Hi all.

I am a massive fan of Oblivion, however it is the only Elder Scrolls title i have played. I got my 360 back in 2007 and got myself a copy of Oblivion preoowned for about ￡12. From the minute i started playing i thought to myself "how the hell can someone trade this in"? It was great and still is on the odd occasion i put it back on. I have played through twice with about 180+ hours on each go. I had not even heard of the Elder Scrolls series before playing this game and after completing my first playthrough i started scouring the web for announcements of the next ES title. Two years after i started looking here we are with Skyrim announced and all is good.

During this time i have constantly being told on forums everywhere how much better Morrowind was, and how Skyrim needs to be the same, or take some of the aspects of the game that made it so good and it has led me to thinking could i go back to the last generation of games and try Morrowind. Each time i come to the conclusion "i am too shallow when it comes to the visuals", would the whole Morrowind thing be as good for me going back to it rather than being brought up with it???

So I think to myself, who better to ask than the die hard fans of the series, the people who have been there, done it, maybe who were once in the position i am now. I'm kinda hoping that people say "hell yeah, you gotta do it!" cause that gives me a brand new game, apparantly better than my favorite game of all time.

So the question is. Knowing what Morrowind and Oblivion are like, and taking into account visualls, storyline, quests, next gen advancements etc... could you go back to Morrowind and enjoy it as much if you played it now after playing Oblivion?

Definitely.

I'd suggest reading http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Morrowind_for_Oblivion_Players this first since some aspects of the gameplay are quite different. However if you're looking for another vast open-world RPG Morrowind will certainly provide.

I have been playing Oblivion for about a year now and bought Morrowind a couple of months ago, Morrowind is amazing and there are aspects of Morrowind that are better than Oblivion (Huge range of weapons, armour and spells) but there are also aspects of Oblivion that are better than Morrowind (fatigue and magic regeneration, combat e.t.c). I found playing Morrowind much more difficult than playing Oblivion but got used to it after a while and now enjoy both games, Oblivion is still my favourite because it was my first Elder Scrolls game but I can understand why so many people prefer Morrowind.

the graphics kinda spoil you, when I started playing Morrowind, I would just not continue because the graphics were so bad, but you get used to it after a while and it become fun

Pursue the game with an open mind, and Oblivion players migrating to Morrowind would probably find the game more refreshing - the plethora of dungeons, weapons, and spells that were lacking in TES IV. I'm not saying Morrowind is universally loved, but I do think many Oblivion players would admire the game's increase in content - for this very reason, I don't see any reason for Bethesda to cut even more in Skyrim.

I played Oblivion first and later bought the Morrowind GOTY with an open mind. The poorer graphics did not really bother me, or the insect-like segmented bodies everyone has, and stiff, unrealistic way of walking. I expect an older game to not have all the bells and whistles of a newer one. On the plus side Morrowind had a very rich setting, steeped in history and rival factions. That was very engaging. Visually it looked alien, with weird trees and strange beasts everywhere. That was also a plus, as it made me feel like I really was in another world. The text-based dialogue quickly got on my nerves however, as there was a ton of it, and almost all of it was exactly the same with every NPC. It very quickly made me not want to bother talking to any NPC because of all the reams of redundant text. What really killed it for me was the combat though. It literally bored me to death, and that was the show-stopper.

Morrowind is not better than Oblivion, it's merely different. There is no such thing as "better" in art or entertainment. Morrowind has features that Oblivion lacks; Oblivion has features that Morrowind lacks. This is not an either/or proposition. There are things to love about both games.

Personally, I think Morrowind's graphics (aside from faces) are fine. Morrowind's water actually looks better than water in Oblivion, to my eye. And I also think Morrowind's skies (both night-time and day-time) are prettier than Oblivion's. I think they're still the prettiest skies I've ever seen in any video game. I'm playing a new game of Morrowind right now - without using any graphics mods - and I'm enjoying it tremendously. What I miss from Oblivion is physics and Radiant AI. Vvardenfell seems so static after years of playing Oblivion. Seeing NPCs standing in one place forever just feels creepy to me now. And, boy, I miss watching a bandit go over the side of a cliff and bump down a hillside after being hit by an arrow, lol.

