This is funny because the graphics aren't even that good, for 2011. They don't even have built-in SSAO which Crysis 1 from 2007 had, and the texture quality and other lighting quality is about the same as Crysis 1 too. Oh, and Crysis 1 has better-looking water.

I agree that it suffers because of that though, and I would have preferred improved/more expansive RPG mechanics and writing over the graphics improvements.

I can agree with post except for one thing. I would be more than fine if skyrim had oblivions graphics..........but plz God not their faces. Believe it or not thats really the only main flaw I have with oblivion. God when I first playex the game and when I had that talk with the emporer....I bout pissed myself. Hes face was so ugly, talking about I was in his dreams..gah all I could think about was this fugly guy has been having dreams about me.....shiver. That game hands down had some of the ugliest faces ever in a tes game.

Why do I sometimes get the feeling that this discussion would probably still be here had the games been released in reversed order? We went through this when Oblivion came out, and from what I've heard, when Morrowind came out. And the really interesting part is that what were once criticisms of one game are now being praised. I actually decided to for old times' sake hit the "last page" button on Oblivion General to see all the negativity again, it looks so similar to here.

What if Morrowind, aside from tech issues, had been Elder Scrolls V and Skyrim III? (ignoring plot issues) Would we be decrying Morrowind for being so different to Skyrim? Would we give less credit to it? I acknowledge it's quite a pointless question as it can't be done, nor does it actually change if one game has X or not. But would it change how we viewed what it had? Remember, Morrowind has quite a lot less choice+consequence than it could, potentially. And actually Skyrim has more than Oblivion did - you can fail SOME quests, you can not take most quests.

So in some ways it is more of an RPG than Oblivion if we're gonna try to define it that way. Stats/Attributes were... not brilliantly handled in past games. Of course you could argue they should just improve them, but then you could also argue that it's better for them to find some simpler, stable groundwork and work up from there. Morrowind was ridiculously unbalanced, clunky, a technical nightmare (when it first came out) and was mostly saved by just being an awesome open world rpg/game.

Also it's hard to judge a game as a TES game when the stated mission objective is to make a different game each time just taking the past as a basis rather than do an actual sequel. Daggerfall is nothing like Morrowind in many ways, Morrowind nothing like Oblivion, Oblivion nothing like Skyrim etc. You could probably set them in different universes and you'd never realise they were supposed to be part of a series.

Play Skyrim with HD pack installed and some mods that changes graphic and you will think otherwise. The problem with Skyrim in developement is that they needed it to run on a computer system that is 5 years old also known as Consoles. Since Skyrim is a port from consoles they didn't reinvent the graphics for the PC version. By default Skyrim looks a lot better then Oblivion straight out of the box, also good thing you bring in Crysis 1 into this a game that was developed primary for PC and ported to consoles years later. When making a game primary for PC you can allow the system to have better graphics as PC hardware changes, where as the Xbox 360 stays as the xbox 360 until the next generation console comes out. Crysis set a standard how FPS games could look, but Crysis 1 as it was had to be rewritten for consoles to work properly. So funny that you use Crysis as a reference.

True, your point is very valid. I'm sure if they had used a static picture of mr. potato the faces would have looked better then original in Oblivion they were hideous that's for sure....

Yeah, but those are mods (mostly ENB, with SSAO and better bloom and better HDR). And it's still not better than BF3 or Crysis 2, which are modern games and run on consoles. Or apparently Witcher 2, which I haven't played.

It's not like you have to include everything from the PC version in the console version anyway. If you actually have easily configurable settings for t he engine, you can just switch off the features that can't run on consoles on the console version.

I mean, let's look at what's been added/changed about the graphics from Oblivion:
> Shadow mapping - This existed 5+ years ago and it's in many games that run on consoles now, there's no reason not to have it.
> New water shader that's just a minor improvement over the old one.
> "Dynamic snow" shader and the like - Doesn't really affect much since it's just a quicker/cheaper way to cover stuff with snow isntead of having separate textures.
> Imagespaces/imagespace modifiers: simply fullscreen color correction, which is an extremely performance-cheap feature that could have worked fine 5+ years ago.
> Higher poly models and textures - but this isn't completely related to the engine and could have worked in Oblivion's engine too.

