Was Morrowind really the best?

[Childe]

Visually and combatwise i think Skyrim is better. However as an rpg and for story i think morrowind is better. I've played all three-Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim- and while i've played skyrim the most i think i enjoyed morrowind the most. I'm really excited that there is a group of people working on bringing Morrowind up the the visual level of Skyrim.

Edit: Thinking about it, Morrowind was a lot harder then Skyrim is, which, in my opinion, makes it better. I remember dying so many times, and the real danger of dying gave the game a real adventure feel. That was lost in Skyrim, as long as you weren't beserker reckless you wouldn't really die.

Morrowind was a lot more rigid then Skyrim. It seems harder when you are a low level character stumbling into areas and quests that are beyond you, but once you get to a high level nothing can challenge you. And you can only avoid finding a massively OP trick through serious effort.

Skyrim has the best balance of any Elder Scrolls game i have played (the big 3, Morrowind Oblivion and Skyrim). Which is really saying something, because Skyrim is very very far from being well balanced.

That to me is another bonus for Morrowind. As the adventurer gets more experience, he learns more and better ways to cope withe enemies and circumstances (i.e. silver weapons for werewolves, variety of spells etc.). That's why the novice adventure has a difficult time whereas the experienced adventurer has an easier time. While Skyrim's enemy scaling does allow for continued playing of one character, it just doesn't feel like an adventure game. And even with the level scaling you still can blow away enemies once you hit a certain point.

 

[Evonisia]

Morrowind is pretty much the definition of "It was great, dot dot dot".

Played it before Oblivion, before Skyrim and honestly I didn't like it. Its world is fantastic even with the dated graphics, but the combat is just bad and needs mods to make it playable. Now one can say that the combat in TES doesn't matter much which would be true, but at least in Oblivion and Skyrim it was (mostly) easy to get through what you need to do.

Still miles ahead of Skyrim though, imo.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I still play vanilla morrowind, and i still think its better than Skyrim and Oblivion. Granted it has its problems but none of them are that big a deal. I can look past all those to the great and varied game world within. Still got the original copy from the XBox - which was the game that made me buy that console.

 

[Elfgore]

I don't think so personally, but I have some pretty high powered nostalgia goggles for Oblivion. I'll agree that morrowind has the most and best content of the series and the most unique world design. But it isn't friendly at all to people who started at Oblivion. Ulgly graphics, text based dialogue, no fast travel, and no map markers really turn away newer fans. Since Oblivion made the series much more user friendly I think it is the best.

 

[Madame_Lawliet]

I've only ever played Vanilla Morrowind, I didn't get very far though, and I don't actually have my original disk anymore (physical release Morrowind had this dumb-ass DRM that meant you had to have the disk in your drive to actually play the damn thing, regardless of whether it was installed or not), so I'm pretty under-qualified to talk about it at length.

However I have played a significant amount of Skyrim, and a comparable amount of Oblivion, and I think Skyrim trounces all over Oblivion in practically every respect.
Oblivion is a game of which I am not a fan, infact I think it's not just the weakest in the TES series, but one of the most overrated games of the last generation (Oblivion was my "game I hate that everyone else loves" before Bioshock Infinite came along).

Oblivion's combat is a mess, the loot scaling is arcane and creates situations where standard enemies are wearing Daedric armor for no damned reason, the dungeons all look the same, the aesthetic is bland and uninteresting (it forewent the weird and unique setting of Morrowind in favor of a generic fantasy world), and I just generally do not like playing that game vanilla. Modding DOES help matters, but no amount of caramel can make an apple taste good if it's rotten at the core.

Skyrim on the other hand I like quite a bit, most of my major problems with Oblivion were either addressed or reworked to make them atlest tolerable, the leveling happened much faster and the combat was greatly improved. Yeah the quests were a bit "follow the arrow-y" but no more-so then Oblivion, and the vastly more visually interesting world made up for it somewhat. Plus I never liked the class system, It just arbitrarily limits what I can do with a character before I even have a chance to play around with each class' mechanics to decide which ones I like using the best. Doing away with the class system was a great decision as far as I see it, atleast in my opinion.

