Has there been a decline in quality of TES games since Morrowind or is it nostalgia?
 

Personally, I believe that Bethesda made the best open world in Skyrim, even though it wasn't as alien and unique as Morrowind's. As far as quests are concerned, Oblivion comes out on top, they are clever and memorable even if the world sometimes feels bland. The main story in Skyrim is not bad, its just short; but I have to say the Civil war is done really well on paper, even though the battles were underwhelming in the game. I liked the political intrigue, Thalmor's involvement in it all and trying to benefit from the political strife between the two factions. Although the dungeons feel a bit same after 40-50 hours in Skyrim, they still are the best in the series in my opinion. All the games in the series do expansions well. Skyrim had underwhelming factions and magic system. And essential NPCs kill the experience for some. What's your take on it?

I keep hearing they have some awesome mods for Morrowind now totally making the graphics modern or possibly as good as SKyrim. It is a super buggy game though and I always have to restart at one point due to the mods breaking my game or constantly crashing. now I hear there is some Morrowind runtime that alleviates this.

@AppleIntimidation I am sure you are talking about Skywind. I encountered 1 or 2 game breaking bugs, but for a 300 hour experience that is not bad. But I do encounter plenty of bugs, most of which are fun.
Skywind link:
https://tesrskywind.com/

Skyrim has a story? Since when.

That whole kill the evil giant lizard thing. That's the story.

The main reason I like TES games is for the faction system, and Skyrim completely botched that.
Also, no levitation.

Morrowind was better for me.

Skyrim was my point of entry for TES games and I was blown away, I liked the environments and its gradual change and the fauna including Dragons. I distinctly remember not even minding Lydia all that much. And then there were mods that made the civil war more strategically and tactically coherent with battles and patrols, Lydia actually bearable, the Dragons thematic and a companion mod called Viljya that included partial writing by Terry Pratchett, and that sold it for me.

Years later I remember trying to recreate the sense of wonder in Elder Scrolls Online but the MMO experience seemed to break my immersion and perhaps I have changed now. I will probably buy Elder Scrolls six, hopefully its social systems are more sophisticated.

I believe that in Morrowind, becoming a part of factions felt really nice, especially because factions (particularly houses) stood for different things and added flavor to the game world. For example Redonans were in with the Tribunal, Telvanni were these wizards living alone in Mushroom towers, Hlaalu people were involved in business and slave trade and many more. However, as far as quests are concerned, they were pretty mediocre. Certain faction quest lines in Oblivion were absolutely top notch though. Easily the best in the series and one of the most memorable in any RPG I have ever played, period. Faction quest lines in Skyrim, even though necessarily not bad, weren't as great as their predecessors, to put it politely.

@mat9813004 My first TES game was Skyrim too and it blew my mind away also. Even though I really liked Oblivion, Morrowind, FO3, FO4 and FO:NV; no open world game can stand up to it except the Witcher 3 (which is my favorite game btw). I haven't played a ton of mods, but currently I am playing Falskaar and will play Forgotten City in the future whose writing has received acclaim. You should check it out.

I love a patched Daggerfall and it's huge dungeons.

@HiddenX Weren't the dungeons difficult to navigate through? I remember playing the game for about a dozen hours and giving up in the end. A game of its time I guess, even though very ambitious.

I played through Daggerfall in about 400 hours and solved the main storylines. The dungeons are huge and difficult. Morrowind's story is great, but the "dungeons" are little earth holes in comparison.
You could ignore the story in Daggerfall and play it as a sandbox game. Even more difficult is the game Battlespire, based on the same game engine.

I started with (and was blown away by) Daggerfall, but Morrowind is my clear favourite. The world is intriguing and different, the main story (although a chosen one cliché as well) was good and the expansions were excellent. The world was also scary and dangerous, and the power curve from a nobody to some kind of god was satisfying.

Oblivion had awesome quests, but the main story was severely lacking. The worst part though was the atrocious scaling, actually making the game easier if you simply didn't level up. And more immersive too, since bandits in glass armour is silly. It completely messed up any sense of progression to me. The world didn't feel dangerous, it felt stupid.

Skyrim toned it down a notch, introducing areas that scaled to your current level when you first entered them. It sounded better on paper, but then you kill a dragon at level 2. And find artifacts scaled to your level. And kill more powerful dragons? Again, to me the sense if progression was completely lost in the end.

To me open world done right in regards to scaling is to have none. Elex is a good example, I died more times in my first hour than I did in my 90 hours in Skyrim. I loved it. I realise the counter argument is this actually makes the game more linear and as such only gives an illusion of an "open world" (if by OW we mean go where you like). I don't care, it still FEELS right to me. And you CAN still go anywhere you like. You'll just probably definitely die.

Skyrim is my favorite by far, but my order is probably Skyrim, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Morrowind.

I thought the main quest in Skyrim was forgettable, but I loved the actual role-playing the game allowed.

Daggerfall was absolutely amazing for its time. I probably spent dozens of hours just trying to create the perfectly balanced character. The dis/advantages of the character creator made it the best such version I've ever seen. The winter theme will always be stuck in my memory due to my many, many hours in that game.

