The best (and worst) sequels

[alpav]

Yeah. Nuf said.

 

[civvver]

Skyrim didn't really improve that much on Oblivion. It did improve, and is certainly a better game, but its not like improving upon Oblivion is that hard either. Its biggest improvements were visual and aesthetic design though, it did a pretty decent job of that. Especially the faces!

I think skyrim is a gigantic improvement to oblivion. I just cannot get into oblivion at all, and I don't see why I should have to load a bunch of mods just to make the game playable (the community always praises it for the mod capabilities). To me the major fixes:

Leveling system. Oblivion's made no sense, zero. Skyrim's still lets you develop your character your way while actually having progression that makes sense. It's not perfect at all due to how getting perks work, but way better.

Visuals. Oblivion got lots of praise but imo the models sucked.

3rd person interaction. It was impossible to play in 3rd person in oblivion since you could never see the pointer or what you were grabbing.

Lock picking. Made zero sense in oblivion. Ridiculously hard. So tired of listening for those stupid clicks.

 

[Antilogic]

I enjoyed Oblivion a little more than the average person did, I think. More than Morrowind.

 

[civvver]

Oh I think the average person did love it, at least all the gamers I talk to did. I always felt like an outcast for hating it.

 

[GrayingGamer]

I liked Morrowind quite a bit, played it enough to finish it at least.

Oblivion didn't capture me at all. I tried several times, but always ran out of steam pretty fast. The whole experience left such a meh taste in my mouth, I still haven't bought Skyrim. I plan to pick up a steam-deal GOTY edition when it comes around.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Morrowind is still amazing after all these years. When I get a hankerin' to play a TES game these days, it's usually Morrowind that I get a hankerin' for. Occasionally Skyrim lures me back with it's improved graphics and perk system but I can never get farther than level 20 or so before I get bored and go back to Morrowind.

 

[da dick]

worst sequel: ultima mario viii

best sequel: ultima underworld ii

 

[Polycrates]

Morrowind, Skyrim and Fallout 3 are all games where you could get rid of all the npcs, all the quests, even all the monsters, and I would still spend hours and hours and hours with them because their huge worlds are so fantastic and full of detail, to just wander around and take in. So much of the joy in them was just setting off in a random direction and seeing what you could find, and you'd always find some memorable, awe-inspiring locations. Plus, apart from the lack of large-scale agriculture (which is my constant pet peeve in these games), their worlds felt more or less real, and full of history. You don't really even need npcs to give you exposition because the places so often tell their own stories. What it really comes down to is that someone was obviously really excited to make these places, and it totally shows.

Oblivion, by contrast, is the most half-arsed world in recent memory - featureless copy-pasted forests stuck onto procedurally-generated terrain, with some copy-pasted forts and copy-pasted ruins and a few of the blandest towns ever devised. You could set out in any direction and be assured of finding exactly the same thing, except maybe the trees would be a slightly different colour. None of the places felt the slightest bit real, there was no sense of history to any of the land, and none of it made any cohesive sense as a world. Bravil and the blades temple were the only vaguely interesting places. It's not that the places themselves are badly-built as such, it's just that the whole thing just reeks of disinterest; like nobody even cared about the world except as somewhere to stick monsters, and everyone involved was just going through the motions. That's why Oblivion was such a massive disappointment to me, the terrible levelling/loot systems were just icing on the cake.
Shivering Isles was a massive step-up though.

 

[Maniacal]

procedurally-generated terrain, with some copy-pasted forts and copy-pasted ruins and a few of the blandest towns ever devised

You can say the exact same about Skyrim. The cities are hardly cities, although they did make them much more unique (at least some of them) and I forget then name but the fortress one in the north-west felt really well done.

None of the places felt the slightest bit real, there was no sense of history to any of the land, and none of it made any cohesive sense as a world.

Eh... it all fit together pretty well, it just didn't feel like a fantasy world, but it was a decent medieval Europe world (which wasn't terrible exciting).

 

[Polycrates]

You can say the exact same about Skyrim. The cities are hardly cities, although they did make them much more unique (at least some of them) and I forget then name but the fortress one in the north-west felt really well done.