So as of right now, I'd probably say the Skyrim is the best for ME, but mind you I havn't played enough of Morrowind to have what I'd consider a well formulated opinion on it. I think it depends largely on what your personal preferences are and just how much age in a game's mechanics you're willing to put up with, as well as your personal level of affinity for mods.

 

[AntiChri5]

Visually and combatwise i think Skyrim is better. However as an rpg and for story i think morrowind is better. I've played all three-Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim- and while i've played skyrim the most i think i enjoyed morrowind the most. I'm really excited that there is a group of people working on bringing Morrowind up the the visual level of Skyrim.

Edit: Thinking about it, Morrowind was a lot harder then Skyrim is, which, in my opinion, makes it better. I remember dying so many times, and the real danger of dying gave the game a real adventure feel. That was lost in Skyrim, as long as you weren't beserker reckless you wouldn't really die.

Morrowind was a lot more rigid then Skyrim. It seems harder when you are a low level character stumbling into areas and quests that are beyond you, but once you get to a high level nothing can challenge you. And you can only avoid finding a massively OP trick through serious effort.

Skyrim has the best balance of any Elder Scrolls game i have played (the big 3, Morrowind Oblivion and Skyrim). Which is really saying something, because Skyrim is very very far from being well balanced.

That to me is another bonus for Morrowind. As the adventurer gets more experience, he learns more and better ways to cope withe enemies and circumstances (i.e. silver weapons for werewolves, variety of spells etc.). That's why the novice adventure has a difficult time whereas the experienced adventurer has an easier time. While Skyrim's enemy scaling does allow for continued playing of one character, it just doesn't feel like an adventure game. And even with the level scaling you still can blow away enemies once you hit a certain point.

It makes sense, sure, but it also makes for a fucking boring game.

For me, Skyrim's level scaling makes it feel more like an adventure. Constantly encountering new challenges, overcoming them and growing by doing so, even returning to a previously cleared area to find it filled with more powerful enemies. I know it's a games mechanic, and a pretty silly one when viewed from most angles, but i think it is for the best. I don't know of any system that is better at keeping enemies relevant while not punishing the player needlessly for exploration.

And yeah you still get OP in Skyrim. It's as unavoidable as in Morrowind. But it takes longer and feels more worthwhile.

 

[Godhead]

I would have loved Skyrim so much more if they didn't have that goddamned quest marker every damn place.

Spoiler

Also, bring back hand-to-hand.

 

[vIRL Nightmare]

Combat mechanics were a bit funky, it had a few issues to be expected with a pioneer in the genre that sadly became what I like to call PseudoRPG but in terms of story, music, world exploration, it's kind of weird combat system, and most importantly your interactions in the game with the NPCs and their ultimate consequences makes it far better than most PseudoRPGs today, and certainly is at least worth it's hype.

One of the biggest examples I can provide is the consequences. Today it is perfectly acceptable for one character to be able to do anything. You can have a 5 foot wood elf wear full plate mail swinging the heaviest warhammer created while slinging spells and successfully somersault sneaking past all, pillaging their pockets and lives with out being detected. All of this, with one character. This, I like to call the PseudoRPG. In Morrowind Your race mattered, as did your class. You were punished, you were wrong, if you tried to make an elf barbarian or an Orc Thief. Also if you joined a faction in the game this affected the NPCs disposition towards you, some would like you, some would hate you, and joining some organizations would bar you from joining others. You see, Morrowind was the definition of a Role Playing Game, and because of the fact that your race determined which classes you could choose from, and your gear, and your actions, and the factions you joined affecting NPCs you had to role play your character, creating a far greater immersion factor than any game, including Skyrim has done. I will say Oblivion also achieved this, the landscape just wasn't as impressive as Morrowind or Skyrim it did however fix the awkward dice roll to hit system in morrowind by simply saying if you are a foot from the enemy your metal beat stick is going to hit them.

