Morrowind 20-year anniversary book(mw.thenet.sk)
mw.thenet.sk
Morrowind 20-year anniversary book
https://mw.thenet.sk/
175 comments
I know this doesn't add much, but a small addition: The whole concept of the lost Dwemer civilization is an entire layer of depth to the fantastic world. A world which IMO is unparalleled
Have you played Elden Ring? That has brought me the same wonder Morrowind brought me decades prior.
Elden Ring is a marvel but its not same to me. Morrowind is not typical fantasy so the alien world of mushroom houses and silt striders takes it to the next level. Skyrim and Oblivion were less interesting to me as it was standard high fantasy setting.
I feel exactly the same.
I had never played a game before that felt so free. I spent so much time just discovering the world, what you could do. The magic system that invited you to break the game mechanics - at a cost. I love how playful it was, with items like the boots of blinding speed.
I don't know if any game can quite capture what I loved about Morrowind, but you might also like Outward, or Kenshi, if you'd like a similar feeling of discovering and surviving in a strange world that wasn't designed around you.
I don't know if any game can quite capture what I loved about Morrowind, but you might also like Outward, or Kenshi, if you'd like a similar feeling of discovering and surviving in a strange world that wasn't designed around you.
Would highly recommend Kenshi, it is very different from Morrowind, very weird, and very janky, but completely unique in its setting and gameplay. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, which is in development.
You capture what I failed to articulate.
I feel exactly that way about Oblivion and Skyrim
Games just felt so much more intelligent back then. Morrowind really went off the deep end.
I really don't get this recommendation.
Elden Ring is a good but drastically differently designed game. It is very unlike The Elder Scrolls by all accounts. Well, all they share in common is basic RPG elements, but that's about it.
First and foremost, there's barely anything to interact with except for attacking things. Morrowind would be a boring disaster of a game if it'd be just the never-ending flocks of Cliff Racers to cut through between a few cutscenes where the key plot points are explained.
Elden Ring has extremely limited non-hostile NPCs. They're essentially static fixtures, best they can do is switch between a few cyclic animations (like those merchants). I felt genuinely disappointed by how they had to cheat around this limitation to make Millicent just stand. But okay, I get it, no one's gonna fall at me from the sky, fine. Still, the quality of NPCs is subpar. Dialogues are so scarce and limited, they make Mass Effect's chatwheel feel as if Commander Shepard is a master orator.
Then, some reviewers brag about the lore and I found it extremely shallow, just the basic worldbuilding. There are like about 50 characters and their stories, plus some fairly weakly explained core concepts about the world order - but not much else. Elden Ring's world has no casual history, it's not a world where anyone had ever lived despite the prologue bragging otherwise. Over the half of ruins are just some meaningless assets - either just some walls or some constructs with faux doors and windows, an attempt to make it look like it is some post-apocalyptic world in shambles, but you need to exercise a fairly strong suspension of disbelief to make it feel so. Shacks and towers make it a bit more believable, but they're just... locations where someone had possible lived. Absolute best you'd get is some tools of the past occupant, and that's an exception, not a rule. Even the large and architecturally well-designed areas (so-called legacy dungeons) don't tell their stories - e.g. the Stormveil Castle is huge, but it barely has any history - just a gallery of untold potential stories, missed opportunities. It's a stark contrast from, let's say, ELEX or Horizon or Fallout, where every other building you can walk in (and you can walk into most of them) has some casual story to it, traces and echoes of the people who had lived there before the catastrophe, told either in notes or environmental cues.
Maybe this is misdirected critique - I get it, game designers might have wanted an alien world (not too alien though, just some medieval fantasy, still closely tied to human cultures), gnostic, unexplained and mystical, where most things just are and logic may not even apply. Symbols and decorations instead of writing and narration, inverbal cues opposed to verbal ones. But that's how exactly it's very unlike TES (which has both!) and why I don't think it's a good recommendation.
And there are games with alien worlds that also prioritize form, style and artistry over actual meaning, yet they don't give up on the meaning but make player assimilate it. Discarding an opportunity to enrich the lore by talking about it is just... weird. Like author is trying to cover up that all that lore is shallow and they haven't really thought it up beyond the surface. Just compare the lengths Disco Elysium's writers explore their anthropic-but-alien world - such as concept of The Pale (sure, that's a very different kind of a game). Pardon the pun but all that Greater Will stuff just pales in comparison. And there's also an example of Pathologic, or if you're up for an extreme weirdness - Vangers (a Jabberwocky of video games).
And lastly, people praise Elden Ring (and Souls-like) for having an open world without auto-leveling, so the content is "gated" by your skill (or level). But that was basically the norm for a long while, in a lot of games. Remember Gothic - it had all of that, but was on entirely another level of game design, despite being over 20 years old. I'm really, really looking for the upcoming remaster.
So, comparing various aspects of Elden Ring to various games that have similar aspects I can say it's definitely not a masterpiece. Just an above-average game - well, it surely got some love and even though neither aspect is stellar they're not awfully poor either (I just don't want to search for negative examples how bad things can be, hah). Except maybe for combat. Though idk what someone with extensive arcade fighting game experience would say - I'm really not an expert on those, so I'd leave this aspect unexplored.
Pardon my rant. I'm just disappointed in Elden Ring because it was not what I hoped it would be, misguided by all the hype (marketing). I'm really trying to squeeze out most of its worldbuilding, story and quests - the very stuff I've so highly praised games like Morrowind for - but constantly getting disappointed. I can guarantee it - it's not about that.
Elden Ring is a good but drastically differently designed game. It is very unlike The Elder Scrolls by all accounts. Well, all they share in common is basic RPG elements, but that's about it.
First and foremost, there's barely anything to interact with except for attacking things. Morrowind would be a boring disaster of a game if it'd be just the never-ending flocks of Cliff Racers to cut through between a few cutscenes where the key plot points are explained.
Elden Ring has extremely limited non-hostile NPCs. They're essentially static fixtures, best they can do is switch between a few cyclic animations (like those merchants). I felt genuinely disappointed by how they had to cheat around this limitation to make Millicent just stand. But okay, I get it, no one's gonna fall at me from the sky, fine. Still, the quality of NPCs is subpar. Dialogues are so scarce and limited, they make Mass Effect's chatwheel feel as if Commander Shepard is a master orator.
Then, some reviewers brag about the lore and I found it extremely shallow, just the basic worldbuilding. There are like about 50 characters and their stories, plus some fairly weakly explained core concepts about the world order - but not much else. Elden Ring's world has no casual history, it's not a world where anyone had ever lived despite the prologue bragging otherwise. Over the half of ruins are just some meaningless assets - either just some walls or some constructs with faux doors and windows, an attempt to make it look like it is some post-apocalyptic world in shambles, but you need to exercise a fairly strong suspension of disbelief to make it feel so. Shacks and towers make it a bit more believable, but they're just... locations where someone had possible lived. Absolute best you'd get is some tools of the past occupant, and that's an exception, not a rule. Even the large and architecturally well-designed areas (so-called legacy dungeons) don't tell their stories - e.g. the Stormveil Castle is huge, but it barely has any history - just a gallery of untold potential stories, missed opportunities. It's a stark contrast from, let's say, ELEX or Horizon or Fallout, where every other building you can walk in (and you can walk into most of them) has some casual story to it, traces and echoes of the people who had lived there before the catastrophe, told either in notes or environmental cues.
Maybe this is misdirected critique - I get it, game designers might have wanted an alien world (not too alien though, just some medieval fantasy, still closely tied to human cultures), gnostic, unexplained and mystical, where most things just are and logic may not even apply. Symbols and decorations instead of writing and narration, inverbal cues opposed to verbal ones. But that's how exactly it's very unlike TES (which has both!) and why I don't think it's a good recommendation.
And there are games with alien worlds that also prioritize form, style and artistry over actual meaning, yet they don't give up on the meaning but make player assimilate it. Discarding an opportunity to enrich the lore by talking about it is just... weird. Like author is trying to cover up that all that lore is shallow and they haven't really thought it up beyond the surface. Just compare the lengths Disco Elysium's writers explore their anthropic-but-alien world - such as concept of The Pale (sure, that's a very different kind of a game). Pardon the pun but all that Greater Will stuff just pales in comparison. And there's also an example of Pathologic, or if you're up for an extreme weirdness - Vangers (a Jabberwocky of video games).
And lastly, people praise Elden Ring (and Souls-like) for having an open world without auto-leveling, so the content is "gated" by your skill (or level). But that was basically the norm for a long while, in a lot of games. Remember Gothic - it had all of that, but was on entirely another level of game design, despite being over 20 years old. I'm really, really looking for the upcoming remaster.
So, comparing various aspects of Elden Ring to various games that have similar aspects I can say it's definitely not a masterpiece. Just an above-average game - well, it surely got some love and even though neither aspect is stellar they're not awfully poor either (I just don't want to search for negative examples how bad things can be, hah). Except maybe for combat. Though idk what someone with extensive arcade fighting game experience would say - I'm really not an expert on those, so I'd leave this aspect unexplored.
Pardon my rant. I'm just disappointed in Elden Ring because it was not what I hoped it would be, misguided by all the hype (marketing). I'm really trying to squeeze out most of its worldbuilding, story and quests - the very stuff I've so highly praised games like Morrowind for - but constantly getting disappointed. I can guarantee it - it's not about that.
Your reasoning may be valid, but I second OP that Elden Ring is the first game in decades that gave me the same sense of wonder and awe that Morrowind once did. (Albeit, perhaps, for different reasons.)
It has fantastic worldbuilding, and parts of it feel alien, but it is much less fleshed-out.
Part of the appeal of From Software's games is their coyness. Very little is explained, and players need to piece the story together from scattered scraps of information.
Morrowind is a comparative firehouse of information. There is much more (mostly silent) dialogue, and there are a lot of books:
https://www.imperial-library.info/books/morrowind/by-categor...
tl;dr: Not enough reading.
