Why I think TES are not part of a proper genre.

[adamflint]

I've noticed that numerous ''Oblivion is better than Skyrim'' and ''Morrowind is better than everything'' and ''TES is going to hell'' threads have been popping up recently on boards all across the 'net, so I thought I'd chip in. Skip to the second-to-last paragraph if this is too long for you.

First of all, I'd like to share the things I didn't find familiar/pleasant in Morrowind and prefered the way they were done in Oblivion and Skyrim. This is my opinion, so a lot of these things are subjective. Here, I shall aim to share with you my viewpoint and try to help you understand why I think what I think.

The World.
Morrowind (to me) looked like an grey/brown ash desert that was composed of rocky areas and flat areas. There were also a few brown/green swamps. Most of the cities were rather strange, but they were still mostly grey/yellow and ugly. Now, I understand some people (mostly those who played Morrowind first) like this; to them it feels alien and scary/threatening, and after tens or hundreds of hours of playtime, it feels like home.

My first TES game was Oblivion . To me Cyrodiil, with its green forests and flaxen fields feels like home. Skyrim (SR) feels a bit unfamiliar, but not too much so and the beautiful mountains and valleys definitely help. In short: familiarity is very important to me in games.

Bottom line: Home is where the heart is, home is where we feel comfortable; to MW players, Vvardenfell is home. To OB players, Cyrodiil is home. To Skyrim players, Skyrim is home.

The Characters.
The characters in Morrowind, while having lots to say, felt more like information terminals that may as well be in the quest log or in a book to me. The staticness and lack of voice-acting is what made me feel this way. However, individual characters are more developed and informative.

In OB and SR, characters look more alive thanks to voice acting, facial expressions and animations. In my opinion, this almost makes up for having less dialogue.

The Combat.
Many MW players seem to miss the more traditional, skill/dice roll-based combat and criticize OB and SR's combat for being too easy and allowing one to simply mash the left mouse button and win (disregarding the fact that that was pretty much how melee combat took place in MW, save the winning part).

A lot of players (for instance, me) would rather be angry at their own mistakes than at a random number generator.

However (and this is the point of my whole post), one must understand that while MW attracted lots of traditional RPG fans, TES aren't simply RPGs, they are pretty much their own genre. Bethesda should not strive to fulfill some ideals set by pure RPGs. They should strive create what they think TES is, what they want TES to be, and TES is evolving.

I do not doubt that Bethesda will bring TES further away from what we call the RPG, but regardless of what some doom-callers say, it will not move into the casual FPS genre. What I think TES is becoming is a High Fantasy Medieval Role-Playing Simulator (for the immediate lack of a better term).

Please discuss.

[Fiar]

With you starting on Oblivion, I can understand you not getting why Morrowind is often viewed as superior.

I won't speak for everyone, but I know a great bit will agree with me.

The setting was great, compared to Oblivion which was just forest, Vvardenfell had some variation in it's setting. Majority of it wasn't a forest, there were grasslands, islands to explore, ashlands, swamps, and the occasional mountain range. It didn't feel generic.

What I feel Morrowind still did better then Oblivion was the exploration. I roamed the land of Morrowind for a good couple hundred hours and found SOO many locations in discreet areas ( And I feel when I pop the game in, I discover something I hadn't found before even to this day). You had sunken ships, daedric shrinse, mines, Dumner strongholds, dwemner strongholds, caves, a dungeon or so (Like the one at Tel Vos), and the sunken daedric shrine you could find or learn about.

As you said with setting though, home is where the heart is.

What I really liked about dungeon delving in Morrowind, was the fact that you had to be observant and patient to find the secrets and explore it all. Some delving was pretty expansive. And you had to keep a levitate spell or potion on hand cause some areas weren't reachable by any other means (Excluding glitching and console on PC).

I also wanna point out Morrowind had much more variety with factions, versus Oblivion having it's static four. I think Morrowind had 6 to 8. And with some it can't always be a great setting and exploration, sometimes it helps immersion to have a faction that caters to a playstyle. Not to mention there was challenge in ranking up in Morrowind in that you had to meet req with skills to rank, which leads me to my next point.

