I'm not understanding your distinction between "sandbox" and "open-world". Can you explain?

+1 sheogorath88 pretty much nails it here ! well said .

I apologize. My goal wasn't to demean your OP or that your question shouldn't be asked. But, it has been asked way too many times, and no matter how you word the question, others have posted this topic before. It is just that it has been covered ad nauseam, and no true answer will ever come from it, when it is one person's perspective. ONLY YOU can decide how one game is for you by playing it and no opinion is going to be a one size fits all theme here or anywhere on the net.

There's nothing wrong with Diceroll combat when the game challenges stratigic skill but for a 1st person, real time combat game, Dice rolls are atrocious. They turn the challenge into simply a flight or fight choice, games that use dice rolls for combat that work challenge the players mind. Games like Baldur's Gate, Ultima 6 (7's neat but the combat svcks), the Gold Box Series, Geneforge, The Wizardry series. Those games used Dice rolls but they challenged the player to think and stratagize. The only active challenge in Morrowind was deciding if your character was strong enough to take on a foe. The battle rested mostly on having the stats you need be high enough, some on the planning of those stats but very little on how you fight the battle and it's both boring and frustrating at the same time. I like Morrowind, but the gameplay has major flaws that have been fixed by dropping a system that was broken at the core.

People think Morrowind and Oblivion are better because most fans, especially older ones (and I am talking about video games in general), hate change. Making video-games is a lot harder than people make it out to be. If you do not change anything because it is working, people will complain that your series is stale. If you try to change things, and you change too much or change the wrong thing, fans will complain that your series is going in the wrong direction. Game developers constantly have to make critical choices, such as taking out x so we can implement x, lower the detail in Y so we can expand on X, etc.

One example: Making the game fully voice-acted. Morrowind's text-based is what gave it a lot of its depth. But this ruins immersion. I think Skyrim's world is the most immersive in the series. People complain that there are not enough voice-actors in the game. Well, there are certainly more than there were in TES 3 and TES 4, and Bethesda has made a lot of money from this game so I hope that it the budget for TES VI will be much higher. Of course, I would rather that budget be spent on adding more content and 'depth' not world-class voice-actors. The game already has some great voice-actors like Jim Cummings A.K.A. Festus Krex, A.K.A. Winnie the Pooh and Tiggir (spelling?).

Lol.



I personally prefer Skyrim/Oblivion combat, but I also don't like seeing people trash Morrowind's combat as it it were factually broken when it in fact wasn't. Aside from the silliness of not being able to hit small starting creatures (which was more about their stats being too high), everything else was pretty much spot on despite the unanimated portions of it. Hell sometimes you don't even need an animation. I know on some enemies if I attacked with a sword and it did no damage, and a small message popped up saying "You're weapon has no effect against X's hard skin" or something along those lines (like they do with ghosts) I wouldn't mind it at all.

I actually found it quite sad because of the truth behind it.

There's a difference between arbitrarily changing and cutting game mechanics every installment and actually preventing a game series from getting stale in regards to mechanics. Again, I refer to Assassin's Creed. That style of progression should be ideal for any video game. (though with AC, the games do get easier over time, but that isn't a fault of the progression style)

Totally untrue, even when going by yours, or most other arguments in favor of Skyrim. Maybe Skyrim should be called a Role(s) Playing Game, because being able to do anything (which I can do in any action adventure game) isn't RPing for me (<--- my emphasis). Being able to be anything and level any skill I want real fast, makes any RPing feel like I am just a generic character roaming around doing chores and quests for no real reason that the game story or characteristics don't change when I do it. Some shooters offer more options than Skyrim does for RPing (Ghost Recon is one).

But see, this is me and I won't tell you that it isn't something for you, because it isn't for me.

But you can't use a phrase to mean just whatever you want. If a word can mean anything, it means nothing.

Sandbox basically means allowing the player to do what they want with no set way of playing the game, while open-world refers more to the environment itself.

