Oblivion is by far my favourite, Morrowind was a pain to navigate and Skyrim felt empty. Bethesda's next game will be a new IP or Skyrim 2 it won't be TES6.

Oblivion for sure. I thought the quests were interesting, and the portals to oblivion were a cool mechanic.

Oblivion is my favorite. One of my stupidest deaths came from Oblivion, where a random Unicorn came out of nowhere to kill me. I just hope the next Elder Scrolls game has varied locations.

Morrowind is my favorite game of all time. It was my first experience of a game that truly didn't hold your hand, was relentlessly difficult if you weren't paying attention, and had an amazing world. It was truly a world you could get lost in for hundreds upon hundreds of hours.

I love all TES games, but the ones after Morrowind feel so restrictive compared to it. Some of the things Oblivion and especially Skyrim restrict from you bum me out.

Oblivion is my favourite for sure, though it is also my first. I just love how pleasant the world feels (not a fan of the gates and Daedric planes) and how it feels aligned with the silly fun of modding. The soundtrack is also my favourite!

Shocked by the number of Oblivion responses. I mean, sure, it was great when the XBOX 360 launched, but man it has not aged well. Bad character models, repetitive voice acting, and a boring world design and it was still hanging on to the series' ancient level up mechanics. If I want an older Elder Scrolls, I'd much rather go back and play Morrowind because the world is so much more interesting. If I want a new Elder Scolls, I'll take Skyrim any day of the week.

As for the future games in the series, I can almost guarantee you it won't be "Dominion" or whatever. The now established pattern is to have a game take place in a single province which shares the title of the game. They might go to one of the provinces you mentioned, but not all of them. Personally, I'd like to see Black Marsh, since the lore of the series makes it sound really alien and interesting (the books talk about fast travel by being swallowed by giant f'ing worms - how cool is that?!). Maybe they could bring more of the Morrowind vibe in then.

Oblivion for me, warts and all. The jump in fidelity from Morrowind to Obilvion was just so huge. Also, fast travel, etc. The jump in visuals from Oblivion to Skyrim wasn't as significant, thankfully, the design decisions were way better in Skyrim.

Hoping the next Elder scrolls is in the Desert, though with the MMO it's hard to judge where they go from here and how much what the MMO had done will inform how they go about the next ES game.

It's really like picking children for me.

I started with Morrowind back in 2002, halcyon days on the original Xbox, fording a path through that game and both its expansions. Morrowind was one of those revelatory, formative experiences. The impact it left on my perspective and tastes as a gaming enthusiast, simply indelible.

At the time, Oblivion was in many ways a similarly astounding game. Though it'd only been four years since Morrowind, Oblivion felt like a coming-out party for the Elder Scrolls. It cherrypicked the essentials that made Morrowind so engrossing while modernizing much of what made Morrowind so difficult to carry forward. As an additive, here was the series on new technology -- a world rendered with a fidelity I could have never previously imagined.

And then, of course, Skyrim. Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim.

I've always perceived Skyrim as the modernity of Oblivion taken to its logical endpoint. That's a trait some people hold against Skyrim, its penchant for streamlining what had been complicated and customizable in earlier series entries. But I don't. I quite like the action. I like the intellectual freedom it affords me, the relaxation. It's a game in which I don't need to be figuring anything out. I can simply just be. And I like that Skyrim is the sort of ultimate platform of accessibility for people newly acquainted with the Elder Scrolls gametype.

--

So, I don't know. When choosing favorites I tend to lean toward Morrowind, since it was my first and still the one I return to most frequently. It's also the one you can break most easily via sheer godlike power, which itself is its own fun reward. Oblivion, in retrospect, is easy to judge, especially in the shadow of Skyrim, but deserves just as much credit for being that bridge between insane, hardcore PC RPG and accessible, free-spirited sandbox. Skyrim, of the three, is probably my second favorite. From a modern design perspective, it is the game whose threads and mechanics I most want to see explored in future iterations. Conversely, I'm okay keeping the more arcane idiosyncrasies locked away within Morrowind as an exhibit of the past.

I love the variety of environments in Oblivion, no matter how implausible they might be, and also find the questlines (excluding the main questlines) to generally be a lot more interesting than Skyrim's lot. Skyrim's still got some good ones though, but nothing quite as grand as literally all of faction quests in Oblivion. Still, exploring Cyrodil is so much more visually interesting than Skyrim.

Design-wise I think Skyrim does some great stuff, especially in how it gets quests to you. I've also found that more random dungeons I go into have little stories than I remember being the case in Oblivion. The perk system is also something I really like, and character models look significantly better.

