Yes you do have quests and shop in COD but how much time you spend on it? All of these quest and shopping function is made out of couple windows browsing, and that's it. Did you spend 80% game time on these window browsing rather than play the actual FPS contents? If that so, congrads, you are the 1% exceptional COD players. Did you play Skyrim 90% gaming out of 300 hours game time only doing the FPS combat stuff? if that so, thats why you never know Skyrim is an RPG.

You really need to replay it.

The system in Morrowind applies to all NPCs. I somehow managed to avoid the favor quest system in Skyrim. Even then, the changes are very limited. It is not an integrated part like in Morrowind. Morrowind didn't have a RS system, but disposition system was changing the quest progress a lot better, maybe akin to fate. It is amazing, watch some LPs and you will see the different experiences people having from the very same quests.

That's the only thing, and they messed it up somehow. A not working part of the game, also a small part. They can remove it altogether in next TES.

Cities are OK compared to Morrowind. I don't see any Vivec though, also 10 years later I want more.

@Redneckdevil, welcome to the club. You know you probably just ruined all future TES games for you?

I have to ask, when was the last time you played Morrowind? Cause it seems nostalgia is blinding you(Along with bad memory.)

I don't see how you can say redneck is playing through nostalgia colored glasses when this is his first time playing

You can spend quite a lot of time building your character, buying guns and camo's and facepaints and figuring out a good selection of perks and weapons, and you can certainly have fun customizing your emblem with the hundreds of shapes and colors available to you that all go into a little icon you can put on your gun. I know I did.

But you're right, 80% of the game was running around and shooting people. But it's no different in Skyrim. Most of the time 80% of the game is walking or fast traveling to a dungeon, running through killing everything in your way, and then making your way back to a city to turn in the quest, sell everything, and do it all over again.


I don't think anyone would call Skyrim's cities 'huge'. In fact, this is another thing Morrowind did better in my opinion. Rather than five 'cities' and a bunch of small towns with nothing interesting in them Morrowind did 1 huge city, 3-4 cities, and 4-6 large towns which had a lot of interesting stuff, not to mention a bunch of little villages of equal size but frankly more importance than any of Skyrim's little 3 or 4 Rorikstead-sized hamlets.

No, because ultimately you are saying that if all RPG's aren't built the same way, then they aren't RPG's.

Your argument is pretty much the advocation that all RPG's are the same.

My argument is that Skyrim has just as many valid "RPG mechanics" as the other games, they are just a different vision and implementation of them.

Skyrim is truly great RPG but for me its action RPG
Quests and story are full of plot holes and never really svck me in

I've fired up Morrowind pretty recently, in anticipation for Skyrim's release I went out and rebought the GOTY edition on X-Box because my gaming computer had blown up and I wasn't able to play it on the computer anymore.

I've been playing it off and on for the past few months, leading up to and since the release of Skyrim.

yes, the rpg genre has split.

to label skyrim as a rpg is, imo, not true. it's as silly as saying that mass effect 2 is a rpg.

to label the mechanics as simple being 'different visions' is absurd, imo. they are the very core of the game.

give me a few of these rpg-mechanics of skyrim.

You are now on the same channel with me, pal.

Skyrim is not the best RPG compare to his older TES series, and it is not the best RPG if you are using 80s / 90s RPG standard because the game took up more action elements. But this doesn't deny the fact that it is an RPG.
And games are improving, so much like my gun theories, if the majority players accept the style or direction skyrim is evoluting, it will become the trend and one day, the RPG standard will change. Well said, with my gun theory, who knows in the future there will be an extremely accurate automatic sniper rifle invented, if it is good enough to fulfill a bolt action sniper rifle, the sniper rifle standard will change. Just like when the US army is still in their dream of long range accurate full cal. rifle after WW2. small cal. automatic assault rifle is ready to pick up the new standard.

Yes dammit I am a proud member of a club I used to have so many arguements with in the past before I shuted up and actually played it. And u know what, it problely did ruin every futre tes game for me, but I dont give a [censored]. The game is endless lossibiliies to keep me entertained for a long time.
But again, im not bashing skyrim per se, I put 400 hours in multiple charectors. I am argueing that it does not stack up with older titles with what they keep cutting out.

All im asking for is a tes game that is well written, intriguing, and makes me use my head and offer multiple answers to a problem. Keep the stuff that skyrim excelled in like combat and graphics and the landscapes, just have it throw in all that stuff and excell what they did right and I promise you, if they did that......omg I cant even imagine the glorious possibilities.

I mean hell, morrowind had an excellent landscape, multiple enemys, an intriguing and wsll written ot, a civilazation u could get pulled into by culture and poitics....why ow why did they think this stuff was bad and decidex to cut it?

I played TES before it was mainstream.....

This is all fine, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you, but what this post (and posts like it) completely ignore are all the advances that Skyrim made over Morrowind.

