Bringing TES to the consoles is widely to blame for the massive dumbing down of the series. Not the whole "lets not make people read by removing lots of interesting stuff and replace it with some basic monosyllabic voice over, while the npc stares at you like you're some delicious cake", but the inventory being very poorly laid out, the repetitiveness of the dungeons (copy paste copy paste), and dare I say it? I dare! The terribleness of everything about that game. 
 
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a PC fanboy, but lets face it, the series went downhill after the consoles got involved. 
 
Do you think Skyrim will be another Oblivion? A bad mark on the series? Or will it be another Morrowind, showing what an Elder Scrolls game is about: Backstory, detail, and a love for user content?

I thought Morrowind was fine on the original Xbox so I don't think consoles alone are to blame for any dumbing down.

Well I love Oblivion but Morrowind certainly odes have a rich lore and backstory in the game. I would love them to marry the best elements of both those games together because Morrowind's combat system is very poor. If they can get some interesting factions akin to the great houses in Morrowind then I would be very happy.

This thread: Will it be full of bias or contain intelligent conversation?

Oh wait, I guess that's already been decided.

@JerichoBlyth said:

Oblivion was good you cunt.

Yeah this. Granted the graphics have not aged well at all, but the game is still great.

Oblivion didn't suck nor was Morrowind "win", so no, Skyrim will be neither of those things.

RIP english language

For me it's more a question of: do i still have the time and motivation to dive that deep into an elder scrolls game?

I loved morrowind and i also liked oblivion...but putting another ~100 hours into a game will take me way longer now than it did when morrowind came out.

Its pretty easy to go "I won't fetch shit" and cut your playtime in half. I'm just going to murder anyone offering me a shitty fetchquest.

This is already an invalid question since Oblivion didn't suck. So no I think that Skyrim will be fantastic just like every other TES game.

Fuck man, I though Oblivion was fine.

Opinions.

Opinions.

Oblivion was good, but I absolutely think that Morrowind was better.  Better back story, more challenge, more rewarding when you become powerful, more imaginative settings, better factions, and it felt less game-y and more like you were exploring a world in Morrowind (in my opinion).  I think Skyrim will be better than Oblivion, but I think they'll still make the game more "accessible," which is both good and bad, I think.  
 
For the record, I played Morrowind on Xbox and loved it.

Is this the thread where a guy who uses phrases like, "will be win," complains about something being dumbed down? Will it be another thread where someone decides that his favorite parts of a series are what the entire thing is about? 
 
Yes.

Bullshit. Neither Morrowind is as good nor Oblivion is as shitty as you claim that they are. Both are great games with noticeable flaws.

@Gladiator_Games said:

Bringing TES to the consoles is widely to blame for the massive dumbing down of the series. Not the whole "lets not make people read by removing lots of interesting stuff and replace it with some basic monosyllabic voice over, while the npc stares at you like you're some delicious cake", but the inventory being very poorly laid out, the repetitiveness of the dungeons (copy paste copy paste), and dare I say it?

This whole paragraph makes me think you have not played Daggerfall and Arena. Unless, of course, for you The Elder Scrolls begins in Morrowind. But then it wouldn't explain why you consider Oblivion to be the black sheep of a franchise, given that said franchise consist of only two games, so that would be a 50/50 good/bad rate, or why Morrowind on Xbox wasn't "dumbed down" and why it's not to blame for the decay of the series.

In other words, bullshit.

@Taka: You only put in 100 hours? The game really only comes into its own by the 300 or 400 hour mark :-)

Please stop feeding the troll, people

Even if it is the most disappointing game ever, I'll still play through it once or twice.

If you thought Oblivion sucked, then yes, you won't like Skyrim.

A bad mark on the series? You can't be serious. Omega troll thread.

Fist of all, nothing can "be win" if you have any understanding of the English language. Second, I though Oblivion was an outstanding game.

I've found Morrowind fans to be almost obsessively irrational in their love for the game. Let's face it, it was a good game, but not exactly user friendly. Most people seem to insist that if you didn't give a full calendar year of your life to the game then you just "didn't get it." However, any game that needs a couple hundred hours of role-playing to be "properly" understood isn't designed very well.

Long story short, for the Morrowind obsessives, nothing, and I mean NOTHING will be as good as Morrowind. The game could drop gold from the sky and perform sex acts on the user, and it would still not be as good.

Is this the thread where a guy who uses phrases like, "will be win," complains about something being dumbed down? Will it be another thread where someone decides that his favorite parts of a series are what the entire thing is about?    Yes.

Fuck man, I though Oblivion was fine.

RIP english language

@JerichoBlyth said:

Oblivion was good you cunt.

Yeah this. Granted the graphics have not aged well at all, but the game is still great.

Oblivion was good you cunt.

This thread: Will it be full of bias or contain intelligent conversation?

Oh wait, I guess that's already been decided.

Bringing TES to the consoles is widely to blame for the massive dumbing down of the series. Not the whole "lets not make people read by removing lots of interesting stuff and replace it with some basic monosyllabic voice over, while the npc stares at you like you're some delicious cake", but the inventory being very poorly laid out, the repetitiveness of the dungeons (copy paste copy paste), and dare I say it? I dare! The terribleness of everything about that game.   Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a PC fanboy, but lets face it, the series went downhill after the consoles got involved.   Do you think Skyrim will be another Oblivion? A bad mark on the series? Or will it be another Morrowind, showing what an Elder Scrolls game is about: Backstory, detail, and a love for user content?

Duders, don't feed the troll.

Claiming that you don't like Oblivion is fine, claiming that it is objectively bad is just trolling.

