Look, I enjoyed Skyrim, but I miss the days when Bethesda made RPGs
Skyrim does at least raise a very good question that has stuck with me. Having to kill paarthurnax is always hated on by fans but I like it. What if your neighbor was hitler but he has reformed and was now living life as a good person? Would you turn him in? Why not paarthurnax? He committed unspeakable atrocities against humankind.
Paarthunax is an immortal being, he actually can impact enough lives positively to potentially balance out to being at least neutral in the grand scheme of things
Plus, magic and other ancient power he uses for good actually having the capability to improve life beyond the horrors he did, no irl human has that kind of capability
I’m literally just realizing they redid this exact same story beat for Far Harbour in fallout 4 with Dima
Just finished a playtrough with Openmw and some graphical mods. The only thing i felt lacking was the quest log. Stellar game with a nice story.
Sure, increasing the base walk speed would be nice.
Morrowind is a good story wrapped in terrible game mechanics. Skyrim is a moderate story wrapped in pretty good game mechanics. I do miss levitation though, even if it negated as many things as it helped.
Morrowind has excellent game mechanics. It’s just that combat is not one of those excellent mechanics.
Y’know everyone really snarls at Morrowind’s game mechanics, and I can see why they don’t have mass appeal but…idk, I built a character that had a combat proficiency as a major skill, and didn’t try to fight things when my fatigue was near zero, and I found myself enjoying it for what it was even early game.
When you kinda see it as a sometimes jank simulation that abstracts all the crazy in-depth combat the devs WISH they could include at the time, like a tabletop game does, it feels more fun to accept (and eventually break lol).
What are the excellent mechanics? It’s not leveling, quest journal, inventory management, stealing from vendors, walking speed being a stat you level, etc.
This sort of comes down to the classic debate of “Depth vs Quality of Life”. To quote Steak Bently in his excellent video essay on Metal Gear Solid 4:
Depth of game play, to boil it down, is usually defined by the number of ways a player can approach any given scenario. More tools with more unique properties. More hardcore players tend to value depth more and consider additional depth to be generally how you measure improvement in game play.
But more casual players value ease of play and think additional depth and challenge at the cost of accessibility is more of a downgrade. Hence why the general public considers Bayonetta 2 a straight upgrade from Bayonetta 1, but the crazy combo junkies don’t like it as much.
Morrowind’s mechanics have a level of depth that vastly exceeds Skyrim’s in almost every conceivable way, but is often referred to as “janky” and “clunky”. Skyrim’s mechanics are far more intuitive accessible, but is often referred to as “shallow as a puddle”. Which of these you prefer will largely dictate which game you think has the “better” mechanics.
I’m glad people are finally coming around to this. There is still fun to be had in Skyrim, but it released around the same time as Dark Souls, Witcher 2, Risen 2 and Fable 3 among others. Not all of them are better games, however Skyrim most certainly isn’t the best one.
Skyrim added some cool lore. Not as much as morrowind sure but the Thalmor, the dragon priests, and the vampire stuff was all awesome in my opinion.
