Skyrim is better than Morrowind

The fire rises!

And now comes the point where we tip this all on it's head. Shoe on the otherfoot, claiming the new boy is bigger than the old man. Yes, it's quite the easy and popular stance to take that 'old game good/ new game bad' and with Bethesda games it's all but a given that this is the way the sentiment trends. I wonder if, for the sake of the argument, someone could neatly turn that on it's head and start from the otherside of the equation; decideing that the newest Bethesda game, with it's years of game design refinement, built up team experience and vastly ballooned resources, is actually overall the superior project and the better all-around game? Whether from the stance of observing the overall package, we can actually conclude that the Xbox original launch title is neatly put to rest by Bethesda's innovations and reiterations? Now you can see where I'm going with all this, right?

On an individual level, as in dealing with actual characters, the people who inhabit Skyrim are, as a whole, more interesting than the various Morrowind residents. That is likely because Morrowind is stuffed with far more people than the developers over at Bethesda could even hope create actual breathing characters and backstories for, whereas for Skyrim, and Oblivion, Bethesda really toned down on the quantity so they could focus on quality. Skyrim's residents are given personalities and unique topics of discussion and often times complex webs of acquaintes only hinted at with clever environmental storytelling techniques and hidden notes pointing this way and that. The majority of Morrowind's NPCs are just puppets for which general quest questions can be funnelled through. This is why the shrinking down of the landmass has been a boon for the immersion of the Elder Scrolls franchise.

Keeping on the topic of 'quality of quantity', I want to talk about quests for a brief while. Morrowind's larger questlines are long and drawn out big events, but the individual quests that make up those chains can, oftentimes, just be mind numbingly boring or uncreative. The mage's guild will have you picking flowers, the fighters guild will have you rat killing; these are all the sorts of quests no more deep and interesting than what an AI could generate. Which is probably why in Skyrim, an AI does generate these kind of miscellaneous 'no substance' quests. Whereas a lot of the less 'essential' parts of Morrowind are shoved with quests that just fill space, Skyrim's handwritten quests all attempt to be more interesting, multi-faceted and memorable. Not all of them manage this, some are collect-athons, but in general the majority of quests has more overall hits than Morrowind's quest success rate.

Of course, the lowest hanging fruit that I'm absolutely going to hit for is Morrowind's combat compared to Skyrim. Now Skyrim does not have the great and most in depth combat in the world and Bethesda absolutely need to overall the action elements of how their games played, and have needed to since Oblivion; but Morrowind was the result of an unholy union that frustrated everybody. Morrowind's combat is built by an idea that sounds conceptually in-depth and detailed on paper, utilising RPG stats and fatigue bars to calculate chance-to-hit like a full action DnD style of game. Whereas in practise it just turns out to be a frustrating and unfulfilling experience of swinging sticks that phase through enemies without doing damage. Level up your weapon enough to hit consistently, and then you'll quickly start to notice that enemies go down like it's nothing, because the sweet-spot between weapons connecting and doing decent, but not overwhelming, damage is so small that you'll have swept right past it by the time you're hitting consistently. Magic is slightly better and more interesting, and bows are always fun no matter the game; but Morrowind's combat never slips into the state of feeling good. It just moves from frustrating and uncooperative to acceptable but boring.

Perhaps it's a little unfair to put it up as a point, but facts cannot be denied, Skyrim has a better sense of set piece presentation. Shackled by antiquated soft- and hardware, even in it's largest narrative climaxes, Morrowind can't quite sell the grandeur of fighting a living god underneath a dormant volcano next to a giant Dwemer mech-suit so well. Skyrim, on the otherhand, smothers itself in the glitzy presentation of the swirling heavens of Sovengarde or the explosive scale of the battle for Whiterun. In it's biggest moments, Skyrim plays up the spectacle to the extent of it's engine's capabilities and matches the flash of an action game of it's time, albeit in the few rare moments that it can actually afford to do so. The set piece presentation isn't exactly stellar for any Elder Scrolls game, but by comparison there really is no competition between what Skyrim had done and Morrowind's very obvious limits. (Don't even get me started on Hircine's Hunt at the end of Bloodmoon; what a dog's dinner of a sequence")

Immersion is another sticking point for which I have to award Skyrim's efforts. Through the style of creating a world to the level of fidelity that The Elder Scrolls V has, it's actually quite easy to get lost up in the flow of living in the world of Skyrim. Cosying up on some warm barstool in a wayward inn on a chilly night, sipping on mead and embracing the heady boozy atmosphere, or listening to the wind howling from the valley drops underneath the Shrine of Azura; there's a sense of atmosphere that really places the player in Skyrim. Not that Morrowind is devoid of that same atmosphere, per se. In fact, I've always said the Bethesda are typically the kings of such immersion in their RPG games, but again this is a mastery of technology question; the amount of ways the player can interact with the world or have it interact with them, in sound and lighting, marks Skyrim as the superior.

And then there's Skyrim's DLC. Morrowind sort of betrays it's own design philosophy with the layout of 'Tribunal', carving out a restrictive section of map full of maze-like sewer tunnels and large empty courtyards instead of the wide open exploration which marked the strength of Vvardenfell. Dawngaurd builds it's narrative into the existing land of Skyrim and expands upon it with new locations and realms that connect with the main game, fitting more neatly into the package of Skyrim's landmass in a way that is totally seamless. Dragonborn is also a culmination of everything we've discussed so far, superior quest design, spectacular set pieces and improved technologies for creating immersion. (Just a shame about those 'waves'.) Making the DLC offerings of Skyrim, ignoring Hearthfire, a more coherent and enriching play experience than what Morrowind presented itself.

Which brings me around to the bitter end of my wanton character assassination of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind; For which in one instance, I quite literally pulled out a knife I'd already used on the back of Skyrim before turning it back on Morrowind. Presenting, I hope, just a few of the reasons for both sides of the potential coin when it comes to this endless debate that has been held for the past ten years regarding these games. Personally, I don't think that either game is better than the other because they are both just so very different. Despite occupying the same franchise and genre, Skyrim and Morrowind are so distinct in how they're constructed that I never find myself playing one whilst wistfully thinking of the other, as I would feel in other comparative titles. Thus for the sake of the argument I wouldn't land on either side too greatly, I think they're both just steller examples of RPG greatness. And then there's Oblivion. Hmm... what shall I do with little 'ol Oblivion?