If you want to play a RPG, an actual RPG then there is no better game than Morrowind and I highly suggest you download either the Morroblivion mod, or the Skywind mod if that is done just so you can experience it on a newer game engine, and not have to deal with those god damned dice roll hit chances.

 

[OpticalJunction]

I played morrowind after oblivion, and before skyrim. It's a good game, it has a much more RPG feel to it compared to the later games, and the map is truly unique. However the gameplay is well, terrible, and I can't stomach going back to it now. Oblivion modded is much better in my opinion, and skyrim on its own is just as good.

 

[Tanis]

I think it depends on what you're after.

Morrowind made me feel like I was entering an alien world.
-Even though I had played the previous games in the series.
There were times when I felt lost, because I wandered too much, but was always able to come back.
Plus the map was just so...big.
So many places to go, people to see, crabs to sell my crap to.
Even the endings to the various guilds made me feel like I'd actually ACCOMPLISHED something.
It's just a shame the combat, like most TES games, isn't that great.

Oblivion was, well, not very good except for some of the main quests.
-Though, in all honesty, I don't think it deserves the hate it gets.
See, I actually PREFERRED it's leveling system, the whole 'use it to level up' thing.
My main issue is how fucked over PS3 owners got (seriously, the '5 Year/GOTY' editions were BOTH missing vasts amount of DLC!).
Plus the game's graphical style was...off putting...to say the least.
Too much 'shinny' and the faces...oi, those faces.

Skyrim, for me, is probably the best game out of the WHOLE series...technically.
-Meaning, I still have a hell of a soft spot for TES3:M, but I can see past my rose colored glasses to and see TES5's greatness.
Skyrim's graphical style fit the world, and the story, that it was trying to tell.
It's game play was very much improved from previous entries into the series, even if 'Shouts' ended up feeling mostly worthless, magic got screwed over, and the zodiac thing wasn't very 'cool'.
I still loved the Norse themes, some of the locations are just...amazing.

Perhaps the worst part of Skyrim is, again, how the developers pretty much ABANDONED it.
The DLC/expansions packs weren't NEARLY as good as TES3 or TES4.
This is a shame, because I felt like so much more COULD have been done.

Plus the main story line sucked.
Having The Blades totally ignore you if you don't kill a dragon, and having to choose either a weak Empire or a racist Kingdom didn't sit well with me.
I wouldn't have minded a story line where you destroy them both and become ruler.
-Which is what those of dragon's blood SHOULD become!

 

[Signa]

For me, I'm sure that it was. Putting aside all its weaknesses, the game just feels more like a hand-crafted world instead of something that was manufactured to be sold to customers, which is something most games can't brag about. There is some intangible qualities in the game that you only see in games that the devs cared for as they made it.

 

[TristanBelmont]

Morrowind had what may be the absolute worst combat system in the entire history of gaming. In Skyrim you could shout people to death.
Methinks the true winner is clear.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

For me Morrowind is the best just because it's the only one in the series I can say I genuinely like. Arena and Daggerfall are too archaic (although I do want to give Daggerfall a real go one of these days, Arena not so much) and Oblivion is just trash. Skyrim is kind of borderline for me. It has some aspects I really like (level 3 unrelenting force is so much fun to use) but overall I find it kind of bland. If I had played any other game in the series first I probably would've never bothered giving the rest of the games a go.

