I like Skyrim, will I like the others?

If you don't mind the rather dated graphics, Morrowind is great.

Oblivion is ok, and if you don't mind the levelled creatures or the console UI in Skyrim, it's a pretty good guess you'll enjoy Oblivion as well. I didn't like those points in this game, especially the levelled bandits were ridiculous. Every bandit and marauder will be wearing daedric armor or glass armor by the time you hit level 25, and the wolfs will take as many hits to kill with a rusted iron sword at level 1 as with a daedric sword at level 40. I understand Skyrim (and Fallout 3 and New Vegas) have this toned down a bit.

There's plenty of mods to fix these issues, though (so get it on the PC, if you hadn't figured that yet).

The thing is, Morrowind doesn't need mods to be a great game, while Oblivion definitely does. In my opinion, of course. I love the expansions for Morrowind too.

Aside from these things, these games are not that different from Skyrim - same sandbox gameplay, same rather poor main story line. And mostly FedEx quests, of course.

 

Morrowind is more dated, it suffers way more from any problems you might have had with Skyrim but the game is HUGE. It is much more free, it is even more than Skyrim a single player MMO. Plops you down into a massive world with countless of things to do. Now I got tempted to load my old save. I have yet to finish the main quest or play the expansions. The problem is the same as Skyrim though, you make your character invincible long before you run out of stuff to do. My biggest issue with Morrowind is actually that I never played it when it was fresh so I kinda missed out on it when it was new and only played it "dated" but I have had a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed Oblivion and Shivering Isles. If you think magic is weak in Skyrim you will be shocked by Morrowind and Oblivion as magic is much weaker in those than Skyrim. Oblivion is more streamlined than Morrowind, everything is very alien in Morrowind, in a good way while everything is very standard in Oblivion. The gates get a bit repetitive but I must say that personally I actually enjoyed the main story of Oblivion the best of the three ES games I played.

Short answer, you will definitely get your money's worth from Morrowind and Oblivion and not only because they are dirt cheap now.

 

I really love Morrowind and mostly because it lets the player experience his own story. There is no compass that constantly tells you where to go, there are more options to travel around, quests can be really hard and you will feel really lost at times, and that's great because if you keep on going then you will be immersed in this wonderful and strange world. I tried Oblivion, it's boring. The world of Oblivion is boring. It's a default fantasy story with goblins and lions and bears and wolves, the creators of Oblivion didn't try to be creative, they just created a low-risk easy-to-get-into world. meh. Morrowind is awesome, there are no normal creatures here, they only started introducing those with the second expansion, Bloodmoon. The original game has bi-pedal alligators, big green hounds with shrimp-like faces, flying squids, fleas the size of apartment buildings? I don't know what these guys were using, but I want some. Eggs? They find those things in mines! You can play the game you want, you want to get overpowered early? Easy, you can find some of the best armor sets early in the game, but you are going to have to be careful. There is a full ebony set in an abandoned mine in the northern part of Ghostfence. There is an ebony short sword, hidden within the ground near Odai plateau. I haven't played this game for years, but I still remember details like this. Bandits don't spawn randomly, they have names and once you clear their hideout, it remains empty.

Haha, I remember finding some scrolls that allowed me to make enormous leaps, and later on I really got stuck near a Daedric shrine. A scamp was attacking me and I had nothing to fight back with and I would be dead in two or three hits while he was blocking the exit. So I paused, looked at my inventory and noticed that I still had these scrolls in my backpack. I could use a scroll, but then I had to worry about landing. There had to be something to soften the impact. There is a feather spell that would allow me to gently float down, if I cast it at the correct time, but I didn't have such a spell. Looking at the map I noticed that lake Nabia was just close enough, so I attempted to face the correct direction, made the jump and after a minute of flight I landed "safely" into this lake. It was awesome

 

You can always pick the first 2 games up for free from bethesdas website. They are playable since you need to use dosbox since they are DOS games.

Link to the first game
http://www.elderscrolls.com/arena/

Link to the second game
http://www.elderscrolls.com/daggerfall/

 

That's precisely what I loved about Morrowind too - the freedom to get all the really good stuff right at the beginning of the game, and a much greater degree of freedom to boost your stats into the sky. To illustrate, in order for you to enchant something yourself, the game expects you to use alchemy to boost your intelligence - and not a little bit either, we're talking about boosting boosting your INT to 1000 or something. But boosting your intelligence also increases the effectiveness of your alchemy skill. So create potion to boost INT -> Use potion -> create stronger potion to boost INT -> Use potion -> ...

I'm sure you can follow the reasoning. So while Oblivion actually limits your stats to 255 max, Morrowind lets you boost it as far as you dare. I got carried away with this once until I had about 65 million INT. Normally these potions should wear off over time. These ones didn't. Accidentally eat an ingredient? Hope you enjoy having that effect semi permanently. Yeah, I had to restart on that game, but it was still a fun experience.

Also, I think Morrowind intends for you to use potions to boost your INT before you can use certain spells, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to have enough magicka to even cast the spells.

