I would say they can compare, however they're simply different games.
I'm a huge fan of both The Elder Scrolls and The Witcher. Both have great worlds, lore, stories (Oblivion Main story was awful to play, but interesting in the sense of the games history), etc.
The biggest difference, in my opinion, is that The Witcher is a story driven game. You play as a set character, with a set story to go through. Morrowind and Oblivion and hopefully Skyrim, focused more on the gameplay with exploration.
And if you want to compare them, you do have to figure in Mods. Now I know, and I agree, a game should stand on its own. However, Bethesdas Mod-policy is what has made Morrowind and Oblivion so popular on PC and they have therefore sold more. It's an important aspect of the franchise that simply has to be considered.
Also, I find, why bother to find out which one is better than the other. Games are very subjective. For example, I love Warcraft 3 and Dawn of War. Those are my Stragey games. My best friend is more of an Total War and Tropico person. I just don't get a lot of fun out of those, so I don't bother.
What I'm saying is that because TW2 and Skyrim are not released anywhere near eachother, they don't have to fight for the consumers money. Anybody that wants both, can easily get them, like I will.
Anybody that doesn't like either of those, simply doesn't have to buy them.
I have spoken.
I'm a huge fan of both The Elder Scrolls and The Witcher. Both have great worlds, lore, stories (Oblivion Main story was awful to play, but interesting in the sense of the games history), etc.
The biggest difference, in my opinion, is that The Witcher is a story driven game. You play as a set character, with a set story to go through. Morrowind and Oblivion and hopefully Skyrim, focused more on the gameplay with exploration.
And if you want to compare them, you do have to figure in Mods. Now I know, and I agree, a game should stand on its own. However, Bethesdas Mod-policy is what has made Morrowind and Oblivion so popular on PC and they have therefore sold more. It's an important aspect of the franchise that simply has to be considered.
Also, I find, why bother to find out which one is better than the other. Games are very subjective. For example, I love Warcraft 3 and Dawn of War. Those are my Stragey games. My best friend is more of an Total War and Tropico person. I just don't get a lot of fun out of those, so I don't bother.
What I'm saying is that because TW2 and Skyrim are not released anywhere near eachother, they don't have to fight for the consumers money. Anybody that wants both, can easily get them, like I will.
Anybody that doesn't like either of those, simply doesn't have to buy them.I have spoken.
I don't really see the point of making this into a poll (on the official forum for one of the choices, nonetheless), for obvious reasons other posters have already brought up; but I guess it works as a place to discuss the upcoming Bethesda game, and what we Witcher fans feel about their previous work.
I'm torn when it comes to Bethesda's so-called 'role-playing games.' When it comes to story or character, they have been consistently horrible. Neither Morrowind, Oblivion, or Fallout 3 - all of which I have played - have ever enticed me with a well-written story, or well-designed characters. The main story in each game has always been laughably uninteresting, and only a couple of side-quests have displayed some sort of quality; still, nothing I ever bring up when talking about good game design with fellow gamers. Writing has never been Bethesda's speciality, and there's a reason why much of it is being made fun of today.
The games win points in atmosphere, however, even though that as well becomes really repetitive after a while (DelightfulMcCoy mentioned the repeated environments), but for a while, I do enjoy the exploration and finding a new cave or dungeon of sorts to investigate - even if all the caves and dungeons have the same textures repeated endlessly. One might say that part of these games' allure, is the open world, free for you to discover at your leisure; and yes, this is enough for most. It is enticing to wander around, and to just be in the world, see what you stumble across. Sooner or later, though, the illusion breaks, as you realise it's a big, open world, but a big. open world that repeats itself and soon becomes very predictable in what you may encounter.
What keeps these games alive is undoubtedly the modding community. Modders make use of the SDK Bethesda always ship with their games, and fix the problems they couldn't be bothered fixing themselves, and start adding more interesting items, characters, and stories to the game. Some even make complete overhauls, completely altering every aspect of the game and write their own stories, that far surpasses anything Bethesda's overpaid writing team has ever come up with. I've never tried any of these, since by the time these overhauls are completed, I have long since placed my game in the recycle bin, and am busy something else, more worthy of my time.