Part of the appeal of From Software's games is their coyness. Very little is explained, and players need to piece the story together from scattered scraps of information.
Morrowind is a comparative firehouse of information. There is much more (mostly silent) dialogue, and there are a lot of books:
https://www.imperial-library.info/books/morrowind/by-categor...
tl;dr: Not enough reading.
There is a fairly legit sounding project remaking morrowind on the newer engine but who knows if it will ever be completed
morroblivion is done but skywind is still in progress.
https://morroblivion.com/
https://tesrskywind.com/
https://morroblivion.com/
https://tesrskywind.com/
No shit? I had no idea morroblivion was done. Will need to check that out. Skywind I have been following as well
Moon & Star :)
The community around this game never ceases to amaze me. OpenMW [0] is one of my favorite open source projects. Planning to make a little something standalone with their new Lua scripting support.
Also there is a Modathon this month, with a huge number of contributions! [1]
[0]: https://openmw.org/en/
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/ua4daw/morrowind...
The community around this game never ceases to amaze me. OpenMW [0] is one of my favorite open source projects. Planning to make a little something standalone with their new Lua scripting support.
Also there is a Modathon this month, with a huge number of contributions! [1]
[0]: https://openmw.org/en/
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/ua4daw/morrowind...
Anyone wondering if OpenMW is good enough to play: the answer is very much a yes.
A year or two ago (it was shortly after they fixed shadows in the engine, which is what I'd been waiting for) I played the entire main quest and a good chunk of the side quests in it, plus the whole main quest of Tribunal, and started Bloodmoon (got distracted and stopped there). I cranked draw distance up quite a ways (nothing crazy, but way longer than the default), played at 4K resolution, and ran it through Mod Manager 2 with maybe 8-12 mods—don't remember exactly how many, but I've gotta have my herbalism mod, at the very least, or I'm not playing :-) I think I even had Twin Lamps (anti-slavers "guild", think Underground Railroad) in there, and it worked fine.
Zero crashes the whole time, which makes it far better than the original engine. No quest glitches or difficulties. It was perfect.
The only downside is that you can't use mods that directly modify the engine itself because they're all written for Bethesda's executables, specifically. This includes most of the more extreme "pretty" mods that make the graphics look better.
However, OpenMW is already a little better-looking than the original, and you can still install better textures, which helps a lot. I even got a replacement pack for the loading screens, to make them widescreen and HD.
A year or two ago (it was shortly after they fixed shadows in the engine, which is what I'd been waiting for) I played the entire main quest and a good chunk of the side quests in it, plus the whole main quest of Tribunal, and started Bloodmoon (got distracted and stopped there). I cranked draw distance up quite a ways (nothing crazy, but way longer than the default), played at 4K resolution, and ran it through Mod Manager 2 with maybe 8-12 mods—don't remember exactly how many, but I've gotta have my herbalism mod, at the very least, or I'm not playing :-) I think I even had Twin Lamps (anti-slavers "guild", think Underground Railroad) in there, and it worked fine.
Zero crashes the whole time, which makes it far better than the original engine. No quest glitches or difficulties. It was perfect.
The only downside is that you can't use mods that directly modify the engine itself because they're all written for Bethesda's executables, specifically. This includes most of the more extreme "pretty" mods that make the graphics look better.
However, OpenMW is already a little better-looking than the original, and you can still install better textures, which helps a lot. I even got a replacement pack for the loading screens, to make them widescreen and HD.
I also played through OpenMW last year, the first time I ever beat the game. When I played as a teen, I would find Cassius and then never advance the main quest, becoming distracted by the guilds and all the other things to do.
> but I've gotta have my herbalism mod
Which mod is that?
> but I've gotta have my herbalism mod
Which mod is that?
Be aware, the first entry on the linked site is an April fool's joke
Thanks! I was thinking if I should point that out or not. Their GitLab [0] is a good place to see just how far the project has come as well.
[0]: https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw
[0]: https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw
What a grand and intoxicating innocence!
Todd Howard must be spinning in his cryo-chamber RN.
I loved Morrowind, but I do still lament the loss of the 'Elite as fantasy' feel for the first two Elder Scrolls games. As much as they were sparsely populated and low on story, those felt more like truly Open World games to me (I was happy running errands and clothes shopping for the most part). Morrowind was a bit of a shock to the system when I first played it. It was very well done, but many orders of magnitude smaller than Arena and Daggerfall. I can't really make a strong case that it wasn't a better game (and I enjoyed Skyrim too), but I hope we're not far off returning to procedural worlds with a new eye, especially now AI is on the verge of being a core part of asset workflows.
Original daggerfall creators are working on a new game in the style of daggerfall: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1685310/The_Wayward_Realm...
I'm glad someone is working on an open world rpg at all, but that looks very promising. Its been 11 years since skyrim and there have not been many first person sandbox rpgs since. I actually can't think of any at all unless you count things like grimrock.
The Witcher 3 scratches that itch fairly well to tide you over, if you haven't played it, although it is a bit different.
Theres a lot more if you don't mind stepping outside of fantasy themed games. Stuff like the Far Cry series, Cyberpunk 2077, The Outer Worlds, the Dying Light series, and the Metro series.
But in the fantasy realm you're right I can't think of anything since Skyrim off the top of my head thats open world AND first person.
But in the fantasy realm you're right I can't think of anything since Skyrim off the top of my head thats open world AND first person.
cyberpunk 2077 is about as far away from an open world RPG as you can get, it's a relatively linear story driven game. Besides the massive number of launch day bugs, that was one of them many points of contention across the reviews of the game, since the game was marketed as an open world sandbox style environment.
> Far Cry series, Cyberpunk 2077, The Outer Worlds, the Dying Light series, and the Metro series.
Metro is about as on-rails as you can get? It's all "go down this one tunnel and shoot everything" or "follow this actually quite narrow and linear path across the rubble and shoot everything". Some of the missions are literally on rails (you're in a subway, after all)
Far Cry is much more open than Metro, and often has some quite fun things to do if you stray off the mission path and talk to the right person. Depends how much you like to hunt and fish amidst blowing up the bad guys!
Metro is about as on-rails as you can get? It's all "go down this one tunnel and shoot everything" or "follow this actually quite narrow and linear path across the rubble and shoot everything". Some of the missions are literally on rails (you're in a subway, after all)
Far Cry is much more open than Metro, and often has some quite fun things to do if you stray off the mission path and talk to the right person. Depends how much you like to hunt and fish amidst blowing up the bad guys!
Metro Exodus is semi open-world, more like "open levels" that you can traverse freely and then never come back to again.
I'm not sure I'd call Far Cry series RPGs. Don't mean that in a bad way (I fuckin love Far Cry), I've always seem them as an FPS with stats (a la No One Lives Forever) in an open world.
I really wanted to like The Outer Worlds, but the writing seemed extremely juvenile; it touches on a lot of heavy themes (LGBTQ romance, corporate power, worker exploitation) extremely hamfistedly and without nuance. I had to put it down as I couldn't stop cringing at the writing...
Now, Outer Wilds on the other hand...
I'm not sure I'd call Far Cry series RPGs. Don't mean that in a bad way (I fuckin love Far Cry), I've always seem them as an FPS with stats (a la No One Lives Forever) in an open world.
I really wanted to like The Outer Worlds, but the writing seemed extremely juvenile; it touches on a lot of heavy themes (LGBTQ romance, corporate power, worker exploitation) extremely hamfistedly and without nuance. I had to put it down as I couldn't stop cringing at the writing...
Now, Outer Wilds on the other hand...
Congratulations, you just made my 2022.
Reading comments like yours nudged me to try the Daggerfall recently. Thirteen hours in, I asked myself if I should continue and the answer was a definite "no". The most fun open world game parts for me are exploration and engaging activities. TES3 and newer Bethesda games exceed at this, but TES2 couldn't offer any of the sorts. If you saw a couple of dungeons and cities, you saw them all. Automatically generated quests feel like chores instead of simple adventures. The main quest did not evoke a sense of curiosity, no desire to know what happens next. I thought TES4 was bland and the worst in the series, but now the honors go to TES2. Not my kind of video game.
It's interesting how radiant/generated quests are pretty widely criticized as the worst aspect of TES5, but everything outside the main questline in TES2 is exactly this.
This surprised me too. F4 generated quest were fun only for so long, but after playing the TES2, I at least gained a valuable perspective on Bethesda games, you can really see the original DNA across the titles. I'd take dense, fun settlements over procedurally generated blandness.
Ah that’s a shame, but glad you’re enjoying other parts of the genre. I’ll admit, I played Arena and Daggerfall after Elite II: Frontier became one of my favourite ever games and I never bored of that either. I just enjoy having a sandbox to be in, the bigger the better. All games are pointless in the end and I find that a game that makes stronger promises to the player (dialogue, quests, items etc) feels even emptier to me once you’ve exhausted those options. Whereas a game that asks you to suspend disbelief at a lower level keeps on working for me.
I have high hopes for Daggerfall once they finish fixing the main bugs and it goes into beta.
The concept behind Arena and Daggerfall are cool but the actual gameplay is pretty horrendous. I guess people today say the same thing about Morrowind though.
Yeah, gameplay's a subjective thing I guess. For me, these were some of the most immersive, atmospheric and thrilling games I ever played.
Something like No Man's Sky, except a huge procedural world instead of universe, set in a fantasy setting, might be what you're thinking?
daggerfall unity is pretty fun if you want a modernized version of that game
https://github.com/Interkarma/daggerfall-unity/
https://github.com/Interkarma/daggerfall-unity/
I enjoyed the procedural towns and quests but I really hated the procedurally generated dungeons.
FWIW, DaggerfallUnity has a (poorly documented) feature to swap in much smaller dungeons.
https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?t=1689 (I really can't stand forum-as-documentation...)
https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?t=1689 (I really can't stand forum-as-documentation...)
