To me, there's no way to win any debate that's based on the subjective opinions of individuals with different tastes and experiences. "One man's trash is another man's treasure" .... so the saying goes.

This thread is an example of how opinions vary, no matter what "facts" are thown into the mix to persuade the another into thinking a certain way. Clearly some believe that Skyrim is the best game ever while others do not.

Sales and a Metacritic score doesn't tell me that this is a superior game over what I've played before. For me, my personal experiece with each example will tell the truth in the end, as it does for a lot of other gamers.

I'm (after a few mods) having fun in Skyrim. But here's what I have to say. All comparisons are considered while in the respective games' prime. Skyrim may not be there yet, but here we all are comparing...

The world is great. Fantastic detail, large, dynamic and true to the lore. I guess that's why you could say it's a little bland; Expect no more than trees, snow, and rocks. There are parts of it, without spoiling, that have their 'ahhhh' moments, whether they be above or below the surface. While it's on par with Oblivion (although Oblivion did have Oblivion), Morrowind takes the cake. Mushroom Wizard Towers, Volcanoes and ash deserts, Imperial Forts, Underwater Shrines, cities made beneath the shell of a giant prehistoric crab and so many hidden treasures and easter eggs. Morrowind's world was rich, magical and enchanting. And when I first played that game, I was more captivated than when I played the subsequent two.

The combat is great. Although I play a mage, I did dabble in an Orc berserker and it was rather entertaining. There aren't as many weapons as there could've been though, and I don't mean skins. I miss Staves (the whacky ones), polearms, thrown weapons and crossbows. All that stuff was so cool. The execution-style cutaways as borrowed from the fallout series, while seeming a little cheap, have their place here and are welcome. Just last night I was giving my Dremora some curry, so he impaled me on his sword, all in glorious slow-mo. All the combinations are great; sword and board, dagger and dagger, one 2H, longsword and fireball. All pretty fun. I wonder how the oldies are going with the twitch needed at times? *CoughYasgurCough* Skyrim has it sorted when it comes to combat I believe. Morrowind was frustrating at earlier levels, but that was the nature of the dice-roll game. I know some of my friends were put off by it. Oblivion was halfway there, still leaving aspects of it up to the game. But for total immersion, it requires your complete involvement. I just wish they applied this to other aspects of the game.

The magick system is...underwhelming. The few spells that are in the game are fantastic and very substantial. However there is so much wrong with magic, as has been described in countless other threads, from no spellcrafting to not being able to change spells in one hand with a ward up. The feel of the mage was off for so many aswell. I for one stopped playing until I modded it. Considering the other 2 games of the era, I consider the magic in Morrowind to be my favourite. Sure it has it's many downfalls, but I didn't feel as though I was bashing my head up against a wall. I didn't run out of puff. I could actually play my mage, not wait to play my mage. It had freedom. Skyrim puts you in an archetypical box, and the Mages one is much smaller than the rest. In fact I think it's a paper bag. A wet one. Which you can't even use your abilities to remove yourself from! The apparent underpowerment, while still playable, was awkward and offputting. I mean, c'mon, a fireball to the face? Of course, you could result to...

...Crafting! Trying to keep this short. I like all the crafting disciplines. However, my first and biggest gripe would be the way the UI operates, and how long it takes, and how awkward it is to manage. The second would be smithing; it can be used to make some serious gear. Some might say a little too serious. I tend to agree. It's overpowered. Honestly, do you beastfolk, men and mer of steel need more help at being demigods? Bah! Should I feel compelled to play a warrior type character, I understand I'd be bored with the amount of smithing I can do. And should I choose to level it, I can do so by crafting iron daggers until the cows come home. It doesn't seem very well thought out applied to the rest of the game. But since Morrowind didn't go past the armourer, and Oblivion was Oblivion. Skyrim wins.
Alchemy is fun. There are bugs; my dirt patch back at the College is getting old. Call me Cletus. There could be a better system for ingredient management. I have to say that, at the time, I enjoyed Oblivion and Morrowind's Alchemy system more. Particularly carting around all your gear, and being able to make potions wherever you pleased. Also, when you think potions, you think Mage. I don't mind that it's in the thief part of the night sky, but I do wish there were more non-general perks pertaining to us mage types later on in the tree.
Enchanting is a bit weird in Skyrim. It effectively hasn't changed a great deal since its inclusion in the Elder Scrolls, so it's fine by me. There are a few little things that bother me though, like a petty soul enchant on an iron dagger giving the same experience as a grand on a daedric longsword. But the main thing again, is the UI. Such a pain in the ass to use on PC; mouse clicks not working, enchanting the wrong item blah. It's hard for me to choose which game had a better system though. Skyrim has no enchanting vendors, despite having trainers. Morrowind was better methinks. You could do all you can do now, the effect creation was more intricate and you could achieve more.