There are many things that Skyrim does that I feel give far more possibilities than what Morrowind gave.

And ultimately, this all ends up being subjective opinion.

Not evidence that can say one game fits the definition of a genre, while another game that is the same thing in it's very foundation, but changes details, isn't.

Skills
Character development
Choice
Determining how your character progresses through the world
Player defining who and what the character is, not the game

Things that actually make up role playing - things that don't need the traditional version of "attributes" to do.

And I'll agree with you on that point... but then we're arguing what "defines an RPG" rather than what we've let RPG's define themselves as, to us.

I consider speech options, multiple outcomes, differing strategies, hell, the ability to complete a quest without even fighting anything because, you know, you're role-playing the character you've choose to create within the games boundaries.

Skyrim lacks... well, all of those. It's not *my* crazy brain that's attempting to define what an RPG is, BGS has already done an excellent job at that with MW. From that point on, they stripped, took a little off the side, decided to take this and that away --- and we're left with Skyrim.

Seriously, Nell, I love you as much as anyone else and I don't want to take your experience away from the game; however, at some point, you have to appreciate the argument we're trying to make.

seriously, what are all these great advances that skyrim has made to the rpg genre??

exactly, lol.

use a skill, level, pick a perk.

edit:

skills- many worthless and don't have any impact on the character. worthless and uninspired perks.
choice- yes, we can become a role....at a point so late in the game that it is way too easy and it's time to re-roll, um, pre-plan.
determination- yes, we have choices, though, the pc recognition within the world is almost nonexistent. or, at least, superficial.
player choice- yes. roleplaying capability.

again, do you understand the difference between roleplaying and rpg-character based mechanics??

I'm glad we've reached a common ground rather than just arguing endlessly. I've always maintained, and said as much a few posts ago that if you held a gun to my head and asked if Skyrim was an RPG I would say yes. In most technical, loosest definition possible yeah Skyrim is an RPG, I'll give it that. Even so, I consider it to be a bad RPG, even if it might be a good or even great video game. And I also worry that, though Elder Scrolls V may barely be straddling the line of what is and isn't an RPG, if Bethesda keeps up its current direction I have no confidence that ELder Scrolls VI won't cross that line, and effectively its RPG status, no matter what Bethesda may claim.

Edit:


I'm glad you've at least experienced Morrowind, but I'd argue that your experiences aren't as 'complete' as you may think. It sounds like at best you last played Morrowind 5-6 months ago, and only briefly while you awaited Skyrim. I doubt you got into it very much, probably didn't appreciate the mechanics, maybe even got lost and didn't understand what was going on or why the game did what it did.

The fact is that in my case in particular I've logged 165 hours on Skyrim, 150 hours on Morrowind according to Steam, with hundreds of more hours from when I used to play Morrowind obsessively on my Xbox. I have a very informed opinion as a player who as sunk literally days of his life into both games, created ALOT of different characters, and experienced both games from many different angles. There are people here even more informed than I am, but frankly Nell I just don't think you're one of them. That's not a personal attack on you, or your intelligence at all, but its an admission of the fact that maybe your depth of experience, particularly in regards to Morrowind, is just lacking compared to the people you're arguing against who have significant experience with both Morrowind and Skyrim.

By this post, you could say that Call of Duty is a rpg too, because it has exact same features as this list.

Skills and lvl-ing up is not the only thing that make a rpg.

I would actually say that these thing's are not really in the game. The game completely controls the character in Skyrim and the questlines are very very linear.

i hear you, but, i have made up my mind: skyrim is not a rpg game. it's a roleplaying action-adventure sim. or, something along those lines, lol.

i would not tell my daughter that skyrim is a rpg. i would absolutely tell her that morrowind is a rpg.

Opening slide/cart-ride/linear walk-through/follow me!/go to X/you are dovakhin!/wtf

Ahh yes, the defining characteristics of open-world gameplay.

Read back, COD has already been brought up and shot down. It has no place in this thread, if you ask me.

The game development direction is not ours to define, let the market make the call. A game company will do everything to fit the majority taste for profit and will not carry the outdated game making principle to feed the hardcoe gamers, face it and try to find the joy out of the box. Otherwise don't play it. It is no point to buy a game you don't like it, correct?

If just for example, skyrim become the new RPG standard and created many copycat counterpart, 5 or 10 years later, someone will complain the newly developed RPG is not following the golden principle of Skyrim... who knows.

I not hear to bash anything, im just asking, what makes Skyrims rpg elements more of an rpg than Cod?

That's in your head. Criticism is the subject of these threads, don't let it fool you. Off course the improvements in AI, gameplay, innovations like RS, marriage, cooking, crafting and environment physics are all welcome. But I think the core things that made Morrowind are gone, it really is that different. Just like two opposing camps' take on a TES game.