The problem with Oblivion was that it was dull, without mods it was boring to play.

I stopped reading at "dumbing down."

Bullshit. Neither Morrowind is as good nor Oblivion is as shitty as you claim that they are. Both are great games with noticeable flaws.

@Gladiator_Games said:

Bringing TES to the consoles is widely to blame for the massive dumbing down of the series. Not the whole "lets not make people read by removing lots of interesting stuff and replace it with some basic monosyllabic voice over, while the npc stares at you like you're some delicious cake", but the inventory being very poorly laid out, the repetitiveness of the dungeons (copy paste copy paste), and dare I say it?

This whole paragraph makes me think you have not played Daggerfall and Arena. Unless, of course, for you The Elder Scrolls begins in Morrowind. But then it wouldn't explain why you consider Oblivion to be the black sheep of a franchise, given that said franchise consist of only two games, so that would be a 50/50 good/bad rate, or why Morrowind on Xbox wasn't "dumbed down" and why it's not to blame for the decay of the series.

In other words, bullshit.

For me it's more a question of: do i still have the time and motivation to dive that deep into an elder scrolls game?

I loved morrowind and i also liked oblivion...but putting another ~100 hours into a game will take me way longer now than it did when morrowind came out.

I always found the Elder Scroll games boring. Skyrim looks like a much needed graphical improvement especially the character models, but we shall see about the story and gameplay. Also the modern quick-menus are already ruining the game.
 
Ultima Underworld 1&2 >>>>> Elder Scrolls
also
Demon's Souls/Dark Souls >>>>> Elder Scrolls

Oblivion was good you cunt.

@sixpin said:

I stopped reading at "dumbing down."

Oblivion is second only to Deus Ex: Invisible War when it comes to being dumbed down to the point of almost ruining the franchise.

The topic creator is definitely going a bit far by saying that it sucked, but I'd definitely like to see some less hand holdy features in Skyrim and more actual exploring. Games don't need to treat the player like a drooling moron.

Oblivion was good you cunt.

Oblivion isn't bad, I just doesn't have near the geographic diversity of Morrowind.
Realistically it can't because of it's location and that was my biggest issue.
I also missed levitating and running into the clouds.

The combat, the feeling of it made Morrowind unplayable for me.  I guess I could get into the lore and the look of it since it was a little more out there than the standard medieval fantasy look of Oblivion.  But I play video games and don't get a boner about some fantasy lands story.  So Oblivion made combat passable and went ahead to enjoy the game. 

Hey man whatever, as long as the game allows me to build a God-like mage, i really don't care!

@WinterSnowblind said:

@sixpin said:

I stopped reading at "dumbing down."

Oblivion is second only to Deus Ex: Invisible War when it comes to being dumbed down to the point of almost ruining the franchise.

The topic creator is definitely going a bit far by saying that it sucked, but I'd definitely like to see some less hand holdy features in Skyrim and more actual exploring. Games don't need to treat the player like a drooling moron.

Now, there's something I don't get. You say Oblivion "did not suck", but at the same time you claim it almost ruined the franchise, right? Those two characteristics seem mutually exclusive to me. But, OK, I'll try to understand where you're coming from: what makes Oblivion so "dumbed down"?

@Gladiator_Games said:

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a PC fanboy, but lets face it, the series went downhill after the consoles got involved.

Ugh totally, I really miss Daggerfall's Doom-quality graphics and overly-complicated gameplay.

Being "dumbed down" is a matter of perspective. I know countless gamers who complained to me when it came out that they could simply not understand it because it was so damned complicated. There were guides left and right helping people through the character creation process. RPGs were once played only by people who didn't mind digging into all the numbers (e.g.., D&D fans), but the gaming market has changed. I'd like a better solution than the one we're being offered (I say keep all the details there for everyone but keep it invisible unless specifically turned on by the gamer), and I think devs are starting to realize that (again, like BioWare, who seems to be putting back some of the RPG elements into Mass Effect 3). I think there's still a lot of experimentation going on.
 
A lot of what people are calling "dumbed down" is really just trimming fat. There have been a lot of Elder Scrolls games, and over the years some of the features and attributes have become redundant. I'm all for streamlining, which is what is really going on. Sometimes devs go too far (I'm looking at you, BioWare) but there's nothing wrong with the general trend toward efficiency. These long-running RPG series can be crippling for devs. They want long-time fans to be happy, but they also want to make a game not so heavily invested in past design decisions that it's weighed down and heavy. Oblivion--great game as it was--suffered from that heaviness. I hope Skyrim is the overhaul the series needs. My guess is that it will be a modest step in that direction, but nothing revolutionary. If you hated Oblivion (for whatever reason) I doubt Skyrim will really change your mind about the series.

@pornstorestiffi said:

Opinions.

You're shitting me. On the internet? Well I'll be.

I'd give you a medal for trolliest topic title of the day, if I had a medal.

It would be "win" if you got hit by a truck on the day Skyrim releases.

@WinterSnowblind said:

@sixpin said:

I stopped reading at "dumbing down."

Oblivion is second only to Deus Ex: Invisible War when it comes to being dumbed down to the point of almost ruining the franchise.

The topic creator is definitely going a bit far by saying that it sucked, but I'd definitely like to see some less hand holdy features in Skyrim and more actual exploring. Games don't need to treat the player like a drooling moron.

See I stopped reading at "dumbed down" again.

I think it'll be good... Like Oblivion. 

I felt the only major issue Oblivion had, that really killed it for me, was enemy leveling.

The developers acknowledged that this was a bad idea as early as pre-alpha development of Fallout 3.

I'm assuming Skyrim will be amazing.