Thanks people for the info, but i think after reading some of these replies that it really was a game to have played at the time. I really dont think i can go that far back with a game, even if the story is great. I think i look forward to game advancements too much, and the shiny new graphics hypnotises me. If only they would bring out old games revamped with all the shiny bits.

Thanks.

Open world games are, absolutely, my genre. And having played each elder scrolls game quite a bit (enough to not quote hours), I personally think oblivion is more "my" kind of game. I am not so much a fan of the elder scrolls "lore" but rather, the atmosphere.

The first elder scrolls game I played was morrowind. It actually had a greater impact, I was significantly more astonished, bewildered, and awestruck. It was the first true open world game I had played, and it was simply amazing to walk around and explore at will.
However, I have always personally (notice how I keep saying personally?) completely and utterly disagreed with most people who prefer morrowind. I think oblivion is a substantially better game. On a large number of levels.

Pros of oblivion:

+ Without mods: Satisfying but simple combat, a visceral feeling to combat, With mods: The best combat in any role playing game. Bar none. Deadly Reflex, or Unnecessary Violence add complexity and depth to the combat more than any new release role playing game has. (and i have played them all)

+ Cities - I Find the originality of the cities to perhaps be more traditional fantasy, but I find the layout of complexity of them to be far more to my liking. Not being a part of the world makes them feel separated, which is inferior to morrowind. But everything else is far more absorbing to me. In particular when you use a city mod, such as open cities, or my favorite, better cities. Then it just becomes masterful.

+ Very few voice actors means you hear a lot of the same dialog,

+ The best mod range, in the entire world. Oblivion has the furthest reach in "addition mods". Nothing else even vaugely compares. Fallout 3 has a lot, but none as far reaching, as diverse, as absolutely game changing.

+ Huge world. Oblivion is large.Very Large. And I actually think the dungeons are far more diverse than people make out. The textures are the only things that repeat, not the individual design. Mods also completely change this.

+ The Vibrancy. This is completely subjective, but every time i boot oblivion. I get lost in the stunning beauty of the game. It might not be a dark fantasy, it might simply kind of feel like some version of the shire. But that's what is so brilliant. The darkness is within the oblivion gates, and the transition and juxtaposition of the two, is absolutely fantastic.

+ Shivering Isles - This is my morrowind fix. Only a lot more interesting. In place of boring dreary text boxes with copy/paste dialog's, there is a fantastic story within this portal. Fantastic alien design, just like morrowind, only vibrant instead of dull brown. Shiving Isles is a masterpiece within a masterpiece. Oblivion provides the scope, and shiving isles is a tad of heart, and insanity within this scope, that just adds a spark to an already bright game.

The Cons of Oblivion:

The oblivion realms are the only thing that the term "generic" applies to. Unlike the interest trap infested cave systems, the oblivion realms do tend to get frustrating. And very red. However, when paced, they are a good change of pace.

Stability. This is attached to the mods. Which push oblivion to it's very limit. If you play with mods, expect crashes. It takes a long time to get a perfect fcom install.


Morrowind Pros:

+ More Lore. The game is packed with lore. Unfortunately a lot of this is repeated via the hotlink style conversations. Which where horrible in 2002, and far worse now.

+ Stunning World - Assuming you can feel happy enough to appreciate it within the sea of brown. Bloodmoon helps with this. But not much, since bloodmoon is surprisingly small.

+ Items are often more interestingly placed, and there are more interesting items, mostly due to things like levitation being something you can add as a stat, and more other interesting things.

That's the pros and cons of morrowind, the cons are attached to the hip of the cons. Except this this.

CLIFF RACERS. - Quite possibly the most annoying thing in the history of gaming. These horrible nightmares seek you out with a horrible soul bleeding cry, and proceed to nip at you until you have a headache. They also completely infest morrowind.