I really liked the main quest in Oblivion. It's big weakness was level scaling and I'm glad Skyrim tackled that somewhat. I hope for improvements to that in the next game. I loved the mage guild quests especially and I nearly always play a mage in that game.

I thought the sky and world art was pretty amazing in Morrowind, but I just couldn't get into the political themes nor religious tones of that game. I didn't want to be the Nectarine but that was my role. This is also why I didn't care for The Witcher 3. I didn't want to be Geriatric the White.

@TomRon I actually agree with you and I have heard how Piranha Bytes does open worlds right like with Gothic and Elex. I tried my hand at Gothic and its controls scared me away, even though the world seemed tempting. I will surely come back to it one day. New Vegas also accomplished this in a way. High level enemies blocking one way to the objective area, forcing you to go South and back up North, taking in the lore and understanding the game world better along the way; made up for a very organic experience.

Skyrim blown me away the first hours which were really 'heroic' with the dragon attack, the environments, the exploration at low level.
After that it went down quite fast, the useless main quest, the dungeons, the scaled to your level places, the factions which changed nothing, the arrow in the knee etc ..

However if I never finished the main quest I still logged hundreds of hours in Skyrim because of the awesome mods.

In most areas, no. I think Skyrim is their (so far) crowning acheivement in many ways. But in terms of world building, absolutely. Skyrim did the bare minimium to create a distinct sense of place, and Oblivion somehow did even less. Morrowind is one of the finest, most detailed, most atmopherric digital worlds ever created. There's no comparison.

I've more or less lost hope that they'lll ever put that emphasis on their settings again, but I do hope they head back in that direction.

Much more likely that he's talking about something like OpenMW.

How come no-one mentioned Arena. It had two great spells which allowed you to either pass through dungeon walls, or blast a hole in them. Heaps of fun!! :)

My wife accuses me of playing this almost constantly along with the DLC, SIF!

Just try it for an hour or so, what’s an hour to a lifetime experience :), and you’ll be fine.

Because it was boooooring. Endless sameness. Copy pasted cities with 20 identical taverns each. NPCs without the C. It was my first Elder Scrolls game, and I didn't come back until Morrowind.

No I was talking about morrowind reborn or something like mwe not skywind, because I do not even own skyrim and rely on a 2009 iMac and Macbook Air via Windows 7 bootcamp with radeon hd4670 for my pc gaming thus I doubt I could even play skyrim. and it is like a collection of a crapload of mods and i found most are not even compatible and gives you thr option to turn thrm on or off via a menu. later the game would start crashing no matter what I choose.

Skyrim > Oblivion > Morrowind in my opinion.

I never even got through Morrowind. The first time I tried it, I did too much bunny hopping and my character ended up leaving the first town at "high level" even though his combat skills were low so he got blasted by everything outside. The second time was better but that time had the opposite issue - I made some sort of magic axe thing that was blasting everything easily and the game got dull so I quit.

I had much more fun in Oblivion, which I completed and even started a second time - mostly to play Shivering Island, which I liked quite a bit.

Skyrim was tops by far, though. The massive modding community made it a design-your-own-RPG! Plus 3D Vision worked great, making the place intensely immersive. Finding Blackreach has got to be the best exploration experience I've ever had in a game!

First one I played was Daggerfall and while I was amazed by the scope, implementation was buggy and the dungeons were often too confusing to navigate. Morrowind was epic, and I never finished the dlc because I put in ~500 hours in the main game with different characters so I forced myself to move onto something else. Oblivion was pretty but had horrible scaling and I hated random Oblivion gates. Skyrim had a great world to explore but didn't like simplification. ESO continuation of trend from Skyrim… HUGE world, very simplified, MMO :thumbsdown:
So order: Morrowind>Skyrim>Oblivion>ESO>Daggerfall

I like how different people have different preferences, just goes to show how Bethesda has evolved over the past 20 years. I think with Morrowind, they struck the right balance. With a couple of mods (especially the Fast Run mod), it becomes a reasonably good experience even after 20 years, which is something I can't say about a lot of games of that time. As far as Skyrim's world building is concerned, I did like it. Unlike in the case of Oblivion, different cities in Skyrim definitely had unique flavor. Solitude, Riften, Whiterun, Morthal, Winterhold, Windhelm had different things going on for them like thieves in the sewers, fight with the Forsworn (natives of the Reach), fight amongst different clans, racial segregation etc. Maybe not as good as Vivec, Balmora and Ald-Ruhn, but definitely interesting.

I'd be very interested in hearing which games from the past 20 years you're referencing here…

@lackblogger All 3 Troika games. VTMB on GOG still ships with community made fixes if I am not wrong. Gothic's another example, terrible control scheme as I previously mentioned.

well those games were regarded as either clunky or buggy upon release, that's not a matter of not aging well, that's a matter of them having always been like that. The people who could cope with those issues back then will still be the same kind of people who can cope with those kind of issues today.

Also, apart from the first two Gothics in European provinces, most of those games weren't what the majority of people were playing back then, so referencing those games as "a lot of games of that time" is a bit of a stretch.