How do you even play those games? Roaming the wilderness is clearly not a fun option.
it all depends ... once upon a time, WoW was a bit like that. XRoads wild PVP, free-for-all ambushes in the wilderness, a reasonably sized world (not too big but not too small). Back in 2004 it did convey a sense of relative immensity. Which was part of the magic imho.
Every subsequent iteration ("evolution") felt like its main goal was to minimise the "downtime" between the farming/"phat loot" sequences (raids, instances, etc).
At the time, you could get a demo run a stone so at least some of the party could join quickly. But that took human interaction, some synchronisation ... it was nice and involved.
Disclaimer: I havent touched WoW in more than 10 years, but from what I know of it today -- it's teleport all the way, straight into the instance, with pre-made aor automatically composed groups. You pop in, you loot, you get out. Rinse and repeat.
Some people will enjoy the "instant gratification" part of this. I'm probably amongst those who did not, who don't and who probably never will. It is my opinion (widely shared? no idea) that immersion has been killed by all those "QoL" improvements.
My 2p.
At the time, you could get a demo run a stone so at least some of the party could join quickly. But that took human interaction, some synchronisation ... it was nice and involved.
Disclaimer: I havent touched WoW in more than 10 years, but from what I know of it today -- it's teleport all the way, straight into the instance, with pre-made aor automatically composed groups. You pop in, you loot, you get out. Rinse and repeat.
Some people will enjoy the "instant gratification" part of this. I'm probably amongst those who did not, who don't and who probably never will. It is my opinion (widely shared? no idea) that immersion has been killed by all those "QoL" improvements.
My 2p.
I'm actually fairly new to WoW and I can't stand modern version. Classic is a way better experience for beginners in my view. The modern WoW is too manic and there's no mystery, sense of achievement for leveling. Leveling in classic MMOs IS the game, it's a shame to see so much of the "endgame > game" trend lately.
I don't buy that modern players don't have time either. WoW was only seen as an addictive timesink by the contemporary media but if they looked at the average hour counts of most modern multiplayer games, it would surprise many. Most modern service games demand fairly eye-popping time dedication to the casual observer.
I don't buy that modern players don't have time either. WoW was only seen as an addictive timesink by the contemporary media but if they looked at the average hour counts of most modern multiplayer games, it would surprise many. Most modern service games demand fairly eye-popping time dedication to the casual observer.
> not too big but not too small
Debatable. I wasn't around for Vanilla but I played Classic up through AQ. The game felt like a walking simulator.
Current WoW is certainly more streamlined, but you still have to earn the ability to travel around faster in current content. One of the Shadowlands zones didn't even let you mount (except for a rare drop for a special mount) until one of the content patches. And that and another zone still don't let you fly.
When you use the matchmade dungeon/raid finder, you do get teleported right into the instance. But for Mythic+ dungeons and Normal or higher raids you still need to manually gather a party and 2 people need to get to the summoning stone.
All of the city portals and the 15 minute hearthstone cooldown do make me a little sad though. My mage portals aren't appreciated nearly as much! :)
Debatable. I wasn't around for Vanilla but I played Classic up through AQ. The game felt like a walking simulator.
Current WoW is certainly more streamlined, but you still have to earn the ability to travel around faster in current content. One of the Shadowlands zones didn't even let you mount (except for a rare drop for a special mount) until one of the content patches. And that and another zone still don't let you fly.
When you use the matchmade dungeon/raid finder, you do get teleported right into the instance. But for Mythic+ dungeons and Normal or higher raids you still need to manually gather a party and 2 people need to get to the summoning stone.
All of the city portals and the 15 minute hearthstone cooldown do make me a little sad though. My mage portals aren't appreciated nearly as much! :)
> My mage portals aren't appreciated nearly as much! :)
non combat abilities is something I feel like modern MMO needlessly eschew. Some people just want to fish and read lore and don't care about combat segments at all.
non combat abilities is something I feel like modern MMO needlessly eschew. Some people just want to fish and read lore and don't care about combat segments at all.
I loved Ultima Online for this. I don't think I ever had a character that was even half-decent at combat. I generally just messed around with trade skills and sold stuff. Our guild had a little town in a clearing near Yew, and I managed the vendors and just had a peaceful existence there.
It would certainly be great if games better supported that non-combat stuff. As someone who plays WoW on WRA I know that plenty of people love to just RP. Total Roleplay is a good addon, but it would be nice if even just a plain text profile and the ability to display if you're IC or OOC were native features of the game.
And dear God, mythic+ is so much fun, it's crazy. You and four randoms just blasting through easier keys, or struggling through harder ones.
> But for Mythic+ dungeons and Normal or higher raids you still need to manually gather a party and 2 people need to get to the summoning stone.
Fair enough, didn't know that :)
Fair enough, didn't know that :)
The dungeon-group finding tools with instant teleport detract from immersion but they are a life-saver if you don't have a lot of time to dedicate per session, or don't have many friends who play at the same times you want to, yet still want to go dungeon-crawling with a party.
There's really nothing stopping people from going the extra mile for role-playing and immersion, it's more the local server communities that have been harmed by these tools but WoW classic brought back a lot of that "old-school" feel for those who seek it.
I'm not really up on the current state of either but I think there's merit in both approaches, I personally found both enjoyable.
There's really nothing stopping people from going the extra mile for role-playing and immersion, it's more the local server communities that have been harmed by these tools but WoW classic brought back a lot of that "old-school" feel for those who seek it.
I'm not really up on the current state of either but I think there's merit in both approaches, I personally found both enjoyable.
all valid point guys, thx for replying. Again, this was just my 2p, back from 2004 and the beta with the Stormwind invasion by skull-level Demons/big-evil-things. :)
I like exploring! Wizardry, Ultima, Elder Scrolls, whatever, I like to go straight off the path and into the weeds. I think great RPGs let you tell as much of the story in your head as possible, and this is hard in very story/dialogue heavy games (especially since the advent of voice acting in games).
This is exclusively the type of games I play now except for 'sport' related titles.
Rim World, Dwarf Fortress, Kenshi, Caves of Qud are all fantastic narrative generators and give you a crazy amount of freedom.
Another type of game I've fallen in love with that I don't remember being around when I was a kid is automation games like Factorio or Satisfactory. Gives you that open world feeling + exploring but you're not just running errands or slaying dragons.
Rim World, Dwarf Fortress, Kenshi, Caves of Qud are all fantastic narrative generators and give you a crazy amount of freedom.
Another type of game I've fallen in love with that I don't remember being around when I was a kid is automation games like Factorio or Satisfactory. Gives you that open world feeling + exploring but you're not just running errands or slaying dragons.
>I think great RPGs let you tell as much of the story in your head as possible
I'd say that having to tell the story in your head is a sign of failure on the part of the game. But, for an open world sandbox RPG, so is restricting you from enacting whatever story you want and we don't have the technology to avoid both.
I'd say that having to tell the story in your head is a sign of failure on the part of the game. But, for an open world sandbox RPG, so is restricting you from enacting whatever story you want and we don't have the technology to avoid both.
One of the most successful games of all time is Football Manager, which mostly involves staring at spreadsheets of numbers about football players. But it's also one of the most immersive games ever! Give me space, freedom, and simple tools to build my own narrative and I'll be more engaged than listening to the most soaring dialogue you might be able to write.
We have the tecnology. From Prolog, to Inform7.
More advanced TTS engines with possibility of generating emotive results might present a "mostly have your cake, and eat it too" solution.
At some point in the near future, I think we might have "good enough" AI voice acting. That could open some interesting possibilities, eh?
Quite apart from the voice acting, what about the writing itself? As a starting point, how far are we from having bots that can DM a plausible tabletop session?
Yeah, I think this is the secret. For me, I sort of bounce off things if they're too procedurally generated, since the tech isn't there to not make things seem too samey after a while.
I like discovering my own stories, but I want those stories to be how I fought off a dragon to save a town, not how I went into a dungeon for no reason whatsoever and came out with some more treasure and otherwise made no impact on the world.
I like discovering my own stories, but I want those stories to be how I fought off a dragon to save a town, not how I went into a dungeon for no reason whatsoever and came out with some more treasure and otherwise made no impact on the world.
Absolutely, but like, how cool would it be for a bot to be generating you new quests with an awareness of the full world state and everything you've already accomplished in the game thus far, plus seeding in bits and pieces that will tie into an overall arc?
I could imagine that potentially being extremely immersive, and doing it for a pure text-based interface would be a great first step on eventually doing it for a 3D open world game.
I could imagine that potentially being extremely immersive, and doing it for a pure text-based interface would be a great first step on eventually doing it for a 3D open world game.
Yup, it's already being used as a placeholder during the process in some AAA games but I assume we're not far off the quality needed for final assets, even dynamically generated locally. Same goes for art, even narrative elements at some point.
Ok, Ultima, you stole as much shit from the shop as you could then wandered off into the weeds. :-)
What Daggerfall Could Teach Future Elder Scrolls Games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7qyxSfUceE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7qyxSfUceE
It's quite a tired engine at this stage but Bethesda have actually been rather tech forward in the past. Especially with MS acquisition, some kind of procedural cloud-assisted world would make a ton of sense.
However, towns with 300 houses with different variations of the same vendors and assets would not be immersive to most modern players. You definitely need a little on the authored side. Heck, I think Bethesda copy/pastes too much now compared to something like New Vegas which has barely has any repetition.
However, towns with 300 houses with different variations of the same vendors and assets would not be immersive to most modern players. You definitely need a little on the authored side. Heck, I think Bethesda copy/pastes too much now compared to something like New Vegas which has barely has any repetition.
> However, towns with 300 houses with different variations of the same vendors and assets would not be immersive to most modern players.
Less immersive than an ostensibly grand city that only has a handful of named NPCs and a few guards? The best and worst city Bethesda have made thus far is still Vivec. Best because it has enough NPCs and redundant economy to feel like a plausible city. Worst, simply because the structure of the cantons is poorly conceived, and because the exterior is barren.
