Honestly I doubt Wine will be in such a state that the Skyrim Remaster will be worth the hassle out of the gate when you can just play regular Skyrim. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the issues aren't solved within 6 months or less though.
Chris wrote:
Daggerfall had more NPCs. Granted they were randomly spawned, but they still served the purpose of making places feel more alive. You could talk to them about anything, there were a variety of responses they could give, and they all reacted differently. Some would be more helpful than others (some would tell you what you want to know, others would tell you if they could, others wouldn't tell you even if they could, and others just won't tell you), some would respond more favorably to different methods of talking (blunt, neutral, or nice). They also cleared away at night, increasing that feeling that they were living their own lives (along with shops and guild halls closing at night).
I was specifically saying that while Daggerfall had more, Morrowind had more detail. There are a far larger number of unique NPC's in Morrowind with their own unique problems and quests than in Daggerfall even if there is a much smaller number in total. Even the shopkeepers in Morrowind are all individuals with their own differences between the same kind of shops which generally isn't the case in Daggerfall. The clearing out at nighttime was a nice touch, but it did little to make the people feel less robotic because it was basically just two states instead of a varying fluctuation. It was a far cry from what the later games can do, not that Morrowind's AI is any better, it's clearly even worse, but I don't feel Daggerfall's was so much better it made much of a difference, at least to me. The semi-randomized responses and ability to change your tone helped a bit, but ultimately it was just window dressing, not that Morrowind's little differences between shops and shopkeepers wasn't also fundamentally window dressing, but I felt it was a little more effective for my personal immersion into the world.
The areas being innately more memorable in Morrowind, I wouldn't say is really true. Daggerfall had plenty of different environments, from rocky mountainous areas, hilly grasslands, plains, forests, deserts, areas that are more wet/rainy, areas that see more snow, etc. It was so designed to make different regions unique that it had a climate map that influenced the weather, and had a system in-place that would dynamically swap a model's textures depending on where you were (which applied to both interiors and exteriors). Sure you may be able to remember more finer details in the later games, but Daggerfall had plenty of memorable regions and areas too (also, a lot of Morrowind's map was taken up by the Ashlands and Molag Mar/Amur areas, which were full of gray, and way too many ash and blight storms; not places I like to be).
The finer details part was kinda my entire point on being more memorable. I'm not saying it was for sure, without a doubt better. I'm just saying I can clearly remember specific cliffs, rock formations, trees, and temples. If I was asked to draw a map of Morrowind from memory I wouldn't get it totally right, but I could give it to you with a reasonable degree of accuracy and be able to place nearly all towns, many important landmarks, several roads, and even give you a general height map with some degree of accuracy. With Daggerfall I simply wouldn't know where to start, I could give you some fairly broad strokes of what each region is like, and might be able to very roughly place a few of the cities I personally remember going back to several times, but that's about it. I couldn't tell you the layout of any of those cities for example.
The size of Daggerfall's map also played into other things, such as having more realistic travel times/expenses and time scale. And that had an effect on diseases, since it gave more realistic progression instead of just being hit with the effects and having it cured within a day, and affected questing, since almost all quests are timed and can be failed (which itself fed into how quests were randomized and repeatable). Those things also fed into the crime/reputation system, since your reputation and renown were based on who you were working for and how well you were doing what they asked of you. You had an infinite number of quests available, so you didn't need to worry about running out and having nothing more to do.
All true, and the timed quests are nice, but they simple wouldn't work with Morrowind's structure of a comparatively small number of hand crafted quests, and here is where we reach the issue of whether or not you prefer a limited number unique quests, or an infinite number of procedural generated ones. Thing is it's entirely up to preference. I get bored with samey procedural quests quite quickly so while I technically still have things to do in Daggerfall it all starts to feel like I don't have anything left that I actually want to do.
That's about where I'm gonna stop because the rest of your response makes entirely valid and quite good points. I never did say Morrowind was outright better, nor do I think that, though I do think most of its changes work much better in its smaller scale world and slower paced nature and I personally prefer it. One thing I would like to point out though is that one of the most interesting things about Morrowind's story is that it's not as simple as being the Nerevarine. On the surface level that's what it is, but the whole idea of being a "Chosen Hero" is what most of the plot is about and dissects. A lot of it is "was it destined, or is it right place at the right time?" There are many Nerevarine's in Morrowind's history, but because they failed they aren't the True Nerevarine even though the only reason you end up being the true one is because you succeeded. So was it destiny, or not? It's never really clear, Azura says you fulfilled the prophecy, but that means quite little, and she's not entirely forthcoming throughout the game.