Anyway, this is off topic... But the graphics aren't good, they're what I would expect from an average game from 2009-2011.

The perverseness here is that all of these criticisms were true back when Oblivion came out. Now we've done even worse with Skyrim, so people start to actually miss Oblivion because at least it reminded them of being somewhere at least still close to the right track.


This is such an odd premise that it's hard to answer. But basically, I think that the Bethesda of the year 2001 had the best group of men to produce the best, most thoughtfully designed, most handcrafted Elder Scrolls ever before and ever since. Had Skyrim been created by that team, back in 2001, I'm sure I'd feel that Skyrim was the best of the Elder Scrolls games.

However, the Skyrim of today wasn't possible back in 2002. Even if it was put out with Morrowind' style graphics the dragons alone would be a technical challenge insurmountable at the time. But let's say it did happen, Skyrim was released in 2002 with NOTHING AT ALL different except for vanilla-Morrowind style graphics. I think a lot of us would've considered it kind of a bleh action adventure game that was too ambitious for its time, and would have ignored the Elder Scrolls series and not become such big fans either at all, or at best until Elder Scrolls V: Morrowind came around.

And that's what I believe to be a subjective opinion, and not an objective, factual statement that Skyrim lacks "essential", or "fundamental" parts of the genre, because I don't think that Skyrim is lacking anything that makes it any less of an RPG.

Is it lacking Attributes? Yes. But I don't believe that Attributes are fundamental. I believe that being able to customize and specialize your character in your own vision, and Skyrim still allows you to do that, without Attributes. I don't inherently hate Attributes, I'm not inherently against Attributes, but I don't believe them to be a vital aspect of RPG's. I believe they were a tool to provide a vital function, but with Skyrim, Bethesda has used different tools to provide that same function. The same function is in the game, it's just done in a different way.

As opposed to taking the QB out of Madden football, I see it as the difference between, say, having a button assigned for each eligible receiver, which is what is done now, vs. moving a cursor across the field to target where you want the pass to go (obviously, not a feature in Madden, but a feature I have seen suggested for future Maddens, a feature that has apparently been in football games of the past). The same function (passing the ball, running an offense) is still in the game, it's just done in a way that's different from what has been standard.

Because factually, objectively, nearly all of the functions of Attributes of past games remains in Skyrim.

Strength - Previously affected melee damage, and carrying capacity (as well as Fatigue). Now, melee damage is tied directly to perking your weapon skills, and carrying capacity is tied to the Fatigue stat.

Endurance - Previously affected your overall Health. Now, Health is determined by putting points directly into Health.

Agility - Previously affected bow damage, as well as staggering when hit by enemies. Now, bow damage is affected by perking your Archery skill, and there are perks that directly affect staggering and balance.

Willpower - Previously affected magicka regeneration. Now, magicka regeneration is tied to enchantments.

Intelligence - Previously affected Magicka pool. Now, you just put points directly into the Magicka pool.

Speed - Previous affected how fast you moved. Now, while the speed stat is removed, the game has implemented sprinting, which is a different, but related function, and sprinting is tied to your Fatigue.

Luck - Previously, affected a little bit of everything, as well as what loot you may find in dungeons. Now, that is affected by perks.

While the details may be different, I certainly don't believe it's drastic enough to warrant Morrowind's methods as an RPG, where Skyrim's methods isn't.

Guilds may be better than in Skyrim, but that doesn't make Skyrim not an RPG. NPC interaction may or may not be deeper in Morrowind than Skyrim (I believe that's debatable) but it's certainly not of such a lesser quality that it makes Skyrim not an RPG while Morrowind is.

Arguably, the only fundamental part of the genre is the role. The role is, after all, the only thing that earned the genre its name in the first place.