I think the Oblivion world is larger, but is more tedious to get around. In Morrowind there's a pair of boots that give you +200 speed. That allows you to move around the map fairly quickly, especially if you maxed out your acrobatics and boosted your strength a fair bit. I loved jumping around from rooftop to rooftop in Balmora. With the rooftops being on different sides of the canal. You could even strafe run (although that works in Oblivion too, probably Skyrim even). The only way this could've been better was if you could rocket jump.

What I also liked in Morrowind was that the quick travel system was actually integrated in the game world. In Oblivion, you would just click on an icon on the world map and you'd automatically travel there, but in Morrowind you'd talk to the guy operating the Silt Strider in Seyda Neen and he'd take you there. Or take a boat. Or use the mages guild's teleportation service. It's just much more involved and integrated into the game world.

The downside of Morrowind is that it's just not as stable as its successors. I've had quite a few CTDs (not that Oblivion didn't have those), people clipping through the world geometry, or even the PC getting stuck in the world geometry - it's telling when a game has a console command that's called 'fixme', which moves your PC 128 units in the direction (s)he is looking, which you can use to get out of places you got stuck in.

Morgoth, if you had more than one copy of the Icarus spell left, you could've used that just before the landing too in order to take no damage from the fall

Oh yeah, if you can still get a copy with a physical map, I'd get that, because I remember having to use it a lot.

 

Morrowind was arguably a better game than Skyrim is. Way more skills, way more weapon types. Can create all kinds of characters, where in Skyrim it gets awee bit limited in that regard.

 

The variety isn't really there in Morrowind or Oblivion either. It could be argued that there is more variety in Skyrim as you are forced to choose your skill points there. In Morrowind and Oblivion you can do everything equally good. As for enemies all the ES games seem to lack in variety. There is plenty in all for one or possibly even two games (although Draugr got a bit old in Skyrim and the different daedra in the gates in Oblivion tend to become dull as well). Morrowind gives the appearance of having more variety but really doesn't and one of my biggest problem with that game was that it can actually be hard to find things to kill to level up combat skills. Enemies are rather rare, high level opponents very rare.

Judged by its time Morrowind was probably the better game but all the things that makes it great is also can make it confusing. It is huge, sprawling, hard to get an overview of and there really is no incentive at all to actually follow the main quest. Pure sandbox. There are bugs and glitches that might wreck you so save often. As we have hinted earlier, for good or bad it is less polished, less accessible and less streamlined than Oblivion or SKyrim.

 

Joacqin makes a good point. But i do think there are some mods that fixes alot of the bugs? And some that enhances the graphics conseiderably - making it look alot less dated.

 

For morrowind there is a full Graphical overhaul set of mods that work together. If I remember right the set is called graphics overhaul.

Think this is the mod I was speaking of http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8987

 

I loaded my Morrowind save today, never finished it but am very close to the end of the main quest. If you are used to the ease of questing in Skyrim Morrowind will be extremely confusing. It might have been the last true old school rpg where you actually have to read, look at the map and try to find your way. Both frustrating and refreshing. I am not sure I will finish the main quest but I never got to play the expansions and I want to. Morrowind is just so vastly more complicated, deep and sophisticated than Skyrim or Oblivion. The UI isn't great and switching between spells, weapons and magical items is rather cumbersome but the game is so much freer. Can enchant all kinds of stuff and you can fly which is probably what I love the most in Morrowind.

 

If I were you I would get Morrowind and Oblivion game of the year editions for next to nothing and wait with your Skyrim dlcs until the prices drop and until they most likely publish a proper expansion. What I have read about Dawnguard and Hearthstone has not made me wet my pants, I am actually rather disapointed especially since they basically charge full expansion price for Dawnguard.

 

Joacqin Dawnguard is only 4000 microsoft points and from what I gather that is only $5 which is nowhere near expasion prices since that would be a lot closer to $20-$30 for a proper expansion if not a little more. So no where near the price of an expansion for a mere DLC unless that was Hearthfire fire that is only 4000 MPoints.

 

The price I have seen for Dawnguard is 19€ which is a whole lot more than $5.

 

I have Dawnguard, and it was $20. Most Bethesda expansions are $30, so even Bethesda was sort of admitting upfront that this wasn't a full scale expansion. I have not downloaded Hearthfire, as AFAIK, it's no extra quests - just the ability to build a nice house.

I've written extensively about Dawnguard in the Skyrim thread, so no need to rehash it all here. There's nothing earth shattering about Dawnguard - it's just more Skyrim. One really big extra quest, of the approximate length and depth of the Thieves guild, a few new weapons and items types. It makes Skyrim somewhat better, but not amazingly so.

 

I do not think Dawnguard is bad, I just don't think it is good value. In a few months I will probably be able to get the proper expansion, dawnguard and hearthfire for at most 30€. Oh and as you see all American companies are jerks, very often they just translate their prices straight from $ to €.

 

Well, Bethesda typically charges about $30 for the expansion alone. I haven't bought Hearthfire yet, as the way I see it, it adds ONLY the ability to build a home and adopt children. While I suppose that's one more thing to throw money at when you have gobs of it lying around, working on housing contstruction isn't doing much for me. Then again, it's $5. I can't buy lunch for that little, and I suppose I'd take at least as much interest in Hearthfire as eating lunch, and it would last longer too. But still... meh.