Why do people think Morrowind is so superior to Oblivion?

[Wayneguard]

Morrowind's entire world is brown

Spoiler: pictured: brown

And honestly, did anyone see ANYTHING like

Spoiler: this

in Oblivion? The answer is no... you didn't.

To me, Morrowind is one of the richest and most unique fantasy worlds ever created. The generic fantasy aspects are kept to a minimum while the aspects unique to Morrowind (Giant mushroom trees towering over the lush ascadian isles, volcanic sulfur vents protruding from the burnt, ash-laden wastes of Molag Amur, etc) are pushed to the forefront. Morrowind just has a great, great setting.

 

[ultrachicken]

Morrowind's entire world is brown

Spoiler: pictured: brown

And honestly, did anyone see ANYTHING like

Spoiler: this

in Oblivion? The answer is no... you didn't.

To me, Morrowind is one of the richest and most unique fantasy worlds ever created. The generic fantasy aspects are kept to a minimum while the aspects unique to Morrowind (Giant mushroom trees towering over the lush ascadian isles, volcanic sulfur vents protruding from the burnt, ash-laden wastes of Molag Amur, etc) are pushed to the forefront. Morrowind just has a great, great setting.

Interesting how you chose to show a screenshot from the Ascadian Isles, pretty much the only region with green in it, to prove that the game isn't brown, and then showed a screenshot that was entirely brown.

The only way in which Morrowind was "unique" was the huge fungus they scattered across the place, the structures built from the shells of animals, and Vivec. Vivec was genuinely unique, but most of the rest has been done in other RPGs plenty, just not usually in Western ones. Though Morrowind does deserve props for its weird creatures.

 

[inFAMOUSCowZ]

Ok, prepared to get schooled I kid

EDIT This isn't nostalgia, I played TES III after TES IV
Cliff racers

I agreed with all that you posted expect for Cliff Racers. If I may speak for most Morrowind fans. I fucking hate those things.

 

[F'Angus]

I personally preferred Morrowind because it had more quests, more customisability (you could make a whole suit of armour by your self, and enchant more), there were more weapon types (spears, darts, crossbows, ninja star), there were more guilds to join.

What I mainly missed in Oblivion from Morrowind is the travel system. In morrowind you practically had to use public transport, whereas Oblivion you could fast travel. It seems stupid that I missed Morrowind's public transport but it really did make the world feel so much bigger. I haven't been to many place on Oblivion because I fast travel anywhere instead of using my legs and exploring.

True I've been playing Morrowind recently and found it hard to follow quests but I still think it is far better.


Also almost missed out that in Morrowind I found Modding so much easier. Made myself a lovely house in balmora that fit perfectly with the surroundings.

 

[Radeonx]

Because Morrowind had a much more epic feeling world, and overall was superior in nearly every way save graphics. The combat system was superior, the non level scaling was better, and overall, the game was just better.
I played the 2 recently, with no nostalgia, so it isn't like I'm biased or anything in terms of enjoying it as a teenager.

 

[Private Custard]

I'll refer back to a post I made in 2008 when asked what I'd like to see in the next ES, after the release of Oblivion had disappointed so many Morrowind fans.

I want:

1) More items, especially candles and lamps to decorate my house.

2) Some way to place items where I want them without worrying that the Havok physics engine is going to fling them all over the place if I look at them funny.

3) Skills. Longblade, shortblade, axe, spear etc etc etc... I hate the dumbing down of Oblivion, it spread to every aspect of the game and should have been sub-titled 'My First RPG'

4) All houses should be available to live in, without worrying about re-spawning crates etc... It's one of the things that made Morrowind brilliant, the ability to choose your own house.

5) New artifacts and special weapons, not just rip-offs from Morrowind. Oblivion stole, amongst other things, Azuras Star, Necromancers Amulet, Umbra......and on and on and on...

6) More spells. Again Oblivion failed on a massive scale. We want the fun spells, Jump, slowfall, levitate, mark, recall etc etc

7) The ability to wear clothes under armour and robes over the top, or just mix and match. Another of Oblivions fail points.