Less immersive than an ostensibly grand city that only has a handful of named NPCs and a few guards? The best and worst city Bethesda have made thus far is still Vivec. Best because it has enough NPCs and redundant economy to feel like a plausible city. Worst, simply because the structure of the cantons is poorly conceived, and because the exterior is barren.
Vivec was probably magical at the time but I literally cannot navigate from memory. Every canton blurs together and traversal is time consuming. I think Whiterun or Megaton are quite well designed.
Deprecating authored settlements in Fallout 4 was quite disappointing but Boston is probably the most impressive technically, diamond city etc nestled amongst the sprawling and surprisingly explorable ruins of the city.
Deprecating authored settlements in Fallout 4 was quite disappointing but Boston is probably the most impressive technically, diamond city etc nestled amongst the sprawling and surprisingly explorable ruins of the city.
Boston itself was great, but Diamond City seemed undeserving of the name to me. It's just a handful of people. Also the setting of known size, the baseball diamond, throws off my suspension of disbelief that maybe distances and population sizes in Bethesda games are simply compressed. Cities like Whiterun and Balmora are the size of a small villages but are presented as a cities; I can accept that as some sort of distance compression. I can't do that with Diamond City because I know how big a baseball field is. That 'city' must really be 1:1 scale, or at least close to it.
Basically if I can't get lost, it doesn't feel like a city. I can get lost in Boston or Vivec, those feel like cities. The others require a lot of suspension of disbelief, but Diamond City particularly makes that hard.
I concede that Vivec is dated (although I first played Morrowind about 2 or 3 years ago and still enjoyed it.) I consider Witcher 3's Novigrad as an example of a modern game getting it right. There's not exactly a ton of named NPCs in Novigrad, but there are enough buildings, alleyways, etc to get lost when wandering around. Also there is redundancy in the town's economy; numerous smiths, taverns, etc.
Basically if I can't get lost, it doesn't feel like a city. I can get lost in Boston or Vivec, those feel like cities. The others require a lot of suspension of disbelief, but Diamond City particularly makes that hard.
I concede that Vivec is dated (although I first played Morrowind about 2 or 3 years ago and still enjoyed it.) I consider Witcher 3's Novigrad as an example of a modern game getting it right. There's not exactly a ton of named NPCs in Novigrad, but there are enough buildings, alleyways, etc to get lost when wandering around. Also there is redundancy in the town's economy; numerous smiths, taverns, etc.
I think all of those games are absolutely tiny when you take into account human scale. You can't traverse any real world city in the few minutes or so it would take for Geralt to circumnavigate the entirety of Novigrad. Agree that you should get lost in a big, redundant world. Bethesda have their work cut out for their next games.
DayZ (and it's ilk) is probably the only game that comes close to 1:1 but is not to most players tastes to take a human amount of time to walk across rows of empty fields. That game is absolutely enormous. It's a pretty niche game though.
DayZ (and it's ilk) is probably the only game that comes close to 1:1 but is not to most players tastes to take a human amount of time to walk across rows of empty fields. That game is absolutely enormous. It's a pretty niche game though.
> However, towns with 300 houses with different variations of the same vendors and assets would not be immersive to most modern players. You definitely need a little on the authored side.
Do you think that in the 2020s, we can't do better generators than what existed in the 1990s?
Do you think that in the 2020s, we can't do better generators than what existed in the 1990s?
You're evidently don't belong to the CRPGs' target player base :)
The basic idea of CRPGs is to give you an avatar that is as different or as similar to you personally as you want and let you experience the avatar's interactions with the world they live in. It might seem that it's currently the case for 90% of the games, but please remember that early CRPGs competed with Pong, Pacman, and Asteroids, not Quake. You'd have a hard time identifying yourself with a paddle or imagining spending your entire life in a maze being chased by ghosts. You would have a much easier time with an Elven archer roaming Middle-Earth, especially if you've read and memorized the Trilogy by heart.
From that basic premise, I'd roughly distinguish two main ways of realizing it: via numbers or words.
By numbers, I mean a situation where your avatar can be described as a bunch of numbers, as is the world, and you're supposed to find your own meaning in those numbers. Which ones matter to you, which you don't care about, or which represent an ability to do things you care about. You are then given an array of activities that both require the numbers to be aligned in a particular way and allow you to improve the numbers for you.
By words, I mean a situation where your avatar is presented to you via description. The numerical values that underpin the avatar identity and the shape of the world are still there, but you experience them only indirectly, through the description of the environment, your avatar actions, and their consequences.
There are not many "pure" realizations of either way because, taken to the extreme, the number case turns into an Excel sheet with all column and row names garbled, while words simply become a book or novel.
Of additional note is the issue of effort on the game creator's part. You generally can't procedurally generate descriptions above a certain length, especially not if you want the descriptions to be meaningful, not only readable. You'd need AGI for that. Procedurally generated content is crucial because it allows you to lengthen the time the game is played. You can read a good fantasy novel in a few days, while you can easily lose 200 hours to a single CRPG.
Back to exploring the wilderness. Morrowind leaned towards the numbers-based gameplay if my memory serves me right. You were required to perform an action repeatedly to improve your skill in that action. Take jumping, for example. I remember locking the spacebar in a depressed position on long treks between cities because jumping raised your strength. On the other hand, it did have a lot of hand-crafted, meaningful locations that you would visit multiple times. It had a few different plotlines you could follow and some memorable NPCs and you were given quite a lot of freedom in how you wanted to interact with the world. These are all features closer to the words-based gameplay. Still, most of the game consisted of repetitive, although more tactical than dexterity-based combat in the wilderness or dungeons.
Some people have a stronger preference for one gameplay style, and for them, Morrowind found a perfect balance. Relatively high freedom in what you could do, the plot, and the NPCs who sometimes even spoke more than a few words, were enough to give them a plausible reason to go and have real fun... By killing skeletons for 5 hours, nearly dying for 4h 50m, then getting a level-up, a corresponding dopamine rush, and going on a skeleton-killing spree in the last 9 minutes. You'd probably die to the boss lich in the last minute, allowing you to rage-quit the game and go back to beating skeletons again the next day.
Is it fun? Yes. It's one of the kinds of fun CRPGs are designed to give you. Since the early days - and I mean the times of ADVENT[ure] and Zork - the CRPGs evolved tens of subgenres, took advantage of the progress in hardware and in the general inflation of game makers' budgets, enlarging the scope, but the basic idea is still the same. To give players either: enough of the descriptions to make grinding meaningful or enough grinding not to frustrate them into not finishing the story.
One note: obviously, at some point nearly all CRPGs became graphical and later multi-media, one way or the other. That didn't, and still doesn't, change much. You can present the description of the world with words alone, with words and images, words and animation, images alone, images and music alone, and so on. What's important is that you are describing a world, an avatar and its actions within that world.
Another note: multi-player changes things drastically in the case of CRPGs, especially if it is not co-operative or is "massive". The metaphor is still the same, but the cost-benefit ratio of various game features is completely unlike the single-player version. MUDs were early multi-player CRPGs evolved as a cross between BBS and IRC, and their rise and eventual brutal demise under the weight of op-wars and spam a warning widely heard by CRPG makers. The MUDs persisted, barely clinging to existence in some niches, and later gave us MMORPGs, which are also completely different from single-player (or 1-4 people coop, later on) games. So I don't think talking about WoW is very relevant to the topic, ie. Morrowind.
The basic idea of CRPGs is to give you an avatar that is as different or as similar to you personally as you want and let you experience the avatar's interactions with the world they live in. It might seem that it's currently the case for 90% of the games, but please remember that early CRPGs competed with Pong, Pacman, and Asteroids, not Quake. You'd have a hard time identifying yourself with a paddle or imagining spending your entire life in a maze being chased by ghosts. You would have a much easier time with an Elven archer roaming Middle-Earth, especially if you've read and memorized the Trilogy by heart.
From that basic premise, I'd roughly distinguish two main ways of realizing it: via numbers or words.
By numbers, I mean a situation where your avatar can be described as a bunch of numbers, as is the world, and you're supposed to find your own meaning in those numbers. Which ones matter to you, which you don't care about, or which represent an ability to do things you care about. You are then given an array of activities that both require the numbers to be aligned in a particular way and allow you to improve the numbers for you.
By words, I mean a situation where your avatar is presented to you via description. The numerical values that underpin the avatar identity and the shape of the world are still there, but you experience them only indirectly, through the description of the environment, your avatar actions, and their consequences.
There are not many "pure" realizations of either way because, taken to the extreme, the number case turns into an Excel sheet with all column and row names garbled, while words simply become a book or novel.
Of additional note is the issue of effort on the game creator's part. You generally can't procedurally generate descriptions above a certain length, especially not if you want the descriptions to be meaningful, not only readable. You'd need AGI for that. Procedurally generated content is crucial because it allows you to lengthen the time the game is played. You can read a good fantasy novel in a few days, while you can easily lose 200 hours to a single CRPG.
Back to exploring the wilderness. Morrowind leaned towards the numbers-based gameplay if my memory serves me right. You were required to perform an action repeatedly to improve your skill in that action. Take jumping, for example. I remember locking the spacebar in a depressed position on long treks between cities because jumping raised your strength. On the other hand, it did have a lot of hand-crafted, meaningful locations that you would visit multiple times. It had a few different plotlines you could follow and some memorable NPCs and you were given quite a lot of freedom in how you wanted to interact with the world. These are all features closer to the words-based gameplay. Still, most of the game consisted of repetitive, although more tactical than dexterity-based combat in the wilderness or dungeons.
Some people have a stronger preference for one gameplay style, and for them, Morrowind found a perfect balance. Relatively high freedom in what you could do, the plot, and the NPCs who sometimes even spoke more than a few words, were enough to give them a plausible reason to go and have real fun... By killing skeletons for 5 hours, nearly dying for 4h 50m, then getting a level-up, a corresponding dopamine rush, and going on a skeleton-killing spree in the last 9 minutes. You'd probably die to the boss lich in the last minute, allowing you to rage-quit the game and go back to beating skeletons again the next day.
