Elder Scrolls General

[Chao Tse-Tung]

Remember comfy snow-days inside, playing Morrowind or Oblivion, and how enchanting and huge the worlds felt?

Perhaps you enjoyed some classic vapor in the 2010s while playing the fun new Skyrim, and reminisced about all the complexity and features lost?

If you're a real nerd like me, maybe you even enjoyed researching the deep metaphysical cosmological lore of Mundus and the millenia of history on Tamriel?

What was your favorite Elder Scrolls game? What old features do you miss the most? Will TES VI be released within our lifetimes?
Discuss this, and anything else TES related below

 

[Cyberbob]

Never played Morrowind. Oblivion was my jam. I didn't stick with Skyrim as long.

Generally speaking, I don't have the patience/time to fully appreciate these types of games (e.g. dialog, story, quests). It was the open-world feel that I loved. Same thing with Fallout 3 and many other games I've played. Specifically, that 'exit the sewers/bunker' moment, when you emerge and realize you can go any direction.

Despite playing Oblivion the most, I can't say I know it all too well. I recall beating it, but I think by that point I was impatient and using cheats :} I'd be curious to hear from a strong fan of the series the order they'd rank the titles, and specifically what was lost over time from the older versions, if anything.

 

[Minusfourty]

Morrowind is probably one of my favorite games of all time, it's one of the few that I've finished more than once. Unfortunately, I've found with Elder Scrolls games I find it difficult to actually sit down and play through all the side quests, usually I just go through the big quest lines (guilds, main quest, etc) and stop after that. Does anyone here have advice on how to play the game in such a way that remedies that?

 

[Chao Tse-Tung]

Morrowind is probably one of my favorite games of all time, it's one of the few that I've finished more than once. Unfortunately, I've found with Elder Scrolls games I find it difficult to actually sit down and play through all the side quests, usually I just go through the big quest lines (guilds, main quest, etc) and stop after that. Does anyone here have advice on how to play the game in such a way that remedies that?

I definitely suffer from this too, to an extent. AltStart mods and trying to immerse myself in role-playing a certain character who would care about certain types of side-quests helps this somewhat.

Honestly though, I probably achieved the most total completions in my lore-buff phase when I really just wanted to discover every single little detail, unique item, and nuance of the world that the devs had hidden away, but even in Morrowind and (somewhat) Oblivion where they actually put that effort in, it's hard to re-capture that childlike sense of curiosity when you've already become jaded to the game and feel like you mostly understand the world already.

So yeah, I guess I don't have a great solution for that, but if you haven't been big on trying to "roleplay" TES games, I recommend giving it a try, I didn't until my god-knows-what playthrough of Skyrim, and it really revitalized the series for me to the point that I went back and replayed the rest in the same manner.

 

[Chao Tse-Tung]

Never played Morrowind. Oblivion was my jam. I didn't stick with Skyrim as long.

Generally speaking, I don't have the patience/time to fully appreciate these types of games (e.g. dialog, story, quests). It was the open-world feel that I loved. Same thing with Fallout 3 and many other games I've played. Specifically, that 'exit the sewers/bunker' moment, when you emerge and realize you can go any direction.

Despite playing Oblivion the most, I can't say I know it all too well. I recall beating it, but I think by that point I was impatient and using cheats :} I'd be curious to hear from a strong fan of the series the order they'd rank the titles, and specifically what was lost over time from the older versions, if anything.

Lmfao I think we all got impatient with Oblivion, after the 10th Gate once you step into that hellscape it's honestly more of a chore to not "~ tcl"

Leaving Daggerfall and Arena out of my rankings because they've been mostly retconned and also they're just not really comparable imo given tech limitations of those compared to the rest.

I'd say Oblivion > Morrowind > Skyrim, mostly for nostalgia purposes, but I feel like Oblivion pretty well strikes the balance between complexity and playability. That being said, some parts of Morrowind are beautiful, all the different weapon types and multiple ways to use some iirc, the face that every individual armor piece is, well, an individual armor piece, from separate left and right pauldrons to multiple layers of clothing, all very amazing to realize how "realistic" it is, in that regard. From Obv. to Skr., the complexity of magic was totally nerfed, from getting to make your own spells and combine effects to being stuck with boring pre-made single-effect ones, and the whole skill system being lost, there's something charming about leveling up to be able to jump across the map, or sprint mach 3 forever, or attack 6 times a second, or whatever, that just kinda hurts to lose.