 

[RealRT]

None of the Elder Scrolls games are really the best, Morrowind is simply the one whose weaknesses are overlooked either because of nostalgia or the assumption that that was the way it was back in the day. In truth, it's no better or worse than Oblivion or Skyrim. All three are fine games and all three are different. Which is a good thing.
Oblivion I think is unfairly maligned for "trading the alien new setting in for the generic fantasy", never mind that Arena and Daggerfall had the EXACT SAME BRAND of generic fantasy as Oblivion and Oblivion was the return to roots. Also, Shivering Isles. The magic was an improvement upon Morrowind (no magicka regen and mana potions are rarer than Adamantium Armor? What?), combat system was a big improvement over Morrowind, the quest log was a vast improvement and the dialog system wasn't just a bunch of walls of boring text with hyperlinks and the character doesn't move slower than a snail on sleeping pills. Oblvion is overall more user friendly and user friendly is good because if the interface takes time to understand, it's not a good interface.
Skyrim, while improving upon Oblivion's story and combat, just wasn't my cup of tea. Perfectly fine good game, but not my thing.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

My favorite thing about Morrowind was the lack of fast travel. Some people criticize it as being needless padding to draw-out the game time, but to me it just added to the atmosphere of the game. At no point could I rest comfortable in the knowledge that I can just open-up a map menu to travel to a city where I can rest. Nay, I had to walk. At best I could take the striders (or whatever they were called), but even then I had to walk TO the attendant; and not every city was located on a route. Some people call it tedious, I call it engaging. Getting into town after exploring a dungeon has whole new meaning when you know that it isn't just a menu away upon hitting the over-world.

At any rate, I think a lot of has to do with the fact that most people prefer the first Elderscrolls game they got into, and a LOT of people's first Elderscrolls was Morrowind. That said though, my first and favorite Elderscrolls game is Daggerfall. What it lacks in graphical capability, it makes-up for with an awesome campaign, and the most open-ended game world in the series. It's only drawback is that the game didn't really get a chance to utilize some of the mechanics that were built into it (there's little point to learn the different languages, and the etiquette system is pretty useless as well), leading to some abilities that were little more than clutter on the stat screen.

 

[SajuukKhar]

No, Morrowind wasn't the best, mechanically, if anything, it was one of the worst, only surpassed by Oblivion in being bad.

It was an action-adventure game with RPG elements that tried far to hard to be an RPG, despite that being contradictory to the action-adventure aspect, which resulting in massive headaches that caused no end of frustration to large amounts of players due to stuff like dice-roll hit chances in a first person game.

Its attribute stat deriving formulas were garbage, the +1/3/5 upgrade system forced railroad character development, the NPCs were nothing more then walking help desks with the EXACT same 50 copy-pastad dialog options, the only hting it did really well was the lore, which it kinda needed to do because it rebooted the series from generic D&D garbage of Arena/Daggerfall into quasi-hindu wheel dream metaphysics the series currently has now.

 

[Souplex]

My understanding is that Morrowind is a good RPG, but a terrible action-RPG.
Make of that what you will.

 

[Arkynomicon]

Morrowind is fantastic from a lore perspective, you can customize your character in a lot of ways, it actually depends on your own ability to orientate instead of holding your hand, it has a more organic dialogue system than the descendant games that hit too many uncanny valley spots, your advancement in the factions actually demand that your character has competence in the operation of the organisations and the dark elf society in the game is very convincing.

The game is in general very thoughtful and consistent despite its technical limitations.

Morrowind is also a lot easier to mod than Oblivion and Skyrim.

 

[Vivi22]

Full disclosure, I have never played Morrowind. I have watched many lets-plays & read deep into the lore through wikis but I have never personally played the game.

Now assuming you still give a crap about my opinion:

Since the release of Skyrim many years ago, I have heard people say that they prefer Morrowind and that it was the best the series ever got. However, I notice that everyone who makes this claim 1)played Morrowind when they were younger and 2)heavily modded it or have since used mods during replays. I've never met someone who played Skyrim first, then played Morrowind (vanilla) for the first time and concluded that Morrowind was better.

I'm not saying that Morrowind wasn't a good game; just was there's a giant, pulsating asterisk next to it.

I played Oblivion first, then got Morrowind years later as well and played Skyrim a while after that. I would argue that with the exception of a few archaic game mechanics by today's standards (mostly to do with the combat), Morrowind was the better game compared to the two that followed. It had a more interesting world, the writing was better, it didn't hold your hand by spoon feeding where to find every single thing all of the time when doing quests, it didn't require playing a game with a handful of voice actors doing shitty voice work for hundreds of characters, and was just more interesting and enjoyable all around.