@lackblogger I was referring to RPGs in general. There are games like Ocarina of Time with which I can still have a blast, in its original state. And yeah games like Gothic were designed like that, so now they are difficult to get into, but I think experienced players at that time didn't have much problems getting into them. As far as Morrowind is concerned, if you can play Skyrim, you can play Morrowind. Not a lot of things have changed since then.

I don't think experienced players of today would have a problem getting into them? The reason less modern players probably try Gothic is because the brand died out so there's no new game to attract new players who will then back-track, whereas Bethesda has kept The Elder Scrolls alive so new players have something to buy and then back-track into.

And yes, I would say "a lot of games" from that era have aged very well and are still eminently playable to new players and experienced players alike and that you're only cherry picking a few easy pickings to make an overbloated faux-factual statement about a game you're a devoted fanboy of?

See how good Classic Fallout has aged, its developers don't seem to struggle with the game they themselves designed, at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dajGzCKRYw
I am cherry picking a few easy pickings? That's your argument? You sound like this:
[removed]

Oh dear :(

Looks like I've walked into an argument this guy's been having with other people on other forums :(

FYI, the original Fallout is well over 20 years old and would be comparable in age to Daggerfall not Morrowind, and, yeah, not so many new fans of Daggerfall either my good friend ;)

A difference of 4 years. Arcanum came in 2001 and its the spiritual successor to Classic Fallout. Not huge technological advancements were made by Troika, I am afraid. If you can compare Arcanum to Morrowind, you can surely compare Fallout to it. And no I haven't argued much about how games have aged over the past few years, but I do sometimes think about it. ;)

Why are you still referring to Arcanum as a "Lots of games of that era" example? No-one outside of specialist forums has likely ever even heard of it…

I mentioned 5 RPGS of that era (Fallout, VTMB, Arcanum, Gothic, ToEE). I only mentioned Arcanum for the second time because of your Fallout argument. These are the games I am familiar with and mechanically I don't think these aged well. You can play Ultima VII, have a blast. You can play Jagged Alliance 2, have fun. After all this time, some games feel just right, some don't. Maybe its just personal preference. I'm done with this debate. Have a nice day. :faint:

Yeah, we are not going to do this. I detected some words in that YT video that are not allowed in black and white on this site, don’t know if you really think those words apply to lackblogger as well, don’t care, and no I did not watched the entire 5 minutes. I have got better things to do.
You say whatever you want to say about how according to you lackblogger is sounding in your own words, but I am not going to allow a trend where people refer to videos to say how people are sounding. Next thing I know moderation has to check hours of video to see whether the content is in line with the TOS.

Fair enough

Sorry if you've posted some weirdness before this post, but rather than edit my previous post I'll make a new one that will probably be relevant to your reply anyway if you did reply:

Let me just pop over to Metacritic and find out what people were playing "lots of" in the general RPG-sphere in 2002 when Morrowind came out:

Ooop, top of the tree looks like Warcarft III, I think there's still lots of people who play that one. In fact this game was the headline news game just this year across the entire gaming world.

Next up is… hmmm… oh yes, Neverwinter Nights, a game that's been relevant and played by many for each and every year since it was made.

Maybe Morrowind will be next? Oop, no, it's Freedom Force. I'm afraid I don't know much about that and it's current playable state as I've never tried it.

Ah, now we get to Morrowind, ah well, nearly at the top, always the bridesmaid, never the bride, eh.

Dungeon Siege is next on the list. Again, one I've never played but I haven't heard that it's unplayable from people who've said they've replayed it recently.

Age of Wonders II, not really RPG, but in the ballpark and is one of those genre benders that gets talked about a lot round here. Yes, I played this one this decade and I believe it's a good seller on GoG and new AoW games are a still a prominent feature of the gaming world.

Icewind Dale 2. Apparently this struggles on Windows 10, though I've never tried so can't confirm, but is known to be a bestseller on GoG. This one could well die due to software incompatability, but not because people don't want to play it or because the game is difficult to play generally.

Divine Divinity. Well, I'm sure there must be people still digging into this, what with Divinity being such a big current name.

Arx Fatalis. Yeah, probably not so many people playing this one, I don't know, not really a 'big brand' so…

Heroes of Might and Magic IV, yup, same as Age of Wonders.

Might and Magic IX, right at the bottom of the list now, moving into the red 'shitty' games. Yeah, not sure I'd say this was ever 'playable'. Nor played really.

Shall we do the other years?

I think it's subjective. I find Troika games infinitely more playable today than Morrowind. And Morrowind is one of my top 3 games and my favorite from the TES series. Yes, Troika games have the reputation of being buggy and unfinished, but as far as mechanics go, they aged well in my opinion. You criticize them for being shipped with community patches on GOG, yet need mods to have a "reasonably good experience" with Morrowind. Some other games from that period that I think aged better than Morrowind are Fallout 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights, Gothic 1 and 2, Diablo 2, and that's just RPGs. I still regularly play Half Life and Counter Strike 1.6, and other non-RPG games that aged better than Morrowind are Quake 3, Red Alert 1 and 2, C&C Generals, Warcraft 3, Warlords Battlecry series, Civilization 3… I can go on.