snaildog said:
I'm sure it will some day, but Oblivion doesn't have 4 years worth of awesome mods yet.
I agree. Oblivion has only been out a few months, and Morrowind has the benefit of years of mods, but Oblivion's mod library is growing quickly, and it won't be long before it's up there with Morrowind. There are already some great mods out. But I do feel, that out of the box, Oblivion is a better game than Morrowind on a number of levels.
snaildog said:
IMO Oblivion has better scripted quests (although a lot are too scripted), better battle system, and the Radiant AI is pretty cool, but that's it. It doesn't have all the background lore of Morrowind, and the conversations are all much simpler because of the voice acting. Plus the landscape and cities are repetitive and boring, random bandits wearing Daedric armour completely kills the buzz of finding cool equipment, and the dungeons are all roughly the same - filled with enemies of your level and usually ending in something as exciting as a chest with 87 gold pieces and a repair hammer. I also miss being able to face enemies and quests way beyond your level and being forced to either go away and train or find some sneaky way around them.
The quests are far deeper, and better written then they were in Morrowind, although there were more overall quests in MW. However, many of them felt more generic, or were simple "FedEx" type quests. Oblivion has fewer overall quests, but they offer more variety, and some of them are very involved. For example: The Painter's Quest, The Collector's Questline, and The Dream World Quest are all great examples of how much better the quests are in Oblivion.
Radiant AI works fairly well, even if it's not a huge leap forward. The Oblivion world feels way more alive than Morrowind ever did, and you actually get the sense that the NPC's have their own life. Heck, you can even follow them around and watch them go about their day if you want to, and you'll see some fairly interesting things. It's a major improvement over Morrowind in that respect.
The leveling system has been talked to death in this thread, so I won't go into too much again, suffice as to say that some people like it and some don't. I do like that it offers a nice challenge throughtout the length of the game, but it does need to be tuned to offer more variety, and perhaps to make certain bosses/npc's/creatures more challenging. Loot drops need to be adjusted as well, but I'm guessing we'll see nice tweaks to the system in Elder Scrolls V.
What I do miss about Morrowind is the deeper background, which you've mentioned, as well as the House Questlines. They added a nice history and richness to the world, and made for a complex story. I would have loved to have seen something along those lines in Oblivion as well. And I do agree that Morrowind had more varied landscapes to explore. Morrowind in the Oblivion Engine would be awesome to see.
snaildog said:
I know you don't have to use them, but I hate the auto-travelling and quest compass. Getting from one side of the continent to the other should be a huge commitment, not just clicking the mouse and waiting two seconds. And the compass killed the immersion for me; in Morrowind you have to follow directions and look out for landmarks, not just line up the red arrow and walk forwards. Oh and one last random complaint is that you can easily make a jack-of-all-trades character and do every single quest in the game.
There is no reason you have to use the quick travel options and compasses if you don't want. I generally only use quick travel when I'm doing house keeping. Selling off stuff, making a run to my house to drop off equipment, etc. It's totally up to you on how and when you use them, and it doesn't hurt the game that it has them as an option.
Not using the compass is a bit of a different story, as the quests are written as well as the ones in Morrowind for you to just get directions to an area. However, the compass does help you to stay on task much easier, and has made the game more approachable to new fans of the series. It has, at times, made the quests a lot easier however.
Completeing all the quests with one character doesn't really feel like a bad thing to me either, as a game with this scope is hard to play through multiple times anyway. You could do the same in Morrowind, except that in that game there were quests that would cancel one another out, so it was impossible to get them all in one play through. Oblivion doesn't have quests that cancel one another, which again makes it more approachable. But a good Jack-of-all-trades character was about the same in Morrowind, minues the quests that cancelled one another.
snaildog said:
I'll probably give Oblivion another good chance when an expansion comes out and there are solid, definitive mods to overhaul the parallel levelling and loot.
I'd highly recommend that you do give Oblivion another chance, as it's an amazing game. I've played both Daggerfall and Morrowind before this, so I'm a long time Elder Scrolls fan, and I've found that Oblivion is probably my favorite of the three that I've played. All the games have elements that I like, and wish were incorporated in every version, but it has evolved well over the years. When you consider the scope of these games, and that Oblivion has made it much easier to get immersed in the world and approach the quests, I think it's pretty hard to not be impressed.
