You can't rightly judge Skyrim's place until the Mod community gets their hands on it. Out of the box it performs well enough. It's very slick. It's easy to understand. Combat is streamlined. All in all fantastic compared to most games released nowadays.

That being said, Daggerfall and Morrowind had more sandbox elements to them. More depth and choices. More of the feel that you really didn't need to do anything unless you decided it's what you wanted to do.

Oblivion is kinda the oddball one to me. It had half the graphics of Skyrim, the broken feel of the combat from Morrowind (un Modded), weird half realized NPC AI, and (to me) a kind of cliche plot.

If Daggerfall or Morrowind had Skyrim's graphics and a slick combat feel (not the whole system, just the smoothness and ease) that Skyrim has, they would be better hands down. In fact, give Daggerfall Morrowind's graphics and Daggerfall becomes the hands down winner. I'd pay serious cash if Bethesda took Daggerfall and replicated it using the new graphics engine. Even limit the scope of radiant AI to just regions around important towns etc and it could be done.

Skyrim is a great game and is worlds ahead of any recent product on the market. It's probably going to be the best new game we'll see for a while. But it lacks the WHALEFIST punch of opportunities and options of Daggerfall and Morrowind.

Maybe the Modding community will fill in those gaps.

my point being: rpg elements that are character driven is not even close to using your mind to roleplay a character. skyrim is a player-skill based game with some very light rpg (character) elements. it's a rather easy concept to understand as seen in comparisons between morrowind, oblivion and skyrim, though, i agree that everybody uses different definitions and communication becomes difficult.

when i think of the good in morrowind, oblivion, and the fallouts, it has absolutely nothing to do with nostalgia. it has to do with the kind of game mechanics i like in my games. it has to do with playing skyrim and seeing all of the great things they left out. it has to do with the options, depth, and customization that is now gone. it has to do with shallowness and unbelievable simplicity of the game.

time doesn't matter. nostalgia has nothing to do with the arugument. it has to do with better gameplay elements that were taken or left out. or, done half ass.

you redo/update morrowind with skyrim graphics/animations, keep/enhance the skyrim play what you level with perks and add some meaningful dialogue/factions/choices impacting the world around you and you've got best game of all-time.

as it is, i'll take morrowind, oblivion or the fallouts over skyrim every day.

I'm very happy with Skyrim. IT's my current favorite. The weakest features of the game don't bother me that much and once the CK is out many of Skyrim's flaws will be improved. After a year of modding I have no idea what Skyrim will look like. But I'm looking forward to it.

"Someone has a different opinion than me, it must be nostalgia"

Pathetic.

And as far as I'm concerned, the OP of this thread is a grand example of the new kind of playerbase Bethesda is aiming for (can't blame them - it's where the money is); Modern Warfare mentality children who'll get hyped over the newest big thing that has a lot of stuff that looks shiny at the surface. It's a depressing course that majority of the gaming industry are taking, but again, they can hardly be blamed for wanting to earn much more money.

E: that came over a bit more flamey than intended, but I stated it with later replies from the OP in mind such as this one:


After which I could only conclude he is either what I described or a (successful) troll.

yep, after others do what gamesas should have done skyrim will be great.

of course, that doesn't help skyrim on consoles

or

take away the weakness of the pc base game, as well.

Overall best? Um,... No. Due primarily to the flashy grapics I'd put Skyrim on equal footing with Morrowind and Oblivion.

morrowind>skyrim>daggerfall>arena>oblivion

What criteria do you base your superlatives between TES iterations? Is it graphics, gameplay, actual role playing elements, story, etc? Graphics are not everything. I've seen really gorgeous games that are just awful in game play and story, so for me, my ranking would be:

Daggerfall>Morrowind>Skyrim=Oblivion

IMO for all of these: Daggerfall had by far the best game play, and role-playing elements. I mean, I can have six different endings of the game depending on what I chose during the course of the game. Morrowind had the best story and I loved the politics and racism effects in the game, right out of the gate. Great magic system too. I rank Oblivion and Skyrim about the same because neither has really good stories, both stories are very linear, short and simplistic with no player agency (choices made having an effect on the story). Both had good looking worlds, but Skyrim is much better looking and more realistic, Oblivion had more NPCs and creatures. But where Oblivion shines over Skyrim is that it had better music and a far better magic system and at least a UI that had the look of the game and lore. Removing spellmaking was a really bad move for Skyrim, IMO. Also, don't get me wrong about Skyrim's music, it is really good. What I don't like, is that the tracks are fewer and the sound of the tracks are too similar from one to the other, especially in the outside world. Sometimes I cannot tell if I am hearing a different track from one to the next.