I sincerely doubt that Skyrim will be any different. The graphics are improved, and the new setting has snow instead of the forests and fields of Oblivion, or the ash-lands of Morrowind. They are still trying to push the fact that the game has a 'really awesome' story or what not, but I don't think they're fooling anyone. None will pay attention to it, because by now everyone knows their games are not about story. In any case, there will be more wandering around vast fields (only snow-covered this time) and finding caves and dungeons. The characters will be bland and utterly unimportant, as will the afore-mentioned story. Once again, the game will be kept alive by the modding community that works for free, and does a better job than Bethesda's employees. Everyone will have fun in their little sandbox for years to come, and we'll see more massive overhauls that completely change the entire game world into something better.
The game will continue to be hyped to the moon and back from now until release, and many months afterwards, and mainstream media will dish out biased previews, and paid-for reviews, in order for the game to be even more hyped. In reality, it will be yet another Bethesda game that most of the time is mediocre, pretty good some of the time, and occasionally horrible the rest of the time. Yet no-one will know until a year or two later, when gaming media finally starts acknowledging its flaws, and the bribes are no longer coming in. All the while the modding community will have a field day, too busy listening to anything anyone else has to say, because they're busy with their sandbox, modding the game to their liking, or just playing around with various toys, having a ton of fun in the process. I'm happy for these people. Heck, I am one of these people, and who's to say that we don't get our money's worth, when months or years of modding is being made available to us?
The only reason I'm bitter, really, is that Bethesda is benefiting and keeps receiving praise for something they haven't really been involved in creating. That company has so little talent employed, and rely on skewed and twisted half-truths they hammer down our throats during PR- and marketing opportunities, in order to make us believe that what they're creating is something out of this world; while in reality, they're just doing the bare minimum in terms of designing a story campaign, while their true work is designing a tabula rasa of sorts, with the basic programming and graphics already made, and then supply us with the tools we need to make something good out of it, ourselves. Kind of like Bioware's Neverwinter Nights, who is receiving glowing reviews, to this day, because of the user-made modules. Anyone who has played any kind of classic RPG knows how horrible the writing for the game's official campaign is.
I'm torn when it comes to Bethesda's so-called 'role-playing games.' When it comes to story or character, they have been consistently horrible. Neither Morrowind, Oblivion, or Fallout 3 - all of which I have played - have ever enticed me with a well-written story, or well-designed characters. The main story in each game has always been laughably uninteresting, and only a couple of side-quests have displayed some sort of quality; still, nothing I ever bring up when talking about good game design with fellow gamers. Writing has never been Bethesda's speciality, and there's a reason why much of it is being made fun of today.
The games win points in atmosphere, however, even though that as well becomes really repetitive after a while (DelightfulMcCoy mentioned the repeated environments), but for a while, I do enjoy the exploration and finding a new cave or dungeon of sorts to investigate - even if all the caves and dungeons have the same textures repeated endlessly. One might say that part of these games' allure, is the open world, free for you to discover at your leisure; and yes, this is enough for most. It is enticing to wander around, and to just be in the world, see what you stumble across. Sooner or later, though, the illusion breaks, as you realise it's a big, open world, but a big. open world that repeats itself and soon becomes very predictable in what you may encounter.
What keeps these games alive is undoubtedly the modding community. Modders make use of the SDK Bethesda always ship with their games, and fix the problems they couldn't be bothered fixing themselves, and start adding more interesting items, characters, and stories to the game. Some even make complete overhauls, completely altering every aspect of the game and write their own stories, that far surpasses anything Bethesda's overpaid writing team has ever come up with. I've never tried any of these, since by the time these overhauls are completed, I have long since placed my game in the recycle bin, and am busy something else, more worthy of my time.
