[Illuyankas]

Morrowind is great, yet flawed. Skyrim is great, yet flawed. Oblivion is greatly flawed.

[Garak]

Skyrim is good, miles better than Oblivion (which I didn't like that much actually). However the King of the Elder Scrolls remains Morrowind. To me that game defines the entire setting. One of the reasons Oblivion felt flat for me was because it was ... well ... dull to look at after the crazy awesome places in Morrowind.

[Silencer]

Yeah, Tiste, don't play Morrowind. It is easily the best game of three, no contest, and one of the best games out there, full stop...but playing it today will mean subjecting yourself to horrendous graphics (though, granted, the sheer oddity of the landscape makes up for that), and awkward as hell combat (though again, there are aspects to that combat which are much deeper [with a bit of imagination] than the hack-and-slash-no-skill combat of the later two) and you probably won't like those parts of it...even if the fact that it actually has depth, a better storyline (scratch that, almost all the storylines in Morrowind are better than those in the sequels...probably helped by the fact that it actually has way more factions and detailed NPCs, but...) you can actually fail/lock yourself out of quests (no character is magically unkillable because god forbid you should want to/accidentally kill an "important" person...) and there is a lot more atmosphere and choices all around.

In other words; don't play Morrowind, because it will ruin the other two for you. (In fairness, Oblivion, while crap, was fun at the time, and Skyrim is pretty good in its own right, even if a lot of the attempts at returning to some Morrowind-esque aspects are shallow/ruined by other things...and the Dragonborn expansion is, for me, the only part worth playing now. That would be because it adds in the island of Solstheim from the first expansion to Morrowind, though. >.<)

See? I didn't rant. I can restrain myself.

[Gothos]

Actually I did manage to lock myself out of completing a quest in Skyrim not long ago. There's this guy in a dwemer ruin, and I killed him on my way downstairs. Only later was it that I started the DB questline and got to a quest where extra credit would be for doing something special with him. So yeah, I ruined my bonus. Truth be told, though, I still succeeded in the quest.

As for Morrowind graphics.... mods Mods MODS! It can still be beautiful.

[Trull's son]

Morrowind Overhaul is a sound and graphics mod compilation with its own installer. It's on version 3.0, and is actually very awesome. If you want to run the thing maxed, you are going to need a beast of a rig. But even scaled back on my system the game is beautiful.

[Silencer]

This is true. The Morrowind modding community is still surprisingly(un-?) strong, given the game's age. And they really can do wonders with it, graphically speaking. But the base game is what most people play, even if mods are (relatively) simple to install and use for the TES games, so yeah... XD

[Defiance]

I've tried playing with Morrowind Overhaul, but a few things have always thrown me off. To start, NPC's default faces are so familiar to me that changing them pulls me out of the experience. Imagine if people you'd known for years suddenly had entirely different faces. Secondly, I actually like Morrowind's "fog of war" or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, it's not all that realistic, but exploring just doesn't feel quite the same when I can see halfway across the map. I'm sure that if I tampered with things I could fix this, however (plus I'd probably be able to run the Mod at top settings with such a short view distance).

I always download the official Morrowind mods. They're not amazing, but they're free and integrate seamlessly into the game. Beyond this, I really enjoy Main Quest Enhancers. This makes the main quest feel more dynamic. Blight beasts (such as Corprus and Ash monsters) will start appearing beyond the Ghostfence, Temples get more populated as time goes on, people gather outside of Tel Fyr, Ghost Gate gets an increasingly large garrison, graffiti gets put on Outlander faction buildings, and Sixth House shrines start to pop up in cities. The mod isn't perfect - some of the graffiti and shrines could be more subtle - but it's very atmospheric and non-intrusive.

Darknut's Greater Dwemer Ruins completely changes the last three areas of the game. This makes the endgame significantly more difficult, as the places you traverse are much large and filled with a ton of deadly puzzles.

And damn, this reminds me that I still need to complete Tribunal on my current character so that I can check out Sotha Sil Expanded.

[Trull's son]

I logged so many hours on the xbox version of morrowind that I can't help but agree with you on the fog of war. Just feels right. That said, the overhaul has provided a new experience in of itself (some really nice views, and you never really get just how huge Vivec is until you see it on a clear day). I've played almost as much with the overhaul as vanilla by this point. I enjoy both, one for atmosphere, the other for visuals.

The added mainland of tamriel rebuilt is really interesting too. Lots to see, and I'm told the quests are pretty decent.

[Defiance]

Ah yes, I forgot to mention Tamriel Rebuilt. I've been following the project for years. The quests fit pretty well within the Morrowind universe, and the actual land design is phenomenal. It's well worth downloading just to tour the landscapes and cities that the modders have built. I can't wait until the project is done, although that's still in the distant future.

[Illuyankas]

On the other hand, Morrowind does have this:

[Aptorian]

Illuyankas, on 29 May 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

On the other hand, Morrowind does have this:

Ah ha! So this is where that gif I saw that one time was from. Mystery solved.

Also this would be a pretty cool in game monster/threat. Any one every experienced a "mob" that acts like a hydra in other videogames?

[Trull's son]

Tried to upload some screenshots on imgur but failed somehow. Googled overhaul 3.0 for a video instead:



I don't like the trees in this video. You get a choice when installing the overhaul of three different tree styles (vanilla, and two others).

This post has been edited by Trull's son: 29 May 2013 - 08:09 PM

[Defiance]

I think it looks significantly better than Oblivion. One thing that really threw me off about Oblivion was just how uncanny and plastic everything looked, which is weird because I'm usually the last person to give a shit about graphics. Plus the monotony of the game's landscape probably made it seem worse than it was.

Here are some good screenshots I found of Overhaul: http://images.techhi...006827-orig.png

http://kingtoko.file...aul-3-mod-3.jpg

http://www.hcrealms....pictureid=19506

http://i1.minus.com/ibgQzHxHCVkstp.jpg

http://media.moddb.c...ewiev_Image.jpg

http://www10.pic-upl...7olfnjm9jrj.jpg

http://cloud-2.steam...76.resizedimage

[Illuyankas]

Also reasons not to play Oblivion:







...

[Illuyankas]

That is true, I do remember being pleasantly surprised at how the outside of the tutorial dungeon looked in the sunshine. At least, before I wandered around and realised THE ENTIRE GAME IS THE SAME THING

Also:



e: Haha, what timing to find this again:

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 29 May 2013 - 11:37 PM

[Gothos]

Well, one of the things you posted Illy is actually part of a reason to DO play Oblivion, namely the Dark Brotherhood storyline, which is awesome.

[Rictus]

Oh come on people, let's not forget about Oblivion modding. It can make all your dreams come true!



 9948-1190302988.jpg (295.23K)
Number of downloads: 2

This post has been edited by Hagop: 30 May 2013 - 12:43 PM

[Illuyankas]

While the DB questline in Oblivion is probably the best thing in it, you know what Skyrim has that Oblivion doesn't?

[Defiance]

Unfortunately, Bethesda has announced that they're all done. I'm sure there will be a Game of the Year edition out by the end of this year.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I remember hearing June I think