Quote Originally Posted by The Jack View Post
TES III Morrowind was super detailed and had plenty of cool ideas that didn't get carried over. It was very popular but even though the gaming market had hugely increased since the days of II, it was nowhere near the behemoth of today.

TES IV Oblivion lost much of the detail and many of the ideas. It was very popular and gaming in general was entering mainstream at this point.

TES V Skyrim shat on the games that came before it and became much more 'gamey' and pulpy at the expense of world building and good story. It was incredibly popular, but gaming in general was incredibly popular at this point.
Focusing on these three, because they're the three I've played.

Morrowind is my favourite, because it has the most alien landscape, the least handholding (it took playing through the tutorial three times for me to understand how to begin the main quest), no annoying lockpicking minigame, and things like levitation are just fun. It also feels like it handles the lore better, in Oblivion and Skyrim I felt thrown into stuff I only understood because I wikied it, while in Morrowind I learnt a bit more gradually. It is optimised for PC play, and on it is highly enjoyable, but I can't imagine what the console version must have been like. This is the one I come back to, after a bit of modding to make the bodies smoother.

Oblivion suffered from a much more open map (note that despite being bigger it could feel a lot smaller due to the lack of detours), having a skill-based lockpicking system over a Skill based one, and the fact that I was being thrown into Oblivion without much warning. Oh sure, now I know that it wasn't that bad, but I was still confused as to why the game thought some level 3 smuck with basic equipment could save people from the hordes of hell (did I mention how I'm not that fond of level scaling?). Oh, and the landscape was much less interesting, if I wanted to explore the forest I'd go back home! Isn't it supposed to be a jungle? On the plus side I played it on console and it was somewhat enjoyable, although I still think I'd have preferred the PC version (if only for mods).

Let us now take a moment to mourn the loss of levitation, teleportation, and other spells that helped you to get around the map. I loved them in Morrowind, and hated how Oblivion had removed them. It meant that I would invest in some skills just to have more tools to move around the map.

Skyrim I have a love/hate relationship with. I hate the lack of stats beyond Health/Stamina/Magicka (I think I ended up pumping everything into Health with one character and not seeing a major issue), and didn't really feel like the Perks added that much to the game (also I'd have preferred if I'd have had to seek out trainers to get them). I love that the world feels more explorable and that I have to detour more, and how it isn't a forest. Oh, and I'm also not fond of the dragons, the amount of focus the dragons have had from people I know, and the sheer ammount of annoyance fighting a dragon can be. I feel like while this game is the most popular of the series, it's for the wrong reasons (the spectacle and ability to be uber powerful rather than the lore and world). Although as a Morrowind fan I might just be implanting lengths of wood in my rear end.