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Interview critical of Bethesda RUBBED OUT

Turjan

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I sometimes have the feeling that, when people claim that Morrowind had no memorable NPC characters, they actually mean that Morrowind had no likeable NPCs. Most Morrowind NPCs are assholes. But how are, let's say, Crassius Curio or Mistress Therana no characters?
 

Mastermind

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Wunderpurps said:
Mastermind said:
I really didn't find Fallout characters memorable at all. I could namedrop a handful like Ian or Dogmeat because so much of my game time was spent in their company but as characters they weren't all that well developed at all. Fallout as a game was pretty small, and the character development was done almost entirely through conversations, which IMO is a poor way to go about it when your conversation system is shit, and the "select a line from a list" is, to me, indistinguishable from the much maligned dialogue wheel. The master was the only one who got any satisfactory development, and that was because you could read his backstory and see the results of his actions upon the game-world. In that respect he is Dagoth Ur, but without a proper supporting cast the whole game ends up falling flat on its face.

You have almost no interactivity with Dagoth Ur at all. You have no character development except reading crap. Which comes back to my comment before only someone who can't relate to people on a normal level could think that's the way things should be.

It's very much possible. :M
 

abnaxus

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Vivec and Divayth Fyr are memorable characters. Both are pretty likable and badass to the core.
 

Wunderpurps

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Turjan said:
I sometimes have the feeling that, when people claim that Morrowind had no memorable NPC characters, they actually mean that Morrowind had no likeable NPCs. Most Morrowind NPCs are assholes. But how are, let's say, Crassius Curio or Mistress Therana no characters?

It comes down to how you interact with them. If you have Abraham Lincoln in a game and his part is to say fetch me ten beaver pelts, but in the game you collect all kind of background details, it's a different thing than to have him prominently star in the game and get to know him through real interaction.

If anything I think that character driven games are generally pretty much shit because what you're really talking about is a movie most of the time. But fallout has a pretty good balance. Morrowind it's basically like I said you are only peripherally interacting with anyone. Then you have super detailed bombastic writing lore to fill in the blanks of a game which is essentially very spartan and content free.

So fallout and morrowind are polar opposites in a sense, but fallout avoids a lot of the badness of that kind of narrative by having lots of C&C. But you could say they each do their own thing very well when it comes to storytelling.
 

Sceptic

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Divinity: Original Sin
LoPan said:
I never understood the notion that The Elder Scrolls at any point had good lore. It's just swords, elves and magic, same old tripe with lesser focus than most.
Have you actually played any TES game other than Oblivion?

They never really did anything with the Dwemer
Clearly not.

I'd go into details, but that may require me to agree with Mastermind, so I think I'll stay out of this thread instead.
 

Turjan

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Wunderpurps said:
Turjan said:
I sometimes have the feeling that, when people claim that Morrowind had no memorable NPC characters, they actually mean that Morrowind had no likeable NPCs. Most Morrowind NPCs are assholes. But how are, let's say, Crassius Curio or Mistress Therana no characters?

It comes down to how you interact with them. If you have Abraham Lincoln in a game and his part is to say fetch me ten beaver pelts, but in the game you collect all kind of background details, it's a different thing than to have him prominently star in the game and get to know him through real interaction.

If anything I think that character driven games are generally pretty much shit because what you're really talking about is a movie most of the time. But fallout has a pretty good balance. Morrowind it's basically like I said you are only peripherally interacting with anyone. Then you have super detailed bombastic writing lore to fill in the blanks of a game which is essentially very spartan and content free.

So fallout and morrowind are polar opposites in a sense, but fallout avoids a lot of the badness of that kind of narrative by having lots of C&C. But you could say they each do their own thing very well when it comes to storytelling.
Hmm. I mentioned Crassius Curio. Most people remember him because of his sex drive, I guess. But if you do his quests, you may get to know a different side of him - or you may not, depending on how you solve the quests. It's not very much in your face, but it's there, and completely without having to read any background information. Heh, Morrowind even has a furry romance in it.

