Alma Mare said:
This is the first actual good entry into the elder scrolls
lol @ the complete lack of perspective of this. Like or not Morrowind or Oblivion, no one in their right mind can deny that they completely obliterated the competition at the time they came out. It's not even close. Some RPGs came out that may have been more involving in their storytelling, that prize is up for catch, but in terms of gameplay, production values and sheer scope, not even close. What did you have when Oblivion came out? Gothic 3? Two worlds? Sacred? Games that attempted their size ended up looking and feeling they were made for the Nintendo 64, games that matched storytelling or production values ended up having a small fraction of the content, replayability or longevity. TES games more than good, they are the standard every Fantasy game are measured agaisnt.
Skyrim is running against Batman Arkham City, the MW3/BF3 duality, and the PS3 exlcusive Uncharted 3. It has some very stiff competition out there running against it. It has done what the other 2 did. The only thing that beat it out so far is MW3 because let's face it, CoD is a pop culture trend and the only thing that can beat a pop culture trend is another pop culture trend for the most part and RPGs are far from that.
Morrowind
When I first discovered Morrowind, the Game of the Year edition was in the bargin bin. I bought it, played it, and discussed with about 5 other guys I know that play RPGs. We had grown up together playing D&D, VTM, Rifts, and Twilight 2000. This game, none of them had heard of either and we discussed the mechanics. None of them wanted to go buy a copy but they checked out my copy and we had hours of conversation as to where the mechanics could be fixed. There were too many exploitative playstyles, the game actually had crappy builds which is a huge flaw considering what it was trying to claim it was, the NPC interaction was atrocious and worked more like Windows key word help topics, there was no way to tell what was strong in the world and what was not. As well, combat was horrid - why would you slash with an axe if it does shit damage like that? Why is my character not smart enough to know I want him to chop every damn time with an axe? Or thrust with an spear? Or do the one that is always the high damage one meant for that weapon type and not one of the 2 low damage ones?
We found Morrowind a great stepping stone to something great but in itself it was garbage. The only credit you could give this game was what it was trying to do, but it failed at it so what you end up with is a bad game with a good idea. The gameplay was bad in Morrowind.
Oblivion
When Oblivion came out, me and a couple of those friends and some guys I worked with checked it out. Within a month of release, we were all bitching about it, not because of bugs but because it got WORSE. The story was considered unanimously awful, the leveling system mechanics got worse. It was a joke a couple guys never got a guy over level 12 because the system gimped them. THEY COULDNT PLAY THE GAME WITHOUT ASKING HOW THEY NEEDED TO PLAY IT! That is like the one rule of game design your game should NEVER break. One guy just chose to keep turning the difficulty down but the other guy refused on principle and we all understood why. (He went through 3 builds and just ended up quitting.) The overworld didn't matter much because most of your time you found yourself in Oblivion Gates that were identical to the last 50 you had been in and dungeons which also got really repetitive pretty easy taking away from any sense of progress the game could offer. It just felt like you were doing the same thing over and over and exploration began to resemble grinding. Even when you were in the big world though, the towns were mostly lifeless and animatronic. The best this game could offer was the times you spent just running around avoiding everything else about the game in the wilderness. However, you weren't safe there because that level mechanic I mentioned earlier could catch up to you I suppose.
Somehow, Oblivion actually managed to be more full of flaws than Morrowind was. The gameplay was mediocre in Oblivion but the constant identical repetition, heavy cliches, and broken mechanics ruined any hope it had as anything but a terrible game. Using "sheer scope" for Oblivion is ludicrous, it did not have a large scope. If I put a bunch of COke cans in front of you, it is not going to look like 1 big Coke can. Morrowind had a large scope, Skyrim has a pretty big scope scope so far. Oblivion lost its sense of large scope the second it started copy and pasting everything and the few things that were built for originality's sake weren't even constructed well. The "jewel" of Tamriel, Imperial city has what? 50 houses? Wow, what a huge scope. Nothing about Oblivion suggests grande scope.
I don't know anyone who still owns a copy of Oblivion anymore. Oblivion is used on a constant basis as to how bad a game can be. "Oblivion it" is now a term that means "take a game with good potential and completely ruin it." (e.g. I would hate to see Arkham City get "Oblivioned".)
Every one of those guys I know except one owns Skyrim, all praise it as to it is what Oblivion should have been and what Morrowind was trying for.
octafish said:
Savagezion said:
It will be remembered. This is the first Elder Scrolls game I have liked despite wanting to like them. It is the only Elder Scrolls game I would recommend to any friends that like WRPGS. This is the first actual good {3D} entry into the elder scrolls. As such, it is going to generate a larger fanbase for the series by itself. SO the following game will be under much higher scrutiny. No more pulling that shit Oblivion pulled.
I doubt it is as epic as Daggerfall. I
know it isn't as big.
You might be right, I have never played Daggerfall. I came in with Morrowind. I was mostly basing it off of my personal experience with TES series which began with Morrowind.
