The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind on Xbox is my favorite. Has anyone ever played it? It won an award for being the most detailed game ever! Of course IV Oblivion is even more so. But I tend to like the classics. ;]
And there are no cheat codes in Oblivion! >:O
I am a huge fan of Morrowind and Oblivion. I play and enjoy them on the 360. No cheating or customizing the game to my own likings. I play them as is and like them just fine.
Morrowind felt like it had more to discover from random adventuring than Oblivion, but it is stated that Oblivion does have more actual explorable space. A claim I am not still totally convinced on, but that’s just me.
Morrowind was technically smaller, but it felt like it had a lot more stuff to find, and a lot more varied terrain and places to explore then Oblivion. Plus the setting was unique, Oblivion just seemed like generic fantasy.
Morrowind was better, way better on release day than Oblivion was, IMHO. Sure, it was technically smaller, but then each part of the island had its own feel, and everything about it felt alien - everything was designed to make the player feel he didn’t, really didn’t belong here. From the giant bug-trains linking towns, to the air medusas, to the foreign cusswords thrown at you, to those wstfgl cliff racers - the land was hostile, and while the natives were fine, you were fucked. It was another world - even the weapons were weird. Chitin armor ? Glass axes ? WTH ?
By comparison, Oblivion felt so bland. Every one was sorta friendly, or blankly nice to you. The landscapes were pretty, sure, but we’ve seen the green valley over the shiny lake a thousand times in fantasy. As did we see the Roman legions, and the knights in shining armor atop horses a thousand times.
Now, that doesn’t mean Oblivion doesn’t have hidden gems in it - for instance, the painting quest floored me. The extension featuring the plane of crazy was fine (much better than Morrowind extensions were). And with enough mods, even bland Oblivion has become a great game.
Still, Morrowind will always hold a higher spot in my heart.
I think part of the reason Oblivion felt so small was because of the fact that (iirc) a lot of it wasn’t hand-crafted, which led to a lot of “if you’ve seen one cave you’ve seen them all” syndrome. Furthermore, I suspect Fast Travel also affected it, the world felt bigger if you ran around on your horse and ran towards things that looked cool, but since most of the time you just clicked a button you missed the detours.
Classics? How old are you? Daggerfall is more of classic than Morrowind, despite its flaws.
I liked Morrowind pretty good, have not yet played Oblivion.
Who says Oblivion was bigger? I could have sworn Oblivion was marketed as smaller, but more detailed.
It might have been Bethesda themselves saying that the parts of Oblivion your character can physically travel on were larger than the amounts of land you can travel on in Morrowind. Thanks of course to all the mountains in Morrowind skewing the results.
Great games. Of course, Morrowind was a wee bit on the too easily exploitable side. I remember realizing that intelligence boosting potions stacked, quickly leading to exponential stat gains and ascension to godhood. And even without that, the enchanting skill made every magic skill obsolete since I could just make magical trinkets instead. And I think everyone knows about getting 100% chameleon. Still, fun times. I was disappointed when Oblivion took away the ability to make money by soul trapping enemies.
For anyone thinking of starting a game of Oblivion with mods (PC only, obviously), do yourself a favor and grab the Better Oblivion Sorting Software (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20516). It automatically sorts out your mod load order to minimize problems and can be a massive timesaver and headache reliever.
Despite its flaws? You mean there was something to that game besides flaws?
There were also basements.
They had rats in them.
As has been stated in the Daggerfall thread a few months back, every game needs a “teleport me to the quest item room because it’s out of the geography” button.
It’s actually kinda funny that this thread is here now.
For years, Lunarnoodle has told me “I don’t like roleplaying games.”
Of course, then she tried my copy of Fallout 3. And then she bought all the downloadable content.
Earlier today I convinced her to give Oblivion a try. I would’ve suggested Morrowind but I don’t think I want to inflict cliff racers on her.
I love Morrowind. Much, much better than Oblivion in my opinion. I think Morrowind was the last really great game that I’ve truly enjoyed (in both the categories of RPGs and all games).
If that’s your only hang-up, there’ve been mods to take them out of the game something like a week after the game shipped out 
(unless of course you’re one of those poor, poor souls who plays/ed Morrowind on the Xbox. In which case, my condolences)
I loved Morrowind and would probably have enjoyed Daggerfall too, but when I first saw it I was too young to know what an RPG was and only thought “Holy shit! Half-naked lady!” at some pixelated slave woman or another.