The perk system is cool. I enjoy a traditional style start-of-game RPG character flesh-out as much as the next guy, but jumping right in a forging your character through WASD and L/RMB is what I like, gives me that sense of growth and progression. However, the perk system needed a lot more polish I believe. Lockpickingtreelol, ward absorb being so beneficial, perks being the only way for a mage to augment their damage output through destruction... Hrmm. Perks are more of an action game system, but I think it has a place here and I like what it's capable of. I think they just need to think about it some more. Certain skills being omitted from the game, and/or adapted into the perk trees is inexcusable! Again with the streamlining...

The narrative quality varies greatly in Skyrim. From kneejerk guild chains, to radiant quests that will pull you into an endless abyss, to where I believe they spent most of their time - the main quest. While I have in no way experienced all of the content of the game, I will provide critique based on my limited exposure. Voice acting and text are neck and neck to me. They all have the capacity to deliver a story as good as each other. But at the end of the day, the voices in my head will be leagues better than poor voice acting (which is rampant in Skyrim).
Anyway, guilds. Guilds have story, sure. But there is no longevity. They give you no sense of achievement. Clearly made for people with short attention spans, or spoilt only-children who are used to getting whatever they want. When you sign up to a guild, before you know it, you're running the show. Well, at least to some; I still get people around the College talking down to me, despite my Archmages attire. The guilds don't make you feel like you're part a greater process at all. Through the last couple of lines all I can think of is the Companions, and how let down I was when reaching the end. It had it's cool moments, but it was just to short. I remember the fighters guild in Morrowind, and how I used to move around from guildhall to guildhall with all my crap and it would take me ages to complete whatever they could throw at me. Same with the mages. And that was an Island in Morrowind. This is the Province of Skyrim! The College of Winterhold was a better experience, and I was happy with what I was given as it made me feel like I was part of something. But to make Archmage, arguably the most senior position of magick in the kingdoms of men, with a few fireballs and a flame atronach? I was scratching my head for days. Didn't feel like I earned that badge at all. I was expecting my position to be commensurate with experience. Boy was I wrong. Now I haven't played the Thieves, Dark Brotherhood or been to the Bard's College, but I understand that the former two are hitting their stride as far as Skyrim quality goes. So I'm looking forward to playing them on a more befitting character in the future.
The main quest is great so far. That's right I haven't finished it yet. I'm up the bit where you gotta read the thing with words(?) on top of the hill with the talky guy. :/ I like to take my time (and I stopped playing for a while, as I said). But every turn it takes you on is great. Oblivion's MQ was a good experience too, even if a little short. But I found the trick is to immerse youreself with everything on the way to the MQ objectives, that way it seems like it has far greater depth. Morrowind's MQ was indeed a saga, god I loved it. Regardless of having to read your way through it, move around like a gypsy, and the end boss wearing a loincloth, it seemed so much more epicly rich than the later 2 games. Combined. This could indeed be edited as Skyrim's MQ draws to a close for me. I hope that will be the case...
The radiant quests are annoying. They serve no purpose but to give you a quest objective indicator.
How people can run up and talk to you is annoying also; I was once about to nuke a bear's face off, but up runs a courier. I freeze. The bear doesn't. The courier lived no doubt.
The details you get provided to complete quests is so shallow that they're useless. Miscellaneous quests weren't even deserving of a journal entry, apparently! The whole quest system relies upon the use of markers, which for us thinking type gamers is mind-numbingly boring and dishearteningly pedestrian. Morrowind was great for this reason - Having to read your journal to determine exactly where to go. NPC's gave you descriptive directions relating to landmarks for you to navigate by. You really saw the game that way, and once you were a couple of hundred hours in, you really knew your way around. Oblivion was halfway between the two. Semi-descriptive journal entries, whilst relying on quest markers to pinpoint who you had to talk to, or what you had to kill.
They go creating this fantastic world, then lead us through it by a small white arrow.
Quest bugs are pretty rampant. All I can say is thank the nine that I'm playing on PC. You poor console sods, and you represent the majority of the profitbase of Skyrim! Absurd!