But sure, it's all very low key. The game doesn't really force anything on you. You cannot ask Caius Cosades whether he is a skooma addict or uses that role as a cover. I guess such vagueness isn't everyone's cup of tea.
 
In My Safe Space
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Codex 2012
The characters in Fallout that I have found memorable:
The Master
The Lieutenant
Harry
Kilian
Tycho
Ian
Katrina (the one with pretty smile)
Tandi
The guy with a shotgun by the entrance in Junktown
Gizmo
Decker
The Brotherhood entrance guys
Maxson
Doc Morbid
Iguana Bob
Garl
The leader of Regulators and the leader of the Adytum and the leader of Blades.
Patrick the Celt
Fucking ZAXX
Aradesh
The doctor in Shady Sands.
 

SCO

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
People who complain about the characters in Morrowind, i suspect are actually complaining about the quests.


Not many cannibal jerky sellers who you can blackmail in Morrowind. There are quite a lot of "bring x of y to z" though, but even these are optional and unimportant (or nightmarish, like the threads of the webspinner), so they're even more bland than usual.

The quests that are worth it standout by not being classical.


To be honest, the interface doesn't help any. The few characters that have a developed "history", you have to access by the same, obfuscating, inadequate interface.

Dialog trees all the way.
 

LoPan

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Oh dear.






Not really. Dark elves are not evil, for example. Their divinity system is not merely a rehash of romanticized paganism. They took that, twisted it and made it something new.

They made it something else. 'New' is too favourable of a word that under scrutiny ends up a fair bit too ambiguous for use in that context as what is new is usually a matter of personal experience, and I found Morrowind to be nothing but basic fantasy and from here we can only confuse ourselves.

The notion that Dark Elves are not evil is moot. Dark Elf is just a name and claiming originality (not a word you used but stick with me here) is to define by your own preconceptions. It comes down to what you do with what you made, and yes I did not finish the game, don't remember it much to be honest (which is not a good sign for any story), but when I played it I read everything I could read inside of the game and all I got was that there was a load of ancient stuff that is generally a problem. Are we really going to argue for Morrowind being a particular in the agglomeration of Fantasy RPG's?


The dwemer played a central role to the main quest's back story. That you think they "never really did anything" with them tells me more about how little you actually played the game.

Retrospectively they did something, but not actually.


None of the games had much chance to explore them since all but Arena took place in someone else's land, and Arena didn't really expand much on anything, it was just an open world dungeon crawler.

Of course, but that doesn't mean you have to entirely ignore the fact.


Spells, alchemy, enchanting, melee combat, ranged combat, sneaking, social interaction (though the latter was sorely lacking, even compared to a small, simplistic game like Fallout). The first three in particular had a staggering array of complexity, with dozens of effects and combinations.

Heavy blade is useful if you want a melee character, but enchant is by far the best and easiest weapon to use. In terms of pure efficiency it blows everything else out of the water. Long blade is a mid-tier combat ability, like marksmanship. I almost always went with medium armor, because the ebony mail is the best armor in the game and because heavy armor drags me down too much in the early game. And no magic = huge headaches. Magic is very useful, even to a melee character, because you still need it to bypass locks, fly and teleport. The tedium grows exponentially without it.

As for race, High Elves were hands down the best race in the game. There is no point in taking any sign other than atronach, so that plugged half their weakness. The rest is taken care of by absorb magic enchantments. Dark Elves... :lol:

I never did get into spells, the non-regenerating magicka was a bother I was repeatedly unwilling to surmount, but melee and ranged had little implication. Different melee weapons didn't matter, and anything but Long Blade was little but a fancy since, as I recall, long blades were the most common weapons, it could all work mind you but it didn't really matter what melee weapon you took. Ranged quickly turned to melee so that was that. Alchemy was as messy as it was in Oblivion, doable but ridiculously simple yet strenuously time-consuming and requiring a great deal of personal knowledge. You make enchanting sound like its broken. A dozen is not a lot, and you really need to look up the word 'array'. Suppose what I am getting at is that complexity is surely a bit too generous of a word.