One of these years, I’ll get a computer capable of Oblivion and play through it… can’t wait. How long before sub-$400 netbooks get a real 3D card, I wonder?
I really couldn’t get into Morrowind - the combat (as is) was just too broken.
A lot of people criticize Oblivion for trying to make the game more accessible at the cost of making it an “easy mode” Elder Scrolls game - well, that’s what hooked me.
I hated how in Morrowind it seemed to take hours just to uncover the main plot thread. Yes, Oblivion nudges you on, but I liked that.
People also criticized Oblivion’s fairly standard “Medieval” backdrop. Again, I liked that too. Sure, it’s a bit vanilla - but damn it, I don’t play many “Horses and Castles” RPGs; I don’t mind a generic setting done well.
Fast travel both helps and hurts Oblivion. Having only limited gaming time, I love being able to zip around to complete quests. That said - some of my favorite times with Oblivion have just been setting out into the unrevealed area of the map and seeing what I encounter in the wilderness.
Every four months or so, I start a new game of Oblivion. I use Oscuro’s Oblivion enhancement along with a leveling mod (leveling in TES games has always been pure shit. I spat, spat on Oblivion after my first character “leveled” himself into being unplayably weak. I have a few rules when I play: First, I won’t allow myself to fast travel to anywhere I haven’t walked at least once. With OOO this is a surprising challenge - try making it even from the Imperial City to Bruma. I promise you will be severely challenged. I always have a great time, though I have to save-scum quite a bit.
I really should get around to finishing the game - or even getting to a level where I feel comfortable exploring the expansion content. I always play for a week or two though, then get bored, and leave it. I can never continue old characters because once I’m away for an extended period of time I feel disconnected from them. Still, I always have a good time starting anew and exploring the world as a rank noob.
I absolutely loved Morrowind. The setting and story was more compelling (to me at least) than any other game I’ve run into yet. The whole of Morrowind was something that was new and exciting to explore – there was such an amazing amount of creativity, and it seemed there was something new and amazing around every corner.
Oblivion was pretty good, but I never really connected to it in the same way. Show up in tamriel? Meh, been there before. Oooh, look at all the slight variants of medieval Europe! There’s a city with slightly more Gothic architecture, and another with slightly Mediterranean tiled roofs! Some of the quest lines were very good (particularly for the Dark Brotherhood) but the rest varied from “not worth it to finish” to “eh, might as well take the next quest”. IMO, the main quest line was one of the worst, and felt like a chore (oh goody, another Oblivion gate to close. I wonder what’s going to be in there…)
Game play in Oblivion was significantly improved in some ways – combat was actually interesting, and more complicated than “click the monster until it dies or you die”. They pulled of stealth pretty well, but that was a pretty boring way to fight through umpteen miles of the same caves and sewers.
At the same time, the leveling system was pretty lame right out of the box – what’s the point of leveling at all if everything keeps pace exactly with you? Or as other posters have mentioned, if you don’t level “right”, you actually fall behind the rest of the game.
Now, Oblivion you could mod to fix most of it – Oscuro’s is one of the best efforts out there. However, the attempts to fix the lame leveling system IMO went to far, and made the game a punishing slog. If I wanted to have to grind for hours between quests, I’d be playing WoW…
So in Oblivion, I’ve sunk a lot of hours in it, installed all sorts of mods to make it the game I want to play, finished most of the big quest lines, and still? Eh, it’s pretty good. I did get The Shivering Isles to try and find something more interesting, but by that time I was pretty disenchanted, and with OOO I wasn’t high enough level to do bugger all in that expansion, so… meh. Haven’t played it since, for over a year now, but I can’t uninstall it because I keep thinking I’ll get back to it. Think of all the time I’ve spend downloading mods! I can’t do that again!
Yep. On the plus side, I’ve never had any problems with any bugs, ever.
On the downside, they’re totally unmoddable. Booo.
And as we’re moving and I’m going back to school for some post-grad work that’ll keep me too busy for a full time job along with my school work, a new top of the line desktop simply isn’t in the cards unless we win the lottery. Or start robbing banks.
Personally I’m leaning towards robbing banks.