Posted December 21, 2014
Having played all of the games, here's a comprehensive idea from someone in love with Morrowind, and has put at least 200 hours in this game, and 100 in the others. Let's start backwards with the newest.
Skyrim, the way to think about it, is the game at its most simplified. Magic regenerates, stamina regenerates, and your spells can cover health. There are no requirements for spells other than the magic cost to cast it, and the gold cost to learn it. Your skills all grow and gain more power, and instead of affecting your ability in the skill, opens up special traits under each ability. Better lockpicking, spell range, magic effects, spell damage/range, conjuration length/number, weight effect on stealth. We're talking about 10 special bonuses minimum to something like 20 different stats, and it offers a lot of flexibility into your character. As far as the story: You're caught up in the middle of a Civil War when a Dragon from Eons past revives and revives more upon the world. You have a very clear and constant threat that looms over you. It can't be predicted. You simply hope it doesn't come across you at your weakest, and prepare yourself for the battles that come eventually. What makes Skyrim at it's strongest is the total construction and flexibility of your character, and creating a world that lives and breaths around you. Dragons clawing the sky, giants and mammoths in the open plains, massive spiders, bears, wildcats prowling the world, and the looming civil war threatening you with camps mounting war on one another. This is the game with in my opinion the second best world, and gives you a character that will constantly grow in ability and talent. The growth is so streamlined that it's easy to get into, but in a way that's also a major downfall. You don't have to put care into your character anymore. Hack, slash, magic, go for it. You'll learn and perfect everything without issue, but you lose some of that personality in your own character. Skyrim also may be the largest of the 3 game maps, but it feels like one of the smallest due to the waves of mountains, snow, forest and so forth limiting your travel, slowing you down, and feeling the same in many areas of the map. If you want a solid game however, this is a good starting pick.
Oblivion, I'll say outright, is the weakest of the three recent titles. It's not bad, per say, but it balances between Skyrim and Morrowind in several ways, both as an idea of progression in how they developed and planned the games, as well as being in between with design decisions, and otherwise not standing out. The combat is far more developed than in Morrowind, but is less flashy or inventive as Skyrim. The location is the dullest, a combination of a largely eastern old European feel mixed with a touch of Lord of the RIngs. There are less skills to play with than in Morrowind, so you've simplified down the detail, while at the same time keeping in strict requirements to what you can and can't do. You CAN technically jump anywhere, reach any point, but your character doesn't gain any new method to do so or improve in the ability to do so. You COULD litter the countryside with your effects, but really there isn't a whole lot carrying from place to place. Pick your armor, pick your weapon, upgrade when you need to, there's not really a whole lot reason to mess with your equipment as things don't break down and you'll be hard pressed to find any magical trinkets of worth. Also annoying is the enemy progression. Think about how in Fallout 3, where you'd start fighting RadAnts and RadRoaches, to eventually finding RadScorpions, Robots, and mutates bears all over the place in the wild. Same way, here, except your typical Fallout 3 enemy doesn't mass up into big piles of angry. Oblivion falters heavily with the story because if you ignore it, the enemies will quickly become more than you can handle in the main quest. Master of the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, AND Dark Brotherhood, one character.... And it takes me about 3 hours to successfully fight my way through the first major story event, the rescue of Martin. A character around level 20, archery so practiced I can pick off a head from 200 yards away and swordplay that can skewer any bandit with ease, doesn't help much in a battle against 10 fast, pissed off clanfears (Dinosaur looking demons) that used to be I assume Scamps (something resembling a leathery imp). What do you do? If you're like me, hide like crazy and spend the next few minutes shooting enemies in the face with a bow so long as I can keep out of range. THEN comes the evil portals. All over the place. And at a high level, all with demons who have magic and powers to obliterate you even in all your best equipment, augmented or otherwise. I've never seen more than the first 2 missions of the Story, because the remaining portals are so insanely difficult that my character is simply butter in a lake of fire. For all of that, you have a technically advanced game to Morrowind, but so mediocre and normal that it's lost the sense of charm.
