Yeah, I was pretty disappointed with Skyrim. Some mods on the TES boards wound up banning me because I was fomenting rebellion against their precious new game, but BY SITHIS it just didn't have the same life to it that we'd come to expect from games in the Farrowbliviout series. Skyrim was "streamlined" - which, as you probably know, is gamedev speak for less game, more "plot". Since RPG plots are invariably dumb, that's a pretty big problem.

You didn't miss much.

I haven't even looked at TES Online, which I assume is out now, but I am eagerly awaiting Fallout 4.

I played this game for a long time, and never installed mods except I think one that made the night sky prettier. I guess I'm an unrefined simpleton, but I totally enjoyed the base game. It was beautiful, brutal, and rewarded exploration with tons of great locations, monsters, and little quests. People who say stuff like 'Morrowind was better' are either responding to something I haven't picked up on, or are wearing some thick-ass nostalgia goggles. I remember picking up Chrono Trigger as a kid and being gobsmacked by its breadth and complexity. Skyrim is more game than I even knew to want.

That said, I never finished the main plot. Way too boring.

No, Morrowind was definitely better. One's enjoyment of the games depends on one's priorities, of course - there are no "wrong" answers here. If you're looking for a game that's "beautiful", then yes, you will probably get a lot out of Skyrim! If, however, you're looking for a game with depth and replayability, a game that engages the mind and punishes simpletons, then Morrowind is the one you want.

Different strokes for different folks.

That said, Oblivion was better than Morrowind, mainly because Oblivion fixed the two most glaring problems present in Morrowind - the crap world design and the nigh-unplayable combat system. Oblivion introduced a host of NEW problems, too - chief amongst them being the lack of pauldrons and the inability to use Jump and Levitate spells - but it fixed enough of Morrowind's 90s-game bullshit that Obi was clearly the superior product. Skyrim, though, Skyrim fixed nothing. All it did was look at focus group user-data, and then drop features.

EvilHomer is clearly trolling here. Morrowind's charm was in the world itself, the traces of cosmic horror intermingled with bizarro hippy dippy enviro-consciousness of remolding giant crab shells into dwellings and using giant flea creatures as transportation.

Oblivion was boring as fuck, vanilla pablum RPG Star-Dot-Star crap that challenged nothing and rewarded nothing with nothing.

OK, sorry. Upon rereading my post, I can see that I was not clear enough. When I said "world design", I meant the actual map architecture - the placement of objects and biomes within the world-space - rather than the lore. Lorewise, Morrowind was great, and as Meerkat says, it was extremely inventive with all its crabs and fleas and weirdass mushroom things. But the problem is, all that wonderful lore got built up into a claustrophobic and rail-roady mess! The entire map of Morrowind was divided into distinct sections, with tight volcanic furrows and dense fog hemming you in, restricting your movement. Sections of the island were arbitrarily cordoned off, everything was drab and grey, and you never felt like you were exploring a vast open world - just trudging through predetermined paths on a small-sized video game map. Compare this state of affairs to, say, Oblivion, or even Fallout 3, where the world just unfolded in front of you - mountains, forests, oceans, swamps, 360 degrees of wonderful movement and where you went was all up to you. Lorewise, Oblivion was a bit more "vanilla" (and why shouldn't it be? It took place in Cyrodill, heart of the empire) but all the crab palaces in the world couldn't help you when you were running from Cliff Racers down a valley's predetermined course, from point A to point B like some Call-of-Duty grunt.

Which brings me to another point, the single biggest problem with Morrowind: Cliff Racers. Morrowind had Cliff Racers. Oblivion did not. Case closed.

Am I the only person who never had any trouble with those cliff racers? They weren't hard to deal with.

"everything was drab and grey, and you never felt like you were exploring a vast open world - just trudging through predetermined paths on a small-sized video game map."

Other than "small sized," because it was reasonably big, that's how I felt about Skyrim up until I lost interest (maybe 1/3 of the way through the plot arc, could have been more like half).


Also it never really felt challenging.


But it was pretty, other than the setting itself being pretty samey throughout and looking kind of like Colorado.

The trouble with Morrowing was that even on modern computers it doesn't really run that smoothly, which if I'm not mistaken is because every single NPC in the entire game world has their actions calculated all the time, no matter where they are relative to the player.

Yeah, this wasn't very good.

Fuck y'all. Giant Gumby owns!