Overall, It's hard for me to recommend morrowind unless you have played oblivion and it's stunning mods, and dlc, shiving isles. If you have absolutely done all of that content. Then move to morrowind expecting the worst. And you might be pleasantly surprised.


This is just my viewpoint, and while morrowind had more original world design (which is fantastic to have) and creatures, a lot of the lauded praise for it, such as it being a more complex game, and oblivion being made for the masses. Has absolutely run anything but true for me. I can literally quote the morrowind story. The game had it's impact. It was the first of it's kind. My bias should tell me it's better. Simply because it popped my cherry. But, no.

Oblivion is better. Modded oblivion is the best open world game, bar none.


Also, I recommend morrowind with the MGE and a texture pack or two from nexus. it helps remove that lifeless brown from everything and also makes the game look nearly-stunning.

You can still download tons of mods that revamp Morrowind and make it look even better than Oblivion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWW7-wRVy10.

That said, I'm one of those who don't care that much about graphics and to me MW's graphics are perfectly fine and enjoyable.

Morrowind is an amazing game. It's older than oblivion but amazing nonetheless.

Of both games, Morrowind is the only one I would play completely vanilla for a long long time.

But, I still love them both.

I would say the best part about morrowind above anything else is throwing stars. You have no idea how amazingly fun running along the paths or through the wilderness is and just throwing the stars at random enemies and one shotting them. The weapon variety alone was so much better in morrowind. In addition to there being more varities of one handed sword types there was also just more weapons period. Throwing stars as I mentioned but also spears. There was way more skills as well. An unarmored skill and a medium armor. Swords were divided up between two handed and one handed plus a dagger skill I think? I can't remember its been quite a few years. Glass armor also looks 1000X cooler in morrowind. The first time I ever saw it in the game I remember thinking something to the effect of "omg what the hell is that? I want it." That said oblivion does do some things better. What I don't understand is why oblivion looks so much better then morrowind if they are both using the same engine. I know technology was better when oblivion was made, but with the same exact engine I don't see why it should be THAT much better looking.




http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:OB-item-Glass_Armor.jpg <--------Oblivion glass armor

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW_Armor_GlassM.jpg <--------Morrowind glass armor

I played Oblivion first, and I prefer Morrowind by a huge margin.

If you really love open world games then I say get it. The lore and faction based things are a ton better than Oblivion.
Be prepared for text dialogue and a poorer (IMO) combat system. I don't think I could go back to it now. Instead of drawing a sword, it is butterknife out, butterknife in. :laugh:

Valandil Ciryatan,

I'm right there with you. I started with Oblivion about a year and a half ago and still play every day. I play on a PC (which I bought mostly for gaming...curse you Bethesda! ). So, after playing with the OOO and Lost Spires mods for the last six months and excited over the Skyrim announcement, I'm going to try to get my hands on a copy of Morrowind GOTY. Hard to find where I live and I ended up getting FO3 instead because I couldn't find Morrowind at our local game store. FO3 was great, but I want more scrolls.

Yeah, I'm sure the graphics and combat system will bug me a bit, but this really sounds like a great game...and there are always mods.

From personal experience...
Oblivion introduced me to The Elder Scrolls, eventually I decided to play Morrowind but couldn't get into it and gave up.
Later I decided to give it another try. It was hard getting into it but once I was, I was addicted(And err still am) and couldn't stop playing.
So yeah I think It's still an amazing game, it's just hard to get into.

If you like graphics and the gameplay exciting and action oriantated, then you'll never like morrowind. Morrowind serves to the more hardcoe DnD style gamers (im not a DnD person, but I like the math behind the morrowind gameplay), and if you werent playing games when morrowind came out it may be hard to throughback ot games from that era like morrowind.

Oblivion really brought ES to the casual console players, many (not all though) would not be interested in the slow paced, hard at first, easy later, style of morrowind.


It depends on the person, Oblivion is far more popular, but Morrowind is what the fans like.....that just shows that the majority of the hardcoe bethesda fans were created in the first games (daggerfall, morrowind), rather then with Oblivion.