For character building, I prefer Morrowind's quantity of skills and attributes. I prefer Morrowind's almost always providing the character a chance, or at least the illusion of a chance, to pull anything off. If want your level-one character to possess a deadric weapon, then he has the chance. If you want your character with a conjuration skill of 40 to summon a winged twilight, then he has the chance.

The main aspect where Skyrim seems to let the Elder Scrolls ideal down is in favoring story over character. Given the choice of letting you do anything or having you hear a story Bethesda wants to tell you, Skyrim tells you the story. An drawn-out opening sequence, a multitude of unkillable NPCs, many upon many needs-a-key-to-open doors, and guilds barely separable from scripted story lines, all shout that you should approach the game along the path that Bethesda sets for you. Skyrim often seems to be trying to drive your experience, to market itself to you. Maybe that marketing feel is a consequence of having a lead marketer double as the director, and maybe it is just my overactive imagination.

as far as this alrdy been discussed becore with previous games, u are right. Let me let ya in on a simple fact.


When u take away from our customization, ability to personalized, and our sense of personal achievement, then yes we bitxh like hell, and wie ll do it everytime hopeing that bethesda thinks twice.

I tend to see the people who played and loved daggerfall to morrowind akin to scribes. They are there to remind us what was lost in the hopes that some of the forgotten stuff may come once again.


And im not saying they took away allll our ability to do that stuff, but each game a large chunk is teken away.

The HD pack from bethesda can be seen as a mod yes, but it was released to upgrade the graphic as PC's could handle it and consoles couldn't. Mods that enhance graphics really show what skyrim could have looked like IF it was developed for PC only. The one thing that dragged the graphics on PC down was that it was developed with consoles in mind.

BF3 has sweet graphic, no doubt about that but again you do the mistake and bring up a game you think can be compared. BF3 can have that nice graphics of several reasons, maps are small, extremely small compared to Skyrim map. So comparing BF3 toSkyrim is a best a hopeful wish that maybe, just maybe you can prove your point. BF3 has explosions buildings falling down a lot of cool things, that also BF-Bad Company 2 had. But again limited size of maps means they can put a bunch of cool stuff on your screen without killing your computer.

Crysis 2 is some time since I played and I never played a lot of it so can't remember the map sizes or anything there, it looked really good but I do not have any good idea how big the maps were in singleplayer mode. My searching on Internet brought up a lot of multiplayer stuff, but never played far in singleplayer so can't give you a good comment on that one. Maybe someone who has played crysis 2 can give me a pointer of how large the maps was?

Dude, why does everyone use that counter-argument? What, do you think everything in Skyrim is loaded into memory at one time? We have cells in Skyrim, and only nearby cells + LOD is loaded. That's exactly how a "small map" works too, you just can't go to the next cell and switch to different full-detail models. The only difference is filesize.

Well, I just don't find classes to be necessary anymore. Selecting the wrong skills was Bethesda's problem too, that's why they no longer make us waste time selecting a set of skills in the tutorial.

I would agree that Oblivion did so compared to Morrowind, but I wouldn't agree in terms of Skyrim compared to Oblivion - and perhaps even Morrowind, depending on how you look at it.

While 18 is less than 21 in number, the versatility and different areas of specialization that each skill has in perk trees I believe give even more variety than Oblivion did, and strictly speaking skills wise, even compared to Morrowind.

I don't think so. In general, I don't agree with the "less is more" mentality that the devs seem to be taking towards the series. Perks have the potenital to be amazing, but there are too many useless perks and %-ups right now.

In accurate and irrational? what was wrong with that statement? I'll break it down

(censored) the term RPG, at this rate all games are RPGs in some essence since one people like-YOU- say they don't need stats or numbers to be RPGs. and that as long as a shortlist of aspects are available in a game no matter how small (Because you your self elaborated that What made Oblivion et al, RPGS is still in skyrim even if Diminished)

Thus Skyrim holds that RPG torch fine and well, Of which you don't like it in that sense because its comparing Skyrim to COD, and I say whats the problem with that? they are action games with RPG elements no? you want to dispute Todd with that? he said it himself last year.