I sincerely doubt that Skyrim will be any different. The graphics are improved, and the new setting has snow instead of the forests and fields of Oblivion, or the ash-lands of Morrowind. They are still trying to push the fact that the game has a 'really awesome' story or what not, but I don't think they're fooling anyone. None will pay attention to it, because by now everyone knows their games are not about story. In any case, there will be more wandering around vast fields (only snow-covered this time) and finding caves and dungeons. The characters will be bland and utterly unimportant, as will the afore-mentioned story. Once again, the game will be kept alive by the modding community that works for free, and does a better job than Bethesda's employees. Everyone will have fun in their little sandbox for years to come, and we'll see more massive overhauls that completely change the entire game world into something better.
The game will continue to be hyped to the moon and back from now until release, and many months afterwards, and mainstream media will dish out biased previews, and paid-for reviews, in order for the game to be even more hyped. In reality, it will be yet another Bethesda game that most of the time is mediocre, pretty good some of the time, and occasionally horrible the rest of the time. Yet no-one will know until a year or two later, when gaming media finally starts acknowledging its flaws, and the bribes are no longer coming in. All the while the modding community will have a field day, too busy listening to anything anyone else has to say, because they're busy with their sandbox, modding the game to their liking, or just playing around with various toys, having a ton of fun in the process. I'm happy for these people. Heck, I am one of these people, and who's to say that we don't get our money's worth, when months or years of modding is being made available to us?
The only reason I'm bitter, really, is that Bethesda is benefiting and keeps receiving praise for something they haven't really been involved in creating. That company has so little talent employed, and rely on skewed and twisted half-truths they hammer down our throats during PR- and marketing opportunities, in order to make us believe that what they're creating is something out of this world; while in reality, they're just doing the bare minimum in terms of designing a story campaign, while their true work is designing a tabula rasa of sorts, with the basic programming and graphics already made, and then supply us with the tools we need to make something good out of it, ourselves. Kind of like Bioware's Neverwinter Nights, who is receiving glowing reviews, to this day, because of the user-made modules. Anyone who has played any kind of classic RPG knows how horrible the writing for the game's official campaign is.
So... you're basically saying: "buy it in a year from now and enjoy the modding", right?
Of course you're totally right.
Only... you should heed your own advice this time around, so you're not already moved on by the time the fun begins.
I think I've lived a thousand hours in Cyrodiil, but 970 of them were due to mods and custom adventures.
Of course you're totally right.
Only... you should heed your own advice this time around, so you're not already moved on by the time the fun begins.
I think I've lived a thousand hours in Cyrodiil, but 970 of them were due to mods and custom adventures.
Hehe, yeah... I won't be getting this game until after it's been made good and interesting. You told me before that I've missed out on some good Oblivion, simply because I had long since moved on once it had been overhauled. This time it will be different. : PDelightfulMcCoy said:So... you're basically saying: "buy it in a year from now and enjoy the modding", right?
Of course you're totally right.
Only... you should heed your own advice this time around, so you're not already moved on by the time the fun begins.
I think I've lived a thousand hours in Cyrodiil, but 970 of them were due to mods and custom adventures.
I know the poll is skewed due to being on this forum and Skyrim not even being out yet, but I voted for TW2 anyway
With Oblivion I spent around 130 hours in the game according to my save, but I felt like most of that time was just filler. I did really enjoy some of the quests (mainly the Dark Brotherhood and the Shivering Isles quest lines). However I don't think I'll ever replay the game because the thought of sifting through all the boring parts fills me with dread. There wasn't a high enough percentage of good parts to make it worthwhile for me to play through the whole game again.
Plus the Oblivion gates and dungeons were all extremely similar to each other, so after I did a few of each and realized they were all the same I stopped going into them unless it was required by a quest. I hate repetition for no apparent reason, which was what the gates and dungeons felt like to me. It also seemed like there was too much distance between points of interest. I'm not really a fan of running across empty terrain for a long time just to get to somewhere new (I used the fast travel wherever possible, although it was annoying when it told me I couldn't fast travel due to enemies but the enemy was nowhere to be found XD).