The problem with the RPG system of Morrowind is that it seems you could do with being good at anything, hence the use of magic because it can cover all areas. The last choices after that is just sneaking or not sneaking and bow or melee or both. The system lends itself to exploit, you'll have to play the game a great deal or read a faq to know that High Elf is hands down the best race, that all but the atronach is wishy washy and that the ebony mail is the best armour, the fact that there is one greatest way to play the game is not to its favour, being an RPG, and it is an even worse sign when knowledge of the games system is to combat the exponential growth of tedium.



The most important part of a game is actually playing it, not the last five minutes. To get a different ending in Fallout other than the combat master race one requires you to put up with inane dialogue, a weak, laughable plot and considerable angst, all so you can talk the master into killing himself instead of just blowing his brains out. Morrowind's skill system is perfect for people who like to play, experiment and interact with a world big enough (both in size and depth) to make such experimentation meaningful. Coming up with new spells, new tactics to tackle obstacles, and new ways to break the game is a vastly superior experience to Gears of Fallout, and if I have to trade multiple endings for a vastly superior game the other 99% of the time, then so be it.

Of course all that is lovely, but not in all games and many have done it better than Morrowind (see Daggerfall), if it at all did any of the things you mention because I could not catch wind of them and I gave that game so many chances I sicken myself.


The RPG system of Morrowind cannot even relate to basic logic, Spear skill relates to endurance, Lockpicking to intelligence (but is raised by practice and not study), Short Blade is different from Long Blade but Long Blade includes the Claymore--can't even get the basic theory right.

Fallout:

Outdoorsman, linked to endurance and intelligence, lowers the chance of random encounters. Intellect makes sense somewhat, presumably you're good at picking up tracks of people or animals who frequent an area and stay out of the way, but endurance? Wouldn't perception make more sense?

Throwing, linked to agility. :retarded:

Big guns, linked to agility. Actually guns in general, linked to agility. Other than pulling the trigger really fast (which has virtually no effect on automatic or single shot weapons) agility has jack fuck to do with firing a weapon.

It's pretty easy to nitpick shit like that because very few games have a wide enough variety to cover everything. Morrowind fucked up by having both speed and agility as attributes, even though the words mean the same fucking thing. But Fallout has fewer attributes, and could desperately use dexterity since a lot of their skills make no fucking sense where they are. At least TES tried, Fallout just wanted to spell out "special" which is certainly one word that comes to mind when I think of its designers. :smug:

Fair enough.




The type of story Morrowind tells is that of the epic, chosen one, climactic malarky.

It appears that way, to next gen consoletards who don't really dig deep or pay attention to it.

What chosen one? From the very first lines you see in the game, whether you really are a "Chosen One" or just someone who accomplished what he did through your own will is left ambiguous.

“Each event is preceded by Prophecy.
But without the hero,
there is no Event."
-Zurin Arctus | the Underking

The player is used from the beginning, by the Emperor, by Vivec, by Azura, because he conveniently fits and also because he is clearly capable of carrying it through. I mean, there's a fucking cave full of failed nerevarines. One would think that if it was "obviously" a chosen one story, there wouldn't be any failures.

It has in-depth background (which takes reading, so I can see how you missed it). It has multiple actors that blend so well into it most people likely don't even realize they're being manipulated. It has an antagonist who's not built up as a super-genius that ends up being too fucking stupid to realize his plan would lead to the extinction of the people he's trying to save.

What the fuck is Morrowind about?

The conflict between freedom/free will versus pre-destination and a proper role in all things. Both sides are explored form their perspectives.

You have the player who usually does whatever he is told. Is he free or just a puppet on the strings of others? He player can also "prove" he is free by bypassing the normal Nerevarine process and taking Dagoth Ur out anyway without fulfilling the prophecy.

The Dwemer, who you claim they never "did anything with" are in fact very relevant to the conflict as they attempted to control a power they were not entitled to control and vanished as a result. Azura and the Box is a pretty good exposition of the Dwemer way of thought that led to their ruin, and it doesn't explicitly tell you or tie it in with the plot, it's something you have to deduce on your own.


