Arena

[A Black Falcon]

The SERIES AS A WHOLE as in ONE GAME THAT YOU PLAYED!

Two. Sure I just played the Daggerfall demo, but it's a big demo and gives you a very good sense of what the game is... especially if you have the background of having played Arena for comparison.

It's because that type of game takes an incredible amount of time and manpower to create, while Diablo shit can be done in a fraction of the time.

Diablo??? Diablo 1 didn't take hugely long but Diablo 2 took years... that is a very bad example of a game that didn't take long to create. And it shows... Diablo 2's world has a lot of detail. The NPCs are decently fleshed out, the graphics are very nice, the different areas are unique, the quests are mostly well designed... no, that wasn't a good example of a game that can be done quickly. :) Actually, good RPGs usually can't be... the scale and complexity of a good RPG pretty much precludes that. Yes, in some regards TES has more complexity than most for sure, but in others it doesn't... it's a mix. I'd say that the biggest reason for its uniqueness is that everyone else making such games is making MMORPGs... where the real big money can be.

I said that I love open-ended games, RPGs being the best type. Body Harvest, GTA, Spider-Man 2, and the like are other types of games that offer great freedom in terms of environments and exploration. When it comes to RPGs the closest thing to Morrowind is probably Gothic. Since open-ended RPGs are the most difficult kind to make, not many developers choose to make them even though Morrowind proved that there is a huge audience for that type of gameplay.

Body Harvest is a pretty good game... but at least in the first world, is it that open-ended? I mean, you are stuck in a specific area and can only progress by beating a boss. You only can save at those points between "stages". Yes, you can drive around and steal all kinds of vehicles (which is a lot of fun), but it seems like most of the stuff you do is follow the main path... the off-path stuff is just about how you get from point A to point B and how much time you spend looking for stuff (hidden basements, etc). It's certainly somewhat open-ended, but it's got more than enough linearity that you never have any question about what you are supposed to be doing... for a RPG comparison Fallout might work. Though Fallout doesn't have walls keeping you only in one small part of the game until you beat bosses. :)

As for market, do you know Morrowind sold great or have you just heard it? And did it sell great on PC or because it was also done on X-Box? And how do other RPGs on PC compare... I don't know the answers to those questions. I think the biggest thing Morrowind proved is that people will buy well done PC ports on consoles.

If you want to see what makes the game so great then play the damn thing.

Yeah, that had a whole lot to do with those paragraphs and really helped answer my questions.