That's my nostalgia-rant on TES, thanks for prompting it lmfao

 

[MorphedSnowman]

I actually was a Skirim baby. Well, I played a tiny bit of oblivion, but I dropped it very quickly since it didn't click with me. For me these games basically are comfy walking sims in strange worlds, filled with really interesting lore that nearly always falls flat in the actual video games. I played Morrowind too, and basically enjoyed it for the same reason as Skyrim: Going on an adventure in a different world.

I have mad respect for daggerfall though, which I played too, only because I am really fascinated by game design which focuses on simulation instead of explicitly designed content. I'm fully aware that the game falls flat in trying to do that to some deep extent and is ugly as sin, but I love seeing something like this

because it makes me feel like this is some real place. Not some toy landscape that an artist thought of and designed for me to enjoy, but some place that exists without a thought about me. Some strange land for me to explore. Which more or less always will be some trees and rats, but you get a real sense of wonder when you see something different once in a while and your mind rushes in with possibilites. I think it's one of the reason minecraft got so popular since it's the only game that kinda pushed that idea forward in recent years. Minecraft is more or less as old today, as daggerfall was when minecraft released

 

[PizzaW0lf]

Played a little bit of Morrowind. Love the ideas but wow the UI aged horribly for me at least.

Skyrim is the one I actually played and I FIGGEN LOVE IT!!! It's a very beautiful game that really feels like it has a lot of life to it. The atmosphere is amazing and I really like the different amount of character builds you can have and create. Really feels like a game that allows YOU to create YOUR own story few games do.

 

[manpaint]

The only games Elder Scrolls I have played is Daggerfall and Skyrim.

Daggerfall seemed interesting, but I quickly lost interested and had to edit a save just to finish the intro tutorial as the game is very unballanced.

Skyrim was a fine. It served me well as a walking simulator. The story was alright and what I expected but not really anything ground-breaking. What I find interesting about Skyrim from an artistic point of view is how it was essentially the apex of the "Twilight Princess vibe" for a long period of time, only to be dethrone by Elden Ring.

 

[Jade]

I LOVED Skyrim back in the day, I played it through like 5 times. I came back to it last year and man, it has not held up well at all. It's still a fun game, but it feels so much more... shallow, somehow. I think a big part of it is, first of all, that a lot of the story quests are boring. Like the mage college plotline in particular I remember thinking was boring even back in the day and now it was a slog. The speech system just sucks and a lot of characters don't act very believably. The other problem is that it really feels like a power fantasy sometimes with how effortlessly the dragonborn can do everything. Like in particular what stands out to me is that even one of the Daedra says that you rival his power, and there's a questline where you pick up the keening - the thing that the Nerevar needed a special glove to touch without dying instantly - and it just makes you feel slightly ill. I can get behind fun power fantasy, but this wasn't a power fantasy I really enjoyed.

 

[Sketch Relics]

Having played all of them at one point or another, the games are mechanically uninteresting, like the area of an ocean with the depth of an inch, except it's seven oceans and the waters already evaporated from how thin it was.
Functionally nothing changes as you progress and the whole game is essentially carried by it's lore, open world design, and writing. At this point other games have encroached/eclipsed these aspects which really takes away from the novelty that made them unique during the Xbox-Xbox360 era.

Overall I rate them-
Shivering Isles>Morrowind>Skyrim>Oblivion>Daggerfall+Arena

Heavily modded Oblivion beats them all to death though.

 

[PizzaW0lf]

I had a stupid Skyrim moment on PC.

I was exploring and went into some dungeons and Lydia was my companion. But for some reason the game glitched out and Lydia just kind of disappeared. I tried console commands and even that didn't work. So I really have no clue what happened.

I'm so sad bros, I gave her some awesome gear and now it's lost. And now I feel demotivated to play. I've been Todd Howard'ed RIP

 

[Sketch Relics]

I had a stupid Skyrim moment on PC.

I was exploring and went into some dungeons and Lydia was my companion. But for some reason the game glitched out and Lydia just kind of disappeared. I tried console commands and even that didn't work. So I really have no clue what happened.

I'm so sad bros, I gave her some awesome gear and now it's lost. And now I feel demotivated to play. I've been Todd Howard'ed RIP

Could be worse, I softlocked a character in Oblivion by going into an unmarked cave that had an exit to somewhere else, but since I didnt have the quest associated with the exit, it put me in an unique version of a town with no exits. This was on console and I was only using the autosave so the char was lost to Bethesda Magic

 

[manpaint]

I had a stupid Skyrim moment on PC.