The "Read a Novel" style, as you call it, conversation is really just a choice list of what exposition you want to read first. Probably one of the worst conversation systems I have ever seen for bringing life to character.

Its purpose is not to "bring a character to life", it's to teach you about the world. It is highly abstract and not the sort of thing you are likely to enjoy if you're not the type who wears a monocle and holds a tea cup with no more than two fingers. Characters are not "brought to life" by talking to them like in a bioware dating sim. They are brought to life through their actions which become more and more meaningful as you get deeper and deeper into the game.

I can't truly argue the story, never did finish the game, but I am glad there seems to be one. I suppose if you prefer reading exposition to dialogue then we may be of different breeds. To reiterate, I read every piece of anything I could get a hold of in Morrowind just to find anything at all to give a toss about but I'm afraid it was to no avail, I just couldn't care no matter how long I tried because it is just exposition and back story, the entire game takes place in back story. I can't recall anyone but the player ever really doing anything, they all just stood around and told you what you yourself could do. They did not speak through their actions, neither did they speak through speaking, they spoke through exposition: the most unimaginative narrative device known to western man.

It does seem the story of Morrowind is that of the faux chosen one, see Arcanum for how its done properly.


I was not bored with either, and Morrowind is my most played game of all time. I can't give you much to work with because you seem to know next to nothing about Morrowind. It's obvious you did not enjoy the game and did not put in the effort necessary to genuinely understand its story and world, and there's little I can do about that.

I can remember very little, all that expositional noise did not stick with me; then again, I'm a reader. Bill Hicks joke there I believe, of all things. I must have clocked over a hundred hours trying to play Morrowind, I gave that game more of a shot than I have ever given a game I despised in all it was. I read everything, I talked to everyone, I tried to do any quest and interact with anything but that god forsaken magicka system (and if that was my demise then don't say it as it will ruin your upholstery) and I got nothing out of it. My bother with Morrowind is not really the story, to claim it is about the story seems foolish to me because it is about the experience of an open world and it is in that I found Morrowind performed the worst; the world is large, you have to run around everywhere which destroys your fatigue, ruining melee combat when travelling; the RPG system does not lend itself to enough variety of play for an open-world game; there are no characters or personalities, only exposition and back story, making the world feel stale and lifeless, something that could have been amended with proper writing.

To argue the merits of Morrowind's story is to try and give pretentious meaning to it because the game does not tell a story, a story can be read about but it is not told. The sadness of this preposterous argument is that you are measuring Morrowind against Fallout and in the aspect of story of all things. Fallout tells a story, Morrowind is an open-world RPG like its predecessors and it should be compared to its predecessor as that is what it came from, and Morrowind is a dumbed down version of Daggerfall. Bethany already made Morrowind better and then, sadly, they made Morrowind.




SCO said:
People who complain about the characters in Morrowind, i suspect are actually complaining about the quests.


Not many cannibal jerky sellers who you can blackmail in Morrowind. There are quite a lot of "bring x of y to z" though, but even these are optional and unimportant (or nightmarish, like the threads of the webspinner), so they're even more bland than usual.

The quests that are worth it standout by not being classical.


To be honest, the interface doesn't help any. The few characters that have a developed "history", you have to access by the same, obfuscating, inadequate interface.

Dialog trees all the way.

I find this agreeable.
 

Turjan

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LoPan said:
The dwemer played a central role to the main quest's back story. That you think they "never really did anything" with them tells me more about how little you actually played the game.

Retrospectively they did something, but not actually.
So, how did your talk with the Dwemer go?

LoPan said:
Ranged quickly turned to melee so that was that.
Not really. Ranged was a viable choice. A bit fiddly in the beginning, though. Very good afterwards.

LoPan said:
Alchemy was as messy as it was in Oblivion, doable but ridiculously simple yet strenuously time-consuming and requiring a great deal of personal knowledge. You make enchanting sound like its broken. A dozen is not a lot, and you really need to look up the word 'array'. Suppose what I am getting at is that complexity is surely a bit too generous of a word.
Both were much more capable than in Oblvion. For better or worse. My mage didn't need them much, though.

