Opinions on the Elder Scrolls

I loved Morrowind, it was what got me into modding. I have never been that big of a fan of generic fantasy settings, so Morrowind's alien landscape drew me in.

I didn't like Oblivion. The story was bland and generic, and the level scaling was awful. You had bandits running with daerdric weapons and armor.

Skyrim was fun when I first got it. But it got boring after a while and I haven't touched it since I beat the DLC.
 
Dr Fallout said:
You're a modder?
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What I meant was playing mods. I was big into playing mods for Neverwinter Nights, Kotor and Thief fan missions. Now I playing mods for New Vegas and the Dragon Age games.

I made some minor personal mods. Small changes to weapons, armors, character presets and changes to companion's appearance.
 
cordelionreaver said:
What I meant was playing mods. I was big into playing mods for Neverwinter Nights, Kotor and Thief fan missions. Now I playing mods for New Vegas and the Dragon Age games.

I made some minor personal mods. Small changes to weapons, armors, character presets and changes to companion's appearance.
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Ah cool, well that in itself is no achievement, but hey you still modded some stuff.
 
My current opinion on the elder scrolls. Its never been a solid RPG franchise in my eyes. As skyrim demonstrates it would make a fantastic open world action franchise. Morrowind had great lore but awful combat and the worst dialogue system I've seen outside of a dialogue wheel. But the landscape, history, economy, and the various cultures of vvardenfell were done magnificently. If skyrim was up to par on all of that it'd easily be the best of TES games IMO. But skyrim is severly lacking in weapon and spell variety. Basically I wish morrowind's combat was more like skyrim's. And skyrim's bland everything else was more like morrowind.
 
I don't know, the dialogue system in Morrowind is trash if you're looking for choices and consequences, but in itself it's not too bad.
 
Dr Fallout said:
I don't know, the dialogue system in Morrowind is trash if you're looking for choices and consequences, but in itself it's not too bad.
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The dialogue system in morrowind was horrendous in every aspect. It would've been a great way for books to work in the game because that's what it feels like. Not Like a conversation but like reading a book. By contrast in planescape everyone has a personality. Those that don't; don't get names. In morrowind, everyone has a unique name. As a result most of the dialogue in morrowind is copy/paste which makes every npc feel like just picking up another copy of the same book. Very few interactions in that game feel human at all. Most just feel like an exposition dump.
 
R.Graves said:
The dialogue system in morrowind was horrendous in every aspect. It would've been a great way for books to work in the game because that's what it feels like. Not Like a conversation but like reading a book. By contrast in planescape everyone has a personality. Those that don't; don't get names. In morrowind, everyone has a unique name. As a result most of the dialogue in morrowind is copy/paste which makes every npc feel like just picking up another copy of the same book. Very few interactions in that game feel human at all. Most just feel like an exposition dump.
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It can't be horrendous in every aspect. It was actually quite well written, but it suffered from being re-used and without any choices. It's not like the dialogue was...
'Three Houses. One sneak. One magic. One fight.'
It was actually quite good, but suffered from tons of other flaws. It provided interesting reading if you tried to find out about the lore and the world.
 
Dr Fallout said:
It can't be horrendous in every aspect. It was actually quite well written, but it suffered from being re-used and without any choices. It's not like the dialogue was...
'Three Houses. One sneak. One magic. One fight.'
It was actually quite good, but suffered from tons of other flaws. It provided interesting reading if you tried to find out about the lore and the world.
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And that's essential all dialogue I in that game. An exposition dump on the lore. I don't remember any strong unique personalities in morrowind apart from the alm sivi...
And it's often not dialogue it's you clicking a link to the next bit of information. Not unlike a Wikipedia article. Would you call a Wikipedia article good conversation?
 
R.Graves said:
And that's essential all dialogue I in that game. An exposition dump on the lore. I don't remember any strong unique personalities in morrowind apart from the alm sivi...
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Exactly, but that's not bad, especially if you like exposition dumps. Morrowind is the only game I know where I can understand the lore and world without reading a book and merely talking to a normal civilian.
 
Dr Fallout said:
Exactly, but that's not bad, especially if you like exposition dumps. Morrowind is the only game I know where I can understand the lore and world without reading a book and merely talking to a normal civilian.
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Without reading a book? I've already gone on about how NPCs often feel like books In that game. And you didn't answer.
 
Dr Fallout said:
I can understand the lore and world without reading a book and merely talking to a normal civilian.
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I have to agree here.

Morrowind, for all of its lore dumping and exposition dumps, actually explains a lot about the world at large, its regions, systems, cultures, beliefs etc. Unlike most Elder Scrolls games where I know little of the world since I don't care about reading too many books at once, Morrowind got me to understand its setting through NPC conversations.

Granted, the repeated answers shared by NPCs does get annoying and I'm not entirely sure how the player character would react to expository dialogue being thrown at them like that. Despite that, I still prefer Morrowind's system over what dialogue system the Elders Scrolls use these days. At least, I'm learning something that constantly gets reinforced by other NPCs (and occasional journal reading).

As an aside, Morrowind's journal system was one of the best things about it; highlighting keywords to help guide players on information they learnt and it allows comparison of certain topics spoken by different NPCs (like comparing how town folk view Ashlanders versus how Ashlanders view themselves).
 
Yes the journal system is amazing but I'd have to say that oblivion and skyrim's lack of lore is a writing problem not a dialogue system problem. Morrowind's dialogue is built around exposition. Its click this keyword and learn about it. Click a new keyword and learn about it. You're not asking questions you're clicking a link. That's not dialogue. As a result the PC has no personality and it's very difficult to give NPC's a strong distinctive personality.
 
R.Graves said:
As a result the PC has no personality and it's very difficult to give NPC's a strong distinctive personality.
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I'll grant you that. Most NPCs tend to have little to no personality (save for some of the more important characters) though I'd argue that no PC in any Elder Scrolls game so far has ever had personality. Oblivion had the same problem and Skyrim was still bland even with longer dialogue lines (and I can't comment on Arena & Daggerfall).
 
R.Graves said:
Without reading a book? I've already gone on about how NPCs often feel like books In that game. And you didn't answer.
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Well I will now. And guess what? I don't actually have a problem with it. It's a farcry from Fallout or Torment, but as long as the dialogue is well written and it's interesting to me... well, I have no problems with it, though I do recognize that it's not really good.
 
CerberusGate said:
I'll grant you that. Most NPCs tend to have little to no personality (save for some of the more important characters) though I'd argue that no PC in any Elder Scrolls game so far has ever had personality. Oblivion had the same problem and Skyrim was still bland even with longer dialogue lines (and I can't comment on Arena & Daggerfall).
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That's fair. Bewtween oblivion and skyrim I can recall 1 NPC having a distinctive personality. (Serana from that BS Dawngaurd DLC).
 
I've always made up the personalities from how they appear, their jobs and small tidbits of dialogue. It's not much, and frankly it's bad game design that the game doesn't have them in the first place, it's better then nothing.
 
I found this gem of an image (credit to RPG Codex's thread on Skyrim SE) that sums up how pointless it is to play roles in modern Elder Scrolls games. Once you figure out the easiest method to circumvent an obstacle with minimal difficulties, one would be inclined to rely on said method:
McOUX00.jpg


Stealth archery FTW!
 
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