If you say Daggerfall is bad because of graphics, well, that cannot be compared because quality of graphics are only going to be as good as what was offered in their respective timelines. For example;1996 is going to look especially poor compared to anything today, so relatively, one can only compare realistically, all other aspects outside of graphics.

I never played Arena.

WOO someone with this simple viewpoint

yes it is BETTER... but not what it COULD be....

guess that means all the unhappy people. (inc myself at times) will feel the need to buy the next Elder Scrolls that TES comes out with...
least they have secured future money!

Nostalgia? Isn't that a yawning for the past? Yeah, well i still regularly play a modded Morrowind, Not as much as Skyrim but then again Skyrim just came out.

Tedious ? not at all, i enjoyed long guild quests where i had to rank up, it is unbelievable how i can do only 8 quests in Skyrim and become the Arch-mage or Companions leader.

Skyrim is a great game no doubt, but not every one will say it is the best simply because of it's shiny graphics and improved combat system. A lot of things have been sacrificed in Skyrim. The way people try to insist that anyone who considers Morrowind best to be wrong is ridiculous. There are people who still say Daggerfall was the best, it is their opinion. Latest does not = greatest, for me personally anyway. A lot of you will disagree.

I agree with you completely. If Jonathan28 disliked the guild quest compared to the ones in Skyrim, then he must like playing short games. IMO, RPGs should not involved getting through them is short playing times. The guild quest, even in Oblivion were deeper than Skyrim's and offered a lot of game play time. But, if it appeals to him to have more action and adventure, I won't bemoan it, but I certainly do not think there is much role playing to be had with that style.

I think its worse Skyrim has plenty of game breaking bugs. I only encountered three noticeable bugs that bothered me in NV, the game froze way to often, and the tumbleweeds locked in place and floated above the air, and those ridiculous ash piles. Skyrim has broken quest some quest do not even begin. Enemies on the outside of dungeons never respawn, alchemy ingredients never respawn dotted threw out the landscape. The game freezes as well. Then the exploding item bug makes it impossible to set up your house. Also this game has ash piles, this game is a bug ridden mess.

Love Skyrim bunches, but I really miss flying/levitate in morrowind ... I love looking out of the window on air planes, I used to dream of floating over towns and cities when I was a child... odd dreams where the wind would buffet me upwards off the ground like a kite. This part of Morrowind just blew me away ... Shame they can't do it in Skyrim ...

The weak elements of Oblivion are for me, very similar to the weaknesses of Skyrim and those weaknesses didn't prevent me from loving Oblivion and playing it WAY too much. Skyrim has made HUGE improvements over Oblivion, so, I'm happy with it. Some things modders will fix that Bethesda should have, but most of the mods are there to tailor the game to each person's own, personalized tastes. Which is awesome.

I play on pc and couldn't care less about consoles.

This^

i'm not into fps's but i'm gonna defend MW3, for what it is, its a very good game, it's exceptional thats why it was 60 dollars for a couple years, so you might not give credit where credit is due, but there's other games that i can point out....GTA is a super good game and its highly popular, i'm not too into the driving etc so its not my type of game but i enjoyed the story quite a bit, the quests were good, it deserved its high ratings. so rating and sales do reflect on the popularity of a game, but and sales ratings don't speak for everyone, but they do give some information.

This is the crap that is ruining TES. "Oh, the cities are too big! Oh, the quest lines are too long. Oh, there isn't enough action."

Just reading your comment is depressing me.

Disagree. It's tied with oblivion for me. Morrowind is still my number one, followed by daggerfall.