Morrowind has the best lore, characters and story but Oblivion is my overall favorite game in the series.

This.

I think Skyrim is easily the best in the series. The base game is the best and it has the most mods and highest quality of mods. Any Elder Scrolls game without mods is a bit drab to be honest. They all have certain issues that make me not want to continue playing. If not Skyrim, then definitely Morrowind. I almost can't believe how many people here liked Oblivion, let alone think it's the best in the series. The gameplay design in that game was hard to not call terrible. Apart from The Dark Brotherhood quest, most of the stuff in that game was real boring too. The idea of the Oblivion portals was cool, but after a few you just cast invisibility to rush to the end because they are that much a pain in the ass and not at all fun.

Skyrim feels like an actual world. As I am the type of person who's first mod installed is to disable fast travel, I really like how it keeps throwing random one-off quests your way if you're traveling a while. It oddly has the most diverse world out of any of them too. It has dragons, which is fantastic and so many quests are interesting. The combat is also actually fun, which was a huge upside. Then, the leveling system is much better. While it has flaws, as I don't like that I can specialize in every single skill to 100, it does have everything else going for it.

I am loving the shit out of the Special Edition so far and I only have some 20 mods installed at this point.

I totally agree. I thought Oblivion was bad at the time. So ugly, boring, and the mechanics were awful. Plus they only did the tiniest of baby steps to fix the combat.

I really enjoyed Skyrim the most for all its improvements, which personally I really don't see as streamlining issues, even though I think that goes on with other games (plus mods that fix stealth and that kind of thing).

I really do appreciate the oddity that is Morrowind as far as a setting but the game is rough to play, was even at the time for me. Going back to an odd setting like that would be a good thing for sure though. That's what is still special with Morrowind.

I want to like Morrowind, but it can be hard to go back to that dice roll combat. Maybe They'll remake it some day...

To the guys who are shocked at the love Oblivion gets; maybe it hasn't aged well, but neither has Citizen Kane (I mean come on, it was no one in the room when he said Rosebud!). Not saying Oblivion is the Citizen Kane of games, but I'm just saying it was a time and a place. And some of our differences seem to boil down to liking the quests better in one game than the other, and that's fair. I just like more or less every quest in Oblivion better than in Skyrim. I'm also one of the those weird guys who likes the main quest in Oblivion better than Skyrim. I love all the mystery surrounding the Mythic Dawn, and I think Mankar Cameron is one of the most underrated video game villains of all time. I really liked that guy, certainly better than I liked Alduin. I also think the main quest of Oblivion fits in better with the huge amount of customization that you get in TES games. The Hero of Kvatch can be anyone, because it's just a guy who happened to be in a certain place at a certain time. The Dragonborn however is this mythic, ancient legend, and even though they try to write around it, it makes no sense for the Dragonborn to be anything other than a nord or imperial.

Imma go play Oblivion now I think.

Edit: Will give Morrowind props for having the best main theme song. Man, that is fucking awesome.

Oblivion was sort of my introduction to video games in a big way (got started pretty late) and continues to be my favorite TES and favorite game, period. I think the quest lines (particularly Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood) and The Shivering Isles expansion are hands down Bethesda's best work.

Skyrim's also great (my 5th or 6th favorite game of all time) but it feels a lot less dynamic than Oblivion or what I've played of Morrowind and feels a touch sterile as a result.

I think Morrowind's world is far more interesting than Oblivion's or Skyrim's and it ported to a modern engine would probably supplant Oblivion as my top pick, but the combat and the instability I've had on modern computers (both with Morrowind and Morroblivion) has made it all-but-unplayable and I've never gotten more than 10 hours in.

My ranking: Oblivion > Skyrim > Morrowind.

As for Bethesda-style games more broadly: Oblivion > New Vegas > Skyrim > Fallout 4 > Morrowind > Fallout 3

@lawgamer: It's kinda only been a pattern for two games (Morrowind and Skyrim) considering Oblivion was set in Cyrodiil. But I get what you're saying. However, it's worth noting that Summerset Isle and Valenwood are waaay smaller lands than Skyrim and Cyrodiil, so it does make as much sense to set the game there as anywhere else. And some leaked document does call attention to Project Greenheart (Greenheart being the capitol of Valenwood), and while the validity of that document was called into question when it first leaked, it also showed Nuka World a year before it's announcement. Considering how important the Dominion was set up to be in Skyrim, I can't see any other way than placing it there. Also, Black Marsh would be pretty unfortunate and/or lore breaking, as most of the land is clouded in a poison that kills anyone but Argonians.