So who cares, what does matter is how it shores up with its Progenitors, and before anyone goes on about how they should be looked at as seperate games. I've several statements to make

1. The Elder Scrolls Always precedes them
2. from Arena to Dagger fall the System Over all has remained the same, Weapons from Arena to Skyrim do nothing different at base value
3. same for Magic
4. magic effects, still rule the games over all mechanically
5. They are Still dungeon crawlers, All of them, NONE have strayed from that in any shape or form.
6. same company, same genre even if its diminished in such aspects over the years.

So for all your metal for saying the ages you've been through the TES series really isn't worth its weight for nothing, Im not sure why you may believe that your elder-ship grants superior near infallible insight.

You say that the soul of the game is still there. my statement wasn't addressing that, nor did it claim that Skyrim wasn't an RPG, I say its less so of an RPG than its predecessors because much of what you could do in past games to facilitate an RPG run aren't in Skyrim, and no your numbers numbers numbers herring really isn't going to cut it. it isn't solely about numbers or stats but outlets, in-game aspects that enable/give reason and effect to a said RPG, not mental connotations. the TES series wasn't sold based on the premise that people will generate reasons for the games being.

All too often you're either spirited through aspects/events of the game or hitting a dead end rapidly after the initial start in Quests/Story, It literally puts nearly everything the game has to offer in your face at day one without expansion or continuation for a more in-depth experience. in pretty much every aspect of Skyrim except Dungeons you are not given the full breath, just a gasp and expected to sit with it.


Don't get my wrong, you've got valid points and a head on your shoulders, you simply seem all to ready to start stomping on anyone who prefers morrowind specifically over its younger brethren. I don't know where you guys get this preconception about Morrowind peeps and harbor such vitriol.

If this was 5-6 months ago I probably would be the biggest FB defending Skyrim on every aspect. Then I had a revelation and saw the flaws that Skyrim had, reinforced further when I played New Vegas Ultimate Edition and Kingdoms Of Amalur Reckoning and then had a final reinforcement earlier today when I poped Oblivion back in and started a long playthrough. The jump from Oblivion to Skyrim and back to Oblivion is huge. Certainly the combat could be considered better in Skyrim and possibly the scaling too but everything else as an RPG suffered. Skyrim has a better Leveling up system but at what cost. I don't see anything wrong with what Oblivion did with Attributes, fix the flaws that the system had and it would've been amazing. Instead we get a causalization of the attributes down to 3 that don't mean anything at all. It's basically pick Blue, Green, or Red.

I haven't even mention the terrible writing, dialoge, or the fact that we don't have spell creation. No spell creation means we lost the magic that made TES great. Skyrim's magic is a joke, I do like the duelcasting but it's still a joke especially Destruction, we have so few spells it's ridiculous. Maybe DLC can rectify that problem but I'm not optimistic.

Skyrim's still a great game but comparing it to the previous TES and the great RPG's, it's not very good. Certainly Skyrim is better then 95% of what the industry currently pumps out each year but it's still not as good as Morrowind or Oblivion and certainly it's not better then both of those titles as an RPG. Gameplay wise, yes, RPG wise, no.

Sounds like ME3.

Wait what? How can you feel that there isn't less customization in Skyrim vs. Morrowind? This is a relatively uncontroversial statement to those of sound and reasonably unbiased minds. While the character's look much prettier, I feel that from a purely aesthetic standpoint even Oblivion offered you much more freedom with how you wanted to shape your character's face, skin tones, etc. With Skyrim I find that it's a little harder to change the 'base' structure of your character's face, aside from playing Mr. Potato with noses and lips, and moving cheekbones a little.

