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[scriver]

I think that's the game calculating what is happening in the world. Iirc you can see the sunlight change hour by hour in Skyrim. It's been like that since Oblivion, it seems to be a necessity of the engine. Or at least nobody bothered to improve that part.

[Bohandas]

I think that's the game calculating what is happening in the world. Iirc you can see the sunlight change hour by hour in Skyrim. It's been like that since Oblivion, it seems to be a necessity of the engine. Or at least nobody bothered to improve that part.

It's not a necessity of the engine. I know because I've found mods that increase the speed with no ill effects (such as 5x Faster Waiting)

EDIT:
There's a version of that mod that doesn't require NVSE but I can't  conveniently locate it right now because I'm on my tablet.

[Naryar]

Morrowind, of course.

Never played Oblivion but it looks like the graphical designer was either drunk or extremely uninspired.

Skyrim was nice for the cool factor and the music and the graphics, however it was dumbed down for casual gamers. I mean a Elder Scrolls RPG without stats ? Where you directly improve your fatigue/health/magicka ? What ?

And magic is boring when it is only useful is combat. I mean there's a light effect, a soul jar spell, what other noncombat spells ? Water breathing ? Meh.

I also barely played Daggerfall, it looks very nice and I really like the character creation screen which is easily the best character creation screen in a CRPG i've seen, however dying twice to monsters in the tutorial dungeon (they looked like imps, I assume they were Daedra) is no.

It seems Morrowind was casualized compared to Daggerfall, though.

Fallout : New Vegas was nice, though. Fallout 2 I have good memories of, but then again it's a fucking Black Isle game, why would it be bad ?

[Bohandas]

You thpught Skyrim's magic was useful for combat? I recall it being underwhelming, at higher levels at any rate.

[Naryar]

You thpught Skyrim's magic was useful for combat? I recall it being underwhelming, at higher levels at any rate.

Well, at least 90% of the spells were combat-orientated. Higher levels in magic I didn't play, grinding for the more interesting effects was obnoxious.

Whereas in morrowind you just had to buy the spells, and even if they were too powerful you just went to spellmakers and made a less powerful spell for you to be able to cast.

Also 1-point cast training spells.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

My friends loved skyrim's magic system because they had the patience to grind to level 100 of whatever skill they were trying for, one of them maxed out conjuration and was able to have two atranochs and (IIRC) a bound weapon... pretty impressive

[Bohandas]

I just remember the highest level spells all sucking; that they took a very long time to cast and didn't do much more than the lower level spells.

[Frumple]

Never played Oblivion but it looks like the graphical designer was either drunk or extremely uninspired.

Oblivion is actually fairly pretty and rather strong on the graphics design side, imo... except for the faces. Good gods, except for the faces. There's some mods that fix that up a bit, though, iirc.

Everything except the faces was pretty alright. Not as exotic as morrowind, but far from bad.

[TripJack]

Fallout 1 and Morrowind

and I agree with Naryar, IMO oblivion was the most visually uninteresting game I had played since the N64/PS1 days

bloom was always a fugly graphical gimmick and in oblivion it was particularly fugly, yet without bloom partially obscuring the scene all you were left with was the most boring fantasy artwork imaginable... i'll take the laughably bad models, animations, and textures of morrowind over oblivion's "art" any day of the week

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Never played Oblivion but it looks like the graphical designer was either drunk or extremely uninspired.

Oblivion is actually fairly pretty and rather strong on the graphics design side, imo... except for the faces. Good gods, except for the faces. There's some mods that fix that up a bit, though, iirc.

Everything except the faces was pretty alright. Not as exotic as morrowind, but far from bad.

+1
the graphics were not that bad

[scriver]

Speaking of art, let me quote myself from the first page:

When I think back to Oblivion I can inky think of five "distinct" types of nature: Green Broadleaf Forest, Snowy Pine Forest, Yellow Plains, Slightly Greener Plains Meadows, and Forest That Completely Fails At Convincing You (Me) It Is a Swamp. Skyrim has it's own versions of all of those except Yellow Plains, and also adds to that Tundra Plains, Snow Whipped Coast, Cliffy Highlands, and Volcanic Geiser-land. Like Oblivion, But Improved - or rather Like Oblivion, But More to be exact.

As for "showing the other provinces creep in" I think one of Oblivion's main world-building faults was how they completely refrained from giving the different regions any personality of their own (let alone tried to depict the actual lore established cultures of the area) in favour of going "like this other Nearby province, except less" on all of them. Which also turned the different cities into a patchwork where none of the cities have any thematic resemblance to another as it was more important to the designers they remind you if these other provinces that you aren't visiting. That problem also exist in Skyrim, but there I think the cities had a greater overall thematic coherence. Like Oblivion, But Improved.

Remember that instead of that we could have had a great Roman Megapolis in the middle of a vast impenetrable tropical rain forest and the Nibenay valley full of native swampland jungle magocrats.

[Arcvasti]

I just remember the highest level spells all sucking; that they took a very long time to cast and didn't do much more than the lower level spells.

With magic items to reduce your casting costs, Lightning Storm basically shot a giant death laser forever. Which was fun. I preferred the Skyrim combat magic to Morrowind combat magic, since the latter was just sad. Summoning a bound weapon while casting a shield spell and maybe paralyzing them before initiating stabbities was just better then slowly pounding away at them with ineffectual spells that took too long to cast and required too much magicka. I will grant using enchanted items as magical machine guns was awesome.

Oblivion's art was the worst out of all the Elder Scrolls games[Besides MAYBE Arena.]. Morrowind had awesome mushroom towers and giant crab houses, with the worst art being reserved for the character models. Even the character models looked like they weren't trying too hard. In Oblivion, it looked like they were TRYING, but they failed. I really didn't like Oblivion. It was basically a major casualization of Morrowind, like Skyrim, so it lost a lot of features, but unlike Skyrim, it didn't even have the redeeming feature of being enjoyable to play. I mean, it was fun to play once, and Shivering Isles was THE BEST, but I am never replaying that game again. It has the same slow advancement Morrowind does, without the ability to get loot far above your level to let you do enjoyable shenanigans without grinding for forever.

[Antsan]

Fallout 1 and Morrowind

and I agree with Naryar, IMO oblivion was the most visually uninteresting game I had played since the N64/PS1 days

bloom was always a fugly graphical gimmick and in oblivion it was particularly fugly, yet without bloom partially obscuring the scene all you were left with was the most boring fantasy artwork imaginable... i'll take the laughably bad models, animations, and textures of morrowind over oblivion's "art" any day of the week

I remember that the graphics of Morrowing looked absolutely revolutionary to me when it came out.

It's a shame that they are still doing action rpgs. The lore is perfect for simulation.

[Antioch]

Morrowind had inferior mechanics to skyrim, but the lore and quests were sooooooooooo much better.

In Morrowind you gradually learn what is going on on that hellhole they call VVardenfell, and even after finishing the main questline you are still left with lots of questions about what just happend. The answers are there, but you really have to look for it.

In skyrim:
You are the big special hero: go kill that dragon that is going to eat the word. BOOOORIIIIIIIING


But what really makes Morrowind more enjoyable is that you actually have to think to solve quests instead of following that awful no-brainer quest pointer. Sure in Morrowind you got awful directions at times, but it felt so much more satisfying to complete quests than with that instant walkthrough mode in Skyrim and Oblivion.

[pisskop]

'Find the amulet in the shadow of the mountain.'

  'Damnit, what mountain, and what shadow!  I swear I've spent days on this stupid quest!  That's it, I quit the temple!  Find your own lost amulet.  The cliff racers probably ate her anyway.'