Tell Me of The Elder Scrolls Games

[Forsaken Lover]

Um, hello everyone. Some of you might know me as a guy who's been playing a lot of WRPG's lately. Since December I've played Dragon Age Origins and II, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Fallout 3 and New Vegas and most recently the Fable Trilogy.

I was thinking my next endeavor might be Elder Scrolls. Not starting with Skryim though, I was thinking of starting with the third game, Morrowind. I have some friends who stick by it as the best ES game by a lot.

I hope it's okay to inquire or discuss the other ES games in here? My main concern and what I'm here to inquire about is what kind of choices are there in the ES games? Are there any at all? The main reason I have become so addicted to WRPG's is the power of choice. Big or small, I love being able to do things my own way or at least having a few different options of doing things so it feels like I'm doing them my way.

Do the ES games have moral choices or branching storylines depending on your decisions?

[Bolivar]

Not really. The only choices which effect your quest progression in Morrowind are which Great House you align yourself with and those quests are optional. And if you pick a House whose character stats do not mesh with the hero you created, you could be locked out of advancing within their ranks or doing their quests entirely, nor will the other Houses let you switch once you made a choice. The last three Elder Scrolls games have very few quests which involve moral choices and the endings are always the same iirc.

TES is more about creating a character, and immersing yourself in a world to build that characters legacy. There's all kinds of quests out there and different characters and play styles will naturally seek out different quests. I had a mage in Skyrim who pursued knowledge at all costs, even if it meant helping the Daedric pantheon in their devious plots against eachother. I completed the Thieves guild quest line in Oblivion, then went on a pilgrimage to atone for a life of crime, eventually restoring the religious order of the Knights of the Nine. My current argonian fighter mostly goes around remote settlements, helping those in need.

You might want to read ToriJ's review on Morrowind to get an idea on how someone playing it for the first time in 2015 might feel. Nearly every aspect of the game design hinders it from being an enjoyable or rewarding experience. But you're a Xenogears fan, so if you can get past that, there is a really fascinating story and setting back there, one of the most unique and intricately detailed fantasy world's in any medium. I say that honestly as someone who reads a lot of fantasy.

I would recommend Skyrim instead for a first timer though. If you get caught up in the lore, then go jump into Morrowind.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well a poster elsewhere had this to say about Morrowind:
"Morrowind has the most freedom of choice. It is also the oldest and most clunky mechanically. There are no voiced conversations so its a lot of reading. You have branching choices in the Thieves, Mages, and Fighters Guild IIRC but it isn't obvious. If you do them a certain way, you can lock yourself out of joining or finishing other quests. You have 3 political factions you can choose between. You have 2 religions on the island to choose from (or both if that is your preference.) The main quest is pretty linear, but you can lock yourself out of it by killing essential characters and then you have to do the alternate way to end the game."

And I'm pretty sure in Skyrim you can choose to support either the Empire or the Stormcloaks, right? I post on a board where there was a whole topic debating the two choices.

Anyway, general agreement does seem to be what you say - that the true enjoyment of the games comes from exploration and immersion. I just want to be able to roleplay and I need to be able to make choices for that. Being railroaded takes you right out of the RP mindset in my case.

And given that Skyrim is supposed to have the best gameplay, while everyone says Morrowind is clunky and outdated, starting with Skyrim would serve only to make Morrowind even more unbearable, don't you think?

[Bolivar]

No, because the combat, game design, even the player movement is so bad that you need something else to motivate you to keep playing. If you play older games a lot or have a high tolerance for clunky design, you might be okay, though.

As you might be able to tell from that list, those are only choices to the extent you can choose to do them or not at all. Most of the factions aren't mutually exclusive nor will joining them have any impact on the story, they're just who you go to see when you want more side quests. A lot of the nostalgia for Morrowind comes from the context added by the factions. Oblivion and Skyrim had less factions and instead distribute those quests across hundreds of NPCs scattered throughout the game world, with their own motivations and stories, some of whom will cross paths once you immerse yourself in a community.

I didn't progress too far in the fighters guild but I can't recall any branches. And while Skyrim's Storm Cloak Rebellion lets you pick a side, it's really just whether you want one series of sidequests or the other. It's not like choice in other WRPGs where a story evolves based on your decisions and ends with a large array of possible permutations.