But then again I consider the aesthetic aspect of character creation a small, even minor part of the Character customization and maybe you would disagree but... In Skyrim you pick a race and an appearance and off you go. In Morrowind you pick a race, an appearance, then you customize your class including the ability to give it its own name which characters in-game will refer to you as "Hello [Custom Class Name], you look pretty spiffy!", and you even have a space where you can write a paragraph or two for your 'class description'. You also pick what amounts to a birth month, and further define your character through picking Major skills (life skills which he obviously had some proficiently at before becoming a prisoner), and minor skills (things the character had a passing acquaintance with his pre-prison life). Now admittedly the choice of faces in vanilla Morrowind was pretty limited, but it had more than Kotor, its contemporary.

So I would consider Morrowind's character customization far superior to Skyrim's on that basis alone, But it goes deeper - Skyrim has such ridiculously few spells, less schools of magic, less customization with your spells. There's also the increasingly less diverse array of armor and weapon types for you to choose from, a further way to customize your character. As is when I create a new character I know he will have one of three outfits for the early part of the game - Leather armor, Iron armor, or the Mage robes you find on the torture cell at Helgen.

So...Morrowind's character customization options are superior to Skyrim's - its perks simply can't make up for the deficiencies that I've just gone through.

Well when I say character customization im talking about the meaty part of it, actually developing what defines your character via skills.

And why I feel Skurim has more is because I do feel that perks offer you wide ranges of specialization within each skill. A perfect example - my main is a heavy armored, dual wielding character. My friend's main is also a heavy armored dual wielding character. However, his character is more efficient in melee combat than mine. Why?

Because within the skills that we shared, we've both perked differently. He has put more perks into Heavy Armor than I have, meaning he can tank more efficiently. He has put more perks into One Handed, so he has more damage bonuses than I do. Whereas if this was Morrowind, our characters would ultimately be the same in those regards, because skills are nothing more than a 1-100 journey. Perks offer a deeper development than a pure 1-100.

Does Morrowind have more styles of armor? Yea. But that's not important to me really... The importance to me is the distinction between Heavy and Light Armor, not the number of available armors.

The fact that Morrowind has more armors doesn't make Skyrim less of an RPG.

But I suppose that I should have clarified that by character customization, I was referring to the meaty parts of the character (skills and development, not aesthetics) and that that is what I prioritize, so the less aesthetic options (I.e. Armor styles) while desirable is not an importance to me.

But even the "meatier aspects" of character creation are weaker than in past games. In Skyrim, due to the lack of attributes and class system, every character I make will be (mostly) the same when I start the game. How can I roleplay a character with a 20 year backstory when every character you can make seems to be birthed out of the cart on the way to Helgen? Making a new character in Skyrim is tedious because by the time you've differentiated your new character from the last one, you're already nearing endgame. This, imo, was a bad design decision and creates a pervading sense of sameness to all of my characters which is hard to shake.

I wish I could say that perks were making a distinction between heavy and light armor. I mean, "...weighs nothing, doesn't slow you down". I personally hate armor skills completely. I wish they worked on their own merit without a skill.

Although, I agree that perks offer a deeper development than a pure 1-100. If only perks were more interesting. I still want my separate pauldrons.

i've seen a lot of posts similar to yours. people are just popping back in the games and quickly seeing the obvious differences.

i was playing morrowind right before skyrim and the shortcomings of skyrim just began to slowly show themselves as i played.

in the same way, in a short period of time i'm going to stop playing skyrim and pop oblivion back in (i haven't played it in at least 2+ years) and make some direct comparisons.

A lot of the perks in Skyrim are bad. Yes we do have a lot more options, just not good options. It's kind of a step in the right direction but far from perfect.

I don't see how attributes need to make way for perks though. I think that if Bethesda put more effort into it they could have co-existed.

And in Skyrim when I create an orc warrior who specializes in two handed weapons and heavy armor a dark elf warrior with the same perk selection is no different. And in Morrowind they were still different even if I took the same skills because of attributes. Not saying that perks should gtfo, but I'd rather have them co-op with attributes naturally.