In fact, speaking of the writing, there's a much greater feel of Morrowind having an actual culture than the other games. Racism runs rampant, people will treat you differently based on what race you are. To a greater extent than games like Skyrim where you might get a comment as you're passing by but as soon as you talk to someone they're as friendly as anyone else. Somewhere along the lines Bethesda just stopped bothering to create a more realistic and interesting world in terms of interaction with characters, and I largely blame the fact that they're now paying people to read and record thousands of lines of dialogue.

If Morrowind were to be remade today and the only thing that changed was it got a graphical upgrade and better combat, it'd be the perfect Elder Scrolls game as far as I'm concerned. Shame that will never happen.

 

[thatonedude11]

Since the release of Skyrim many years ago, I have heard people say that they prefer Morrowind and that it was the best the series ever got. However, I notice that everyone who makes this claim 1)played Morrowind when they were younger and 2)heavily modded it or have since used mods during replays. I've never met someone who played Skyrim first, then played Morrowind (vanilla) for the first time and concluded that Morrowind was better.

In fairness, just because someone modded Morrowind doesn't mean they're playing a fundamentally different game. Some of the most popular mods (MGE, Morrowind Code Patch, Unofficial Morrowind Patch) mostly just fix bugs or add quality of life improvements. Sure, some people like playing with mods that add new content or drastically change the way the game works, but that is by no means everyone.

OT: I feel Morrowind is the best Elder Scrolls game (at least, best modern Elder Scrolls game) because I feel with Oblivion Bethesda made a lot of changes without really considering how they impact the way the game works. I am hesitant to use the term 'dumbing down,' but I do feel these changes made the series far less interesting. For example:

Quest Markers: I'm guessing Bethesda implemented these to make their job easier, as they wouldn't have to re-record dialogue if they changed a quest around. The problem is, it turns quests into just following the arrow on your compass. Compare that to Morrowind, which had some quests that were tricky to solve, and had an overall more organic feel to the quest system. It may be more convenient in Skyrim, but it isn't as interesting.

Compass: I don't have a problem with the compass itself, but I do have a problem with the compass pointing out every notable thing in the vicinity. Bethesda probably thought that now players won't miss any of the stuff they worked so hard on, but it ruins the sense of discovery. Morrowind had some deviously hidden secrets that you could pass by a hundred times without knowing it, but the secrets you did discover made you feel awesome. That feeling is lost when every damn thing is pointed out to you.

Full Voice Acting: Yes, Morrowind did have a lot of repetitive dialogue. But it also had far more unique dialog than Oblivion and Skyrim, and this really helped flesh out the world and the people within it. I can see why Bethesda didn't want people reading many paragraphs of text whenever they talked to someone, but I don't have to like the change.

Fast Travel: Bethesda likely thought that the fast travel system in Daggerfall was really continent, so let's add it to our next game. Unfortunately, it turns travel into a joke. Instead of gradually figuring out new ways to get around the world, now you just teleport to wherever you want to go. It makes the world of Oblivion and Skyrim feel much smaller than Morrowind, even thought they are actually much larger. At least they added a more Morrowind-like fast travel system into Skyrim, but the travel system is still far more boring than in Morrowind.

Invincible NPCs: In Morrowind, whenever you killed a plot-essential NPC the game would provide a little warning message stating that you probably screwed yourself over. The system wasn't perfect, but it gave players a lot of freedom to play how they want without accidentally messing things up. In Skyrim and Oblivion, important NPCs are invincible. That is stupid. Now I've heard that the reason behind this is that in early versions of Oblivion, NPCs had a tendency to get themselves killed by wolves. But how hard could it be to make important NPCs invincible to damage from every source except the player? This one is just dumb. Really, really dumb.

TLDR: Bethesda made a lot of changes in Oblivion and Skyrim that made the games easier and less interesting.