LoPan said:
I must have clocked over a hundred hours trying to play Morrowind, I gave that game more of a shot than I have ever given a game I despised in all it was.

...you have to run around everywhere which destroys your fatigue, ruining melee combat when travelling; the RPG system does not lend itself to enough variety of play for an open-world game.
And you see, these two statements don't go well with each other. If, after 100 hours of gameplay, your fatigue still dragged you down, you made something very basic very wrong, even without using any help from alchemy or enchantment. You could jump over mountain ranges and just run from one end of the map to the other in less than 5 minutes. Not sure what you did there. You didn't even need to use the multiple fast travel systems the game had anymore.

LoPan said:
To argue the merits of Morrowind's story is to try and give pretentious meaning to it because the game does not tell a story, a story can be read about but it is not told.
No. You learned of these things in conversations. Even if you read a book, you were told to do so at that point. Which isn't really much different in a game where conversations are mostly just textual, anyway.

I have the strong feeling you are just bullshitting yourself through the conversation in this thread. You won't hear me defend the pretty much lifeless NPC world in this game, as that's a given. But I still get the impression you don't really know what you are talking about in most of the points you want to make.
 

abnaxus

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Turjan said:
As Mastermind already mentioned, you will only feel like the "Chosen One" if you don't pay attention. You are the tool of a petty revenge, and only then if you make it happen. The one who set the Neverarine prophecy into the world tries to make sure it's actually happening. She produces "Nerevarines" by the numbers (there are even quests to get rid of others), until one of them succeeds, which makes it pretty obvious that you get abused. It's also strongly hinted at that the "big, bad evil" is actually a victim himself. If you finish the mainquest, not everything is sunshine, even if it might seem so. In the same swipe that removed the big threat, you deprived the people of Morrowind of its protectors. Not everyone is happy about that.

The only people who are really thankful towards you are the dreamers. They wake up from their nightmares when you remove the respective Dagoth that enthralled them. The rest behaves indifferently towards you. But this is not a failure of the game, it's by design. The whole game is deeply cynical.
Azura's prophecy was "fake", but the PC is still mentioned in an Elder Scroll (the reason why Uriel Septim VII even bothers to send you), so is still a Chosen One.
 

.Sigurd

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abnaxus said:
Turjan said:
As Mastermind already mentioned, you will only feel like the "Chosen One" if you don't pay attention. You are the tool of a petty revenge, and only then if you make it happen. The one who set the Neverarine prophecy into the world tries to make sure it's actually happening. She produces "Nerevarines" by the numbers (there are even quests to get rid of others), until one of them succeeds, which makes it pretty obvious that you get abused. It's also strongly hinted at that the "big, bad evil" is actually a victim himself. If you finish the mainquest, not everything is sunshine, even if it might seem so. In the same swipe that removed the big threat, you deprived the people of Morrowind of its protectors. Not everyone is happy about that.

The only people who are really thankful towards you are the dreamers. They wake up from their nightmares when you remove the respective Dagoth that enthralled them. The rest behaves indifferently towards you. But this is not a failure of the game, it's by design. The whole game is deeply cynical.
Azura's prophecy was "fake", but the PC is still mentioned in an Elder Scroll (the reason why Uriel Septim VII even bothers to send you), so is still a Chosen One.
If you follow this logic everyone is Chosen One since the destiny of every single person is written on the Elder Scrolls.
Correct me if I'm wrong but people that achieved CHIM like Vivec, Uriel and the player aren't supposed to not be cited on the Elder Scrollls since they can free themselves from the dream of the godhead and forge their own patch?
 

abnaxus

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.Sigurd said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but people that achieved CHIM like Vivec, Uriel and the player aren't supposed to not be cited on the Elder Scrollls since they can free themselves from the dream of the godhead and forge their own patch?
But very few persons' "destiny" would impact the history of Tamriel, unlike with main characters from the games.
 