Is it fun? Yes. It's one of the kinds of fun CRPGs are designed to give you. Since the early days - and I mean the times of ADVENT[ure] and Zork - the CRPGs evolved tens of subgenres, took advantage of the progress in hardware and in the general inflation of game makers' budgets, enlarging the scope, but the basic idea is still the same. To give players either: enough of the descriptions to make grinding meaningful or enough grinding not to frustrate them into not finishing the story.
One note: obviously, at some point nearly all CRPGs became graphical and later multi-media, one way or the other. That didn't, and still doesn't, change much. You can present the description of the world with words alone, with words and images, words and animation, images alone, images and music alone, and so on. What's important is that you are describing a world, an avatar and its actions within that world.
Another note: multi-player changes things drastically in the case of CRPGs, especially if it is not co-operative or is "massive". The metaphor is still the same, but the cost-benefit ratio of various game features is completely unlike the single-player version. MUDs were early multi-player CRPGs evolved as a cross between BBS and IRC, and their rise and eventual brutal demise under the weight of op-wars and spam a warning widely heard by CRPG makers. The MUDs persisted, barely clinging to existence in some niches, and later gave us MMORPGs, which are also completely different from single-player (or 1-4 people coop, later on) games. So I don't think talking about WoW is very relevant to the topic, ie. Morrowind.
This is one attempt to break down those different preferences for RPGs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory
Interesting, but I don't think (even without taking into account the "Criticism" section) it can be applied to CRPGs. I was very careful to put the "C" every single time because, while related, CRPGs are quite different from table-top RPGs. By simply excluding both the Game Master (no way to improvise, add meaning above and beyond what could be predicted and accounted for) and other Player Characters (again, no way to improvise and adapt the in-party interactions) makes for an environment so different from TRPGs that they are bound to be perceived very differently by players. While it's possible to grind in TRPG, it's utterly impossible to grind for 60 hours. CRPGs also have a clear ending - either as an end of a story, end of content, or end of leveling up. The MMORPGs may come closer to TRPGs, but the "massive" scale also makes for a drastically different environment compared to 3-6 party members + GM. The closest to the TRPG would be co-op multiplayer in the vein of Baldur's Gate, but then again - no GM and technical limitation also make it pretty different. If I recall correctly, Neverwinter Nights tried to introduce a multiplayer with a GM, but then the problem became the amount of work needed to get to the expected amount of detail; it was simply too much effort for a single GM. MMORPGs side-step this issue by employing hordes of developers and admins, on top of encouraging player-made content.
TL;DR: I think the distinction of CRPG vs. TRPG is useful, and directly comparing the two doesn't work that well.
TL;DR: I think the distinction of CRPG vs. TRPG is useful, and directly comparing the two doesn't work that well.
I think I missed an important detail: Daggerfall and Arena are abundantly full of nothing interesting - I don't think you played them if you think I'm not a CRPG target :)
I'm not even sure if you can actually reach another town on foot, there's so much of flat boringness. You can definitely get lost and never find your dungeon again in one of those (Arena?) because there's no map helpful enough to find your position.
Of course, I gave up at that point, having run out of things to do (besides walking), and not being able to come back to the fast travel.
I'm not even sure if you can actually reach another town on foot, there's so much of flat boringness. You can definitely get lost and never find your dungeon again in one of those (Arena?) because there's no map helpful enough to find your position.
Of course, I gave up at that point, having run out of things to do (besides walking), and not being able to come back to the fast travel.
Yup, I didn't play Daggerfall, you're right. I actually started with Might and Magic VI, I only read about the earlier titles. I read about how much of an improvement to the series MM6 was, but I never experienced how much worse the games were before. I enjoyed a zoomable minimap, sounds of secret passages opening after completing some objective and monsters lurking around the corner (plus some voice... acting? well, synthesis, at least), notifications about quest progress, a journal, a comparatively large number of distinct locations, etc. Probably due to improved graphics, so a higher amount of RAM needed for them, MM6+ were split into maps, so no matter how lost you got, you could just go straight ahead and arrive at the map border after 5-10 minutes max. Faster with the fly spell. There was also a compass, which greatly helped with navigation, especially underground.
But, to go back to the original topic a bit, you only gave up (wandering the wilderness) after you ran out of things to do. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you did have fun until you had things to do there :P Exploring the wilderness in MM6 and MM7 was also fun, and actually essential if you wanted to seriously power-up your heroes. There were random encounters with enemies, some waaaaaay above your current level, but the physics engine and the exploitable real-time-but-turn-based mechanics were primitive enough to let you, with some luck, camp a troll safely from behind a rock. Then there were one-time semi-random treasures in chests to discover (watch out for traps), hidden locations with quests, altars and trainers, in general everything you would need to take it easy in the latter parts of the game. Of course, there was a high risk of ending up dead, having run into too powerful opponent. For example, in MM7 there was a killable and exploitable dragon (high-level monsters sometimes had more than one drop, and you had to click twice to get them - but if you saved after the first drop, you could repeat second click as long as necessary for there to be 3rd drop generated. Rinse and repeat. I spent a frickin' DAY doing this. Got enough money to last me to endgame, though) in the tutorial, that you could find if you explored a little. It was, obviously, mercilessly slaughtering low-level characters, and it was impossible to kill it without a very heavy save scumming and a lot of preparation. On the flip side, entering a random cave in the tutorial and facing a screenful of fire-breathing winged lizard kind of set the tone of "wilderness exploration" later on.
In summary: exploring the wilderness can be fun, but it's the "numbers based" part of fun. I mean, sightseeing was not really worth it until much later, when the 3d-accelerated graphics begun in earnest. And even then, the main motivation was to level up, find treasures, kill monsters for exp - all focused on bumping up some numerical values in your character sheets. There were certainly some useful clues to discover here and there, and the mentioned hidden locations and quests too, but the meat of the game at that point was to grind. And it was fun! At least as long as monsters still gave you enough exp, the drops were still worth the effort, and you could get back to civilization relatively quickly.
To be honest, I'd be very happy to play a modern take on the CRPGs from around MM6 time. Large, but not vast, maps filled with randomized content but hand-tuned and with frequent hand-made locations, with quests and subplots to discover, without "you cannot go there, because you cannot go there" prevalent in modern CRPGs... I would like it combined with a mainly tactical, but real-time combat as in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. First person perspective, preferably solo, or in a party with mechanics similar to Vampire Redemption/Bloodlines. Non-linear plot, freedom to decide how to finish the more important quests (not just 2 choices, make it 6 at minimum), freedom to ignore the plot entirely and focus on buying a house... Fallout 3 was, IIRC, kind of similar to what I have in mind, but I'd like a dark-fantasy setting. If you know of any game like that, please share :D
But, to go back to the original topic a bit, you only gave up (wandering the wilderness) after you ran out of things to do. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you did have fun until you had things to do there :P Exploring the wilderness in MM6 and MM7 was also fun, and actually essential if you wanted to seriously power-up your heroes. There were random encounters with enemies, some waaaaaay above your current level, but the physics engine and the exploitable real-time-but-turn-based mechanics were primitive enough to let you, with some luck, camp a troll safely from behind a rock. Then there were one-time semi-random treasures in chests to discover (watch out for traps), hidden locations with quests, altars and trainers, in general everything you would need to take it easy in the latter parts of the game. Of course, there was a high risk of ending up dead, having run into too powerful opponent. For example, in MM7 there was a killable and exploitable dragon (high-level monsters sometimes had more than one drop, and you had to click twice to get them - but if you saved after the first drop, you could repeat second click as long as necessary for there to be 3rd drop generated. Rinse and repeat. I spent a frickin' DAY doing this. Got enough money to last me to endgame, though) in the tutorial, that you could find if you explored a little. It was, obviously, mercilessly slaughtering low-level characters, and it was impossible to kill it without a very heavy save scumming and a lot of preparation. On the flip side, entering a random cave in the tutorial and facing a screenful of fire-breathing winged lizard kind of set the tone of "wilderness exploration" later on.
In summary: exploring the wilderness can be fun, but it's the "numbers based" part of fun. I mean, sightseeing was not really worth it until much later, when the 3d-accelerated graphics begun in earnest. And even then, the main motivation was to level up, find treasures, kill monsters for exp - all focused on bumping up some numerical values in your character sheets. There were certainly some useful clues to discover here and there, and the mentioned hidden locations and quests too, but the meat of the game at that point was to grind. And it was fun! At least as long as monsters still gave you enough exp, the drops were still worth the effort, and you could get back to civilization relatively quickly.
To be honest, I'd be very happy to play a modern take on the CRPGs from around MM6 time. Large, but not vast, maps filled with randomized content but hand-tuned and with frequent hand-made locations, with quests and subplots to discover, without "you cannot go there, because you cannot go there" prevalent in modern CRPGs... I would like it combined with a mainly tactical, but real-time combat as in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. First person perspective, preferably solo, or in a party with mechanics similar to Vampire Redemption/Bloodlines. Non-linear plot, freedom to decide how to finish the more important quests (not just 2 choices, make it 6 at minimum), freedom to ignore the plot entirely and focus on buying a house... Fallout 3 was, IIRC, kind of similar to what I have in mind, but I'd like a dark-fantasy setting. If you know of any game like that, please share :D
> sparsely populated and low on story
Elden Ring is like that (or rather, not in-your-face about it). You can tell it's filling a void because re-releasing the DS formula keeps selling like hot cakes.
Elden Ring is like that (or rather, not in-your-face about it). You can tell it's filling a void because re-releasing the DS formula keeps selling like hot cakes.
So "filling a void" here means "giving fans the game they were hoping for"? We definitely weren't expecting or wanting a Bethesda game.
