Okay, let me apologize for what may seem to be a particularly long and talkative reply to something that should probably take only a few sentences, at most. Morrowind was actually the first real game I played. Hell, it was, and remains to this day, my mother's favorite game, and she remains the woman who refuses to allow any type of game console in the house aside from the computer (which is now a mac). Admittedly, when I first played Morrowind, me and my brother had fun cheating through the game, but I went back to it a few months later and decided to try it without the little aid of cheating assistance. What I found was actually a much more enriching experience. I'm going to try to break this down into separate topics to make this easier to understand (and for me to write as well.)
Morrowind was not a game I played for the combat. It was, and remains to this day, the one complaint I have with the game. Not because of a lack of variety. The combat had more variety than almost any other game out there. There are spears, pole arms, bows and arrows, throwing stars (more games need these, honestly), throwing knives, swords, axes, hammers, knives, short swords, and I'm certain that there are things that I've left off this list, as I haven't even begun to go into the amount of various magical options there were when it came to combat. Combat was the one thing that actually frustrated me. This wasn't all the time, trust me. There were times when fighting an enemy felt almost natural as I swung and hit. Then there were the times (oh, so many times...) that I found myself fighting a cliff racer, swinging wildly at the wildly cawing beast (that sound was the bane of any intrepid Vvardenfell adventurer). In Oblivion, the combat was only better because you hit what you were aiming at. The ability you had in the weapon still contributed to the damage, but at least not the hit chance anymore. What was lost, though, was the variety. Many of the weapons were lost, and what we got in return felt more like standard fantasy RPG combat than the cocktail of various combat styles that had been Morrowind's tantalizing arsenal.
The bread and butter of Morrowind was it's lore. I feel that most of the people who put it down after a short period of playing were unaware of the amount of time that went into designing that game's lore, its universe. For an example of what I mean, take a look at the books section of the Morrowind wiki ([link]http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Books[/link]). Try reading some of the documents, and just think about the amount of time that had to be placed into every inch of the game's world. Morrowind was not a utopian world. There were troubles, there were dangers. Slavery still ran rampant across the island (and yes, there was a portion where you could buy one). The dark elves that called the island home were being forced away from their homeland, pressed out by the oppressive imperials and their legion. What we had when we stepped into Morrowind was a world vastly different from our own, affected by the whim of gods both tangible and elusive. The main character in this world felt much as any other person would have. They (we) felt lost at our first steps, a freshly released prisoner with little or no ability to comprehend the vast continent of Vvardenfell. To do so, we had to talk to the NPCs within the game, those characters who told us things about the world. They pointed us to the world's travel systems, the silt striders or the teleporting mages in the Mages Guilds (there were also ships, but those were one of the least used). They told us about the troubles in the north, if we had the Bloodmoon expansion. We had to find our way without our hand being held and it was actually different.
Then came Oblivion. I have always labeled Oblivion as a 'console' game. Yes, Morrowind came out on the Xbox, but at its heart, it has always been a game for computers. The simplification built into Oblivion changed it, and for many people, this change was not for the better. Oblivion had a fast travel system, but different from Morrowind's fast travel system, which was built into the game's lore and world, it was part of the menu system, which set it aside from the gameplay and made it feel segregated and apart. It encouraged people to simply use it rather than explore the world. Morrowind, you had to travel through the world in order to complete almost all of the quests. Sure, the journal wasn't the most organized system for tracking quests, but it felt more...real than the system that Oblivion had. I feel like a nit picker here, but the Oblivion quest pointers always made it a little annoying for me when compared to the Morrowind 'ask for directions' method. It forced players to interact with the world instead of skipping around it like some sort of teleporting god that could flit from place to place and ignore the distractions along the way. On the way to any Morrowind destination, you were almost bound to run into some dungeon or another, and often felt compelled to duck into it simply to see what loot or monsters there were. Admittedly, this was sometimes because you forgot the name of the dungeon you were looking for, but that could be overlooked.
Now the setting. This may sound like a repetition of many other arguments, but Morrowind was different. Certainly, some of the most generic fantasy enemies were there, such as skeletons, but the other monsters were different. From beasts, such as Nix Hounds and Cliff Racers, to daedra, the Atronachs and other summonable creatures. From the Dwemer creations to the ash creatures to the various species of Kwama colonies, each one of them was radically different, and remains so, from the creatures in any other game to date. The races, Dunmer, Dwemer, Bosmer, Khajitt, and Argonian, as well as the various sects of humanity, drew from a culture largely their own. Admittedly, Nords were Nordic, but certain concessions could be drawn for that. (For those of you wondering why Dwemer was included there, despite not being one of the playable races, there was one in the game, the last surviving member of his kind, and yes, you could kill him if you wanted to be a dick...extinction ftw.). When we drag this to Oblivion, the culture and the history of the various races seems to have been almost forgotten. They live together, they talk together, and they completely forget about the various tensions between them. Yes, Oblivion does have a deep and varied history, but there is almost no incentive in game to delve into that history. The ruins and temples around the landscape were simply that, and we didn't really wonder why all of the Akaviri and the Aleid were gone. Much of the developers' creativity was therefore lost, as players ignored the history they had built into their world. In Morrowind, the main quest was intricately tied to the history of the world. If you don't know who the Nerevarine is, I won't really place any spoilers here, but Nerevar is a powerful name in Morrowind's past, as he is one of the gods, one of the lost deities. Very few of them remain, among them being Vivec (also a part of the main quest), and Almalexia (part of the tribunal expansion) remain within the world.
Drawing off of the setting, we have the world. Tamriel is, for lack of a better description, a fantasy cliché. Trees, forests, and castle-like towns. Vvardenfell is completely and utterly different. We have trees that look like giant mushrooms, ash deserts were ghouls and corprus monsters roam, and a city made out of a giant crab shell. (god, I loved just looking at that). The nomad tribes that have camps placed around the island serve as reminders of the history that the Dunmer race remembers. Ancient daedric and dwemer ruins litter the landscape, lending a taste to the history in the tomes and lore of the world.
Finally, and not because I'm out of discussion, but because my hands are starting to hurt from typing so much in fifteen minutes, we have the factions. In Oblivion, each one of the various factions feels so different and apart from each other that you simply skip from one to the other without ramifications. In Oblivion, the factions actually have interactions with each other. For example, the thieves guild and the fighters guild are in a continuing feud, which can, by the players actions, either be intensified or laid aside. Yes, it is possible, through some very very careful timing, rise to the top of both of them, but along most tracks, one must choose between one or the other. The Morag Tong, the Mages Guild, and all of the various houses are usually interwoven and connected in various ways, and it is usually difficult to play in more than one because of the different requirements for each of them. In oblivion, one can fight their way through the mages guild, fight their way through most of the thieves guild, fight their way through the fighters guild, and then fight through the dark brotherhood for fun. Sure, some sections require more finesse, such as some portions of the thieves guild, but it rarely requires any significant experience in the skills attributed to whatever guild you're playing through at the time.
I'm not going to say anything else here, and I realize that several arguments above seem one sided because of the short amount of time I put into this, but I hope that this represents my beliefs adequately enough to be put up here.
-Izzy
The Artist Who Paints With Words
I kid
