Morrowind had better weapon variety and I'm tired pretending Skyrim's isn't boring

[EbonyWarrior]

Just replayed some Morrowind after a couple Skyrim runs and man, I forgot how much I missed actually caring about what weapon I was using. Skyrim's got like... what, iron, steel, dwarven, orcish, elven, glass, ebony, daedric, and dragon? And they're all just stat upgrades. Morrowind had actually weird stuff - different weapon types with different animations, enchantments that felt unique, weapons that looked genuinely distinct from each other.

In Skyrim I just craft one type of weapon, maybe slap an enchantment on it, and I'm done for the entire playthrough. There's no reason to pick up loot because every sword is functionally identical to every other sword at your level. Compare that to Morrowind where you'd actually find something and go "oh, that's a different moveset" or "that enchantment combo is actually useful for this playstyle."

I get that Skyrim streamlined a lot of stuff and that's fine, but the weapon variety is one area where I think it genuinely lost something. The perks help a bit but they don't really fix the core issue that every iron sword plays the same as every other iron sword. Does anyone else feel like this or am I just being nostalgic?

 

[DragonbornVet]

You're not wrong, but I think you're also comparing Skyrim to a memory of Morrowind that's gotten better with time. Morrowind's weapon variety was partly just visual - yeah, a katana looked different, but the actual gameplay loop was still "equip the highest damage number and swing." The enchantments were wild, sure, but half of them were broken or useless depending on your build.

That said, Skyrim's weapon system is genuinely flat in a way that does get stale. Every iron sword is identical because there's no durability, no weight differences that matter, no real reason to experiment. The perks help - like if you're doing a specific build you notice the difference between a heavy two-hander focused on power attacks vs a dagger build with daggers and backstabs - but yeah, base weapon variety is just stat tiers.

The real issue is that Skyrim's loot design doesn't encourage exploration the way Morrowind's did. Finding a unique enchanted weapon in Morrowind felt like something, even if it was just a visual or a weird enchantment combo. In Skyrim you find a Daedric sword at level 30 and it's just... fine, I guess, until you craft something better. Mods help (Immersive Weapons, stuff like that), but vanilla? It's definitely the weakest part of the itemization.