Although I have to say maybe my aversion to running around was due to how it looked. Red Dead Redemption seemed a lot more beautiful and natural-looking to me, and I did often ride the horse from one place to the next just because I was enjoying the scenery. More than once I was about to fast-travel in RDR but the beautiful sunset caught my eye so I rode instead Also, the horse controls in RDR were very good, the best I've experienced in a game so far, whereas in Oblivion I did not enjoy traveling by horse at all.
So I don't think I have a problem with open-world in general because I did like it in RDR. I just don't care for the way it's done in Oblivion or Fallout 3 for that matter. I expect Skyrim will be the same way and I'll dislike the same aspects of it. I also have mixed feelings about their new story engine. I can't decide yet whether it will make the story better or worse, so I'm not really too excited for Skyrim overall. I'll get it eventually after it's been patched quite a few times, and hopefully I'll enjoy parts of it, but my expectations are pretty low right now.
The third person mode in Oblivion and Fallout 3 made me nauseous XD I don't even know how to describe it but the way the camera moves really got me and I had to play in first person mode, which actually wasn't all that bad. To me it felt like the games were designed around the first-person view and then the third-person was tacked on later and not really refined properly. They're claiming Skyrim will have a better third-person mode though so maybe that will work out better.
With Oblivion I spent around 130 hours in the game according to my save, but I felt like most of that time was just filler. I did really enjoy some of the quests (mainly the Dark Brotherhood and the Shivering Isles quest lines). However I don't think I'll ever replay the game because the thought of sifting through all the boring parts fills me with dread. There wasn't a high enough percentage of good parts to make it worthwhile for me to play through the whole game again.
Plus the Oblivion gates and dungeons were all extremely similar to each other, so after I did a few of each and realized they were all the same I stopped going into them unless it was required by a quest. I hate repetition for no apparent reason, which was what the gates and dungeons felt like to me. It also seemed like there was too much distance between points of interest. I'm not really a fan of running across empty terrain for a long time just to get to somewhere new (I used the fast travel wherever possible, although it was annoying when it told me I couldn't fast travel due to enemies but the enemy was nowhere to be found XD).
Although I have to say maybe my aversion to running around was due to how it looked. Red Dead Redemption seemed a lot more beautiful and natural-looking to me, and I did often ride the horse from one place to the next just because I was enjoying the scenery. More than once I was about to fast-travel in RDR but the beautiful sunset caught my eye so I rode instead Also, the horse controls in RDR were very good, the best I've experienced in a game so far, whereas in Oblivion I did not enjoy traveling by horse at all.
So I don't think I have a problem with open-world in general because I did like it in RDR. I just don't care for the way it's done in Oblivion or Fallout 3 for that matter. I expect Skyrim will be the same way and I'll dislike the same aspects of it. I also have mixed feelings about their new story engine. I can't decide yet whether it will make the story better or worse, so I'm not really too excited for Skyrim overall. I'll get it eventually after it's been patched quite a few times, and hopefully I'll enjoy parts of it, but my expectations are pretty low right now.
DelightfulMcCoy said:
The third person mode in Oblivion and Fallout 3 made me nauseous XD I don't even know how to describe it but the way the camera moves really got me and I had to play in first person mode, which actually wasn't all that bad. To me it felt like the games were designed around the first-person view and then the third-person was tacked on later and not really refined properly. They're claiming Skyrim will have a better third-person mode though so maybe that will work out better.
