Which Elder Scrolls game is the best?

isengrimb16_ESO

Online

starkerealm wrote: »

isengrimb16_ESO wrote: »

Shiaxi wrote: »

oh shadowrun returns is awesome.. or well.. the dragonfall expansion is awesome; the original was good.. but a bit.. lackluster

Mmm. Shadowrun. I'm thinking here of the tabletop RPG .... good game and backstory, but I wish they'd put out a new Earthdawn game of ANY sort; I really liked that one (same universe as Shadowrun, but set in the distant, mythical past. The magic is diminishing, rather than growing, and people are just coming out of their mountain strongholds to face whatever Horrors might still be around. Yeah, the future of Shadowrun is bleak; once that magical field gets strong enough .. never mind the mutants. ) We had a good GM for Earthdawn, and he really knew how to put the creepy fears into his players.

One guy stopped to have a drink in a river while the party was resting and we were deciding our next move. Turns out the water was .. infested .. with .. very small Horrors, micro-Horrors. Three days later, my character got to witness him being literally torn apart for no apparent reason. In a marketplace.

That's what Earthdawn is... I've been seeing it at the used bookstores lately, but never knew what it was, or bothered to look. Huh, I'll need to grab a copy, next time I'm out.

The general theme kind of reminds me of the way Exalted was supposed to tie into WoD... of course, now I'm remembering that Exalted title Interplay was working on that never came out.

Yes; if you've got a tabletop group, I'd strongly suggest you give Earthdawn a look. Warning though, character creation .. makes some pretty powerful characters, do expect your people to seem to get overpowered really fast. But there are a lot of nasty enemies from which to choose. It does have a "strain" system, though, for spells/abilities (the harder it is to do a feat, the more you wear yourself out.) Beyond that, I only played, and didn't own the book myself, because I don't cheat in multiplayer games (never even read the AD&D monster manual to this day, even though I don't ever expect to be able to play tabletop again.)

Crumpy

Oblivion

Oblivion's countryside and buildings were (are!) so beautiful.

isengrimb16_ESO

Online

starkerealm wrote: »

isengrimb16_ESO wrote: »

ThatArgonianGuy wrote: »

Oblivion because the spellmaking and enchanting system was amazing. Enchanting in Morrowind was too hard to do yourself without a mod and too expensive to have npcs do it. (100,000g for an enchant? really?) I did love the mudcrab merchant in Morrowind lol. I love all of the games, though I couldn't really get into Arena (Daggefall's game play is much better).

Ah, someone who played Daggerfall.

I have Anthology, and my version of Arena and Daggerfall are both in their original states, apparently (unfortunately). This means I can't use the ini file cheat with Daggerfall for godmode.

Ok, so I walk out of the cell and explore around, and grab that one sword that's available (I never found anything else). I learned really quick not to go into the basement, because there's some heavy armour dude who three-shots my face. So I go upstairs, to beat the guy behind the table to open the door to the stairs. So I can beat him, but at a health cost to myself.

My health is so low (and apparently does not regenerate?) I can't beat the ghosts or whatever they are on the outside stairs. That's as far as I got. No food or potions. I did try resting! But when I woke up, heavy armour guy was there and three shotted my face again.

I'm stuck! 30 seconds into the game, and I'm stuck good. Please tell me, did I miss something I should have found and need to do this?

I'm afraid to try Arena .... :O

As for voting, I guess Online, because I _CAN_ play it without cheats, woo, go, me.

It's been a long time, but my recollection is Arena and Daggerfall are both incredibly brutal starting out. Morrowind at least offers you a, "not in the face, not in the face! Oh please, gods, not in the face!" option, with the silt strider network, and some gold after you're let out of prison.

Oblivion was the first game you could play easily, as I recall.

Most of those old games were. I did ok in Eye of the Beholder - I got about halfway through that before my 286 finally gave up the ghost, but Tomb Raider, couldn't get past those dogs (even though Eye throws wolves at you right away, too, iirc). I don't remember either of those having cheats available.

Morrowind seems to be the first one that has anything like a rudimentary tutorial in this series, too. But it also has /tgm.

Akhratos

Morrowind

Morrowind, of course.

Skyrim:
Weird Fighters/Mages/Thieves guild concept.
Weird mage schools and spell learning/use progression (worst Ive seen).
No birthsigns.
No classes.
No footsteps (snowy region I heard?).
No party...


I dont even see Skyrim matching most of Morrowind features (the ones that were not simply removed directly), so we rather dont talk about the new features they left on the way.

starkerealm

Morrowind

isengrimb16_ESO wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

isengrimb16_ESO wrote: »

ThatArgonianGuy wrote: »

Oblivion because the spellmaking and enchanting system was amazing. Enchanting in Morrowind was too hard to do yourself without a mod and too expensive to have npcs do it. (100,000g for an enchant? really?) I did love the mudcrab merchant in Morrowind lol. I love all of the games, though I couldn't really get into Arena (Daggefall's game play is much better).