I would say Morrowind had the least freedom of choice because many of its gameplay systems were not viable. And a lot of quests require you to do things a very specific way, such that many people have to load an earlier save or actually enter commands in the in-game console because they broke the quest. Thats the opposite of choice to me.

Conversely, Oblivion introduced puzzles and traps to the dungeons which you can use against enemies if you're clever enough. The level scaling enhanced the freedom of exploration by allowing you to wander any region or storyline you want (although you will need to use the difficulty slider to recalibrate Oblivion from time to time). The newer games just have a lot more viable character builds and unconventional quests. The game engine was very restricted in Morrowind, so there was only so much you could do. Oblivion and Skyrim had much more nuanced game design, which allowed them to create quests which very consciously play with CRPG tropes, some of which poke fun at Morrowind.

Morrowind is the most interesting world but the successors are much better games. It all comes down to what you're looking for.

[Pike]

I've seen some people have trouble getting into Morrowind but I have to admit I never saw it; as someone who didn't really play it until just a few years back I had no problems whatsoever with it. Admittedly the combat system isn't particularly fantastic but the awkwardness goes away after earning a couple of levels. It's dice-based, much like, say, KotOR, anyway.

Graphics-wise just toss in a couple of mods from Morrowind Overhaul (for example) and it becomes a gorgeous game; almost as gorgeous as Skyrim and (IMO) several miles above the weird uncanny valley potato faces of Oblivion.

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Really I feel like any of the three games are good for starting your adventure into the Elder Scrolls; Morrowind and Skyrim are my personal favorites but Oblivion has its moments.

If you are going in looking for a Bioware experience you will be disappointed; TES is about making a character, roleplaying, and living in an open world. The world reacts to you in a sense that you can kill anyone you want, for example, but not in a Bioware-esque fashion. If anything TES is the Minecraft of WRPGs, what it does is give you a sandbox world with some very, very deep lore and then gives you free rein to, say, spend hours being a fisherman in Seyda Neen or dicking around with one of the guilds or Great Houses. Of all the games, Morrowind lets you accomplish this the best and is easily the most sandboxy of the modern TES games; if you're looking for a more traditional "grounding" like other WRPGs you're probably better off playing one of the later games.

Lore and story-wise Morrowind leaps over the heads of the other two games which makes it brilliant for roleplay and digging into a character, but as I said, if you're looking for a more traditional experience start with one of the other two games.

Anyways this is my favorite game series and I know a lot about these games so let me know if you have any questions

[Madame Adequate]

Bolivar could not be more wrong. One of Morrowind's greatest strengths is the immense diversity in viable characters and the different ways you can get things done. You can criticize the game on several fronts, but the criticisms he's latched onto are quite literally (accurately using "literally") as incorrect as it is possible to be without, I dunno, claiming it's a game where you race Yoshis around or something. (Would play btw)

Say you need to kill someone. You could walk up to him and crack his skull. Or you could sneak up behind him and knife him in the back. Or you could blast him with a spell. So far so generic, right? Wrong. Each of those broad decisions can itself split into a variety of different methods.

Upfront Violence

1. You can go buy a suit of armor and use a regular old warhammer
2. Or you could summon a warhammer from another dimension
3. And armor yourself with a different school of magic entirely
4. You could buff yourself with alchemy first
5. Or use restoration magic to add to your health and strength instead
6. If they're somewhere populated maybe you can taunt him into attacking first, so you don't get into trouble

Stealth

1. Get up close, or shoot him from afar?
2. How are you opening locked doors? Knowledge of lockpicking?
3. A spell used to open locks?
4. Or maybe you'll pickpocket the key from someone else first
5. Stealth can come from the sneak skill
6. But also from casting one of two different kinds of invisibility on yourself
7. Both of which can come from casting as a spell as normal, alchemy, or from enchanting items to provide those effects
8. If you want to steal something you could also use telekinesis to take it from far away
9. Got into trouble? Get out of it with an athletic and acrobatic build.
10. Or instead charm your way out with calming magic.
11. Or teleport yourself away from the scene of the crime before anyone can react

Magic

• Loads of different kinds of magic to use
• Elemental spells, sure, but also poison, drinking health for yourself
• Or draining fatigue leaving them helpless
• Summon all kinds of equipment for yourself to use
• Or create powerful enchantments that turn mundane items into legends
• Why not summon the undead or demons to fight for you? Never lift a finger.
• Make yourself resistant to, or immune to, different kinds of damage
• Use it to teleport around the world for convenience
• Or buff your speechcraft so you can travel very cheaply

