So I recently began playing Skyrim because it's been nearly 5 years since the game came out and I'm still hearing people talk about it. The thing is, I neglected to do any sort of research on the rest of the franchise. How big of a no-no was this? If the games are intertwined can someone please give me the 411 on the plot? Thanks in advance :)

they are connected loosely, however they are for the most part pretty standalone since i think they take place well after each other. No need to go back in my opinion.

It's just like Dark Souls it's nice to understand the "Big Big" picture, but it doesn't matter at all.

The Big picture is about Tamriel as a whole, no characters make it from game to game b/c of how much time passes between each. Assuming no one became a ghost or something.

Nothing wrong with jumping in on Skyrim. Morrowind is still my personal favorite for various reasons but I put in tons of hours in Skyrim and had a great time.

@owen99: Thank you very much. Glad to see there are enough people here to get immediate answers. I shall continue to enjoy what seems to be a promising game so far. Just finished Bleak Falls Temple and I must say, I'm impressed with the dungeon design. :)

They are only loosely connected by like, the regions and the gods and things. But you can probably learn all of that through the in game books anyway.

Enjoy it! There's going to be XBOX One and PS4 versions released next month so you'll see people talking about the game again.

It's probably the best way to do it. It's really hard to play Oblivion and Skyrim after Morrowind since they really took a lot of things out to give it mass appeal.

Skyrim is at least a pretty good game. I still don't get how so many people loved Oblivion.

Well I'm in the minority opinion where I don't like any of the other games and found Skyrim to be the best by far. Even if you were to go back to the old ones they would most likely not hold up at all for you. Even if you mod it up with the best texture packs the game play would be where it's aged most poorly. With that said they are important landmarks in gaming history but I will fall short in saying they are a must play.

As others have said you're totally fine starting with any of them. The only way the games tie together are loose references, usually from afar - some of the things you hear regarding Morrowind in Skyrim are things your character did in Morrowind in TES 3. Similar with some of the books in all the games. It's more easter egg winks and nods than it is coherent, sequel to sequel story.

The gameplay and level progression is the biggest difference between them all and you can really pick your favorite. Morrowind is the easiest to break open and make yourself some kind of impossible to kill god (letting you kill an actual god, if you want) in the vanilla game but if you're modding them all bets are off, just pick the one you like.

I'll also add that Morrowind is REALLY hard to go back to after the newer ones - they streamline everything, make everything feel better. It's excruciating to run, no sprint, no fast travel (except at vendors), etc. everywhere you're going. But there's an exploration aspect to it that's unmatched by the other games.

It was wrong, and you should feel bad for what you've done. Shameful.

As someone who holds Morrowind as my favorite Elder Scrolls game I completely agree with this. The strength of Morrowind was the exploration and discovery but the conversation system was archaic and clunky and the combat was awkward early on (never really advancing to approaching good).

Also damn cliff racers...

I do wish they would return to having more weapon type/skill diversity.

Naw you can play whichever one you want for sure. It really doesn't matter.

I did the same. There is a tone of lore to the world that you are missing, but none of that really matters in Skyrim unless you're doing a deep dive into the background of every race or major character. I watched a bunch of lore videos on Youtube and was totally caught up within a day so.

This series is great and covers pretty much everything you'd ever want to know
ShoddyCast Skyrim Lore Season 1 (18 videos)
ShoddyCast Skyrim Lore Season 2 (25 videos)

I'm still playing Skyrim although I play most Bethesda RPG's on a long loop.

Feel free to PM me if you have questions duder.

I imagine Skyrim was most people's first Elder Scrolls game.

No no-no at all.

Really? I'd guess Oblivion

That was my first thought, too, but I thought Skyrim vastly outsold Oblivion.

Among people posting on a forum like Giantbomb, it probably was Oblivion, but I would wager that Skyrim was the first Elder Scrolls game for people in general. I don't have any real data to back this up, though, so if you can find any solid information about it I'm all ears! I'm just guessing that due to how ridiculously well Skyrim sold.

My guess is as much a shot in the dark as yours is; I just figured that most of the mainstream people who turned up in droves for Skyrim were so excited for it because they played Oblivion on the 360

This is accurate, even if it's my favorite Elder Scrolls game. Part of what makes it great is how much you could break it. Enchanting a cloak with flight was the best tool any game has ever had.

@justin258: you may be right, I think

Out of personal experience as someone who did not look at forums+comments at all yet back then Ive known a lot of dudes my age (around 20 y/o) IRL who pretty much never played any games, and I dont think any of them haven't played skyrim on something. It was insane, EVERYONE seemed to be playing skyrim at the time, even the most unlikely people, I've never seen something like that before or since. And its not because I recommended it to everyone around me either or anything, I dont like bethesda rpgs at all despite giving them a chance every time.

I know exactly 2 people IRL who've played oblivion as far as I know, and at least between the 20-30 who have played skyrim. Skyrim was a weird thing, I dont get how it managed to appeal to almost everyone.Thats quite the achievement.

I think it's the best one to get into. I love Morrowind a ton but that game is really hard to go back to now. Oblivion is too and it's not as good as Morrowind or Skyrim. Add to that the years of awesome mods that Skyrim has and it still holds up

In my experience, if you're staying current with games, anything but the most recent game is unlikely to hold up. Oblivion MIGHT be alright and if you get into it you may eventually get sucked in, but the difference in play-ability and tech and the like is pretty stark between the different games.

Skyrim is fantastic, despite all the criticisms (many fair). It's a great place to jump in. Maybe try going back to Oblivion though, it has some truly fantastic questing.

Oblivion sold about 12 million copies, Skyrim sold about 22 million copies. It was incredibly successful and sold more than most games you probably think would have sold more copies than it. So it's safe to say that, even if the vast majority of Oblivion players never touched previous entries, Skyrim was everyone's first ES game.

For reference, Morrowind sold around 4 million, so every new entry has massively outsold the last. I'd be VERY curious to see how another Elder Scrolls title would do.

All I remember from playing Oblivion for 100 hours is Patrick Stewart is murdered in the opening and then Oblivion gates open everywhere. You don't really play these games for the story anyway, at least I don't. I just started playing Skyrim again. I tried playing with mods that makes you have to eat and drink and such but it got tedious so I just use mods to improve the graphics and not alter the gameplay.

Hard to say really, if you are still interested in the previous ones they will be hard to go back to after Skyrim. Oblivion might still be doable, Morrowind is pretty much impenetrable by today's standards you will likely end up looking up every little details which might be considered defeating the whole point of Morrowind.

I think Skyrim is probably the most playable overall, but it might have the worst writing and story. The setting has potential, but it was nearly all squandered.

Oblivion has the worst world space, but I find it to have the best writing and story

Morrowind's world is technically smaller, but there are aspects of it that I find superior to the other two. I find it to have the worst gameplay however

I think Skyrim is the easiest to get an overpowered character, because you can always recover after the legendary patch, in Morrowind and Oblivion mistakes are permanent, it is possible to build yourself into a corner, in Oblivion's case you might straight up never be able to move on.

Just sneak around with a bow till everything is dead and all is good. WHO CARES BAYBEEEEE Just skyrim it!

@alavapenguin: the bow in skyrim is so god damned good. It's the reason I always pick a bow now in every rpg

Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game, and I had a good time with it. However, initially, I only played it for, line 60 hours and never finished the main quest.

Fast forward 5 years to Skyrim, and I've put a cumulative 400 hours into that over multiple characters. It was a vastly improved experience with better magic, better levelling, better stealth, etc.

So, in short, the only reason you might start with an older game is so you can compare how much better Skyrim is in every way.