I feel like going to play Skyrim now, so I will stop typing. But as I said, considering the last three games whilst in their prime, I would have to say Morrowind had more of an impact; Superficiality doesn't get far with me. But I'm glad you feel this way OP, as the majority do. I just hope Bethesda will one day return to the content, style and substance that the Elder Scrolls universe is deserving of, and what made the series great in the first place.

TL;DR: I'm enjoying Skyrim, as any ES fan would. But the superficiality, streamlining and bugs have really prevented me from holding Skyrim in high esteem.

It's overated imo . Maybe Morrowind was much better on the PC because honestly i didn't find it that great at the time.

Chance based hits in Marrowind are definitely a "what the heck were they smoking when they design this" moment.

Oblivion's level scaling and "+5 stats per level or become gimped" was another one.

Skyrim has it's own designed stupidity (non-scaling spells when spell making is not provided), but none as jaw-droppingly bad as the above.

The red stuff is graphics crap that says nothing about the game relative to former titles or relative to how it will stand the test of time. The yellow thing is simply wrong. Character custimization is different but it's not "better" unless you strictly define "better" as "simpler". And I'm not.

Yes, we have archery, we have daggers and backstabs, we have dual wielding, and we have two handed weapon skills. Nice. Of course, it would be nice if dual wielding was actually a skill on its own rather than two measly perks available under one-handed weapons, it would be nice if axes and swords were modeled as different weapons that required different skills, it would be nice if anymations were not so blatantly reused between weapon types, and it would be nice if we didn't have a mere three skills conceptually covering for all the ranged and melee weapons in human history. And with "nice" I mean "not blatantly absurd".

Yes, we have dragon fights. Well, sort of. We have overgrown cliff racers that are stupidly aggressive, to the point of being suicidal, and yet spending more time flying around in the air than they do burning players to death. They look impressive but what did I say about graphics? What's the point of giving us dragons and adding a ton of lore that suggests they're intelligent beings if they're going to behave no smarter than your average wolf or spider or skeever?

Yes, we now have horses. Well, sort of. We have suicidal hyper-aggressive four-legged mountain escalators that look much like a horse would look, but again, what's the point of calling them horses if they're not going to even act the least bit like an actual horse? And what's with the idea that a horse individually will go nuts against anything from giant elephants to flame-throwing wizards and a warrior will do the same, but put a warrior on a horse and they'll both stoically let your garden variety skeever nipble them to death? Why can't I at least jump off my horse in battle mode? Why can't I even talk to people? Seriously, just what the heck am I riding?

Yes, we now have better smithing. In fact, our smithing is so good that we make items that make unique artifacts of legend look like toys for feeble children. We make items so insanely powerful that adventuring into dangerous ruins or caves is really not to discover artifacts but rather to raise the gold needed to buy the raw materials. And the best part? We make items that transform men into gods but still we can't get a commission for these crazy well-forged items. Heck, we can barely even sell those crazy strong items because nobody can afford buying them, even though the jarls would realistically bend over for such kind of equipment.

Skyrim is an exercise in surface-depth. Everything looks awesome on the surface, but once you start drilling even the least bit into the surface then you'll see a complete, gaping void underneath. This applies to just about everything in the game. Combat looks deep but is effectively just block, hit, block, hit until you learn smithing, at which point it's hit, hit, hit, win. Archery looks cool but is effectively just MW style archery + perks and a nice zoom feature. Magic looks very nice but where's the variety? Where's the ability to mix effects from schools? Where's the feeling of actually being a master wizard? AI looks nice with all those schedules being applied, but why are everybody acting like they've got horsedung for brains? Effectively, people are just as dumb as they were in Morrowind. They make all the same bad choices and groups don't actually work together. Dialogue? Forget it.

Want to open a wooden chest? Forget about using your big axe or hammer to pound through the chest, forget about burning the wood or melting the lock with a fire spell, forget using telekinesis to emulate the effects of the key, forget using alteration to change the properties of the lock, forget using frost to make the metal brittle, forget using your alchemical skills to make an acid or an explosive powder to deal with the lock. Bring out your lockpicks and deal with it like a thief! Daggerfall had bash, the Open spell, and lockpicking. MW had Open and lockpicking. Now we have just lockpicking. Intelligent progression? Added depth? Pfft. Casual action gaming anti-RP nonsense is what it is.

And two years from now, games will be released that make Skyrim look ugly. Then you'll hate Skyrim and think it was garbage. Graphics =/= gameplay.

The combat system wasn't [censored] in MW, it merely wasn't animated. If you had seen dodge animations when missing instead of just the same "hit with no hit" animation then people wouldn't be complaining so much. And it made a lot more sense than the player-based system we have now.