That's not an exhaustive list. Moreover you'll notice there's a lot of crossover, which is exactly the point - you don't just choose what to do and that's that, you choose how to do it, and you can hybridize things in pretty much any way you can imagine. I'm honestly struggling to think of a build that wouldn't be more-or-less viable, though some are obviously more complimentary than others. Yes, the objectives themselves are often relatively straightforward and yes, there's not as much diversity in quest outcomes as some other games like BG2 or PS:T or something, but those were never what the games were about. They were about immersing your character, and by proxy yourself, in a grand world, and Morrowind does this like nothing else.

Bolivar's points are like criticizing Kerbal Space Program because the only real objective is "go to space". Well, yeah, but that's simplifying the vast array of options in how to achieve that. Same deal here. The gameplay is a bit janky compared to modern stuff, but it's still one of the best experiences gaming has ever given us.

None of this, of course, makes any mention of mods and modding. There are new factions, new landmasses, mods that let you side with Dagoth Ur instead of the Tribunal, any changes to gameplay from minor tweaks to radical overhauls, tremendous graphical upgrades, as Pike posted, etc. etc. etc.

[Bolivar]

MILF, I know you're very dismissive of other people's opinions (especially mine) but you might want to check your definition of "literally," especially when used on opinions. A proper use would be how, literally, everything you just listed is included in the later games, which expand on it with the advanced physics engines, enemy AI, and dungeon design, all of which were elements Bethesda sought to improve upon after Morrowind. You can also google for yourself how unviable Stealth is. That's 1/3 of the skill tree rendered irrelevant by the game engine.

You claim I "could not be more wrong" but failed to address any of the other widely-criticized aspects of Morrowind. I think that more or less speaks for itself.

Also, if we're gonna talk about mods, the conversation changes entirely. Morrowind's engine limitations are perhaps at their worst here, since its simple geometry and flat landscapes automatically limit how far mods can take the game. You can't even compare it to what has been done with the later games:

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[Forsaken Lover]

I dunno if i really want to get into the modding scene yet except for maybe graphics.

I mean, the modded game is not the game when you get right down to it. I've played mods for other games and Final Fantasy VII New Threat is not Final Fantasy VII. I cannot say how I feel about FFVII based on that mod.

Same for these games. I can't say how I feel about them when taking into account fan-added content. It be like reviewing A Song of Ice and Fire while taking into account some Danfy fanfiction I read.

[Pike]

Well, for what it's worth, I have ~120 Morrowind mods and plugins installed (last I checked) and the gameplay/story is not substantially changed at all. Morrowind has an incredibly robust modding scene and a lot of these are just quality of life changes or similar very small things that add up to make an amazing experience

I envy anyone who has the opportunity to play through Morrowind for the first time; I wish I could reverse time and do that again. Best gaming experience I've ever had.

[Loony BoB]

I favour Skyrim of the ones I've played, with Morrowind next, and then Oblivion. The biggest problem I had with Oblivion is that it was extremely repetitive after a while. The landscape rarely changed at all compared to the very interesting and varying places you can go to in Morrowind, or the incredibly nice if more subtle variations found within Skyrim.

All games are worth playing, though. I've not played the earlier TES games (Daggerfall or whatever?).

[Bolivar]

I dunno if i really want to get into the modding scene yet except for maybe graphics.

I mean, the modded game is not the game when you get right down to it. I've played mods for other games and Final Fantasy VII New Threat is not Final Fantasy VII. I cannot say how I feel about FFVII based on that mod.

Same for these games. I can't say how I feel about them when taking into account fan-added content. It be like reviewing A Song of Ice and Fire while taking into account some Danfy fanfiction I read.

The modding community is very cognizant of that and distinguishes mods based on whether they're "lore-friendly," in terms of the creative direction of the development team. Many of the definitive modding guides will designate whether a mod is lore-friendly or not.

The visual options are astounding and go beyond just graphical fidelity, such as making the menus more intuitive and user-friendly for PC, changing the scaling and positioning of the HUD, using different fonts and making the world map more aesthetically pleasing.

Even if you don't plan on modding you should at a bare minimum install the unofficial patches, as there are still countless bugs that Bethesda has left in the games.