Morrowind, I will say is my personal favorite. But, it comes with a caveat. The combat, difficult. Your attacks, your archery, your magic, your lockpicking, speechcraft, ALL OF IT relies on 3 things: Your level of fatigue, your skill, and random chance. If you're looking for combat at it's best, you won't find it here. That's not the reason people talk about it though. From the very moment you start, you're given a bare bones story. A prisoner born to uncertain parents, from uncertain places, traveling to the inner areas of Morrowind. You arrive by boat upon a dock, get your paperwork sorted, and from there you're given a name, a location, and a world. The end of the world isn't upon you, as far as you know. There isn't an exciting action scene. No fleeing from a dragon, no protecting a king from assassination. It's you, yourself, and a sprawling map. What's on your map? Nothing of note, yet. As you travel, you'll see marches, swampland, cities built upon mushrooms as tall as trees, ancient ruins long forgotten, adobe mud brick cities, forts, a volcano looming in the center of the island cut off by a barrier, powered by the efforts of a living, on-earth god. You'll see a city built into the chambers of a fossilized crab far larger than any creature to ever exist in our real world planet. You'll meet the living God, who stopped a meteor from crashing into the world. One you can see hovering over his city. You'll meet travelers, pilgrims, thieves, people. You'll come across ash storms, lava rivers, demons. This is a world that has been so filled with creativity and love you can't help but look in awe the first time you play, and the many times you'll come back after. The story? It builds. Danger doesn't loom over you. It grows in size and power as you advance through the world. You'll learn your place in the world. You'll explore a massive map packed with secrets, cities, forts, peoples, places, missions, and never will it feel stagnant or boring. It's regarded by many people as the best in the series for the simple fact, that so much love and care has been put into the game, and it shows. Is it more difficult than it needs to be? Yes, of course. But you gain a heavy appreciation eventually. You learn that fatigue, being tired will cause issues. And you will see improvements. You'll hit more often. You'll hit harder. Your weapons wear and fatigue less often. You'll run faster. You'll jump higher. You will be breaking locks open through the character's own skill, not your own sense of how many lockpicks you can break before you get the combination right. You'll make potions to walk on water, breath in water, levitate, swim faster, create shields and barriers, and every aspect of the game is about your character performing, and not about how well you can use the mechanics to your own advantage. By that, it's the most realistic. And there's so much to find, so much to do, that I've yet to find everything after playing the game multiple times. And the game gives you appropriate challenges. You will never fight demons in the random wild. The wildlife simply becomes more decayed and rabid. The missions and the characters don't grow with you, the challenge is there whether you want to fight fresh off the boats or grow a few levels and come back on an even playing field. That's why people today look to rebuild the game in the new engines. Not because the original is the worst, but because the original could find a new appreciation with a less random style. I'll certain play the rebuilt Morrowind whenever they finish. But until then I'll still enjoy and appreciate my copy of the 1999 Game of the Year edition game.
ShadowWulfe: Mod the hell out of Morrowind and you will love it. If you're into graffix... either mod it or go somewhere else. No big deal. No handholding. 
Zookie: Is there a list of mods that you would recommend for a first time player? There are so many mod for Morrowind I have no idea where to even start. The only totally recommended mod is a community patch mod that fixes some of the bugs and issues in the game, including script errors, grant errors and a few other things. Everything else is just to give it more detail, add content or give it improved graphics. Careful if you go with graphical upgrades though because they aren't all compatible with each other, and the top package you can get to make it as nice as a modern game takes a very good CPU to run at a reasonable framerate.
Skyrim, the way to think about it, is the game at its most simplified. Magic regenerates, stamina regenerates, and your spells can cover health. There are no requirements for spells other than the magic cost to cast it, and the gold cost to learn it. Your skills all grow and gain more power, and instead of affecting your ability in the skill, opens up special traits under each ability. Better lockpicking, spell range, magic effects, spell damage/range, conjuration length/number, weight effect on stealth. We're talking about 10 special bonuses minimum to something like 20 different stats, and it offers a lot of flexibility into your character. As far as the story: You're caught up in the middle of a Civil War when a Dragon from Eons past revives and revives more upon the world. You have a very clear and constant threat that looms over you. It can't be predicted. You simply hope it doesn't come across you at your weakest, and prepare yourself for the battles that come eventually. What makes Skyrim at it's strongest is the total construction and flexibility of your character, and creating a world that lives and breaths around you. Dragons clawing the sky, giants and mammoths in the open plains, massive spiders, bears, wildcats prowling the world, and the looming civil war threatening you with camps mounting war on one another. This is the game with in my opinion the second best world, and gives you a character that will constantly grow in ability and talent. The growth is so streamlined that it's easy to get into, but in a way that's also a major downfall. You don't have to put care into your character anymore. Hack, slash, magic, go for it. You'll learn and perfect everything without issue, but you lose some of that personality in your own character. Skyrim also may be the largest of the 3 game maps, but it feels like one of the smallest due to the waves of mountains, snow, forest and so forth limiting your travel, slowing you down, and feeling the same in many areas of the map. If you want a solid game however, this is a good starting pick.