Morrowind had challenge, you could stumble off the boat and wind up getting smacked into the ground by an Ogrim. The game wasn't leveled to you. You could easily stumble somewhere and everything there will decimate you. It added excitement knowing you can't always assume you can take what's in front of you. Some who played the game a lot knew ow to get around this though, cause there were set items and gear that normally a high level character would only be able to use. And finding this did help, but I didn't always use these items. Could it be argued that this could break the challenge of the game? Yeah, but it meant the game wasn't afraid of being flexible. The game did not hold your hand though, and it appealed to those who appreciated a reasonable challenge.

I think I prattled on long enough. Morrowind is pretty well loved by veterans, for good reason. Did it do everything perfect? No, combat was pretty stupid, sometimes directions to a quest were vague, being able to kill essential characters was annoying, there were skills that should have been combined into a category like Oblivion and Skyrim have done.....Oh, and cliff racers.

Don't get me wrong, Oblivion did a bunch right as well. Quests were more engaging, combat wasn't infuriating, cities and towns were more alive, and Shivering Isles was an absolute blast! I do love Oblivion, but not as much as Morrowind.

When it comes to Skyrim..I feel Bethesda did take qualities from both and added them into this game. And it shows. Great landscape, good quests, dungeons are interesting, some NPC's have a pretty nice backstory. The combination of static leveled areas and un-leveled areas I feel works. At least 6 factions, which is nice. And I am noticing a distinct variety in weapons (Not form, the look. Foresworn, nordic, orc, skyforge, etc).

The lack of a spell-crafting system is a disappointment though, and I hate that they took the difficulty slider out.

Also, I wanna point out, TES isn't just an RPG. I believe it's correct genre is sandbox-RPG, which really is accurate. More so since the criteria to be considered an RPG is rather expansive.

This is my 2 cents on this.

[soda popinski]

The people that really enjoy morrowind because it had a million little things in a remote corner of the world are also the 1% of people that found everything in that game. Most people missed a lot of content because it was hidden away.

Now with quest markers it may take away from some of the excitment of exploring, but it also opens up the vast majority of the game to the vast majority of the people playing it, which is a good move in my opinion.

[The Edgy Redguard]

It's not so much the question of which game in the series is better, but how each game plays to its own strengths and weaknesses, and how they are regarded as "dumbed down" RPGs; which is especially prevalent with those who criticize Skyrim's lack of Classes, birthsigns and attributes. Daggerfall had an incredibly deep and complex character creation system which was toned down considerably in Morrowind, with less skills, no strengths/weaknesses, rolling for skill points etc. Morrowind's system was also considerably dumbed down in Oblivion, with the merger and loss of certain weapon types, less skills etc. The TES series is simply adapting to a rapidly changing market that values storylines and experiences much more than stat sheets and grinding. I agree completely, This series should not be viewed in the same light as tradtional RPGs.

[Frost Mage]

I agree with you 100% FireAcolyte. Exploration was done so much better in Morrowind, and was so much more rewarding than Oblivion. It takes a while to really get into a character in Morrowind, but once you do it's better than any ES out there (Skyrim TBD).

[Mucro]

To be honest, I prefer low fantasy, you can mix some high in, but keep it mainly low kthnx.

But, I have found plenty of green forests and land in general which I've enjoyed looking around. Having a proper forest this time is brilliant.

[The Silent Striker]

I agree, people say they are RPG's, but for me, RPG's have to have a tactical style of combat. I'm not saying TES is untactical (You try bringing a dragon down by randomly slashing.), but RPGs for me need a tactical battle system for it to be an RPG. TES, and Fallout is more about thinking on your feet rather than planning ahead. Sure, you need equipment, but TES and Fallout allow you to make do with what you have.

For example;
Turning up to a boss battle without supplies in Dragon Quest; INSTA DEATH!
Turning up to a boss battle without supplies in Skyrim; Alright, I have no potions, so I better use ranged weapons. When he's weak, I'll move in with dual swords.

[Ryuhza]

I agree, people say they are RPG's, but for me, RPG's have to have a tactical style of combat. I'm not saying TES is untactical (You try bringing a dragon down by randomly slashing.), but RPGs for me need a tactical battle system for it to be an RPG. TES, and Fallout is more about thinking on your feet rather than planning ahead. Sure, you need equipment, but TES and Fallout allow you to make do with what you have.