You know, you can completely forego all of those boring, repetetive and similar parts and just play one of the great adventures like "The Lost Spires" or "Verona Bloodlines", combined with all of the Dragon Caption mods (modding group) or whatever I can't recall right now. They are mainquests all of their own, but with better pacing, more interesting locations, items and stories. 1000 hours was actually underestimated, because I had around half a dozen characters, each played several hundred hours (I also didn't use the stupid levelling system, but XP system, so you don't have to do the "training"). But I seldom played a vanilla quest twice.WardDragon said:
And there's more! For all, who like TES games and don't want to wait that long, there's always Nehrim. A completely new game, made with the Oblivion engine, but better. Every pebble handplaced, just like in TW2, gameplay like it should have been all along and just... whatever they could squeeze out of that old engine.
Well, as someone who gets nauseous in first person view (and mad at the laziness to not make a toon for some devs), I can't see that. But the very first mod I used, from day one to the day I stopped, was the Chase Cam Mod. Yes, people have picked up on the camera being bs. I couldn't have played the game without the fixed cam, so I hear you. But there was such an easy fix for it!
Gothic III suffered from the same thing and also needed a community fix for it...
So, if you're really into modding, TES games are fun, you can even play Morrowind with acceptabale graphics now. But if you want to pop in a game and expect it to be perfect as is, you should look elsewhere.
DelightfulMcCoy said:So, if you're really into modding, TES games are fun, you can even play Morrowind with acceptabale graphics now. But if you want to pop in a game and expect it to be perfect as is, you should look elsewhere.
I actually never got into modding for Oblivion but those mods you described sound really interesting (especially the camera fix
) so maybe I'll get around to it I did try the Morrowind graphics mods and they looked really good. However the text is so tiny that I can't read what's going on in the story, and I got frustrated at the slow running speed, so I stopped playing the game an hour or two into it I never played Morrowind before so I guess I've been spoiled by more recent games.
Lol @ all the Skyrim haters.
TES games have a magic all their own. There's just no way that Skyrim isn't going to be incredible. But it's not an either/or scenario, thank God. I'll play the bejesus out of both games.
TES games have a magic all their own. There's just no way that Skyrim isn't going to be incredible. But it's not an either/or scenario, thank God. I'll play the bejesus out of both games.
flyingsaucers said:
For people who didn't really get the magic from Oblivion or Fallout 3, do you really expect Skyrim will be more enjoyable to us? I admit I haven't seen too much of Skyrim yet, but so far everything I have seen looks like it's still more or less the same as Oblivion.
Yes, you can. And you have all the right to do so.Pham said:
Fun, however is subjective.
Stalins VS Martians is probably one of the worst games ever made. I've met a person that adores it.
When things like taste and fun come into the equation, you can throw the equation into the garbage bin.
As entertaining as the Elder Scrolls games are, highly explorable, large worlds, plenty of things to see, they always feel utterly soulless.
Although there are hundreds of characters to meet, only a handful of them in each game had any personality, and the rest are entirely forgettable. And the main plotlines have always been very pedestrian, Oblivion was very significant in its anticlimax and sudden end to the story that made me feel very "Is that it?" afterwards.
The Witcher is simply populated by more interesting and fleshed out characters, plenty of work may have indeed gone into the Elder Scrolls lore, but it's just not very interesting without memorable characters to fill it with.
Although there are hundreds of characters to meet, only a handful of them in each game had any personality, and the rest are entirely forgettable. And the main plotlines have always been very pedestrian, Oblivion was very significant in its anticlimax and sudden end to the story that made me feel very "Is that it?" afterwards.
The Witcher is simply populated by more interesting and fleshed out characters, plenty of work may have indeed gone into the Elder Scrolls lore, but it's just not very interesting without memorable characters to fill it with.
flyingsaucers said:
Really? No way at all? If we both watched the same footage, you should have noticed Skyrim looks and feels essentially the same as Oblivion. Again, in this footage, there is only COMBAT to be seen, how can we judge it's role-playing properties? Which by the way, if you can role-play as much as in Oblivion, then it should be pretty weak. Quests in the elder scrolls games are inconsequential, nobody cares whether you killed some marauders, pillaged the nearest ayleid ruin or became arch-mage, their reaction is always the same. This doesn't mean it's bad, I am also semi-excited about Skyrim because, as Oblivion, it can be *fun*, but role-playing wise it doesn't touch TW2 in my opinion.
flyingsaucers said:
That's the thing. Nowadays everything is an RPG if it has character attributes and experience gain. I think The Witcher and The Elder Scrolls games are essentially different: one gives you a branching story-line with excellent writing, where your actions are extremely important, while the other gives you a sandbox to build sand castles on and pretend there's a background story to it.