As a player that went from Morrowind to Oblivion if the shoe was on the other foot and I were to do it the other way I'd say.
If you wanna try out morrowind in my opinion there are 2 things to get over. First being graphics.
The second is as soon as you land in Seyda Neen many adventurers have had bad luck attacking mudcrabs until out of stamina and get low on health, then dive into the water and get away back to town and meet the slaughter fish(much more aggressive than Oblivion fishes) without having a saved game file. Saving is important.

If you've totally exhausted doing all the quests in Oblivion I think it's worth giving Morrowind a try.

Yeah I remembered the first time I died to a rat. I was pissed and was swearing like crazy at the tv (xbox goty copy). Morrowind is not kind to new players. Fun as hell once you get a hang of what you are doing though. Except for cliff racers of course. They can burn in hell for eternity.

For those who started with oblivion I would say morrowind has much more content then oblivion, but oblivion has better graphics and mechanics then morrowind. They are both worth playing, regardless of which order you do it in. Lets just hope that skyrim has the content of morrowind with the mechanics of oblivion. With some nice graphics of course, but I would rather they not be cutting edge if it means more content or time spent on the fun stuff.

Yes. I played Oblivion before I played Morrowind and I think Morrowind is an awesome game. Only played it for about 10 hours because my XBox died, but I do plan on getting it on PC. There was some really cool stuff about that game. In particular I remember my first trek to Ald'ruhn from Seyda Neen by way of Hla Oad and Balmora, getting Viatrix killed in the mountains, and running past cliff racers in the Boots of Blinding Speed. Morrowind was tougher, but not excessively so. I was never killed by a rat or anything...only once or twice by Nelos Onmar (I think...some bandit just north of Seyda Neen. I remember running from him back into Seyda Need but the stupid guards wouldn't help. Bastards.) I actually had to be careful when fighting, something I barely ever had to do in Oblivion. Then there's the lack of fast travel...that certainly added to the less "friendly" nature of the game (not a bad thing, Oblivion is just more friendly for casual gamers).

But yeah, good game. If I played through the whole thing I'd probably like it even more, and it'd be even better on PC.

I seriously can't actually, i played it before Oblivion but just a few hours maybe 2 or 3. After that i played Oblivion and i couldn't stand Morrowind.

Oblivion made Morrowind a ton better for me. I actually tried Morrowind before I found Oblivion, and I didn't have much fun, I was used to more linear roleplaying games, and so was like a fish out of water when I got all that freedom, I ended up just playing with the world mechanics, like setting my acrobats to 1000 and jump across the island.

Anyways, Oblivion had a better tutorial, and a little more sense of direction, which as it turned out, didn't just help me get into Oblivion, it helped me get into Morrowind as well, after having played Oblivion extensively for years I tried Morrowind again, and everything just came naturally.

I agree. The idea of being a member of the Imperial Legion and the Imperial Cult is something that I missed in Oblivion. Great Houses, writs of honorable execution, conflicting questlines . . . ah, memories. I love Oblivion, but Morrowind introduced me to the Elder Scrolls. It will always have that special place in my heart, dated graphics or not.

In Morrowind you are far weaker and slower in the beginning also less level scaling makes you run into lots of things at level 1-3 who would kill you. Combat system also punishes you hard at low skills as it’s hard to hit.
Games has pretty similar complexity, but Oblivion is more user friendly and idiot proof, can not sell quest items or kill essential npc.

I wouldn't call it idiot proof, although the hit system was dumbed down a bit (in morrowind you had a better chance at dodging attacks from multiple enemies swinging at you, in Oblivion its more stacked against you since if they are in range you can have 3 things crowded around you swinging all hitting you and you are only able to hit one back at a time with melee for some reason.)
Things are just tougher when you start out at lower levels it makes everything dangerous and there usually is a lot of those things around. One second you'll be running through an area kill a rat a kwama forger an alit then hear a cliff racer closing in only to realize there was actually 3 cliff racers.

Morrowind is challenging but it's plot is just so thick, I think anyone that makes it past level 5 or 10 will be hooked on exploring it.