I was exploring and went into some dungeons and Lydia was my companion. But for some reason the game glitched out and Lydia just kind of disappeared. I tried console commands and even that didn't work. So I really have no clue what happened.

I'm so sad bros, I gave her some awesome gear and now it's lost. And now I feel demotivated to play. I've been Todd Howard'ed RIP

I am pretty sure my Lydia just randomly died out of nowhere on my first playthrough lol

Skyrim is quite something sometimes.

 

[Chao Tse-Tung]

I had a stupid Skyrim moment on PC.

I was exploring and went into some dungeons and Lydia was my companion. But for some reason the game glitched out and Lydia just kind of disappeared. I tried console commands and even that didn't work. So I really have no clue what happened.

I'm so sad bros, I gave her some awesome gear and now it's lost. And now I feel demotivated to play. I've been Todd Howard'ed RIP

If you're on PC it might be worth it to go check out the weird corpse cross room thingy, she mighta glitched into there somehow, I've had weird things happen with companions before lol

 

[PizzaW0lf]

Who needs women when you have Skyrim


View: https://youtu.be/pWGEOpAwMQg?t=265

 

[Deleted member 3990]

We have to address a serious topic of discussion: What's inside the breasts of Argonian women? We have three main options as seen below.

 

[Cobalt]

We have to address a serious topic of discussion: What's inside the breasts of Argonian women? We have three main options as seen below.

View attachment 47773

Option 4: Gatorade

"I only drink Gatorade from the sport cap bottles. Its just like your drinking it from the titty of the Gator, just as God intended." ~ Some kid from my HS XC team.

 

[Deleted member 3990]

Option 4: Gatorade

"I only drink Gatorade from the sport cap bottles. Its just like your drinking it from the titty of the Gator, just as God intended." ~ Some kid from my HS XC team.

Holy shit. This is so awesome to think about. I love this so much.

 

[I-330]

We have to address a serious topic of discussion: What's inside the breasts of Argonian women? We have three main options as seen below.

They're reptiles so I'd assume it's just fat. As other races interacted with Argonian society, it's possible that male Argonains began to appreciate the booba which through years of selective breeding led to the development of Argonian tiddies. That or every race in skyrim is just a heavily mutated version of ancient human which was wiped out by a catastrophic world event. idk

 

[h00]

I've played every elderscrolls, and I rate them
Morrowind > Skyrim > Daggerfall > Arena > Oblivion
~1200 hours in Skyrim
~700 in Morrowind
~120 in Daggerfall
~10 in Arena
~70 in Oblivion

Morrowind is my favorite because of the fantastic Art direction, the varied biomes, and the true zero to hero Journey. Skyrim and ESPECIALLY Oblivion I hate because you start out of the gate "Omg your the fucking hero of the game". To me it ruins the sense of progression. I've rolled so many new characters on Morrowind because it is a proper RPG. Skyrim you can be good at everything really. Oh, and also TES3MP. I always wished Morrowind could be coop and now it can, shouts to Nerevarine Prophecies server.

Daggerfall, like.... FUCK the main quest. Fuck questing in general in Daggerfall. It is atrocious. You have to wait many in-game months just for quest updates to get delivered to you by courier and many of the times it'll bug out and then too many in-game days will pass and you'll never be able to continue the quest. The CompUSA patch introduced a lot of pretty cool PROPER scripted quests that are actually a lot of fun, but again, they bug out and multi-part ones will always be a bitch.
My favorite quests: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Runaway_Pet https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Former_Student_Part_I
But woah, if I hate the quests so much in this game why do I rate it as my third? Well, because dungeon crawling and roleplaying as mr random adventurer is actually a lot of fun. Ignore the side quests, ignore the ATROCIOUS main quest, and theres a lot of fun to be had dungeon crawling, pimping out your character, restocking for supplies, and doing it all again. Daggerfall has a great soundtrack, a GREAT ambience, and it is really spooky in the caves.

Arena is just a worse Daggerfall.

And Oblivion....... I hate the way the characters look. I hate the trudgery of the main quest. I hate how you start IMMEDIETLY as mr. big hero. I hate how candyland and boring the overworld is. I hate the combat and how comically fast you swing giant stell swords.

Skyrim? Everyone knows Skyrim. It's solid. It's fun. Plenty of mods. I return to Morrowind more often though.