As for game balance, I don't think you should take such complaints too far. Yes, you could drink a ton of fortify strength potions and kill just about anything but besides that, you had to power level to get your attributes high and simply having a few skills at 100 wouldn't make you immortal. You'd need decent equipment as well and decent equipment generally had to be found. Or you'd have to pay an enchanter a crazy amount of gold to make it for you, and provide a soul of either a golden saint or an ascended sleeper. Mind you, getting such souls in good supply was dramatically harder than it is to search Skyrim merchants for black soul gems and kill bandits to fill them.

And further keep in mind that a character with 100 smithing, 100 enchant, and a physical damage skill is going to own anything in Skyrim. No actual milking or looping is needed for this. Just procure any regular potion of enchant, drink potion, make your smithing suit, equip smithing suit and drink a regular potion of smithing (preferably the +50% kind), then boost your equipment to Legendary++. Then drink another potion of enchant and make your everyday gear. Fortify weapon damage on the pieces that can and combine with fortify magic school on helmet, armor, ring and amulet. There, you have something like +175% weapon damage, zero cost magic school, and there's plenty of room for resistance enchants too.

Ebony and Daedric swords do 300+ damage base, and you can potentially get another +100 from elemental damage enchants. That's 400 damage on a single handed sword without doing anything cheesy. Now try power attacking with that 400 damage weapon during a slow time shout.

At least MW made me work a bit to get my strength really high without it being time limited. Skyrim gives the equivalent to you without much effort involved. It takes what, maybe 800 iron ingots and a similar amount of leather strips to iron dagger your way from 15 to 100 smithing? And the cost of staying at 90 smithing instead of going to 100 really isn't huge. Less than 5 points of damage off the end result, if I'm not mistaken. Staying at 80 for the ebony perk would cost maybe 10 points of damage and is very easy to reach, even without using that warrior stone.

No, it wasn't. It was very much in tune with the target segment at the time, which were RPG gamers rather than action gamers. KOTOR, the IE games, NWN all used chance-based hits. But I'm guessing you weren't playing RPGs back then and wouldn't be playing modern "RPGs" if they weren't really just action games with slightly deeper stories and some attempts at giving you character decisions.

Today it wouldn't really work with chance-based combat since RPGs have gone mainstream, and like you, most of the mainstream crowd really don't have the patience to work with a chance-based system. Back then, a chance-based system worked. The TES fans were used to it, RPG gamers were used to it, and using player skill would've been considered a huge sellout to the action gamers. Which incidentally is exactly what happened when Oblivion shifted focus, by the way.

And the crap dialogue is a similar thing. Old school RPG gamers cared about dialogue but the new generation of TES gamers are in it for the fancy graphics, finishing moves that behead enemies, and killing enemies in creative ways. They're not playing Skyrim or TES6 to talk to virtual characters? How [censored] geeky would that be anyway? Screw that, just add more variation in the finishing moves!!

It's the at this point very often mentioned clash between the casual gamer vs the nerd gamer, and the casuals are by far the bigger segment. You make a lot more money producing watered down crap to the masses than you do taking your time to make art that only the nerds appreciate anyway. And while gamesas might one day have been in this to produce great games, they're today just in it for the money. Mind you, the BGS staff might individually be game devs for the art, but the top management certainly is not, and ultimately they do call the shots.

Anyway, if you want to talk about "WTF were they smoking" elements in Morrowind then you need to look no further than the original journal or how relatively complicated it was to get an x5 multiplier in the original release version. Or how crazy heavy weapons were.

black spider-

all i can say is, here here. excellent.

well-said. absolute truth.

Well, I think it is the best yet.

Yes Black Spider speaks the truth.

i disagree and here is why-

- they have dumbed down the skills to simple magicka, stamina, and health dumbing something like this down in an RPG isn't ever a good thing cause it limits what you can pick to costume build your character (one of the small things but important)
- less armor spaces then even oblivion we could equip grieves or other types of pants in oblivion Skyrim ripped that from us making characters less costume and forcing us to use the full set. and even oblivion didn't have many spaces to put armor
- the story line was kind of lacking a tiny bit. you didn't really have to do much and to gain power you absolutely needed to progress the story even if just a little
- the bugs, grant it not as buggy as F:NV (im not even sure you can use NV here as it was made by Obsidian and not Bethesda) but most of the bugs are just god awful and are capable of killing you (post that on a Dead is Dead thread)
- faction quest lines are too short and anti Climactic. in oblivion there would be some epic quest at the end of the faction skyrim is lacking that.
- they got rid of a bunch of attributes they could have made the perk list a whole lot longer and more interesting if they kept some of them ( not to be confused with skills) acrobatics mysticism etc
and that my friend is why i feel skyrim isn't the best TES title. another thing is Graphics Don't make the game story and character rendition play a much bigger roll in it

Not even close. Not even in the same league. Don't get me wrong, I really, really enjoyed NV, but damn, that game had an enormous amount of showstopping bugs.