For example;
Turning up to a boss battle without supplies in Dragon Quest; INSTA DEATH!
Turning up to a boss battle without supplies in Skyrim; Alright, I have no potions, so I better use ranged weapons. When he's weak, I'll move in with dual swords.

Playing a mage has been a very tactical experience for me.

[Fiar]

The people that really enjoy morrowind because it had a million little things in a remote corner of the world are also the 1% of people that found everything in that game. Most people missed a lot of content because it was hidden away.

Now with quest markers it may take away from some of the excitment of exploring, but it also opens up the vast majority of the game to the vast majority of the people playing it, which is a good move in my opinion.

I disagree with the first part, like I said, I have had the game for a long time (Launch year), and even to this day I still know I have not explored every nook and cranny I could have...And for that I love knowing there is still more to do when I pop the game in. Plenty in Morrowind I have have yet to do.

I agree with your second part, to an extent. Having the quest markers/compass are nice. The option to disable them appeals to a percentage cause it feels more mysterious and natural to them. I'll probably have my next play-through act like this to see if I would like it more or less.

[MorroWeiner]

In response to the Op, I would like to make a few comments.

It's not fair to criticize Morrowind for having shoddy combat, bland textures, and no audio dialogue. Something I feel that a lot of people overlook is the fact that audio takes up a lot of memory. Keep in mind that Morrowind has many, many, more quests than Oblivion. So to have that much audio content on a disc made in 2002 mind you, would have been impossible.

I would also like to comment on the "I am a baby" disposition of those who started with Oblivion and moved backwards to Morrowind. I don't blame you for thinking Morrowind is too hard, confusing, or vague. I actually commend you for trying to play Morrowind! I just feel that Oblivion was far too dumbed-down. The quest waypoint, the "go to map" option when in the journal? So they won't even make you flip over to your map? Nice.

One thing Morrowind didn't have (that I really liked) was fast travel. When you needed to go somewhere, it was a commitment, you had better bring everything you needed. While jumping along to your destination, (to raise your acrobatics - a skill I don't miss in Skyrim) you might come across an ancestral tomb, or a Daedric ruin. You might go in, and get brutally [&@%!] by some monsters. That's how it should be! Come back when you're ready. The world shouldn't revolve around the player, baby.

Oblivion on the other hand, had almost nothing interesting to come across while wandering the strangely identical green hills. You might come a cross a robber, with the same round, yellow face and same shirt as every other breton male in the game, and the same feminine voice as Lucienne Lachance.

I continued to play Morrowind for two years after Oblivion came out, only borrowing it briefly later to beat the main quest at level 5.

Oh and leveled items? wtf.

/rant. Bitter veterans and Oblivion players will never agree I'm afraid

[Fiar]

In response to the Op, I would like to make a few comments.

It's not fair to criticize Morrowind for having shoddy combat, bland textures, and no audio dialogue. Something I feel that a lot of people overlook is the fact that audio takes up a lot of memory. Keep in mind that Morrowind has many, many, more quests than Oblivion. So to have that much audio content on a disc made in 2002 mind you, would have been impossible.

I would also like to comment on the "I am a baby" disposition of those who started with Oblivion and moved backwards to Morrowind. I don't blame you for thinking Morrowind is too hard, confusing, or vague. I actually commend you for trying to play Morrowind! I just feel that Oblivion was far too dumbed-down. The quest waypoint, the "go to map" option when in the journal? So they won't even make you flip over to your map? Nice.

One thing Morrowind didn't have (that I really liked) was fast travel. When you needed to go somewhere, it was a commitment, you had better bring everything you needed. While jumping along to your destination, (to raise your acrobatics - a skill I don't miss in Skyrim) you might come across an ancestral tomb, or a Daedric ruin. You might go in, and get brutally [&@%!] by some monsters. That's how it should be! Come back when you're ready. The world shouldn't revolve around the player, baby.

Oblivion on the other hand, had almost nothing interesting to come across while wandering the strangely identical green hills. You might come a cross a robber, with the same round, yellow face and same shirt as every other breton male in the game, and the same feminine voice as Lucienne Lachance.

I continued to play Morrowind for two years after Oblivion came out, only borrowing it briefly later to beat the main quest at level 5.

Oh and leveled items? wtf.

/rant. Bitter veterans and Oblivion players will never agree I'm afraid

Actually, it is fair to criticize what Morrowind offers.