8) More unique dungeons and caves. So many of Oblivions caves were copy and paste jobs, crates were always found on the raised bits in the corners surrounded by stalagtites and stalagmites.

9) No more scaled levelling. To make it so you can take over the world as a level 1 character renders the entire levelling system null and void, meaning the game isn't full RPG. Remember in Morrowind when you accidentally made it to red mountain as a level 5 character and suddenly got worried for your safety?!

10) More easter eggs, things like Indiana Jones's note, the mudcrab merchant, the message in a bottle.............fishy sticks!! Things that make you want to go out and explore. Oblivion never offered much in the way of special items, and when it awarded them to you, it quite often wanted you to give them away to complete quests (garridans tears, artifacts etc..)

11) Armour - By the time you reach level 20+ in Oblivion, pretty much every bandit is wearing full elven, glass, and laughably, Daedric armour. What makes certain armours special is their exclusivity, I don't want 50 sets of Daedric in my storage chests!!

12) Draw distance - Yes Oblivion had good draw distance, but it didn't half make the world look small. If you're going to give a good draw distance, at least make places look far away.

13) Voice acting - Four words "Thank you kind sir" !! The voice acting was an epic fail. Martin was about as exciting as a coma and the rest of the population comprised of probably less than 15 different voices. The one ray of light was Sheogorath...............although I'm pretty certain the Sheogorath that speaks to you on the shrine quest is not the fake Scottish accented Sheogorath in SI!

14) AI - Just one example of laziness is the infinite arrows trick. Stand out the back of the Chorrol fighters guild when the Orc is doing his archery practice. Just keep taking his arrows off the target.............he'll never ask for them back!

15) Oblivion - If you can be bothered, try doing all the Oblivion gates, you'll soon realise that there are probably less than 10 individual 'Oblivions'. They repeated so often that I could guide a friend around them over voice chat!! This complaint could probably be lumped in with the repeating caves complaint I have.

16) Too much forest - the landscape had no variety, it was either mountains (with snow sometimes) or forests. Morrowind had Azuras Coast, The Ashlands, Mournhold, Solstheim (North and south), The Bitter Coast etc etc....

Yes, I could keep adding to that list all day and not run out of things. Oblivion was prettier and had a better spellcasting system.....that's it.

 

[JC175]

For me, I feel that Morrowind was more immersive. There are obvious critiques you can tack onto both games - Morrowind's combat is quite horrendous, Oblivion's leveling is fundamentally broken, etc - but for me Morrowind just felt more alive.

A lot of it comes down to the leveling issues in Oblivion, I'll admit. The fact that if you didn't plan ahead in Morrowind you were likely to be slaughtered by a Daedra felt a lot more real to me, as did the presence of fantastic non-leveled gear from day one in game. Granted, the vast majority of this gear was either ridiculously hard to find, steal, or fight your way to; but it was there and available if you put enough effort into it. Travel options were a big thing too - as convenient as fast-travel is, it feels artificial and limits your exploration of the world.

Plus, you never felt quite as much of a badass in Oblivion as you did in Morrowind. If you leveled your acrobatics up to 100, you could leap over buildings. Find the Boots of Blinding Speed? Use a resist magic spell to counter the blind effect, run at light speed, profit. Want to enchant a constant effect restore health/fortify strength cuirass? Buff your intelligence into the thousands by stacking alchemy potions and away you go. I'm sure the majority of these things were intended by the developers, but in either way it felt like you were beating the game somehow. Oblivion managed to restrict that feeling.

And just to mention too, I played Morrowind for the first time about a year and a half ago, before I played Oblivion. I've put about 180hrs into Morrowind and its expansions, and about 130 into Oblivion.

EDIT: To add though, Morrowind is ridiculously hard on a first-timer. I remember being completely overwhelmed by the content and organisation in regards to items, let alone the world itself. My first ten minutes in game consisted of a mind-bending trip to the general store in Seyda Neen and trying to work out how the fuck to interpret the scrolls for sale.

