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[Tito]

Well, I'm not sure if I prefer Daggerfall's freedom over Morrowind's nice landscapes (haven't tried Oblivion though). Daggerfall was too random and a bit repetitive, I mean, hundreds of villages and characters, but they were all the same in the end.

Morrowind, yes, it was a bit smaller, but every village and town had some personality on his own. And also, you had watery water and bricky bricks...

Not to say that I enjoyed Morrowind over Daggerfall. I loved both of them, but they gave me a different feeling.

[Mighty Midget]

As for the freedom in DF/MW/Oblivion, it was the freedom to create any character in DF that struck me as the greatest freedom. I never, ever, walked to the next town or dungeoun, but alwasy used the auto travel feature. Honestly, I had no idea you could walk there. I thought the only way to get to another place was by using the auto travel. Only later, when I had stopped playing DF did I read it was possible to walk all the way. Anyway, the freedom in character creation is what (in my eyes) makes DF a better RPG than MW, and what makes MW an role playing game and Oblivion a straight 3D "shooter".

The small world in MW never bothered me really, but I had this feeling when playing Oblivion that I was walking around in all these theme parks. In MW, all the out door locations were sown together while in Oblivion they were on different maps altogether. I believe that is one reason for the crippled magic in Oblivion: You can't levitate because outside the city walls there is nothing, just like Mournhold in MW. What saves MW is that Mournhold is the only place that is cut off from the rest of the land. I choose to see Mournhold as a warning from Bethesda of what was to come in Oblivion.
Neither does a 7 man army really get to me. Let's face it, they are at least 7 and they are living beings. In one RPG I saw, an army would be a single capitalized letter A....

[levethian]

Tito,
Yeah, Daggerfall was repetative - but I imagine it could have been improved uppon if Beth handn't given up on its lofty goals.

I expect I'm bias because Daggefall was my first I just hope the TES series isn't 'mainstreamed' any further.

Actually, I don't much like the experience system of the TES series, sorry to say. I would prefer to gain experience points for killing things, which raises your level, which will offer a sum to distribute to stats and skills - arranged just as the stat distribution currently stands; more strength when a strength based skill used, and one 'point' to a skill could increase a skill by more than 1 if that skill had been used during the level increase.. if you take my meaning.
Maybe

As it stands, its pointless to use any skill after it reaches the arbitrary level of '100' (utterly perfect, apparently) - there should never be a point at which performing an action is pointless regarding the progression fo your character.. I think.

Most RPG's assume that if a player uses a skill to destroy things, the player will increase the skills they use once their level has increased - without being told to. Maybe TES should adopt a strict 1 skill point per allocation point, and if a player advances a skill they never use, its their own silly fault?..

I've been nattering on for too long.. this reply window is pretty small - difficult to guage how long exactly one natters...
Dum di dum...


Mighty Midget,
Oblivion is not really a shooter - simply because it executes its combat aspects more eloquently does not make it so. Daggerfall and Morrowind both had equal need for hacking and slashing - and the core gameplay has changed reasonably little. Granted, Oblivion is more like an FPS than MW or DF, but is still mercifully a long way off...

[Mighty Midget]

Levthian: Yes You are right, Oblivion is not actually a shooter, thus the quotation marks. My point was that the severly crippled character creation system in Oblivion also cripples it's RPG status. I just can't role play if I can't relate to the character, and when I'm forced to be someone I don't really want to be, I just can't relate.

[Doubler]

Morrowfall *sigh*

Truth is, I agree with arguments in both camps. Daggerfall was awesome and by and by the best game of the series as an RPG, while Morrowind introduced some much needed character and variation.
In a perfect world, Bethesda would have continued to experiment with and improve on various generation techniques building up on this new, necessary foundation. They did some with Oblivion, true, but it was next to inconsequential. Especially when placed next to all the sacrifices the game made in terms of RPG mechanics.

I kind of like the current skill system of TES, by the way. First of all, it's a bit of fresh air within RPG games ("a game claims to be and RPG and doesn't copy D&D at least in part!? Preposterous!" ) and it makes more sense from a real-world perspective. Removing XP counters and a large chunk of the focus on levelling helps make TES a bit of an RPG-lite series with a different focus then most others. In short: It fits much better then the traditional XP system with what TES offers, imho.
Character progression, for me, is always a means to an end. Only passingly an end in itself. Otherwise you end up in the stale MMO or diablo-like environment of eternal non-satisfaction and purely kinetic pleasures *shivers*

Like MM, Oblivion's sacrifice of half the RPG elements Morrowind had (which was already half of those Daggerfall had) in my book caused it to cross a threshold where the actual RPG posibilities were too limited to live up to RPG pretentions. In effect it fails as an RPG. Literally. It tries, and fails.
Also take note of the distinction between various forms of roleplaying. In the past, roleplaying meant having the character assume a role, and having the game actually provide this role and relevant feedback to it. These days a younger generation seems to think of roleplaying as 'play pretend', which pretty much misses the point if you ask me.

[Blood-Pigggy]

They're all pretty average in my opinion, they're not really the most indepth games (none of them are indepth in fact) and they're repetitive and have extremely generic environments, lore, and characters.

[Tulac]

You can't call the Telvanni part of Morrowind generic, actually the whole architecture in morrowind is amazingly done, one of most beautiful and versatile I saw in any of the games.