While it's technically accurate to call both Morrowind and Skyrim open-world or sandbox games, I tend to use the former more in reference to Morrowind, and the latter more in reference to Skyrim. The reason for that is Morrowind tries a lot harder to create a believeable and immersive world. You don't get all the crap like markers and excessive fast-travel (features which completely undermine open-world games in my opinion), so instead of just feeling like a game with a pretty world to mess around in like Skyrim (sandbox style), it almost feels like a world sim.

That's just my opinion of course. As I said, it's technically accurate to apply both terms to both games.

There not better in totality Skyrim is far superior .

This^. One thing I liked in Oblivion for example, what that trying to use a non-enchanted weapon on a Lich or some other apparition wouldn't have any damage effect on them. That made the game fun especially when discovering that the first time and having my butt handed to me deep in an Ayleid Ruin. Now any weapon kills any apparition.

I think it's more about how much fun you had at the time you played it. I played Oblivion when it first came out on xbox 360, it was actually the whole reason I bought an xbox, just because it wasn't out on ps3 and my PC svcked balls. Even though it was on xbox with no mods or anything, I played the game for well over 500 hours and I still haven't to this day finished anywhere near all of the quests. The amount of fun I had at that time was more than playing Skyrim for the first time even though now when I compare the two, I would much rather play Skyrim.
Oh and btw, I've started playing Morrowind with the super duper graphics overhaul-super mod and I can say that it is a lot of fun. The combat is quite annoying but the amount of lore and crazy quests/ awesome places/ awesome people well and truly makes up for it!

I found M'aiq in Skyrim.... and random encounters.... and dragons

I like Skyrim but I just wish they would have added some more details that could have made the game feel more immersive.

I am not making it mean whatever I want, on the contrary, that is my argument for RPG as they're made now. If anything, what you prefer calling an RPG in Skyrim, is, IMO, reinventing an RPG to mean anything you want. "Hey, I started off as a mage but I leveled being a warrior type fast and now I am a warrior, but, then I picked 20 locks and pocket and now I am a thief/warrior/mage on my way to adding merchant to the mix as well. To me, that isn't roleplaying, that is just playing a generic character playing out an adventure because I have no effect on the world or story. I can actually do this in Ghost Recon, believe it or not (well, I cannot play a mage).

Skyrim was an amazing adventure for about 100 hours, but now it's over?

Can we get an Oblivion FCOM or Fallout FWE without having access to a character development system?

I really hope so.

I like the post that say since Skyrim is drawn better, it's better.

That will simplify things.


Oblivion and Morrowind have NPC's that interact with the player. There are more choices for the player to make regarding his play and development. There are more spells, and you can make spells. There are attributes. (One poster said who cares about NPC dialogue scripts and attributes that are merely repetitive and obstructive- paraphrase) But these things represented interaction and choices. Skyrim has less character development and fewer choices. It is an action adventure game. The NPC not only had script- they would react to events in their world and actions by the player.

If the interaction with the NPCs was flawed, it was a opportunity to improve it with Skyrim; not abandon it.

you are so right!

because to most people they were the 1st of the series they played and definitely the 1st of the action rpgs.

they arent better just people always find the 1st experiences most enjoyable then they expect too much for the next releases.
leaving themselves to be dissapointed

I wouldn't generalize older gamers, or gamers that have experience with many older games and their subsequent releases as being as such. I can name quite a few game series where I thought the ensuing releases were better games. Example, I thought Ultima IV was way better than I, II or III, but then I found VI to be my favorite all time. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines was a way better experience than was VTM Redemption for me.

Not that this thread already has enough replies, but here's why Morrowind was so brilliant, and that it did things no other Elder Scrolls game succssfully did (despite its awful combat system and the moment-to-moment gameplay feeling very gamey).

