Bismarck.Elanabelle said:
»So is "Morrowind" generally considered the best of the Elder Scrolls games to date then?
I've gone to great lengths explaining why I feel Morrowind is the best, Better than Daggerfall, Better than Arena, Better than Oblivion and even though it isn't an Elder Scrolls game, better than what I feel is it's closests competitor (of sorts) Fallout 3.
Without wanting to go on another 17 page rant, it's simply how the world presents itself that allows it's consistencies and amazing attention to detail to "Fill in the cracks" or imperfections of the game.
I still considering Morrowind
The Best game on this planet, despite the colossal failings of the title. It's perhaps got the least engaging combat of any RPG, and it's far too easy to break unwittingly (in both developer-intended ways, and just bugs), and the main quest pretty much lacks any narrative urgency, despite it's overall impressive pacing, especially for the open-world game.
Oblivion, on the other hand, had much better combat, and the production values were obviously much higher, but with higher detail comes an exponentially higher level of minimum integrity you have to maintain in order to preserve
suspension of disbelief. A poorly delivered line, an awkward animation, or an NPC stuck on a wall can suck you out of the world faster than [sexually explicit material that would get me Krizz'd]. In short, Oblivion was undone by its own ambition. It tried to way too hard, and because so much effort was spent focusing on "The big" things, the little details that actually sell the worldspace suffered considerably, creating an uncompelling world, with poor pacing, a poor identity and an overall lack of "The artists' touch", relying far too much on *procedural content* (Like Daggerfall, only not 140Sqr. KM of space to explore).
For those unfamiliar with the term, Procedural Content is the process in which the developers creating a specific technique for the computer to generate the content, instead of hand-crafting it. The most obvious and painful example of this is Oblivion's Level-scaling, but the World itself was also procedurally generated. Morrowind, Skyrim, Shivering Isles and Fallout 3 however, are not. A world artist and scenario designer all had their hands on every aspect of the game.
This is already getting a little long for my tastes, but there's still one important point to make about Morrowind.
Aside from what I believe was an overall quality overhaul (Daggerfall loyals will spit at the notion, but whatever), Morrowind also marked the turnaround of The Elder Scrolls from Cult game leaving Bethesda Softworks on the cusp of financial meltdown (Battlespire didn't help either) to literally
the name in open-world Western RPGs. The release of Morrowind on the Xbox allowed the games Popularity to skyrocket by being released to an audience many times larger than that of the PC gaming master-race.
TL;DR I leik Morrowind.
If the developers didn't envision great mods and user-made content coming out, why would they release a modding pack? They *want* us to expand on their content.
The Mod kit is really just an Idea Farm. They utilize a lot of mods as inspiration for direction in their game. Particularly Datamods that adjust balance, pacing and difficulty.
I haven't found a good "Content Mod" or "Gameplay Mod" That I'd put up to the standard of Bethesdas' original work. Often, things like
Deadly Reflexes focus so intently on flavoring one aspect of the game to the creators desire, that it completely ruins the rest of the game. While the overall quality of combat in something like
Deadly Reflexes is better than Oblivion Vanilla, the real artistry comes in making the other experiences equally engaging, and in that, mods fail horribly.
That's just like, my opinion and junk though. I stick with Graphical Overhauls (As long as they preserve the art) and balance tweaks, which I usually do myself anyway.