[deleted]
If you're into Morrowind, I highly recommend the youtuber Sorcerer Dave[0]
He recently completed an epic, multi-chapter, role-played morrowind series[1]. Hundreds of hours of content, and all with an overall story arch. Was a constant of my life for almost a decade and it's still weird to me it's done.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/SorcererDave
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w08TwfG3KDA&list=PL0VJ_-KbXC...
He recently completed an epic, multi-chapter, role-played morrowind series[1]. Hundreds of hours of content, and all with an overall story arch. Was a constant of my life for almost a decade and it's still weird to me it's done.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/SorcererDave
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w08TwfG3KDA&list=PL0VJ_-KbXC...
It's always such a strange, bittersweet feeling when some long-running presence in your life like this comes to a conclusion. Though, I'll admit I've never had one running for a decade. Few years at the most.
What a cool idea! I’d never heard of this, I guess you’ve now cost me 100s of hours of my life.
So thanks!
So thanks!
If anyone is looking for more content to watch. The main author of the above book also has a great set of interviews with Morrowind modders and community from the last twenty years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXMC2wI9IOw&list=PL_JwI1LLI9... (Full Playlist)
Its so nice to hear so many different stories connected by one shared experience.
Its so nice to hear so many different stories connected by one shared experience.
Wow I thought youtube recommended me all the morrowind videos there were. Thanks for this!
> He recently completed an epic, multi-chapter, role-played morrowind series
"I'll finish watching that, one of these days", I keep telling myself... Well, the seventh time I'll make it to the end for sure!
"I'll finish watching that, one of these days", I keep telling myself... Well, the seventh time I'll make it to the end for sure!
I was a little kid when Morrowind came out and I remember the first time I saw it. My family got takeout and we had rented Kung Pow: Enter The Fist. My older brother wanted the couch to himself so he could lie down while we watched the movie and he told me if I got off the couch he'd show me something cool later. Turns out that something cool was Morrowind. I remember he was playing an Argonian because he switched to third-person and for some reason that blew my mind. I tried installing it on the crappy PC we had out in the living room for us kids but I never got it running, I think it didn't support the required DirectX version. Many fond memories associated with that game.
DirectX - bane of my childhood
Elder Scrolls has spawned what is probably the best community wiki that I have ever seen: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Morrowind
Yes! It is such a cool community effort.
Fond memories. I remember power gaming Morrowind, by making potions that made you more intelligent and 'have more luck'. If you drank those, you could make better potions, which in turn would made you luckier and more intelligent. After a few cycles I could shoot fireballs to wipe out entire villages!
All well and good until an add-on introduced some guards with a shield that 100% reflected my epic fireball, resulting in not only my character being fried but also my poor PC having a blue screen of death.
All well and good until an add-on introduced some guards with a shield that 100% reflected my epic fireball, resulting in not only my character being fried but also my poor PC having a blue screen of death.
Morrowind is a great achievement but there were other great obscure RPGs from this era. Namely JoWooD's Gothic.
In many ways it went beyond Morrowind. Morrowind was huge but it also had moments where it felt mostly text driven to get immersion.
In Gothic for instance, the levels feel incredibly organic and NPCs are doing stuff on their own. For instance, in the wild monsters would engage in combat with each other. Vast underground mining camps require no loading screen to enter and explore.
Have a look at Gothic if you liked Morrowind. The world is nowhere near as huge but the story, dynamic levels/npc, all combined create a fluid and very rewarding almost Skyrim like world in the early 2000s.
In many ways it went beyond Morrowind. Morrowind was huge but it also had moments where it felt mostly text driven to get immersion.
In Gothic for instance, the levels feel incredibly organic and NPCs are doing stuff on their own. For instance, in the wild monsters would engage in combat with each other. Vast underground mining camps require no loading screen to enter and explore.
Have a look at Gothic if you liked Morrowind. The world is nowhere near as huge but the story, dynamic levels/npc, all combined create a fluid and very rewarding almost Skyrim like world in the early 2000s.
You might be misremembering things (a bit). Gothic 1 had the world, the oldmine, the freemine, the orcgraveyard and the orctemple (and technically also the abandonedmine and orccity but they are unused and empty) as seperate maps. So these had loading screens. Since you said JoWood's Gothic, I'm assuming you mean the 2nd one, since the first was published by ShoeBox (and I'd call it PiranhaBytes' Gothic anyway, since they were the developers).
Gothic 2 had the newworld, the oldworld, the addonworld and the dragonisland. Only in Gothic 2 are there no "dungeons" (internally indoor vs outdoor maps) so to speak, but there are some underground places which do not require loading screens.
Why I love Gothic so much is because the entire world is handcrafted. Nothing is procedurally generated, they just used their world editor (Spacer, they released it) and placed items, benches, fires, etc etc. This was also done by a much smaller team, basically it started with 2-3 german CS students wanting to make something as cool as Ultima, but of course it got bigger later on.
The monster AI is really great. Various monsters also behave in packs, i.e. you can lure Scavengers away one by one, but Snappers all attack you if one attacks you, even if they didn't see you. They also each have a distinct fighting style (more relevant in Gothic 2 than in Gothic 1), so you can learn patterns and theoretically beat the biggest monsters with terrible gear.
I can only recommend it as well if you like these type of older RPGs.
Gothic 2 had the newworld, the oldworld, the addonworld and the dragonisland. Only in Gothic 2 are there no "dungeons" (internally indoor vs outdoor maps) so to speak, but there are some underground places which do not require loading screens.
Why I love Gothic so much is because the entire world is handcrafted. Nothing is procedurally generated, they just used their world editor (Spacer, they released it) and placed items, benches, fires, etc etc. This was also done by a much smaller team, basically it started with 2-3 german CS students wanting to make something as cool as Ultima, but of course it got bigger later on.
The monster AI is really great. Various monsters also behave in packs, i.e. you can lure Scavengers away one by one, but Snappers all attack you if one attacks you, even if they didn't see you. They also each have a distinct fighting style (more relevant in Gothic 2 than in Gothic 1), so you can learn patterns and theoretically beat the biggest monsters with terrible gear.
I can only recommend it as well if you like these type of older RPGs.
wow!!! really impressed with your memory recall here. Yes I meant the first one. My memory is quite fuzzy as its been ages since I was gaming actively.
To me some of the best games I played allows me to build these internal dialogues with what has transpired so far. So much of Gothic 1 world seemed organic and quite dangerous with enough diversity and variability that creates unique character for each region.
I can't put in to words just how good that game was. Running through a dark forest with low HP, trying to make it to the new camp, witnessing bunch of Snappers gang up on a Scavenger and attack it etc while I hide. That was super impressive because it made me think there was some food chain ecosystem going on.
The story was quite good too and I could identify with the struggles easily. It was a believable world. Bunch of rebel lawlessness in new camp, the resource centric old camp competing, and buddha like spiritual group who seeks to escape the samsara.
I just have not played a good RPG like this on the PC, Stalker also shared similar qualities, perhaps FF7. But it was far more enjoyable than any new games I played recently. In fact I stopped purchasing new games since 2017.
Really wish the coop multiplayer mode in Gothic would've been released, used to get super excited seeing that.
To me some of the best games I played allows me to build these internal dialogues with what has transpired so far. So much of Gothic 1 world seemed organic and quite dangerous with enough diversity and variability that creates unique character for each region.
I can't put in to words just how good that game was. Running through a dark forest with low HP, trying to make it to the new camp, witnessing bunch of Snappers gang up on a Scavenger and attack it etc while I hide. That was super impressive because it made me think there was some food chain ecosystem going on.
The story was quite good too and I could identify with the struggles easily. It was a believable world. Bunch of rebel lawlessness in new camp, the resource centric old camp competing, and buddha like spiritual group who seeks to escape the samsara.
I just have not played a good RPG like this on the PC, Stalker also shared similar qualities, perhaps FF7. But it was far more enjoyable than any new games I played recently. In fact I stopped purchasing new games since 2017.
Really wish the coop multiplayer mode in Gothic would've been released, used to get super excited seeing that.
I fiddled around with these two games for years mod and reverse engineering wise, otherwise I wouldn't remember it all either! And of course I played them both many times.
I played this game first as a kid, and it really left an impression on me. And yes, the game world is just so real, it all kinda makes sense. The forest has a really dark atmosphere, they did a funny trick there, they hardcoded it that your character state goes into threat mode, so the music changes to the threat version.
I have to be honest, it kind of ruined RPGs for me long term, since none of them really ever held up to the standards Gothic set that early. Too bad PiranhaBytes also never truly recaptured what they had.
And yeah coop would have been fun. Final game still links to wsocks, because they had it internally at some point, and some Net classes even remain too, but it's all unuseable. There are multiplayer servers though for actual roleplaying, but the multiplayer part is written outside afaik.
I played this game first as a kid, and it really left an impression on me. And yes, the game world is just so real, it all kinda makes sense. The forest has a really dark atmosphere, they did a funny trick there, they hardcoded it that your character state goes into threat mode, so the music changes to the threat version.
I have to be honest, it kind of ruined RPGs for me long term, since none of them really ever held up to the standards Gothic set that early. Too bad PiranhaBytes also never truly recaptured what they had.
And yeah coop would have been fun. Final game still links to wsocks, because they had it internally at some point, and some Net classes even remain too, but it's all unuseable. There are multiplayer servers though for actual roleplaying, but the multiplayer part is written outside afaik.
You will probably like Elden Ring, Dragon's Dogma, maybe the first Fable? Greedfall II.
Morrowind, on the xbox, would completely reboot the xbox after presenting a static loading screen, in a last ditch effort to allow the user to keep playing. [1]
1. https://kotaku.com/morrowind-completely-rebooted-your-xbox-d...
1. https://kotaku.com/morrowind-completely-rebooted-your-xbox-d...