And to note, at the time, if you look at most other games, the graphics were on par with a lot of other games at that time. The graphics for it's age were really nice. Combat was probably fairly received at the time, how it was done though won't hold up over time.

And I agree on commending those for trying it. Oblivion wasn't really dumbed down though, they removed redundant skill schools and mechanics. You don't need a skill for spears, swords, maces, and that sort. The one-handed and two-handed system is actually preferable since it condenses it into a class it should have already been in. Spears use two hands, maces and swords can be both, so put the variants into their respective class. Waypoint IS a valid point, though not completely dumbing down the game, it's there for those who need it. The option should have always existed to disable it in Oblivion.

The rest I agree on.

[Srikandi]

I have no idea what "part of a proper genre" means... but if the topic is about the relative merits of the three games (and why are we omitting Daggerfall and Arena? ), I'll put in my two cents.

I like map tags, and fast travel. I think those are positive enhancements. I don't hate leveled enemies and loot; Morrowind had em too, after all, just not quite to the same extent.

I still thought, and think, that Morrowind was the superior game, though. And the reason is epistemological uncertainty. In Morrowind, not only were right and wrong hard to distinguish... true and false were equally difficult. For every belief system in the game, there was another contrary belief system. Most striking of all: it was never even clear that you really were the Nerevarine, or that such a person existed. Some people chose to see you that way, others didn't; you could decide for yourself whether you thought you were fulfilling an ancient prophecy, or just an opportunist who played into the locals' superstitious hopes. That was a fascinating twist on the whole "Chosen One" cliche that riddles video games, not excepting Oblivion and Skyrim.

The terrain in Morrowind mirrored this diversity of world views. The orange desert of Ald'Ruhn, the green areas around Balmora, the grassy plains with the giant mushroom towers and the camps of the nomads... there was vastly more variety than in either of the other two games.

The morality in Oblivion was clear: Martin vs. the Daedra, good vs. evil. There were some plot twists but there was no real uncertainty as to the underlying truths. And that dualism was reflected in the dualism between the green and sunny landscape and the red and orange twisted planes of Oblivion. Mind you, I liked the realization of Oblivion as a space; the crazy worlds of the Daedra lords has always fascinated me. But back on Nirn, things got a lot duller.

I haven't been everywhere in Skyrim yet... and there is some diversity in landscape, but the palette is very uniform, pale and chilly. Stunningly beautiful, yes. Fitting to the region, yes. Interesting, not as much A consistent aesthetic, for sure, which like the aesthetic of the Fallout games, tends to leave me feeling a little depressed and... cold, heh.

But Skyrim does appear to be closer to Morrowind in terms of having a real diversity of perspectives and a wobblier moral compass than Oblivion had So I think it's an improvement.

Anyway... my opinion TLDR, Morrowind was the better game, not for any reason relating to gameplay mechanics but because of the complexity of the IDEAS the gameworld represented about the nature of reality and morality.

[Chaos the N'wah]

RPG is a vague genre to begin with, many people have their own opinion on what defines an RPG, but those are just that, opinions.
But if you're dead set on putting TES into a category, the series has been frequently been called ARPG (Action Role Playing Game) which is more aimed at Oblivion and Skyrim than their predecessors.

On the Morrowind/Oblivion debate: What a lot of people fail to realize is that to those that love Morrowind, their reasons are mainly because that despite its dated graphics, bugs, difficulty, and vast texts, it still managed to suck the player into the world. There's no doubt that Oblivion's game mechanics are easier to grasp and funner than chance to hit, but for many it lacked the atmosphere, depth, and intrigue that was what pulled them into TES in the first place.

To Morrowinders, TES stands out above other RPGs because of its lore and atmosphere, they avoid games like Oblivion because of the more casual approach to the story than Morrowind
To Oblivians, TES stand out because of the intuitive gameplay combined with the visual/verbal story telling, they avoid Morrowind because they view it as the last vestige of a dying breed of the old RPGs, where numbers and percentages were king.

[N'wah Nern]

I don't think I could say anything to change your mind about Morrowind. I do agree that a lot of it can seem brown and ugly, but mushrooms man, MUSHROOMS. The architecture and ash storms also really added to that feeling of visiting a foreign culture. But If you don't care for it, that's your business.

