“With Oblivion, we’re dealing with the capital province, and we wanted to get back to the more classic Arena and Daggerfall feel of a fantasy world that felt more refined and welcoming,”
“A place that you instantly understood. But in that, we sacrificed some of what made Morrowind special; the wonder of discovery.”
“With Skyrim, we’re trying to bring some of that back and walk the line between Morrowind and Oblivion. Where it’s at first familiar looking, but has its own unique culture and spin on it.”
The “wonder of discovery” you mention that Morrowind had and Oblivion didn’t to the same extent had nothing what-so-ever to do with culture or fantastical landscape features. I can’t argue that I didn’t think that Sadrith Mora was cool with its weird-looking structures built into trees, though, because it was. And I can’t argue that those things don’t help at all.
But the point is, what made Sadrith Mora (for example) so memorable was that I found it at all – it could have been a forest of giant Redwood trees or a particularly cool castle and I would have felt similarly rewarded. So the way to get back that sense of discovery and wonder isn’t by getting the environment artists to add some funky assets, you need to ditch fast-travel and replace it with something akin to Morrowind’s Silt Striders and boat travel.
Compare and contrast the difficulties associated with finding Azura’s Star in Morrowind and Oblivion. In the former, you had to explore around the coast (miles from anywhere) until you saw, looming out of the mist, an awesome statue high up on the cliffs. Something interesting is there, but you don’t know what yet…
In Oblivion, you get a quest and fast-travel near to where the arrow points.
By the time you’ve got your hands on Azura’s Star in Morrowind it really felt like a treasure since the odds of you stumbling upon it felt tiny even if in reality they weren’t.
And, yes, you had to find places in Oblivion before you could fast travel there. But every fort, every cave, every settlement you walk past is providing future points to insta-travel to. So as you get further through the game the need to actually explore decreases and the whole giant map feels like it’s progressively shrinking.
By limiting travel points in Morrowind, you made exploration constantly essential to discovery. You spent most of your time wandering around those main locations so that when you ventured off into the wilds, far from a convenient travel point, you really felt like an explorer. In Oblivion, you were always just a click on the map away from your bed in Anvil and that ruined everything.
(Having said all that, it doesn’t half look nice)
You got it. In a nutshell.
Personally, I still play daggerfall more than oblivion or morrowind, but then it is huge enough to have the replayability. Also, at the time of daggerfall and arena I believed that the dev team were producing for hardcore RPG gamers.
I very much hope that skyrim is a change of direction for bethesda, heading more in the direction of where they might have gone if they had stayed hardcore. But I understand they need to not dissapoint their new fanbase too.
Yep – looks fantastic.
Thats a pretty valid point, but your only being grumpy because of one reason?
If you don’t like fast travel (I don’t like it either) then just don’t use it at all. Do what I do, just walk/run/ride everywhere. 🙂
Cheers,
~Grey
To me the greatest thing about Morrowind was being a nodoby. Or just not being in the spotlight. It was more like participating in another world vs. Following your destiny or another media cliche. Don’t get me wrong Oblivion was a great game and I have spent hundreds of hours on it, but it just wasn’t Morrowind.Hopefully one day there will be a game that contains all of Tamriel. Or atleast a Morrowind where you get to go to Morrowind? And not just one city. That always bothered me .. 26 hours No more trolling lol