The next two Bethesda games are new IPs, then we get Elder Scrolls 6. That's been more or less confirmed. That's why I'm thinking a release date for 2022 or 2023 seems plausible.

This for me. Sadly, I was too young to play Morrowind when it came out, and going back to it after Oblivion was incredibly painful. However, I can respect it as clearly superior in terms of story and world building, even if the gameplay mechanics are archaic and let it down.

Oblivion was my first, and thus my favourite by far. Skyrim is good and all but can't hold a candle to it for me. The Thieves Guild actually has thievery in Oblivion (YOU STEAL AN ELDER SCROLL) and isn't a glorified Fighters Guild v2. The Dark Brotherhood is on another level - who can forget the murder mystery house where you can persuade the NPCs to murder each other, or the huge twist at the hideout where you have to kill literally everyone else in the guild.

Exactly! And how did I forget Shivering Isles? Man, I remember when games came with Expansions, not shitty DLC packs. Shivering Isles was quality content.

@bollard: Dark Brotherhood could almost have been it's own game. So many memorable moments there. As for the thieves guild, I love how you have to steal stuff and sell it to your fence in order to get more quests. It just made sense. You were actually a thief. And man, the whole Gray Fox part is just... Wow.

Skyrim just nudges out Morrowind, for me. Morrowind is very hard to go back to though. Oblivion is great in some ways - it has some of the best quest in the series, but that only really makes it stand out the first time through. Skyrim is straight-up the most fun to play for me: I can go back to that game over and over and know I'll have a good time just on a purely mechanical level. I also think the world is great - people tend to remember it as snow and mountains, but that's primarily because the snowy mountains are so big that you can almost always see them. There's plenty of lush forests, open plains, swampy marshes, and more in that game - and the major cities all feel unique and distinct in a way they don't in Oblivion. Didn't play the first two (or Online) so I can't speak to those. Daggerfall seems neat but kinda wild from what little I've seen of it on here.

@y2ken: Can't say I agree with the part about the major cities feeling unique. While there are supposed to be nine big towns, there are in reality only five. Winterhold, Falkreath, Morthal and Dawnstar all basically have the same layout, and that's pretty disappointing. I think Oblivion offers much more in terms of diversity, with cities like the Imperial City, Anvil, Cheydinhal, Bruma and Bravil all being very unique and memorable.

Skyrim by several orders of magnitude. Followed by Oblivion and Morrowind, both of which I enjoyed. Haven't played the first 2 games, hated ESO.

But yeah, skyrim. What a game.

For me it`s close between Skyrim and Oblivion, but Oblivion wins out. Skyrim has a ton of various gameplay improvements and does a great job of building the world. It also has a more stable quest quality, but that actually brings me to why I like Oblivion more. The highs in that game are so high! The game has so many incredible quests, both stand alone and quest chains. There is so much creativity and interesting story stuff in them.

The Dark Brotherhood is obviously great, but there are also quests like the one with the Innsmouth like cult town (Hackdirt?), the one where you enter a painting to save a painter, the town with invicible citizens, all the deadre quests like the one where you must get a priest to kill you without resorting attacking him or the one where you pull a sick magical prank during a fancy dinner party and I could go on for days. The main quest is pretty lackluster, the mechanics haven`t aged well and there are a lot of bad quests. But when that game get`s good, IT GET`S GOOD! Every couple of years I return to it and do a "best of" tour of the quests and have a great time all over again. Also the Shivering Isles is an amazing expansion.

Morrowind is really interesting and I want to get back to it one day (I have never finished it), but I played a while after it came out and a lot of the mechanics of that game really pushed me away.

My advice for people just starting Morrowind/trying to break that early game slump is to utilize the game's trainers. Just pay to upgrade your level by any means possible. By the time a given skill hits 50 or so the mechanics start to feel like Oblivion's.

It's a grind. An unnecessary one, by modern standards, but suffering through the early bullshit can pay dividends by the endgame.

Not trying to start an arguement, but all three games the same theme song, just played differently. :)

Morrowind has the best 'feel' but, man, it's a hard game to go back to in 2016. When Oblivion came along it just played so much better. I get the complaints that the world isn't as interesting but when you're setting a game in Cyrodiil, that comes with the territory.

Oblivion for me, closely followed by Skyrim. Oblivion wins because of its Dark Brotherhood quest line.

I'm willing to bet elsweyer or hammerfall, leaning toward hammerfall since it has a big dwemer imprint and bethesda loves using dwemer cites as dungeons.

I think it will be a good 3-5 years before the next single player TES game. They don't want it to get in the way of ESO. The sad part is that is also why I think we havent seen any really good single player Star Wars games as well, because of SW:ToR.