Oblivion, I'll say outright, is the weakest of the three recent titles. It's not bad, per say, but it balances between Skyrim and Morrowind in several ways, both as an idea of progression in how they developed and planned the games, as well as being in between with design decisions, and otherwise not standing out. The combat is far more developed than in Morrowind, but is less flashy or inventive as Skyrim. The location is the dullest, a combination of a largely eastern old European feel mixed with a touch of Lord of the RIngs. There are less skills to play with than in Morrowind, so you've simplified down the detail, while at the same time keeping in strict requirements to what you can and can't do. You CAN technically jump anywhere, reach any point, but your character doesn't gain any new method to do so or improve in the ability to do so. You COULD litter the countryside with your effects, but really there isn't a whole lot carrying from place to place. Pick your armor, pick your weapon, upgrade when you need to, there's not really a whole lot reason to mess with your equipment as things don't break down and you'll be hard pressed to find any magical trinkets of worth. Also annoying is the enemy progression. Think about how in Fallout 3, where you'd start fighting RadAnts and RadRoaches, to eventually finding RadScorpions, Robots, and mutates bears all over the place in the wild. Same way, here, except your typical Fallout 3 enemy doesn't mass up into big piles of angry. Oblivion falters heavily with the story because if you ignore it, the enemies will quickly become more than you can handle in the main quest. Master of the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, AND Dark Brotherhood, one character.... And it takes me about 3 hours to successfully fight my way through the first major story event, the rescue of Martin. A character around level 20, archery so practiced I can pick off a head from 200 yards away and swordplay that can skewer any bandit with ease, doesn't help much in a battle against 10 fast, pissed off clanfears (Dinosaur looking demons) that used to be I assume Scamps (something resembling a leathery imp). What do you do? If you're like me, hide like crazy and spend the next few minutes shooting enemies in the face with a bow so long as I can keep out of range. THEN comes the evil portals. All over the place. And at a high level, all with demons who have magic and powers to obliterate you even in all your best equipment, augmented or otherwise. I've never seen more than the first 2 missions of the Story, because the remaining portals are so insanely difficult that my character is simply butter in a lake of fire. For all of that, you have a technically advanced game to Morrowind, but so mediocre and normal that it's lost the sense of charm.
Morrowind, I will say is my personal favorite. But, it comes with a caveat. The combat, difficult. Your attacks, your archery, your magic, your lockpicking, speechcraft, ALL OF IT relies on 3 things: Your level of fatigue, your skill, and random chance. If you're looking for combat at it's best, you won't find it here. That's not the reason people talk about it though. From the very moment you start, you're given a bare bones story. A prisoner born to uncertain parents, from uncertain places, traveling to the inner areas of Morrowind. You arrive by boat upon a dock, get your paperwork sorted, and from there you're given a name, a location, and a world. The end of the world isn't upon you, as far as you know. There isn't an exciting action scene. No fleeing from a dragon, no protecting a king from assassination. It's you, yourself, and a sprawling map. What's on your map? Nothing of note, yet. As you travel, you'll see marches, swampland, cities built upon mushrooms as tall as trees, ancient ruins long forgotten, adobe mud brick cities, forts, a volcano looming in the center of the island cut off by a barrier, powered by the efforts of a living, on-earth god. You'll see a city built into the chambers of a fossilized crab far larger than any creature to ever exist in our real world planet. You'll meet the living God, who stopped a meteor from crashing into the world. One you can see hovering over his city. You'll meet travelers, pilgrims, thieves, people. You'll come across ash storms, lava rivers, demons. This is a world that has been so filled with creativity and love you can't help but look in awe the first time you play, and the many times you'll come back after. The story? It builds. Danger doesn't loom over you. It grows in size and power as you advance through the world. You'll learn your place in the world. You'll explore a massive map packed with secrets, cities, forts, peoples, places, missions, and never will it feel stagnant or boring. It's regarded by many people as the best in the series for the simple fact, that so much love and care has been put into the game, and it shows. Is it more difficult than it needs to be? Yes, of course. But you gain a heavy appreciation eventually. You learn that fatigue, being tired will cause issues. And you will see improvements. You'll hit more often. You'll hit harder. Your weapons wear and fatigue less often. You'll run faster. You'll jump higher. You will be breaking locks open through the character's own skill, not your own sense of how many lockpicks you can break before you get the combination right. You'll make potions to walk on water, breath in water, levitate, swim faster, create shields and barriers, and every aspect of the game is about your character performing, and not about how well you can use the mechanics to your own advantage. By that, it's the most realistic. And there's so much to find, so much to do, that I've yet to find everything after playing the game multiple times. And the game gives you appropriate challenges. You will never fight demons in the random wild. The wildlife simply becomes more decayed and rabid. The missions and the characters don't grow with you, the challenge is there whether you want to fight fresh off the boats or grow a few levels and come back on an even playing field. That's why people today look to rebuild the game in the new engines. Not because the original is the worst, but because the original could find a new appreciation with a less random style. I'll certain play the rebuilt Morrowind whenever they finish. But until then I'll still enjoy and appreciate my copy of the 1999 Game of the Year edition game.
Post edited December 21, 2014 by QC