It all boils down to the fact that all the systems in the game (quest design, world design, item design, balancing, etc) were all designed to encourage the player to experience and explore the world at their own pace and on their own accord. There was very little hand-holding, which might seem bad (and in some cases and some quests it was a little too "hands off"), but it put the emphasis on the world and the deep lore/character the world had, over other facets of the gameplay. It was immersive because they way they designed everything, encouraged the player to get lost into their creation. At the same time, because the game was designed to not hold your hand through everything and give the PLAYER the power of choice in the game (versus the narrative or the quest system just using the player as a tool for linear progression), a lot of things were put in place to make the natural exploration and discovery of the world easier to get into. Including multiple ways of transportation, levitation, teleportation spells, detail quest information that pointed you in the right direction instead of just saying exactly where something was, etc.

The whole game was built from the ground up to facilitate open-world gameplay, and world exploration. Questlines were all for the most part non linear - you could choose not to do one quest for the mages guild in Balmora and instead opt to progress in the guild by taking up tasks in Ald Ruhn. As you got further into the guild, the "story" behind it becomes clearer. The mainquest started off requiring the player to actively pursue it before it fully kicked into gear, which encouraged the player to "explore" and "live" in this new world (granted this was also a fault - it took TOO long to get started).

Now Morrowind wasn't perfect. It's major faults lie simply with the fact that all it's minute-to-minute gameplay was based on really old RPG rulesets, the fact that the game was released in 2002 and therefore couldn't accomplish much when it comes to stuff like AI, etc. Due to those things, the game relies on your imagination to really work. In a way, it does work. Players who can roleplay or have the capability to put themselves in their characters shoes have a much easier time adjusting to old archaic gameplay mechanics like the combat system relying on chance dice-rolls to determine if you've hit something or not. But that's not why people like me remember Morrowind as a great game - we remember it because of the above reasons. If the next elderscrolls followed Morrowind's "mantra" for open-world gameplay design, except infused it with modern gameplay mechanics and features (bringing all the old and archiac facets of Morrowind up to par again), it would easily be one of the best elderscrolls ever made.




Compaire this to Skyrim. Skyrim on the other-hand was designed purely around questing and accomplishing as many things as possible. While nothing inherently wrong with that, it completely undermines a lot of the depth in lore, beauty in world design, etc that Skyrim has. You literally have to force yourself to "fight" against the design of the game to experience how grand the actual world of Skyrim is: no fast travel, ignoring MANY quests thrown at you, not paying attention to the compass or using quest arrows, etc. And the worst part about it is, you can't completely play like this without it becoming tedious, because all the game systems in the game were all designed to make the player perform linear questing above all else.

If you took Morrowind and boiled it down to its bare essentials, then tried to discribe it you'd probably come out with something like a "Fantasy world exploration and discovery", while Skyrim would probably sound something like "Fantasy questing and dungeon crawler". Everything in Skyrim is designed to serve the quest system, which often times isn't even well designed (radient quests) or have a good story behind them. Morrowind was the other way around - quests (and gameplay/RPG systems) were designed to serve the world system.



TL;DR: And that's why Morrowind was good. The fact that it had a lot of options when it comes to loot, skills, spells, etc has nothing to do with it, though all of those things helped substantiate the world even more. It all boiled down to the fact that Morrowind was all about the world, all about discovery, and all about its design focusing on the open world gameplay, while Skyrim and Oblivion simply used the Open World as a shell for linear questing, much like Grand Theft Auto (which isn't "true" open world either - it's psudo-open world in the sense that your only legitimate gameplay goals are to accomplish linear missions).

Morrowind is an old school RPG. Its a huge world and you are thrown into it.
Oblivion and Skyrim are Gothic2 copies. Its you, and a small world is thrown at you.


In plainer worlds in M. you have to search for quests. In S. you are being led.

Now open the door, go outside and compare which game better depicts (fictional) reality.

Yea same here I never played Morrowind I want too though I started with Oblivion loved the game one of my favorite games but Skyrim great too all the TES games were great IMO.