Greetings.

I kinda get the feeling that the "mystery" of the game dissapears way too fast. After only a few weeks since I playd it, its seems that I already know the land too well. Nothing about the game is "alien" after a month. It was the same as Oblivion. When you play these games for about a month, you no longer feel like a stranger anymore.

I remember Morrowind (please dont bash me for bringing that game up). You could play that game for several months and still the game kept its charm and mystery. The "wonder of exploring" never really went away, and you didnt want to miss a singe location in the game. It really enhanced the feeling of being in a strange land. Not just the looks, but there was always something new to learn about the history, customs, religions and belief's.

Skyrim and Oblivion both gets too familiar. It doesnt take long before dungeons/locations start to feel repetetive, and most of the times I even skip dungeons wheneve they show up on the compass. The feeling of wanting to explore these places just disapperars.

The history, customs, religions and belief's doesnt have that much depht that it could have had.

But im not here to bash, I still play Skyrim from time to time

Am I the only one with this feeling though?

I can't really agree with this, I think there's still plenty of interesting things/locations to see, and I've been playing Skyrim since the first day it was out.


I do agree with this, however. Morrowind definitely had the most interesting atmosphere. Experiencing and learning about the politics, history, culture, etc. was a big part of the fun. Skyrim and Oblivion don't have nearly as much of that. And I'm not saying this as a Morrowind really devoted fan, I've played Morrowind the least out of the three games I mentioned, and Oblivion is my favorite TES game.

Can't say I have that problem. The only area I know well is the area around Whiterun.

Really? Oblivion is your favorite TES? Wow not many people think that.

I blame the compass

You know, I actually thought about that. My next playthrought will be without compass or fast travel.

I can agree that the dungeons/caves get kind of repetitive. But Morrowind was a different land. The Nords do things a lot different than the Elves.

And a lot of quests bring you back to a place you've been too so it doesn't feel like you're discovering a new area often.

But there are more Halls for the Dead. Lots of Heros to bury.

And there are tons of mysterious. I've put TONS of hours into the game and I've barely checked out Falkreath/Markarth/Morthol. I'm on my seond character and I've found several places I didn't know existed in my first character.

I think the difference is that in Morrowind you had to pay attention of where to go and who to talk to. No compass or easy way to get someplace. All trial and error.

Skyrim has the markers so you can just go there even with fast travel.

Kind of the same way you feel after a month when living in a real world town or city that you just moved too right right ? After about a month of living there and getting familiar with your surroundings and landmarks its not so " alien " anymore either. Im not sure why a video game would be any different.

Yeah I've never understood why everyone hates it so much. Oh well, it doesn't really matter, I think it's a fun game regardless of who else likes it.

Oh I didn't think of that, I play without the compass and I almost never fast travel, I bet that's what makes the difference.

I actually do have this feeling..the sense of exploration is almost gone for me..maybe I'll quit playing for about a month then return, might help

I agree with the OP. Skyrim puts a lot of focus on its admittedly great dungeons, but this might have been at the expense at the rest of the world.

I still feel there are remote regions of Morrowind, particularly in the South-East which I haven't been to or spent much time in, and frankly there's not much of Skyrim that I haven't seen.

Same here which is a good for me since it helps to ground me with this vast humongous world. Once am familiar with the world and how i operate in it thats when the real fun begins

I don't really agree completely with this assessment. Morrowind was much more of an alien type world than what Skyrim is, but from what I remember of the game, vast amounts of Morrowind was grayish marshland or wind torn wasteland type area. Morrowind was a great game, but in my opinion the world itself could be rather bland to explore outside of the towns and certainly wasn't the games strong point. Skyrim on the other hand features one of the better looking and better modeled open world environments that I've seen in a video game. plains, forests, rocky mountainous regions, and snowy all add variety to Skyrim that the past few ES games didn't feature near as well imo.

It also must be noted that its easier to explore Skyrim due to a more open layout (Morrowind was a lot of winding, almost maze type hilly regions done in order to make the smaller world seem large), and movement in Skyrim is much faster.

I totally agree.

I agree to a certain extent. It's an issue that was repeated from Oblivion, though to a lesser extent. It mostly a problem with procedural content. Stuff not hand-picked by a developer. Most people mistakenly believe it leads to a more "Dynamic" Experience, but the fact of the matter is, all it lets a person do is predict outcomes ahead of time, as opposed to having to experience it first.

Oblivion is a much better example, because the procedural content is much more pervasive. Even after only 20 hours, you've practically seen everything the game will do (not can do) from then on.

You're level 20? Guess what, Minotaur lord comin up. Ring of Mundane or Amulet of Axes in that boss chest.

Compare to Morrowind, with it's mostly hand-drawn (Particularly NPC's and much of the treasure), each and every cave could contain either two plates of scuttle, or a legendary weapon like Chrysamere. You simply couldn't see what was coming next because it didn't follow any formula. (Well, a lot of the creatures were procedural, but as long as it's contextual it's fine)

As for the "Alien" complaint, that's not really Skyrim's fault as a game. It's simply that the Skyrim setting is one that westerners are very familiar with (Vikings n stuff) as opposed to Morrowind, which borrowed a lot from more Eastern or Middle-eastern cultures.

They really should have done a lot more hand-placed stuff. I'm of the mind that virtually, if not all the NPCs in the game need to be hand-created, as opposed to generated by the system. Creatures can be procedural as an animal doesn't need to really "Tell a story". But subtle things like "What is this bandit wearing" "What do they have strewn about in their hideout" "How hard were they?" add important context to human encounters that you don't really need with a mountain lion or a troll. A bandit clad in Ebony, surrounded by gold, jewels and enchanted weaponry, protected by well-armed lieutenants tells a story of a successful bandit king wreaking havock on the hold. A bandit wearing a hide harness, with tattered shoes and an Iron dagger, alone in the wilderness with 2 or 3 coinpurses to his name, tells a completely different story doesn't it?

The "mystery" atmosphere of Morrowind has never been surpass in TES.

I agree. Skyrim definitely is an improvement over Oblivion in this matter (and practically all matters), but Morrowind remains unsurpassed in terms of alien atmosphere.

Fortunately, I love Nord(ic) culture, so the gap is a bit softened to me

Well don't look at your map as much. Stop fast travelling and run around more. Yes Morrowind is great when it comes to making you feel like you don't know where you are. But in morrowind they stuffed so many locations around and honestly the ground was not veyr level and hid alot things. One of the biggest factors though was the fact that in morrowind you could not see as far ahead. There was a limit on how far away you could see. It made things harder to notice. I truly wish they could make a game like morrowind again though. I mean if they just take the time to put in as much stuff as morrowind had and put more into the environments and the surroundings like they had in morrowind skyrim would probably feel that way. now u got me thinkin about morrowind lol

I think that too then I find something totally different and crazy and I'm around 700 hours.......

That is exactly why I think Its a bad game.

It does get a bit easy to get a lay of the land but i think it's versitle enough it is a human land after all...