Ah, someone who played Daggerfall.

I have Anthology, and my version of Arena and Daggerfall are both in their original states, apparently (unfortunately). This means I can't use the ini file cheat with Daggerfall for godmode.

Ok, so I walk out of the cell and explore around, and grab that one sword that's available (I never found anything else). I learned really quick not to go into the basement, because there's some heavy armour dude who three-shots my face. So I go upstairs, to beat the guy behind the table to open the door to the stairs. So I can beat him, but at a health cost to myself.

My health is so low (and apparently does not regenerate?) I can't beat the ghosts or whatever they are on the outside stairs. That's as far as I got. No food or potions. I did try resting! But when I woke up, heavy armour guy was there and three shotted my face again.

I'm stuck! 30 seconds into the game, and I'm stuck good. Please tell me, did I miss something I should have found and need to do this?

I'm afraid to try Arena .... :O

As for voting, I guess Online, because I _CAN_ play it without cheats, woo, go, me.

It's been a long time, but my recollection is Arena and Daggerfall are both incredibly brutal starting out. Morrowind at least offers you a, "not in the face, not in the face! Oh please, gods, not in the face!" option, with the silt strider network, and some gold after you're let out of prison.

Oblivion was the first game you could play easily, as I recall.

Most of those old games were. I did ok in Eye of the Beholder - I got about halfway through that before my 286 finally gave up the ghost, but Tomb Raider, couldn't get past those dogs (even though Eye throws wolves at you right away, too, iirc). I don't remember either of those having cheats available.

Morrowind seems to be the first one that has anything like a rudimentary tutorial in this series, too. But it also has /tgm.

I remember... well, not the gold box games, but I remember the old vicious games of the late 80s and early 90s. Arena was '94 and Daggerfall was '96 though, and both were serious throwbacks at the start. I seem to remember them getting a lot easier after a few levels... well, after you got out of the Imperial City prison in Arena anyway.

MasterSpatula

Morrowind

Shiaxi wrote: »

the castrated npc guilds is actually also true for oblivion...
I really missed the skill requirements of morrowind

"You're green, outlander. Bittergreen green."

I still remember the feeling the first time I hit the progression wall in the Morag Tong because I hadn't hit the requirements in enough of the skills. Man, I missed that when Oblivion came along.

JD2013

Morrowind

Morrowind. It is far and away the best ES title. It was so deep, there was no hand holding, the story was quite excellent, spellcrafting was a great thing, the game world was brilliant ...

But also I love Online. I can't explain it, to me it absolutely feels like an ES title. Once they fix things and bugs, introduce spellcrafting, the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood and the Justice system are introduced, and as more areas of the provinces get unlocked, it's going to be outstanding.

Shiaxi

Morrowind

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Shiaxi wrote: »

the castrated npc guilds is actually also true for oblivion...
I really missed the skill requirements of morrowind

"You're green, outlander. Bittergreen green."

I still remember the feeling the first time I hit the progression wall in the Morag Tong because I hadn't hit the requirements in enough of the skills. Man, I missed that when Oblivion came along.

god those last couple of promotions could take FOREVER..

it also made you feel like the most powerful person in morrowind after becoming the leader of the fighters, mages and thieves guild, morag tong, temple and imperial cult, one of the great houses, the imperial legion...

also fun to see the ordinators actually starting to like you after a couple of promotions in the temple

Commonpain

Morrowind

Morrowind is and always will be the best title of the series. Period.

I can still remember trying to steal the ebony curiass and daedric greaves from the shelf behind orvas dren at the dren plantation. Or dying by equipping sunder or keening without putting wrathguard on Oh and meeting a living Dwemer definately was an experience of its own kind!

This game had an atmosphere at a quality that has yet to be reached again.

I still own it with all expansions and play it through at least one time a year...

KerinKor

Morrowind

Daggerfall was a flawed masterpiece but the flaws were pretty deep so even though loved playing the flaws always marred the experience.

Morrowind wasn't perfect but I will always remember sitting there staring at the title screen listening to the main theme play the first time, Souelle's music was awseome.

Then, as you emerged from the ship and saw Seyda Neen for the first time the music crescendoed again .. utterly stunning. I loved the game, in fact when I'm playing ESO, a couple of the soundtracks use very similar musical themes (one is a slow one played on a Viola or something similar) and I see in my mind's eye areas of Morrowind where a similar melody played and feel the urge to re-install and play all over again.