But it's well worth the wait, everything does click eventually. Sorry to hear you bought it vanilla though, because the vanilla journal is a mega-*****. Plus, Bloodmoon is a fantastic expansion - Tribunal? Not so much.

 

[teh_Canape]

because

Spoiler

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

This is my first forum post on the Escapist, so let me know if I did something wrong. Anyway, I'm not trying to piss anyone off, I am genuinely curious.

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. 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.

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?

Oh and I think Skyrim will be my new favorite, 5 days!!!

The journal is annoying, to be sure, but it feels more like an actual journal. The oblivion journal is WoW-baby quest guides. It's a question of your preference, simulation or convenience. It's just like the quick-travel system: the oblivion version is much more convenient, but the silt striders, boats, and spells fit the world so well.

Oblivion did do some things much better, of course, such as making spellcasting much less klunky, and the ability to become a vampire and play the main quest around that was way more fun than "you are a vampire. Your game is stopped forever unless you stumble across the cure. Screw you, you vampire bastard." Then again, playing as a vampire was essentially worthless unless you didn't drink blood, which is sort of opposite of how it should go.

Additionally, Morrowind's plotlines were just better. Oblivion's story contains little-to-no characterization of anyone involved, which makes the sacrifice of two of the main characters utterly bereft of emotion. You can't feel anything for martin or jauffre because aside from them giving you your next compass marker, they aren't involved with the player at all. The only decent plotline in the game is the Dark Brotherhood one, and that's just okay. Actually, I take it back, the thieves guild questline was pretty good. the missions weren't any fun, but the story was alright. The mages guild, unlike morrowind's fairly mundane collection of intellectuals stabbing eachother in the back and secretly hating their colleagues, decided to try for an epic plotline where you defeat an ancient evil, but failed in the execution by not making the stakes seem high, which is the same problem that the fighters guild had. I will say that the DLC plotlines were pretty fuckin awesome, but they were add-ons to bolster a disappointment.
Morrowind on the other hand has an engaging (provided you are willing to keep track of the reading) story wrapped up in conspiracies, politics, and general skullduggery. Almost everything in morrowind related to the rest of the world in which it resided. If the quest itself had no story, it was leading you through the background of Vvardenfell and showing you more of the world's depth. the main quest is wrapped up in betrayals and corruption of those in charge, and has real characters with whom you spend a great deal of time learning about either themselves, or the world around them. Then add to that the expansion packs, wherein you confront a dark god and a murderous Daedra... wait. Oblivion didnt even have original ideas for its DLC! Anyway, Solstheim is a living environment where things are just familiar enough to get your bearings, and so massively different you never feel like you are just retreading the same ground as elsewhere in the game. Plus, the lycanthropy is fairly sweet. Tribunal on the other hand had way to much moving around in a confined space, but it had truly awesome quests. And the museum! the museum was awesome! why didn't oblivion have a museum?! I want a box to put all my epic loot and show it off!

Also, the leveling world system in Oblivion was balls. I want to have a REWARD for making my character bigger and stronger! I don't want the same guards to be able to whip my ass once I've conquered the moon! I want them fleeing in terror from my godlike power!
Which in Morrowind, you can do. By jumping. It is amazing. LO! I CAN JUMP GREAT HEIGHTS! FEAR ME!

Essentially, morrowind has more depth, more story, more memorable actions, and more clothes. FEAR MY ENCHANTED SUIT OF DOOM!

 

[Sniperyeti]

It was all about immersion for me. Morrowind had this big open world full of competing guilds, working from the small scale of particular grudges between politicians to all out guild warfare.

Maybe it was the fast travel system, maybe the lack of variety in environemnts, but Oblivion really lacked that feeling of being in a world - and that's really important to me for getting into a long term single player game.

 

[Bob_Marley42]

I've never played the Elderscrolls series, but one of my friends described the situation like this:

Morrowind made him feel like and idiot, Oblivion treated him like one.

 

[dslatch]

I loved morrowind for all its ups and downs, but i loved oblivion becuase i never had to deal with 50 cliff racers all in a towering line above me.