I do like the text rather than voice acting. If they had given more diverse faces and animation it may have lessened that Info Terminal feeling. But still, I get a much better sense of character through text. The voice acting can make everyone except a few seem like generic NPCs. This was especially the case in Oblivion, where everyone had the same voice. In Skyrim less so, but the many of the quests in Skyrim don't feel fleshed out to me.

As for RPGs. RPGs, for me, are about choice and about story. I don't consider the modern Final Fantasies to be an RPGs. It's about tweaking your character however you like, playing how you want to play. They can take out stats, but what Bethesda keeps doing that worries me is that they keep taking customization out along with it. I could wear lots of small pieces of armor like greaves in Morrowind. I can't in Skyrim. I could choose some beginning stats so the direction I chose made sense for my character. I can't in Skyrim. I want choice, that's all. I get what they are trying to do, have you figure out what skills you like as you go along, but that means we are all the same when we start. And then pointless skills level up.

The stories in the ES games are already pretty linear, though I do like the Imperial and Stormcloak choice in Skyrim (that's a step up, a step in the direction of Fallout New Vegas). If they keep that up I think the series will actually improve in that regard.

So no, I don't want them going away from RPGs, other wise Elder Scrolls will start to look like medieval grandtheft auto.

[POMC S117]

I'm... sorry. I.. had to pick... the last option. I don't know why but the actual title of the option made me laugh. I actually agree with you though.

[Imp]

I don't know if this genre has already been created, but I would call Elder Scrolls a "Free form RPG." I don't know really. I haven't played Morrowind (You can hit me if you wanna) but I like Skyrim and Oblivion in different ways.

[MasterRokon]

Imo it is a role playing game, because well u can role play, games such as the final fantasy series arent rpgs to me, because u have your mainquest and sidquest, but thats where it ends, you cant role play, you are squall, or cloud you cant be whom you want, and in the end after all the side quest and main quest line your done nothing to do but lvl.

[dzio]

I'm not sure if "not part of a proper genre" is how I'd put it. For me, discovering Morrowind few months ago was an epiphany of sorts - "This is what cRPG should be like!" (followed closely by "Girl, you're a moron. Why haven't you tried it before?!") I've played many different games (mostly older ones, my hardware sucks) and something was always missing. Now I know what it was - the almost complete freedom of choice. Before Morrowind I've never realised how restricting those rules and plots were, even so-called "non-linear" ones. Like MasterRokon said - in this game you can actually roleplay, and not just by imagining stuff, but by actions that are part of regular gameplay.

Another thing is the experience system. This is how you should do it! You get better at different skills by using them. It always bothered me that in "regular" cRPGs you can inexplicably become more skilled at casting healing spells by hacking fifty rats to pieces with a dagger, or that after all that hacking you somehow gain a supernatural ability to see in the dark. I mean, how? Why? When does that happen? In Morrowind knifing rats makes you better at using a knife. This way it's much easier to really immerse yourself in the world and in the game, because it's closer to reality and follows some form of logic (whithout going to extremes which would make it tedious and boring, that's important too).

And about the difficulty level and the complexity - for me it's one of the game's strongest points. I don't like to be treated like a brainless, trigger-happy jerk, who can't be bothered to read more than two lines of text. I don't like it when I can never get in serious trouble just by wandering around, because everything is fitted to my level - it feels like I'm being led by the hand and the free choice is just an illusion, while in fact the only paths I can choose are the safe ones, pre-determined by the game's creators. Here, the game is telling me that I can do whatever the heck I want, I just shouldn't whine if I stumble into something that turns me inside out and eats me. My choice, and my responsibility for consequences.

All in all, I'd say that for me Morrowind is the golden standard. It has many flaws, so I'm not going to say it's a "perfect cRPG", but the general concept is so simple and so brilliant that every single game designer should follow its example.

I'm a bit worried that some of those things I love in Morrowind get lost in Oblivion and Skyrim (and potentially in TES6). I haven't played them yet (as I mentioned - hardware issues) but I've read some comments here and I've seen some Skyrim videos, and I'm not sure if I like the direction the series is headed. I understand that it's supposed to generate money, so some compromise is necessary to appeal to casual gamers and those trigger-happy jerks I mentioned before, but it would be a real shame if Bethesda managed to create the perfect formula for a cRPG and then dismantle it gradually, in the name of higher sales...