In that link someone posted about this same poll at the Skyrim forum someone said:
Heh. Now that's just funny. I'm not even going to comment on that as it would be a waste of space.
Now let's wait until 11.11.11 and enjoy both games. But I can anticipate that the story, writing and overall cohesion and role-playing of TW2 will not be surpassed for a long time. Skyrim might be a really good and fun game with lots of dungeon crawling and spell casting and sword slashing, oh... and dragon hunting
According to the latest news Skyrim is going to win over Witcher 2 in at least one category: TMPCGOTY.
Meaning - The Most Politically Correct Game Of The Year.
Cause, you know, you can get into relationship with any race & gender! YAY! Pushing RPG genre forward!
(sorry, couldn't help it)
Meaning - The Most Politically Correct Game Of The Year.
Cause, you know, you can get into relationship with any race & gender! YAY! Pushing RPG genre forward!
(sorry, couldn't help it)
Like said before, 2 very different games, each with very unique strong points.
I thinks the witcher wins in terms of storytelling hands down.
Throughout the history bethesda stories have always been quite generic and very slow paced.
This was done due to the fact that people basically can do what they want within the sandbox of the world, and the story really takes a backseat sometimes. (Heh I know people that actually played Oblivion over 200 hours, and never even started the main quest.)
The witcher tells an epic story, but the player has less choice in how to play out the entire thing. There is a large amount of freedom given, and exploration of the gameworld can have some nice benefits, but at certain points you are funneled down towards a new element of the story, and through this the game progresses.
I thinks the witcher wins in terms of storytelling hands down.
Throughout the history bethesda stories have always been quite generic and very slow paced.
This was done due to the fact that people basically can do what they want within the sandbox of the world, and the story really takes a backseat sometimes. (Heh I know people that actually played Oblivion over 200 hours, and never even started the main quest.)
The witcher tells an epic story, but the player has less choice in how to play out the entire thing. There is a large amount of freedom given, and exploration of the gameworld can have some nice benefits, but at certain points you are funneled down towards a new element of the story, and through this the game progresses.
Charza said:
I would say The Witcher actually gives the player a LOT more choices than any Elder Scrolls game. The difference is in story-driven games you can only do a limited amount of things at any given time, while ES games are all about doing whatever, at any moment. This gives the false impression of non-linearity.
RPG's are highly valued (at least among the older audiences) for their flexibility in how the game progresses, which should adapt to the role you play. This works in terms of story progression, character development, all kinds of skills and abilities, allies, locations visited, etc. It makes the game different every time. In Oblivion, for example, you have at your disposal many places to go and many things to do at any time, but when you start any of those there is only one way of finishing it. You are basically told what to do and you just have to go to dungeon/cave/ruin/house X and do Y or bring back item Z. You finish the quest and are given items, gold and/or fame. Then you do this again 1000 times, in whatever order you prefer. In games like The Witcher 1 and 2, almost every little thing has an impact in the world and affects you and those around you. So, if anything, it's a lot less linear and choices play a bigger role than in a game like Oblivion, where there isn't really any progress as the world is somewhat static.
That's what mods such as "Morrowind comes alive" are good for. But sadly I agree, Morrowind wasn't that bad in this regard (besides, it's one of my favourite games of all time), but Oblivion's dumb looking, creepy NPC's standing around in deserted areas, all voiced horribly by the same four to five people gave me nightmares.SlateUK said: