I bought this badboy yesterday, got a dvd rom drive from newegg the previous day and installed it. I have only played it for an afternoon and an evening at this point, but I must say I do not regret this purchase!
Virtually all my complaints about morrowind's gameplay have been addressed. Less stat rolls and more interactive play, combat is more enjoyable, theiving (so far!) has been enjoyable. Beautiful forests, a "living" gameworld with physics interaction. I'll just sort of break down my experience so far.
My character is a wood elf thief, with both blade and archery skills. In practice, I only have to use my blade when my bow fails, which hasn't been to often. When the enemy is right next to you, archery is pretty much worthless because you can't even get the bow drawn back while being hit. It was like this in morrowind, but its even harder here. No complaints, thats how it should be! Archery is much more enjoyable then in morrowind because you can recover more of your arrows and they pack a lot of punch if you hit them while hidden. I distinctly remember running backwards as a ogre with a gut full of arrows lumbered toward me from up on a bank. The final arrow connected with his neck and his corpse came sliding down the hill on its back, finally coming to rest near my feet. Awesome!
I find sneaking a bit awkward however, because its only a toggle key when I'm used to and prefer a "hold" key. I'll get to the interface in a bit.
The NPCs:
Great improvement. I can't believe everything is spoken dialog! Their face changes accordingly, and although some of the animations seem a bit odd its a very nice effect overall. Its kind of weird when there's combat going on and it all pauses while you stop for a chat though. The AI is nice I'd say, people go about their daily business...I've witnessed an orc practicing archery on targets in the afternoon for instance, and chat with eachother.
The chatting is a mixed bag, I definately like the effect and how you can pick up side quests by eavesdropping but it could use some tweaking. I've witnessed a couple of times where the NPCs said goodbye to eachother after a conversations, and then immediately said hello and started another. No big deal.
Their face graphics sometimes leave something to be desired. I'd actually say that HL2 achieved more with less here, but they of course did it on a MUCH more limited scale in that game. The mouth animations seem just a hair off sometimes. The only real complaint is that the older faces look...bad. I think maybe the bump mapping or shadows are overdone on them or something. The worst part is the first face we're introduced to is the elderly emperor and his is pretty much the worst in this regard. Frankly his head looked bad to me, whereas most of the younger faces look great.
Their movement animations are GREATLY improved from the rigid awful ones in morrowind. Not just for the NPCs but for all the enemies IMO. Still not the best though, the robes are still missing the "stretchy" texture thing other games have had for years and the movement doesn't look totally natural.
In combat, they still get in the way of your sword swings. I actually just wish they make them not take damage from you. Sure its not to realistic, but especially if they're main quest characters you'd never actually want to kill them anyway.
They also aren't retarded anymore! When I go into some one's shop and walk into their bedroom they follow me and you can see them staring at you. Awesome. Looks my theiving is going to be a bit harder this time around.
Overall, much much better, largely thanks to the radiant AI. Morrowind felt so dead and lonely because all the NPCs were blatantly just waiting around for you to show up before they did anything. That was my biggest complaint with morrowind and they have addressed it head on here with a complex solution that gives a nice effect.
Combat:
As said, the archery is fun. Sword play was enjoyable. As I walked toward the first quest node (hadn't figured out fast travel yet) I stumbled through some ruins. As I went to exit through an archway a khajiit appeared and demand my gold or my life. I decided that I had no intention of being robbed...thats my job! It proved quite enjoyable, absorbing blows with my shield and then moving in for a quick slash immediately afterwards. The enemy was pretty smart too! When he saw my shield was up he'd try and strafe around my "blind" flank to hit me from the side, and it worked on more then one occassion! After that, I stuck to my trusty bow for most encounters.
Again, much improved over morrowinds "click mouse repeatedly, wait until they die". I feel like I'm actually there, and that I actually have an effect on the world outside my stats.
Quests:
Many complained about the "noob compass" on elderscrolls forums when it was first presented. I always thought it was a good idea and that hasn't changed. It was downright frustrating trying to find a cave in a sea of caves. Or when miswritten or misenterpreted dialog led you to wander right past the location you were seeking. (South west could mean, go south and then west...go south west, go west and then south, or sometimes it could mean go northwest.) ES expansive opened ended game world is a sword that cuts both ways, and while unrealistic this takes the frustration out. So much focus is placed on realism by some people that they forget games are a way to escape reality and have fun, not simulate something.
The quest system is more logical, seperating them into completed and uncompleted quests, and a easy system to pick your "active" quest. Which is a nice change of pace from the barely adequete morrowind journal.
Magic:
I haven't done much with magic, my I enjoy that I don't have to put my weapons away to use it. That heal spell is handy and I think the effects are nice.
Trading:
Its better, I like the dialog and that traders now give me full price for items rather then a quarter of their value. Haven't gotten to much into this yet. Repairs of armor are cheaper. The economy hasn't revealed itself to be totally out of whack like morrowinds yet.
Graphics/Performance:
I'm running a 3000+ @ 2.4ghz, asrock 939dual, 1gb CVS @ ~220mhz, x850xt, 80gb 8mb SATA drive. I've been playing with basic options, 1024x768 noxAA, bloom. I actually turned off bloom because the first and only slowdowns I noticed happened around the fires inside one of the towers in oblivion. Other then that I noticed no slowdowns at all. My wife hasn't complained one bit while playing it on her machine. A sempron 2800+ @ 2334mhz, 6800nu, 1gb CVS.
I didn't really buy this game for its graphics, despite how big a deal has been made of them. They're nice, the draw distance is breathtaking...the forests feel real. Only a very few games have done forests right or close to right, and this is another for the list. I actually couldn't see anything when I went off the path the trees were so thick. The method that they are loaded with creates a great effect. The grass however, pops in at a rather odd distance making it look like it just grew all of a sudden. Not to bad though.
The load times, are excellent IMO. While the "Loading Area" pops up somewhat frequently while traveling around outside, it only results in a pause of perhaps 1-2seconds. If that. I couldn't even complain about that if I tried. Compared with morrowinds inexplicable long hangs this is a welcome change. Entering internal cells results in a load time of maybe 10-15 seconds tops. The worst part is there's cool tips on those load screens, that because it now loads so fast, I don't have time to read!
Bugs:
I've only noticed a missing text in the main menu bug and a character get stuck while running and then immediately teleport to his destination. No crashes...which I find remarkable since I was playing for a long time yesterday and morrowind STILL crashes once every 3-4 hours even after all the patches.
Interface:
This a mixed bag and my only real complaint. The interface is good once you get the hang of it and stop trying to use morrowind controls on it...but it suffers heavily from consolitis. The icons are huge, the text is huge and there just plain aren't enough options for binding things quickly to a keyboard key. Its obviously designed primarily for a TV with poor resolution and no mouse interface.
The interface is easy to use yes, but I am NOT playing on a console and I am NOT limited in the number of keys I can bind. There should be more options at the very least and I should be able to shrink the massive font. Why can't I bind map to m? Or inventory to i? Where the hell are the mouse over quick tips to explain what that picture icon means? Where are the options for changing the sneak mode style? Why can't I show more of my inventory on my screen at one time? Its irritating, and stinks of being dumbed down for the console.
Despite what people say about it being developed for the xbox from the ground up, the game was in development for 3 years before they even got the dev kits for xbox. You'd think they would have some more PC options in the interface, especially since it doesn't seem like it would have taken long to add. A lot of developers make this mistake, thinking that a good console interface is a good PC interface...I'm just a little tired of seeing it.
Aside from the giant text and some what ambigious giant icons, it is also an improvement from morrowind however. The map is better in conjunction with the quests, the quest journal is better. Its a little hard to use at first since I'm used to having mouse over tips to quickly guide me, but through trial and error the interface reveals itself to have a nice catagory system. I can see myself still liking it better then some of the clunky more compartmentalized setups of morrowind.
All and all, I'm very happy with this purchase. It looks like this game is going to be bang for the buck better replay wise then anything else I've bought lately.