Have to strongly disagree - the landscape in Skyrim was actually handcrafted (quite well, apparently), and all the regions are very distinct. There's some seriously majestic vistas - the huge mountain of course, the vast open tundra plain, the amazing lunar landscape of the hot pools, the creepy swamp toward the north, the craggy verticality of the reach, and of course the icy wasteland of the far north. And they're all chock full of interesting little locations. Oblivion (which was literally procedurally-generated, as I understand) just had forest, slightly more yellow forest, slightly more jungly forest, slightly more snowy forest. There was just nothing interesting to see, ever. And in Skyrim, the various old ruins etc actually fit into the landscape, rather than just being cloned and plopped down equidistantly. They make some sort of sense in their location. On top of that, one thing I think Skyrim deserves considerable praise for is that they put a hell of a lot of work into making all the dungeon interiors somehow a bit unique - they all tell a story or have something different or interesting. Every one is an interesting find, whereas Oblivion's are pretty much just dull clones (quite literally in many, many cases, if you fire up the editor). Apart from loot/xp/quest McGuffins, there's really no reason to visit any of them for their own sake after you've seen two or three. And the less said about the oblivion gates, the better.

Granted the cities are tiny in Skyrim, but that was always the case with the majority of RPGs (Daggerfall being the very obvious exception). There's always a balance between "realism", hardware capabilities, where to spend development time, and the gameplay aspect of whether it's actually fun to be constantly running through five hundred samey streets every time you go to town - and you can certainly argue that you think they got the balance wrong in terms of city size. But I don't care so much about that, I care that what there is of the "cities" got so much more thought and attention than the flat samey-ness of Oblivion's towns. I personally really like Skyrim's cities/towns.

Essentially, Skyrim was a constant stream of "wow" moments for me; whenever I'd go somewhere new I'd be impressed by what I saw. When I first explored Oblivion, I just had a constant sinking feeling of "is this it?". Every time I thought there might be something exciting just over that hill, it was just the same disappointing thing I'd seen over the previous hill.

Eh... it all fit together pretty well, it just didn't feel like a fantasy world, but it was a decent medieval Europe world (which wasn't terrible exciting).

To me it felt like the whole thing could have sprung up fully-formed the day before. There's six (i think?) disconnected cities and pretty much nothing else in what's supposed to be the epicentre of civilisation. There's no history to the land, it looks like completely untouched terrain except there's these inexplicable ruins plonked down here and there. Morrowind and Skyrim are harsh, hostile border provinces that have also been torn apart by strife since well before your character arrived, so it makes some sort of sense that civilisation has retreated within its walls. And they feel so, so old. Cyrodiil feels to me like a brand-new border province, with a few colony towns that haven't been there more than a generation, and nobody has had time to tame the land yet.

 

[Maniacal]

There's some seriously majestic vistas [in skyrim]

Yes and? I didn't say there weren't.

Oblivion (which was literally procedurally-generated, as I understand) just had forest, slightly more yellow forest, slightly more jungly forest, slightly more snowy forest. There was just nothing interesting to see, ever.

Yes and? I didn't say it wasn't a little boring.

And in Skyrim, the various old ruins etc actually fit into the landscape, rather than just being cloned and plopped down equidistantly. They make some sort of sense in their location.

On the outside yes, but on the inside most of them really weren't any better than the Ayleid ruins and caves in Oblivion. Sure they had some minor puzzle elements which mostly fit in, but they weren't terribly exciting after the first few encounters. They mostly become rather forgettable aside from the fewer more unique ones.

they all tell a story or have something different or interesting. Every one is an interesting find

Most of them don't tell any kind of story besides "ancient undead nords, again!". The ones that do have a decent story are great though, but they are in the minority.

Apart from loot/xp/quest McGuffins, there's really no reason to visit any of them for their own sake after you've seen two or three.

There's no reason to revisit even most of the story dungeons in Skyrim either...

Cyrodiil feels to me like a brand-new border province, with a few colony towns that haven't been there more than a generation, and nobody has had time to tame the land yet.

Yeah Oblivion suffered a lot because they decided to retcon it from a largely jungle province to a bland medieval Europe wannabe. There is barely any farmland and the Imperial City is great until you leave the gate and realize that wasn't just the downtown/core of the city and was the entire massive capital!?!?!?