Oblivion's level scaling sucked and I barely played it because of that, and although I bought Skyrim I have never even installed it, I didn't realise it too had level failing in it.

TetsuMaru

Morrowind

Hands down Morrowind. From a time when games didnt hold your hand and guide you every step of the way with quest objective locations, players had to actually read dialogue and use their brains to succeed. The environments were gorgeous and the gameplay....amazing. A true masterpiece of its era. I spent more time playing Morrowind then I did attempting 3rd base with random girls.

Shanna

Morrowind

n.englishb14_ESO wrote: »

....Ones first experience is always the best.

seems so

SadisticSavior

Online

My last Elder Scrolls experience was Daggerfall. It was a fun game, but Elder Scrolls Games have ALWAYS felt like they should have been an MMO from the start. The other Elder Scrolls games feel like stripped down demos of this game to me.

One thing I miss from Daggerfall is the sheer scale...walking to the next town was like the real world. if it is 10 miles away it could take hours to walk there. If you decided to walk to ride places instead of using fast travel, it was a journey. It was 10 "real" miles. Everything in ESO is scaled down.

GreySix

Skyrim

Have Morrowind, and really tried to get into it.

Wanted to like it, but just didn't have the patience to read through the walls of text. Lack of fast-travel (from my POV) was a turn-off too.

Sariias

Skyrim

Morrowind was my first, and I would say it is the best because of spears, spell crafting, and flying spells - BUT CLIFFRACERS.

Skyrim is just an all out explore funfest.

Opioid

Skyrim

I had to go with Skyrim, mainly because of current replayability. I loved Morrowind and Oblivion, but trying to play either of them these days after playing Skyrim is painful, due to the dated graphics, UI and combat.

I'm waiting patiently for the Skywind and Skyblivion projects to get finished so I can replay Morrowind and Oblivion with updated graphics/UI/combat from Skyrim.

GreySix

Skyrim

Opioid wrote: »

I'm waiting patiently for the Skywind and Skyblivion projects to get finished so I can replay Morrowind and Oblivion with updated graphics/UI/combat from Skyrim.

That would kick butt.

Draaconis

I think technology has changed WAY too much for anyone to actually answer this question. Arena was released in '94.

Maleficus

Skyrim

Modded Skyrim for me all the way....

Spidermonk

Morrowind

Vampire Embrace...'nuff said.

david271749

Skyrim

Draaconis wrote: »

I think technology has changed WAY too much for anyone to actually answer this question. Arena was released in '94.

I think you're trying too hard.

isengrimb16_ESO

Online

Yes, I think I wouldn't mind those, either. Um, that mouse-wagging thing with swords is so weird, you'd think they were predicting Wii controllers to come out a lot earlier.

PrinceBoru

Skyrim

Skyrim was then first game I'd ever felt compete immersion.

stabbykitteh

Other

I chose Other because Morrowind and Skyrim are pretty much tied for me at this point (though Morrowind will always be the sentimental favorite).

Darrett

Daggerfall

Clearly Daggerfall. Morrowind was interesting, but I ended up going back to playing Daggerfall pretty quickly. Didn't play MW again for a few years; it was decent, but too restrictive. Obviously not as restrictive as Oblivion or Skyrim, though.

starlizard70ub17_ESO

Skyrim

n.englishb14_ESO wrote: »

....Ones first experience is always the best.

This reason right here.

Merlin13KAGL

Morrowind

In terms of Immersive? Morrowind, hands down.

You started with a truly blank slate...nothing on the map (pre-GOTY)...scavaging anything you could to sell and upgrade. Starting with the rusty knife you aquired after litterally getting off the boat and starting out so weak and slow....

Exploration was unlike any other game up to then...(and any after, until Oblivion). You wanted to go places you couldn't reach and wanted to explore in a way I've never quite had another game, even this one, make me want to explore.

I continue to be in awe of the level of detail that originated in one individual's mind, let alone what they've been able to turn it into. I'm hopeful they look at all Elder Scrolls creations and think "I made that..."

I'm equally hopeful they look at every single one and know that it's better than the last...and at the same, never going to be quite as good.

It's a compliment on both counts!

Gedalya

Online

You left off 3 games: Battlespire and Redguard; as well as The Elder Scrolls Travels. Or are we not counting these since Bethesda seems to overlook them also?

GreySix

Skyrim

Gedalya wrote: »

You left off 3 games: Battlespire and Redguard; as well as The Elder Scrolls Travels. Or are we not counting these since Bethesda seems to overlook them also?

Were those EPs or stand-alone games?

Gisgo

Morrowind

Of course.
I want a Caius Cosades easter egg in ESO!