“There’s been great tricks that [Xbox] taught us,” Howard said. “My favorite one in Morrowind is, if you’re running low on memory, you can reboot the original Xbox and the user can’t tell. You can throw, like, a screen up. When Morrowind loads sometimes, you get a very long load. That’s us rebooting the Xbox. That was like a hail Mary.”
Hearing this makes me feel better about some of the asinine things I've done to keep software going.
I never played on the xbox, but I remember when traveling between cells in Morrowind (like into a dungeon or building, etc) I never could figure out why it sometimes only took a few seconds and other times I was sure the game was locked up. I saw this behavior on several PCs and don't ever remember it going away.
Morrowind had a much more interesting world than Oblivion, but I really appreciated that Oblivion did not do that. And that NPCs could chase me out of buildings.
Morrowind had a much more interesting world than Oblivion, but I really appreciated that Oblivion did not do that. And that NPCs could chase me out of buildings.
And they say that games can't do stop-the-world garbage collection...
I dimly remember that the Xbox SDK manuals recommended to reboot into new game levels, or to boot into a completely different executable for the multiplayer mode to make better use of the limited memory by not keeping stuff around that's not actually needed.
Italian Job in PC did that. And PS too I think.
I'm more surprised the Xbox somehow did this without showing the Xbox loading logo, is this like some normal feature of game consoles I was unaware of? I guess I would call it moreso a silent reboot.
Yes, IIRC it was a special "warm start" boot mode. Rebooting into different game modes wasn't that uncommon.
Particularly interesting since wasn't the OG Xbox the first major console to actually be running a significant amount of background system software? I feel like that would considerably complicate reboot-to-self vs with old-school setups where everything is bare metal and the user software is in control from the moment of boot.
Anyway, maybe the full weight of the hypervisor-based solution didn't land until the 360, but even a generation later, other players were in catch up mode like, wasn't the Wii still doing goofy stuff like making individual games include the code to show the "system" pause screen when the home button was pressed?
Anyway, maybe the full weight of the hypervisor-based solution didn't land until the 360, but even a generation later, other players were in catch up mode like, wasn't the Wii still doing goofy stuff like making individual games include the code to show the "system" pause screen when the home button was pressed?
Didn’t the Wii do something similar for GameCube games? It would technically reboot when loading and when done.
I'm confused. If you're running low on memory, why wouldn't you just... deallocate stuff?
Mainly because with 64 MBytes of RAM filled to the brim with game assets you'd very quickly run into memory fragmentation issues.
It's easier to just load big chunks of data at pre-defined memory addresses, and once you need to overwrite most of the memory anyway with new data, starting from a clean slate with a reboot is much more straightforward.
It's easier to just load big chunks of data at pre-defined memory addresses, and once you need to overwrite most of the memory anyway with new data, starting from a clean slate with a reboot is much more straightforward.
A lot of Linux-based DSP solutions do this. You either purposely tell the kernel that you have less memory than you do at startup, reserving the rest for the DSP, or you load a kernel driver which can allocate contiguous memory. This driver never actually uses the memory, it just scoops it up before anyone else can.
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An unfortunate thing about Morrowind for me is the "you can never go home" effect. Fans can always remaster it with better graphics, but the strangeness and beauty of playing it for the first time is something that we won't get to experience again.
There's a recurring joke in the Morrowind community that the best way to play it is by hurting yourself enough to get amnesia and then playing it.
I know by now my favorite play style (Dark Elf, long sword, heavy armor, destruction magic). But I need to branch out to try something else, but then I won't be playing my favorite way! Magic in particular is pretty difficult to work with in this game.
I still remember discovering the mushroom buildings of Seyda Neen.
I know by now my favorite play style (Dark Elf, long sword, heavy armor, destruction magic). But I need to branch out to try something else, but then I won't be playing my favorite way! Magic in particular is pretty difficult to work with in this game.
I still remember discovering the mushroom buildings of Seyda Neen.
For me it was always about the meta game. The alchemy loop was fun to find once, but then so broken as to be boring. The enchanting system was so rediculously powerful that it made everything trivial, but somehow in a fun way. Always on levitation, spell reflection, and spells that could literally annihilate anyone outdoors as I flew into a city apocalypse-style and cast once and everyone fell down.
I remember a mission where I had to visit Tel Branora, a Telvanni tower (I think it was the beginning of the quest line to become head of House Telvanni).
As it happened, the weather was foggy, so I got quite close to the tower before it suddenly loomed up out of the fog in front of me. I've never been quite so stunned by anything in a game before or since.
As it happened, the weather was foggy, so I got quite close to the tower before it suddenly loomed up out of the fog in front of me. I've never been quite so stunned by anything in a game before or since.
Huh, I only played like an hour of Morrowind. Giant fleas and I found some boots that made me jump into the air and die. Maybe I should try it. I beat Skyrim and Oblivion, it's just hard with the graphics and I feel like I've been waiting on Skywind or whatever that mod is called.
> and I found some boots that made me jump into the air and die
You're probably the first person I've ever seen to have confused the Scroll of Icarian Flight with the Boots of Blinding Speed. ;)
You're probably the first person I've ever seen to have confused the Scroll of Icarian Flight with the Boots of Blinding Speed. ;)
FWIW, the modern graphics mods improve every texture, the draw distance, and atmospheric effects. Some of the game play like how a sword can look like it hit, but did not, are more of an obstacle I think.
there are no mushroom buildings in seyda neen. youre thinking of Aldruhn
I thought Aldruhn was made of giant bug shells? Sadrith Mora has the Telvanni Council which is in a living building same as any of the Telvanni towers in the east: Tel Mora, Tel Aruhn, etc.
https://en.uesp.net/maps/mwmap/mwmap.shtml
https://en.uesp.net/maps/mwmap/mwmap.shtml
Agreed. Mind boggling experience that I've never been able to replicate after the first genuine play-through. Granted I was young and Fable more or less had a great impact on me as well.
Games feel...not as great as before. Ghost of Tsushima was excellent but it's been a while since a game has truly made me go, "Whoa!"
Games feel...not as great as before. Ghost of Tsushima was excellent but it's been a while since a game has truly made me go, "Whoa!"
Souls series is probably exemplary of an "okay, I'm a kid again" game for me. It's just so left field in many ways yet familiar. Souls makes me nostalgic about my gaming past that is not even historically accurate, they are so weird.
A large part of that is the draw distance.
Play the game with the original view distance, and the island feels enormous, mysterious, full of possibility.
Turn up the draw distance, and you realize that Pelagiad is closer to Balmora than my house is to the corner store.
Play the game with the original view distance, and the island feels enormous, mysterious, full of possibility.
Turn up the draw distance, and you realize that Pelagiad is closer to Balmora than my house is to the corner store.
I would love to play a Morrowind successor with a modern engine, maybe not a total remake, but further along in the storyline of Tamriel. I just want to revisit a lot of those places I used to go to with the same type of rich detail of Skyrim and Oblivion (for its time).
Aside: I would love to see the other regions in Nirn someday as well. We've yet to see anything beyond Tamriel in the modern games, and there are even other races / species we have yet seen which could make for a really interesting game if done correctly.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Nirn
Edit:
If they do a Morrowind Sequel or Prequel they need to be careful not to overlook even minor details, unless they go far enough forward / backward to where most things are ignored, but I would say even check the books and the quests of the game to make sure nothing is amiss.
Aside: I would love to see the other regions in Nirn someday as well. We've yet to see anything beyond Tamriel in the modern games, and there are even other races / species we have yet seen which could make for a really interesting game if done correctly.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Nirn
Edit:
If they do a Morrowind Sequel or Prequel they need to be careful not to overlook even minor details, unless they go far enough forward / backward to where most things are ignored, but I would say even check the books and the quests of the game to make sure nothing is amiss.
I suppose the problem is that it seems like Bethesda is more interested in creating a sandbox then having a story that fits that sandbox. Going back to Morrowind doesn't accomplish that necessarily.
On the story front I think what it did well was have the lore tie into weird things about the game world. The sand storm, the blight, the floating rock are things that dagoth did on purpose. Likewise, vivec and company are "Gods", that you can meet, but they're also Dunmer who used artifacts to become immortal who knew you in a past life. The visuals are more tangible because the story is integrated into what you see.
On the story front I think what it did well was have the lore tie into weird things about the game world. The sand storm, the blight, the floating rock are things that dagoth did on purpose. Likewise, vivec and company are "Gods", that you can meet, but they're also Dunmer who used artifacts to become immortal who knew you in a past life. The visuals are more tangible because the story is integrated into what you see.
Morrowind has a some interesting lore but is the textbook definition of a 'fetch quest' game. I'm not sure I can even remember the plot of any of the missions. Their modern games, while often hackneyed in the writing dept are at least diverting to your attention. "Wouldn't it be cool if a mage dropped from the sky" is probably the high bar of Morrowind narrative chops.
Bethesda is culturally a "level design developer" imo. Kind of like Valve in that regard. They have a technical idea of what they want the player to experience, not a strong narrative one. New Vegas is so interesting because Obsidian clearly do not have the same culture, it was ALL traditional RPG storytelling (and some okayish levels) in the same Bethesda framework.
Bethesda is culturally a "level design developer" imo. Kind of like Valve in that regard. They have a technical idea of what they want the player to experience, not a strong narrative one. New Vegas is so interesting because Obsidian clearly do not have the same culture, it was ALL traditional RPG storytelling (and some okayish levels) in the same Bethesda framework.
They did in Elder Scrolls Online. I didn't play that much of it but it's from an earlier time period than in the normal TES Morrowind. It was fun for the sightseeing at least.
The problem with ESO is it's moreso an MMO and less like playing any TES game. I have played it a little bit but its not as immersive as regular TES games feel.
These games are weird and have a bizarrely long shelf life that is often (unfairly in my view) thrashed in the gaming consciousness.
