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.Elberik said: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.
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.