[Madame Adequate]

MILF, I know you're very dismissive of other people's opinions (especially mine) but you might want to check your definition of "literally," especially when used on opinions. A proper use would be how, literally, everything you just listed is included in the later games, which expand on it with the advanced physics engines, enemy AI, and dungeon design, all of which were elements Bethesda sought to improve upon after Morrowind. You can also google for yourself how unviable Stealth is. That's 1/3 of the skill tree rendered irrelevant by the game engine.

Uh trout I better get some patches or something because my last character was Full Stealth and she did just fine so the game must be broken badly. And yeah the later games made improvements in physics and grafix and stuff, so what? I've not said anything in this thread about either of them, I was just responding to your ridiculous assertions that Morrowind doesn't give you much choice in how to build a character or whatever. You can claim it's your opinion all you want, but there's a whole lot of ways to build characters and people find just about every single build somewhere between viable and enjoyable. You could choose your ten skills completely at random and almost certainly end up with something that would work. So it doesn't really matter that this is your opinion because you are, literally, objectively wrong about it.

You claim I "could not be more wrong" but failed to address any of the other widely-criticized aspects of Morrowind. I think that more or less speaks for itself.

I didn't talk about any of the other criticized aspects of Morrowind because you either didn't talk about them (The inability to side with House Dagoth without mods, for example, is one I would highlight as a major shortcoming, as is the lack of involvement of Houses Dres and Indoril in most of the plot) or because well, yeah, a game released in 2002 is going to have some technical shortcomings next to a game released in 2011, nobody is claiming otherwise and nobody ever claimed Morrowind's greatest strength was in the technical sphere, even on release day.

That all said you're 100% correct about modding, as is Pike, and I would strongly urge you, Forsaken Lover, to look at at least some mods for QoL improvements, bug fixes, and suchlike.

[Bolivar]

The scariest part about your post is that someone might actually believe you're serious and build a random character like you suggested, only to find out just how broken Morrowind really is. Every character creation guide on the internet cautions players against thoughtless character builds and acknowledge how some skills are unviable at the beginning, others fail to scale into the late game, and quite a few are outright useless.

Here's one:http://strategywiki.org/wiki/The_Eld...acter_creation

Here's another: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Classes

I'm not saying there aren't a lot of viable build options, there just aren't as many as the later games.

I mention physics because it takes some of the gameplay options to a level of choice and freedom which Morrowind never could. Stealth is more fun when you can leap between the rafters, stalking unsuspecting prey until you crash down on them like Batman. Archery is better when you can kite enemies to walking across the trip wire between you, setting off a devastating trap. And swordfighters can either dance nimbly within and out of their opponent's range, never being hit, or use brute force to block and parry attacks. In Morrowind, you can build a character who can do those things statistically but ultimately, it's up to the game's random calculations to decide whether you're successful, not you.

Oblivion and Skyrim have such a higher level of creativity it's not even funny.

[Ayen]

I dunno if i really want to get into the modding scene yet except for maybe graphics.

You'll change your mind as soon as the game decides to spam you with cliff racers. Don't know what a cliff racer is? -Scary Batman voice- You will.

I started the series with Skyrim and honestly liked that better than Morrowind. I haven't played Oblivion so I can't comment on that. I got mixed opinions on Morrowind, honestly. There are those like Pike who chopped my head off Ned Stark style for not playing the game right, and then fans who don't even recommend Morrowind because of all the time you spend running around in the mud to get any enjoyment out of it, and then people who say Oblivion is the one you want to start with. My brother played Oblivion and found it boring, but honestly, I think he prefers the JRPG/BioWare route of playing RPGs. I have similar preferences, so even though I enjoy Skyrim a lot it's not rated as highly as other RPGs I've played.

I haven't touched the MMO.

[Forsaken Lover]

I've been inquiring about TES on all the forums I visit and a guy on TVTropes said something that seems to be very true. "There are no fans of the Elder Scrolls series, only an Elder Scrolls game." Basically, whichever one you start with, you will like the most. Morrowind fans generally seem to hate Oblivion and maybe only tolerate Skyrim and Skyrim fans hate Morrowind. I know my GF, a Skyrim addict, couldn't play more than ten minutes of Oblivion. And if you meet the exquisitely rare soul who LIKES Oblivion, it seems they don't like Morrowind.