I really wanted both ToR and ESO but had I known it would cost me waiting a lot longer than usual to get a really cool single player game in either of those universes, I would have passed hard on them for sure.

Exploring Morrowind was probably the part I miss the most playing Oblivion & Skyrim. Relying on quest notes & directions instead of following a marker on a map or compass while tedious at times really added to that exploration.

When I played through Oblivion again it was a chore, purposely not leveling up & sneaking to the end of the portals to finish the game.

I would love Elsweyr. Khajit are awesome. It would cover desert and jungle.

And hopefully there would be some really cool Moonsugar based stuff. I want to trip out on it and have all sorts of drug operations going on. Khajit El Chapo.

YAKNOWWHATIMEAN

@bojackhorseman: *nudge nudge* ehhh, eehhhh

Morrowind is still probably my number one even though out of the three (Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, because let's be honest that's the real discussion here) it is probably the worst playing game. I don't reccomend people new to the series start at Morrowind, because combat is dumb, the world is difficult to navigate, interface isn't as good as it could be, and even with mods it doesn't look great graphically. That said Morrowind is not only my favorite elderscroll game (Skyrim and Oblivion are still fantastic games that I've put hundreds and hundreds of hours into) it's my second favorite game of all time, right behind Persona 4.

Many others have talked about Morrowinds excellent qualities here, but I think more than anything it is the world. Unlike Cyrodil and Skyrim, vvardenfell seems very creative in the world that is represented, one that is familliar enough to fantasty worlds but unlike any others we have seen in games. It really feels like every place you go, person you talk to, and book you read, you learn a little about more about the workings of this strange place and its political landscape. This feeling certainly exists in the others as well, but has never felt quite as perfectly tuned since.

TLDR: anyone who didn't say Morrowind, "We're watching you... scum."

By the way, just checked out a 2016 graphics overhaul for Oblivion, and man, that game can look absolutely fantastic. Like, much better looking than vanilla Skyrim. Of course, Skyrim can also look incredible with mods.

Morrowind is easily my favorite, but I like Oblivion quite a bit, as well. I seem to be in the minority, though, in that I thought (and having played it again a month ago, still think) that Skyrim is a terrible game. It was one of my all-time gaming disappointments, for sure. The world just felt completely empty and void of any personality. When playing a Bethesda game, I generally avoid fast travel unless I'm really trying to knock out some specific mission or something, because I want to wander. In Skyrim, however, I ended up using fast travel incessantly, because I was sick to death to pretty much only ever seeing a couple of giants herding some mammoths around. I think I ran across the map end-to-end once and that's all I saw. Maybe a wolf if I was lucky. I felt that the towns were incredibly sparse compared to previous games, as well. Another big problem I had with the game was the dragons. Lore-wise, they tried to play it up like they were these incredibly powerful creatures, that, if they weren't stopped, could be an extinction event for Tamriel. While in reality, the dragon fights were absolutely trivial. Like, my low-level rogue character shouldn't be able to single-handedly kill a dragon by just bashing away at it with two iron daggers, but I most certainly did that more than once. I also thought all of the guild questlines were far more boring than their Oblivion counterparts. The only redeeming thing about Skyrim is that the modding community was so large, but I've found that even copious amounts of mods can't make me enjoy that game.

Morrowind is by far the best ES game and it isn't even remotely close.

I really dislike definitive statements like this. Oh well.

@bojackhorseman: Guy ain't wrong though

Skyrim is best elder scrolls game because it strays from what every other elder scrolls (and fallout) game asks from the player before they even get a chance to see what the game is. Skyrim doesn't ask you to choose a class. It doesn't ask you to choose a playstyle, or fucking astrological sign. It doesn't ask you to fiddle around with points in skills or traits. It just allows you to play they game and naturally decide how you want to build your character, whenever that may be. I couldn't stand that about Oblivion and Fallout 3/NV. I was such a shame that they went back to that for Fallout 4. I feel crippled by indecision when they ask me to make those decisions before I even truly know what the full breadth of the game is.

As far as what I think or want ES6 to be... I've always imagined it being set in Hammerfell ever since I met the Redguard in Whiterun.

Man people who vote Skyrim. A didn't play any Elder Scroll Games before. B only owned a console at the time. C don't know shit about games ! D. Got into the whole Skyrim hype and never played a RPG before... REALLY Skyrim.... E. You where probably 14 at that time the game came out. I am even gonna go out on a limb and say Skyrim is the worst one if you don't count online witch isn't a TES game imo. Yes DaggerFall has the same quest key dungeon over and over a again but at the time that world map was bonkers !