All of the games have this half life where you love it for the first 60 hours, enjoy for another 100 hours of modding and then you are sort of disgusted by the realization that NO game can really sustain this level of scrutiny and you see all the seams, copy-paste that such a diverse world needs.
The Outer Worlds was undoubtably an attempt to mimic the style of Bethesda but I honestly couldn't play more than 30-40 hours of it. Even New Vegas, my favourite in that engine, doesn't have enough of the repetitive grind that really makes these games so unbelievably popular.
All of the games have this half life where you love it for the first 60 hours, enjoy for another 100 hours of modding and then you are sort of disgusted by the realization that NO game can really sustain this level of scrutiny and you see all the seams, copy-paste that such a diverse world needs.
The Outer Worlds was undoubtably an attempt to mimic the style of Bethesda but I honestly couldn't play more than 30-40 hours of it. Even New Vegas, my favourite in that engine, doesn't have enough of the repetitive grind that really makes these games so unbelievably popular.
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I've tried more than once to play Morrowind since playing it to death back in the day but as an adult with tendonitis in my wrist the horrible GUI that has zero keyboard support is just too big an obstacle to overcome. Inventory management, dialog, everything in the game requires endless mouse clicking.
What's perhaps more surprising is that Microsoft-owned-Bethesda hasn't yet started working on an official remaster of it. Given that Bethesda still uses the same engine, it would be relatively cheap for them to do as opposed to building a new game and it would sell like hotcakes.
What's perhaps more surprising is that Microsoft-owned-Bethesda hasn't yet started working on an official remaster of it. Given that Bethesda still uses the same engine, it would be relatively cheap for them to do as opposed to building a new game and it would sell like hotcakes.
Skywind is I think what people want but it's basically a remake from scratch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_K7Kpt7X84
'same engine' is something that gets thrown around a lot by salty players but it's not really reflective of the massive changes that have happened since then.
'same engine' is something that gets thrown around a lot by salty players but it's not really reflective of the massive changes that have happened since then.
Also, Skywind has been 'to be released this year' for like 10 years.
Get a vertical mouse.
This is an awesome book! I remember being blown away as a kid playing Morrowind. I had no idea what was going on, and got killed by a Nix-Hound pretty quickly. But once I started to understand the mechanics and what I could do, I was blown away. I don't think many games that I have played have matched the sheer oppression and alienness of Morrowind. There are giant mushrooms everywhere. Almost no one likes you or cares about you. There are multiple political issues and maneuvering going on between the Great Houses and Guilds. It's truly a fantastic RPG.
Morrowind is my favorite game that I've never completed. I've started it a dozen times, devoured the lore, savored its truly unique setting, but I cannot get past some of the more outdated mechanics. Still, I love Morrowind nonetheless, which is saying something.
The first few levels are brutal, but after that your weapons actually start to hit things most of the time :-)
The main mechanical difference from modern games, other than that, is the lack of fast travel—but it kinda does have it, it's just in-world. The three (? IIRC? Though admittedly one is a ton of work to get) fast travel networks, the mark and recall spells, and almsivi/divine intervention, between all those there pretty much is fast travel, it's just in-world rather than a meta thing you do on the world map.
Oh, and the lack of quest markers, I suppose. You do actually have to follow the directions people give you, to find things. But that's excellent and it's a shame they took that out of the later entries.
The main mechanical difference from modern games, other than that, is the lack of fast travel—but it kinda does have it, it's just in-world. The three (? IIRC? Though admittedly one is a ton of work to get) fast travel networks, the mark and recall spells, and almsivi/divine intervention, between all those there pretty much is fast travel, it's just in-world rather than a meta thing you do on the world map.
Oh, and the lack of quest markers, I suppose. You do actually have to follow the directions people give you, to find things. But that's excellent and it's a shame they took that out of the later entries.
Don't forget Jump+Slowfall -- probably the on-average-fastest way to get anywhere.
I think it might have been my first experience being fully immersed in a world. Other games felt like they were just letting you into their playground.
This game is probably one of the reasons I still play games today. Until it, I'd only been able to play some RTS games and Zoo Tycoon, and nothing else offered me as much flexibility and immersion, especially without an internet connection on that PC. It was the first game I got in trouble for playing too much of, but hardly the last.
I'm not much of a gamer but to this day Morrowind is my all time favourite video game.
For anyone not aware of it, I strongly recommend Tamriel Rebuilt: https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/
It's a community-made mod that adds a huge amount of new content. TR itself focuses on adding mainland Morrowind to the game while there are sister projects aimed at adding other regions such as Skyrim.
For anyone not aware of it, I strongly recommend Tamriel Rebuilt: https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/
It's a community-made mod that adds a huge amount of new content. TR itself focuses on adding mainland Morrowind to the game while there are sister projects aimed at adding other regions such as Skyrim.
If you don't know it yet, make sure to read this loveletter to the game: https://www.pedestrian.tv/gaming/morrowind-is-broken-buggy-t...
Morrowind lore is deeper and more interesting than most real religions. It's incredible what they managed to achieve, there are very few games that have come close since
The idea of Morrowind always sounded cool, but I could never get into it. I think I grabbed the Xbox version for ten bucks at a Best Buy back in the day. I spent roughly a half hour designing my character, spawned on a boat, and saw a nearby treasure chest. I took stuff out of it (as one does in a freaking RPG), and was then murdered for stealing by nearby guards.
Back onto the shelf it went.
Back onto the shelf it went.
> I took stuff out of it (as one does in a freaking RPG), and was then murdered for stealing by nearby guards.
And this was a surprise to you in an RPG? Even in Ultima I back in 1981, you'd get attacked by the guards for stealing stuff in town.
And this was a surprise to you in an RPG? Even in Ultima I back in 1981, you'd get attacked by the guards for stealing stuff in town.
It was surprising to me, yes. I wouldn't say I grew up exclusively with JRPGs (I did play the Eye of Beholder games on DOS), but those were the majority. And as you're probably aware, it is perfectly acceptable in JRPGs to break into people's houses to loot everything that is not nailed to the ground, and shatter their outdoor pots in search of currency.
I think my frustration was not that stealing is a crime in the game so much as the game's UI didn't really do anything to warn me that I was stealing. If the UI had maybe coded the action in red font with "Steal plate" instead of grey text "Take plate", I probably would have reconsidered.
I think my frustration was not that stealing is a crime in the game so much as the game's UI didn't really do anything to warn me that I was stealing. If the UI had maybe coded the action in red font with "Steal plate" instead of grey text "Take plate", I probably would have reconsidered.
Not sure if you're aware, but this is exactly what Skyrim does. The on-screen prompt shows red text and "Steal plate" instead of white "Take plate". I wasn't 100% sure what triggered people to come after you though, sometimes I'd steal something and nobody would bat an eyelid. Other times I'd be on my own in a room with a closed door, steal a book or something and someone would come from the other side of the building and give me a talking to.
Yeah, there's an icon that lets you know whether you're visible while sneaking, but nothing like Skyrim's red/white indicator as to whether an item you're looking at is owned or not. Although there are nowadays mods to indicate owned items.
I understand this, but I would look upon it as a failure of all the other RPGs up to that point. You really shouldn't be able to steal from chests with little to no skill in direct sight of guards. You can come back later and loot them when you're much stronger or your sneak is up far enough or other more specific skills are high enough but you won't really need to since you'll be amazingly rich by that point anyway.
Like real life, you can't steal while people are watching :) You probably needed to level that stat, a bit also. It is deeply advantageous to play a klepto character
I remember catching the Corpus disease and then trying to cure it with the utmost urgency, as if I'm really being sick. While searching for the cure, I got that shocking message "Your case of Corprus has worsened.". I went searching on the Internet for cure and once I had the potion, I was so relieved.
The funny thing is, you really don't want to cure it too fast. It's how your character gets strong enough to achieve the god-like power the plot suggests you ought to attain.
Oh, I didn't know that. Tnx! For me, it meant the end of the game and it would require restarting the game. Next time I catch it, I'll see what it actually does.
It does the same thing it does to the others afflicted by it: it makes you strong, dumb, and slow, with the effects growing the longer you have it. This is represented in the game by causing physical base stats (str, end) to go up, and mental & agility stats to drop.
... but, crucially, when you cure it, the bonuses remain, while the penalties go away. So you can use it to pretty much max out your strength and endurance.
... but, crucially, when you cure it, the bonuses remain, while the penalties go away. So you can use it to pretty much max out your strength and endurance.
Damn I'd hoped to keep this game locked in the box I hide it in so I don't lose hours of my life to it any more...guess I'm digging it out just in time for summer :/ Goodbye sweet sweet free time. Hello Tamriel.
Morrowind was mostly a cliff racer simulation game for me. I'm surprised I still don't have nightmares from those things.
Morrowind was the last great RPG.
I miss the constant-effect levitation charms I could embed into glass armor, using grand soul gems. I suppose Bethesda had good reasons for removing that in later TES titles.
Wealth beyond measure, outlander.
Very Thank You for this book
Why is the TLD from Slovakia ? (.sk)
Is thenetsk some reference that I don't get ?
Is thenetsk some reference that I don't get ?
Looks like it's where one of the authors (Aurel) is from: https://www.thenet.sk/about
Morrowind book very thank you
Japanese
The game more than delivered on my expectations. The music still soothes me to a large degree, and the world (glass and daedric armour or houses made from giant mushrooms) was so absolutely fantastic to me.
I've always wanted to experience the exact same thing, but with present (or future) graphics. I've tried installing the various mods and rebuilds, but it never was that great an experience.
Recently I bought Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) while it was on sale, and while I think the game itself is quite boring and constantly nudging you to subscribe, I was blown away by exploring Vvardenfell. In my opinion it really captures the same mood and it's... Just. So. Beautiful!
Not quite RDR2 graphics, but it really hit a soft spot for me, seeing Seyda Neen "remastered". I can highly recommend spending the dollars/euros, simply for that dose of nostalgia :-) or simply an image search to see some of the good old scenes with modern day graphics