Not sure I do, but I'm no classic roleplayer, so, for starters, the notion of "dungeon" is a bit fuzzy to me. I take it it's the roleplayers word for "indoors" ? Like "stuff with rooms and corridors" ?

Morrowind had lots of caves. They all felt as samey and different as caves do. They felt natural to me. It also had citadels, with a common architecture type, because it's the same area. And they're as samey and different as expected. Them it had these mushroom towers, and, well, again...

It all simply felt coherent to me. Are you implying it should have been a bit more "all over the place", stylistically ? I understand that problem for space operas, but for a tiny fantasy area that you cross on foot, my expectations are not the same. I'm not bothered by Stalker's buildings and tunnels either.

Yea, I know exactly what you mean. When they bother designing a dungeon it's great, but otherwise too cookie cutter.

Daggerfall is exceptionally guilty of that.

At least Daggerfall makes up for it by making the dungeons large and sprawling. Seriously the first 2 Elder Scrolls games practically are the true sequals to Ultima Underworld.

So anyway is there any "3D" RPGs here on GOG where they have unique dungeons?

Divinity 2?
Two Worlds?
Risen?
Gothic?

I agree with you,take Baldur's Gate,Zelda,Etrian Odyssey and most MMOs(WoW,EQ,Rift). They have great dungeons designs and several of them are memorable like Icecrown Citadel or the infamous Water Temple. I can understand Daggerfall since it's randomly generated but on Oblivion and Skyrim,it's just reeks of lazyness.

It's because of the modular nature of TES worldbuilding, i.e. they use a set of pre-constructed rooms with different shapes and then combine them together. The problem is that the assets used are too few and too similar, and no matter how skilled you are at combining them, after a while it's hard to escape the "seen one, seen all" feeling.

For a good game with unique dungeons (or at least not so repetitive) try Gothic 1-2 or Risen. Piranha Bytes have their fair share of game design issues, but I don't think anyone can question their skill at worldbuilding.

Music also helps. I love it in World of Warcraft and Zelda that each dungeon has a unique music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWhkTlLyYR8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fV17aNKHXw Say what you will about Ultima IX at least that game gave us unique dungeons that do not feel repetitive.

Does Divinity 2 also have unique dungeons?

Elder Scrolls are engines, you need to build the game yourself from either the tools or mods :o)

IceCrown Citatel has one of the best tracks of the game. Have to agree with you but it will be great,as elmo said,for BethSoft to spend money on 10 to 20 well crafted memorable dungeons to just having 100 cookie cutter ones.

Yeah, an RPG dungeon is kind of everything indoors, unless it is the home of friendly characters, and unless these friendly characters have their home in a vast and labyrinthine indoor/underground area, in which case it would qualify as dungeon als well ... or something like this.

I agree with you that it is totally ok for dungeons to look very similar if they are all in the same area of the game world and therefore would use the same/a similar architecture, like the ancestor tombs in Morrowind for example. Still, running through Morrowind’s dungeons, one will notice that the same modules are used over and over again, only with some details like smaler rocks or wooden platforms placed differently. The rectangular design of the dungeons, even in the natural caves, makes this very clear.

The best way to counter this problem, without having to create a completely new look for every dungeon, is to give every dungeon one unique set piece that makes it distinctive from every other dungeon. Some of the Morrowind dungeons have this, like the shrines in form of a huge statue or some central rooms within the dungeon that have a very unique look to them even though they use the same assets, but placed cleverly. And I think that they did a great job in the Tribunal addon for Morrowind, where they did exactly this und which therefore has some of the best game dungeons I have every seen (with a few exceptions of course).

Honestly, I've been in a lot of caves in real life (Petralona Cave, Aggitis Cave, Alistratis Cave) and they all look the same to me. I'm not talking about the shape or how big are the corridors or even bigger differences like an underwater river like in Aggitis Cave, but from what material the walls are made. It's the same since they all exist in the same geographical area in Northern Greece.

When I played Oblivion (for example), I wasn't expecting any differences to the dungeons to be honest, for the same reasons I wasn't expected to see something completely different in real life caves!

I have been inside a cave here in Puerto Rico aswell......it was increadibly muddy and wet inside :P

In general, the humidity inside caves (at least the underground ones) is very high and sometimes reach nearly 100%. That alone makes the soil turn to mud, unless the cave is a tourist attraction and a pavement has been built, so visitors can walk inside without getting dirty.

Below you can see 3 photos I found on the web that shows 3 different caves, that as I said above, they look nearly the same. :-)

Oh, and the real problem in Oblivion for me, wasn't the caves or whatever rather than the damned level scaling in everything. :-)

Yeah, I.... noticed.

Seriously, I played with a version of Morrowind where half the caves were filled with water and drowned bandits. I'm not completely certain it was intended.

I advised to check on Might and Magic VI in similar thread some time ago :) It had big influence on MMOs of following years, you will understand when you'll play it. It even has spells like Heroism (with quite similar sound to that one in WoW).