be fun but it's very much a game that tries to appeal to a wider audience.
Also there are mods that fix all of Morrowind's big gameplay issues such as the combat so check them out.
Every time I tried to play Morrowind, I couldn't get past the graphics. From what I played, however, it just seemed a bit lifeless. True, the text screens offered more dialogue but overall, the world seemed empty compared to Oblivion.
I think a lot of it is nostalgia goggles as well as the fact that Morrowind was more of an old-school RPG where Oblivion is more modern
Everyone up here has given some very great (and true) reasons about why Morrowind is better then Oblivion but I think people are missing out on three key reasons.
1. Mora Tong
2. Motherfucking Silt Striders
3. A naked mage falls out of the sky after you leave the first town.
The only thing in my opinion that Oblivion did better was blocking but Morrowind didn't set the bar high there and Oblivion is nothing to shout about in that department either.
Then to a degree you have stuff like opinion and nostalgia but all and all Morrowind was a better game in my opinion and while people may not like the Oblivo fast travel I do think it should have a fast travel option like that but then the immersive option like in RDR. As in I can camp and magically appear there, get a coach or ride there on my horse. There is no need to alienate people just because some abhor a certain system which is one the complaints I hate the most.
Another sort of annoying complaint about Oblivion is that it was a generic fantasy setting with too many forests. You were in Cyrodiil what do you expect really? You can't get much more vanilla fantasy than there at least they kept it relatively canon to what it should have been although they could have had its native were forms.
In Skyrim though I hope there is a way to turn off the finishers as they seem like they might get generic and boring after awhile.
Alright, here's the thing: fully-voiced dialogue, improved gameplay/interface, and graphics/animations? Those are things that happened because Oblivion was a sequel on a next-gen console quite some time after its predecessor. And those aren't areas were people consider Morrowind to be superior to Oblivion.
Yes, I get that. I made the point because adding all of those things meant they wouldn't be able to flesh out certain aspects of the game, like in previous ones. Quality or quantity, I totally see where you are coming from with this though.
Char-Nobyl said:
Here's the thing: you judge a game by how much fun you have playing it. A fair number of people had more fun with Morrowind than they did with Oblivion. They didn't play Oblivion and then go back and play Morrowind. They played the latter when it was first released, and then the former when it was released.
Definitely, I didn't claim my opinion was the right one, I realize I technically played these games incorrectly, I took that into account when I was comparing them.
Char-Nobyl said:
And to be frank, you'll never really understand why many people liked Morrowind more than Oblivion. Because you weren't one of those people: it would've required you to be playing Morrowind back in 2002, and then picking up Oblivion in 2006. It has nothing to do with your condescending remark about nostalgia: it's a matter of knowing that standards don't change retroactively for past achievements.
You're right, I can't understand why people like it more, that's why I made this thread, that way I could at least get a little insight into it. My remark about nostalgia wasn't meant to come off as condescending, it is unfortunate that you felt it was. I personally believe nostalgia plays a big role in almost every comparison and to completely assume it doesn't have some sort of effect just seems foolish, again that is just my opinion.
I've played both, and despite nostalgia goggles, I still think Oblivion is the better game. Morrowind did more stuff, but it often did so poorly. The combat system and the leveling system were made of boiled donkey genitals in particular.
Granted, the leveling system in Oblivion is not better.
Its all personal opinion. The Elder Scrolls is my favorite series of all time, and I love Oblivion and Morrowind. I will be honest and say I love Oblivion more though.
Both have quite alot of little annoyances and problems, dont let anyone tell you different, but as a fellow above me stated, Morrowind had more stuff, Oblivion had less but did it better.
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I kid