Decapitations, dual-wielding, dragons and graphics. Those are the primary reasons that make this the best TES game for you? I think you need to play the previous titles because those games were certainly not about that kind of fluff.

Overall best TES game? I think not. It's more like the best action adventure game with rpg bits.

Skyrim is fairly well polished compared to Oblivion, but it can be easily seen that many corners were cut.

I still think Morrowind is the best. It wasn't so dumbed down for casual players, and the game had a lot of options for roleplayers.

I agree. Also since Oblivion I've had to remove casual features like the GPS compass before I even want to play the game.

So far for me It's Morrowind>Oblivion>Daggerfall>Skyrim. Skyrim to me is more Action than RPG. If I lump it as an action game and think of only graphics, Games like GOW 1-2-3 far outpace Skyrim in the Action category..and they don't have the crazy bugs.

Yes, I agree almost completely. Skyrim; looks great, less filling. I would have to say the Morrowind and Oblivion guild quest are 100% better written than Skyrim's.

Yes, overall it is like the sum of its components' quality and polish, but the highest scores it gets are on the technology part where the advancement is a given in time anyway, so I think Morrowind is better considering their time of release.

I am with you, I have played all the past TES games going back to Arena and I can't believe how good Skyrim is! Sure the guild quests could have been longer and more fleshed out but on the whole I am finding the rest of the quests including the MQ fun and pretty fulfilling! Thanks Bethesda, please make TES 6 in Valenwood on next gen, something about Elves and treetop towns sounds fantastic

Ha. FONV and Skyrim have both been the least buggy games in Bethesda history by a longshot for me. Take that! (Yeah, yeah, Obsidian made NV, but the engine and probably 75%+ of the tech was BGS.)

Anyway, as an unrepentant Daggerfall and Morrowind lover, and thus clearly older and wiser than all of you--especially if you've been drinking--my official vote is that Skyrim is pretty damn good. I personally don't think it's an RPG, but it's a great game, regardless. If you're lucky enough to be playing on PC, it may turn out to be the best.

• Combat is much better than in the past, and that's one of the things modders have had limited ability to fix--even Duke's mods, Deadly Reflexes, etc. -- they made it much better, but couldn't completely redo the engine.
  
• There's probably no need for a major overhaul like FCOM/OOO/Fran's, though an MMM would be nice--we need more creatures, spawns, and variation.
  
• IMO, major overhauls for magic and stealth are just about a necessity, but I still think the core game is better than ever.
  
• OK, Morrowind wins on atmosphere and story, but Skyrim's overall environment is still a success

Now modders (and if we're lucky, DLC) will have to build on that base to take Skyrim the rest of the way. I've never played a BGS for more than about 60 hours without serious mod intervention. Technically I've got a lot of mods right now, but most of them are for minor things, or additional content that shouldn't be expected of BGS--and I'm 400 hours into the game. For me, at least, that's a step forward.

Oh yes skyrim really good, skyrim have less questline, less weapon, less armor , less spells, less skill, less attribute, little cities, same IA of 6 years ago, and more less respect oblivion or morrowind is the more little Elder Scrolls ever made (for now).

Those cited are minor relatively unimportant features. The combat system, which is based on an outdated (even at that time) design is a bigger turn off. It is basically still using dungeon crawling systems of Warriors of Eternal Sun (1992) and Shining the the Darkness (1991). Yes I have played and enjoy both those games.

Yes, OP, I agree that Skyrim is the best TES game yet.

How can less skills, no birth signs, no attributes, no spell making, and less armor pieces mean better customization? How can you improve something that was not even there before (I'm talking about smithing)?

All the arguments you make seem to be praising solely for its wow factor. It seems like the only way you could make this game better, in your eyes, would be to add explosions.

Fire runes serve that function.

I was disappointed I could only lay one down at a time.

Agree, not allowing multiple runes was a major misstep. Runes should cost alot, be spamable and last until cell resets. Throw balance out for this one because fun > misguided balance.