@lawgamer: You lvl'd up by jumping ! I don't call that ancient i call it revolutionary at the time ! YOU LVL'D UP BY JUMPING !!! lvling up by killing mobs is boring and ancient.

@bojackhorseman: i Think the problem with people liking Skyrim is. It's probably there first TES game and going back to Oblivion is probably to hard because it doesn't have those sweet Graphics bro ! look at this dumb clean faces mod installed for my Skyrim Waifu.... man fuck those guys !

Oblivion. I was big on Morrowind when it first came out because it felt so unique and open. And Bloodmoon was a cool expansion.

But I was on the hype train for Oblivion, staying up watching those short gameplay clips that were released every day counting down the release, and it more than exceeded my expectations. The combat felt fluid, I liked the skills and attribute systems better even though they were still flawed and easy to exploit. But most importantly the world felt more alive, the side quests were better. I had my gripes with the level scaling, but I learned to kind of look past it.

Morrowind is far and away my favorite, with Oblivion being near the bottom (above Arena but below Daggerfall). I'd slot Skyrim as my second favorite. Oblivion I dislike because it basically took away the things I loved about the series while cranking the dial up on presentation, goofiness and (admittedly) improving the combat mechanics. But not being able to do amazing shit with enchanting ruined the game for me.

I loved enchanting so much in Morrowind. I made rings that let me leap across small towns and across mountain ridges (constant effect slowfall boots to survive the landing), I had a character who carried no actual weapons on his person and rather used a slew of constant effect items equipped that gave him daedric weapons, anytime he needed to fix them he could simply unequip and reequip the item to resummon it fresh as new. I enjoyed ensnaring a merchant under a follow spell and then leading him away and treating myself to the loose wares, that last one may still be possible, cannot remember, but the others, and things like it, were lost in the later games. Skyrim though did some cool things with character progression that helped to make up for it, and so I still enjoyed it quite a bit. The things I'd do to have that crazy shit back though.

Skyrim was the game the got me into the series. I've tried going back to the older games but they are all a bit rough around the edges compared to Skyrim so I couldn't get into them. I am super excited for TES6. High-fantasy RPGs aren't really my thing so I went into Skyrim thinking "hey, I'll give it a chance" and it was kinda boring for the first few hours until I discovered the first Dwarven ruins (the one were you find the glass sword for that quest) and after seeing that I was hooked for about 200 hours afterwards. Then I went back and watches a bunch of lore videos on Youtube and spent a good week or so on the Wiki reading about everything.

I wouldn't mind a Skyrim 2 still set in Skyrim, I also wouldn't mind a larger open world with all of Nirn separated into different sections.

@soulcake said:

I was actually referring to the overly complex system of you get three tokens each level to increase stats but you get a multiplier based on how many times you leveled up skills linked to those stats, and then those stats are used to derive other stats. You needed a spreadsheet to keep track of everything.

The thing that's really nice about what you've described is that your own indecision becomes something of a strength in Skyrim. Oblivion and especially Morrowind actively punished players for trying to pick up new skills long after the base class and abilities had been chosen. Even after substantial work with paid trainers, you'd still be playing at a disadvantage when compared to a min-maxed character specialized in an individual skill.

Morrowind is so good because it forced people to "play their class". If you want to play a mage then you need to PLAY a mage and doing so means you lock yourself off from some quest lines. It made it so you needed to play more than one character to see all the game and you have to fully immerse yourself in one character at a time.

Oblivion was my first and i love that game, but i hate the oblivion gate sections. Skyrim pretty much perfected what i loved about that game and the whole thing about dragons was way more interesting. So i go with skyrim.

Morrowind is a game about magitech Babylonian objectivists and a theocracy of living deities in a land of ash deserts and fungus forests where people ride giant ticks that sing whalesong and farm flying jellyfish. And one of the most important characters is a bi-racial, bi-polar, bi-sexual, mortal god warrior-poet.

How this is not considered the greatest game ever is beyond me.

I played Oblivion first, coming to it after Fallout 3. Did the thieves guild storyline then kinda didn't know what to do next, so I put it down. Skyrim didn't hook me at first. Saints Row 3 came out around the same time and that delivered immediate satisfaction, but in 2012 Skyrim devoured me whole. I played hundreds of hours on 360, got every achievement, played all the DLC. Had confusing branching saves so I could experience conflicting stories. Then it released me. I bought it for sale some time later for PC, but I didn't play it much. I don't see myself playing the Special Edition either, despite being grandfathered into owning it.