The atmosphere in Morrowind was amazing. The terrain was varied and the island of Vvardenfell had different biomes which made exploring new areas so enjoyable. Tribunal was kind of a sewer crawl and Bloodmoon added a whole new island, Solstheim, which is also featured in the latest Skyrim expansion. Solstheim was basically Skyrim in miniature form, tundra, taiga, glaciers, snow everywhere. Morrowind had a magical fantasy feeling, Skyrim and Oblivion had bland medieval fantasy scenery and the overall theme was so generic compared to Morrowind. I was so disappointed when Oblivion launched and Cyrodiil which was described in previous games as a vast jungle and the Imperial City as a Venice-like city with flowing water and gondoliers like in Vivec. Instead we got an incredibly boring city and the same bit of forest copy-pasted all over the map.
The game turned into Orcs & Elves: Medieval RPG and on top of that it was casualised to hell and back. The quest marker was almost necessary since the quest descriptions didn't provide enough information to complete the quest without blindly following the quest markers. Fast travel was introduced in place of taxi services, teleporting and other means of travel that was present in Morrowind. The horrible level scaling made exploration boring since the enemies and loot was going to be the same level as you meaning it got difficult later on in the game if you didn't level properly. The game was easiest at level 1 (except you couldn't complete some Daedric quests and whatnot) and the main quest was such a let-down. The focus was clearly on consoles, the fonts were massive, the UI was horrible, removed skills, retarded mechanics of skills (namely Sneak, the Sneak affected the damage of sneak attack criticals, a person with sneak 1 and sneak 100 were just as good at sneaking but dealt different amounts of sneak crit damage). Radiant AI was hailed as the new coming of Christ, NPCs were supposed to have their own agendas, their own schedules every day but instead they just walked around in pre-set areas and went to sleep each night.
Skyrim made everything even worse by removing attributes, removing even more skills and making the UI even worse than Oblivion. Skyrim was incredibly boring and overall a really bland experience. How I managed to suffer 14 hours of it is beyond me, Oblivion amused me a lot more once you downloaded a few mods to fix the level scaling. Dungeons were extremely linear with a shortcut to the entrance once you "finished" them. Quests always involved draugr and/or bandits with the occasional dragon. The series has become less of an RPG and more of an action game. I'd expect an action game to have decent combat but Skyrim fails at that. Clicking on mouse1 over and over again with the occasional power attack is boring, having just a few spells in each school of magic with almost identical effects with different damage is extremely boring. Heavy armor was pretty useless as you could hit the armor cap with light armor easily, two handed was useless, Sneak was overpowered, dual cast stunning spells were overpowered, conjuration was overpowered and the whole game was a walk in the park even on the highest difficulty.
TL;DR Skyrim sucks, Oblivion is bad
EDIT: Thought I'd add this quote from Michael Kirkbride who worked on the writing of Morrowind, but quit during the development.
Quote (Michael Kirkbride)
I can safely say that Vivec is the most realized character in videogame fiction. Period.
If a hermaphroditic, bug-armored, bipolar god-king existing in multiple universes who has his very own bible with *actual* magic strewn throughout it is your idea of a cliche, then I really would like to live in your world. It sounds fun and new.
But, wait, then I'd have to inexplicably make snarky and insulting comments in a forum where creators often tread. And that would quickly make me boorish and prone to cliched Angry Youngster Angst. That's the interwebs for you and good luck with it.
I can also say that Morrowind is the finest novel written in videogame fiction. A 40 hour narrative whose main character is only ever referenced is almost Nabokovian in aspiration, and prophecies whose truth is determined only by the player is akin to Borges if he only had been born with a USB port in the back of his beloved neck.
There is a fine line between celebrated tradition tuned to masterstrokes by its crafters and cliche'd demons underneath volcanos. Morrowind is the former, Selbeth, and nowhere near the latter. Except, again, when wrapped 'round electric peanuts tossed from the back row with bright'n'shiny underscores for effect.
This post was edited by Hillomunkki on Dec 21 2012 07:41am