 

[Ravenbom]

Horse armor/thread

 

[easternflame]

Going back to morrowind is fucking hard man. I couldn't do it either. BUT From the moment I stepped in, I felt in an alien world, when I stepped into Oblivion I just felt in another fantasy setting. I love oblivion, it's my favorite game yet and skyrim will probably be my new one. But it's just that to make it more streamlined they cut some content, I think it's good, fanatics gonna hate.

 

[ianeddy44]

Morrowind's entire world is brown,

There was a reason the land was mostly bland, and it was because the entire province was afflicted by a terrible blight which was responsible for killing lots of things. Especially near the centre of the province (around Red Mountain) the land was very dead.

OT: As for me, I liked Morrowind ever so slightly more. Text-based dialogue didn't bother me, I used a detailed map included in the box, and kept a notepad handy and organized my own journal, which ended up being about 35 pages, by the way. I loved the diversity or environments and the mystery that pervaded everything. Towns, landscapes, creatures, everything seemed so alien and it was a joy to discover. I also loved the fact that magic was far more useful. Especially flying. My best character ever was a theif/assassin who used magic to fly out of range and snipe his targets.

Oblivion was not nearly as fantastical; In fact it was extremely familiar because it had very recognizable creatures (horses, goblins, trolls), architecture, culture, etc.. I also felt that oblivion did a lot to hold your hand, especially with the quest markers and the fast travel system. I recently did a playthrough of oblivion in which I restricted myself to purely manual travel, and I found the experience far more enriching. The random dungeons and level-scaled world were absolutely garbage because there was hardly any edginess or risk/reward in that equation. It was very unlikely that you would find something better than what you had (unless you had lately surpassed one of the 5-level tiers, that is)

They both sucked up ~350 and ~300 hours of my life, respectively, and I love them both to death. On a related note, I was introduced to them at almost the same time. I played an hour or two of oblivion at a friend's house and decided I wanted to buy it, and figured it would be a good idea to pick up its precursor first.

 

[damselgaming]

Honestly I only got 30 minutes into Morrowind and it didn't really grab me. I remember swimming for a bit, getting attacked by a bird dinosaur thing, not being able to beat up a women with a sword and then my then boyfriend turning off the monitor and telling me it was, and I quote, "sexytime".

True story, never played the game again.
... Also Morrowind now just makes me think 'sexytime'.

Funny story, but if I had a magnetic metal for every time someone said they played Morrowind for half an hour and then gave up, I'd be a billionaire. Of magnets. Seriously, they even always say 'half an hour'.

Play it for longer, You have played it for... ooh, 1/600th of the time most fans play it for? Compare that to a 20-hour game, and you've relatively judged an entire game on the first 2 minutes.

Go back to it, giving up that quickly is just crazy.

When I get a free spell I might do that. I figure that it wasn't my bag at the time. I think that was my jrpg phase. In fact I Have just started getting into d&d so the 'dice rolls' are now right up my street.

 

[heaventorn]

Atmosphere/variety in cities/terrain and the fact that armor was in separate pieces!

The first one I'm willing to forgive because I understand why Cyrodil was very uniform in appearances, but the armor thing! Why!? Morrowind's armor setup was fuckin' amazing! I could have underclothes, armor over it and wear a skirt and then fuckin' robes over that! Two different pauldrons/gloves!!! It was so fuckin' awesome! And then the amount of armor!!

That's why I loved Morrowind so much more. I do love Oblivion as well, but the armor always felt like a HUGE step backwards.

 

[Ubahootah]

I prefer Oblivion, though Morrowind is actually good as well. My only complaint of Morrowind was the fact that, at lower levels, you could not hit enemies despite them being right in front of you, and having a longsword. Annoyed the crap out of me.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

Oblivion was much more mainstream, they simplified and shortened in order to draw in a wider audience. Morrowind is the game for more hardcore RPG players, there is absolutely no handholding and a much larger amount of freedom (too much in fact. You can kill important npc's and be unable to progress in the game).

Both are good you just need to answer one question: Would you like to finish the game in 2 weeks or 2months.