Turjan

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abnaxus said:
Turjan said:
As Mastermind already mentioned, you will only feel like the "Chosen One" if you don't pay attention. You are the tool of a petty revenge, and only then if you make it happen. The one who set the Neverarine prophecy into the world tries to make sure it's actually happening. She produces "Nerevarines" by the numbers (there are even quests to get rid of others), until one of them succeeds, which makes it pretty obvious that you get abused. It's also strongly hinted at that the "big, bad evil" is actually a victim himself. If you finish the mainquest, not everything is sunshine, even if it might seem so. In the same swipe that removed the big threat, you deprived the people of Morrowind of its protectors. Not everyone is happy about that.

The only people who are really thankful towards you are the dreamers. They wake up from their nightmares when you remove the respective Dagoth that enthralled them. The rest behaves indifferently towards you. But this is not a failure of the game, it's by design. The whole game is deeply cynical.
Azura's prophecy was "fake", but the PC is still mentioned in an Elder Scroll (the reason why Uriel Septim VII even bothers to send you), so is still a Chosen One.
If your character decides to follow everything all those instigators around you who push you to follow the letters of the prophecy tell you to do, yes, then your character will be the Chosen One :smug:. This construct is devious and beautiful at the same time.
 

LoPan

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And you see, these two statements don't go well with each other. If, after 100 hours of gameplay, your fatigue still dragged you down, you made something very basic very wrong, even without using any help from alchemy or enchantment. You could jump over mountain ranges and just run from one end of the map to the other in less than 5 minutes. Not sure what you did there. You didn't even need to use the multiple fast travel systems the game had anymore.

To jump over mountain ranges and run from one end of the map to the other in 5 minutes are two things I can only imagine, within the confines of the game, to be doable with magic or certain special items. Neither of which speaks well to the games design.

I like to think having spent 100 hours on the game is an overestimation but over the years that I have returned to it, and that one month I came back and forth on it trying as I could because I had nothing else to do. 100 hours is probably all too accurate, mind you those hours were stretched across time, I doubt you could spend 100 hours in one sitting with a game whilst you dislike it all the way.

I had a terrible time with the game in a time when I was having a terrible time and that does colour ones perception of something, but I dare say that if I tried as hard as I did to get into that game and I could not find anything and was given nothing and I am one who prefer my games slow and boring then I cannot help but wonder if something else besides my own situation was fundamentally awry.

I have the strong feeling you are just bullshitting yourself through the conversation in this thread. You won't hear me defend the pretty much lifeless NPC world in this game, as that's a given. But I still get the impression you don't really know what you are talking about in most of the points you want to make.

This whole thing started when Mastermind made a dubious claim about the story. I did not remember much of the story of Morrowind but that it was similative to Fallout seemed entirely preposterous, so I put my preconceptions on the line to be harshly judged, it is the way things are done around here I find. Thankfully my preconceptions of Morrowind's story proved false, and that is good as you must well know, preconceptions being dusty old things and of no actual use. Sadly the whole ordeal has now devolved into a series of generic qualifying phrases, insult, accusation and conveniently favourable assumptions.

I derive my meaning of the word 'bullshit' from how I have heard Americans apply it, which is to accuse something of being an obvious and audacious lie. I may have been wrong, but to call me a bullshitter is rather manish don't you think?

I suppose in the end I don't really know what I am getting at, the only point I'd raise is that Morrowind is a dumbed down Daggerfall and that its RPG system is rather on the flimsy side.
 

Turjan

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LoPan said:
And you see, these two statements don't go well with each other. If, after 100 hours of gameplay, your fatigue still dragged you down, you made something very basic very wrong, even without using any help from alchemy or enchantment. You could jump over mountain ranges and just run from one end of the map to the other in less than 5 minutes. Not sure what you did there. You didn't even need to use the multiple fast travel systems the game had anymore.

To jump over mountain ranges and run from one end of the map to the other in 5 minutes are two things I can only imagine, within the confines of the game, to be doable with magic or certain special items. Neither of which speaks well to the games design.
Yes, some items would help. But nevertheless, fatigue would be no problem with an advanced character, even without items. Regarding the game design, the system has no checks or balances. If you want, you can make yourself completely invulnerable, unhittable and one-shot everything with spells. So you could say that it's a design problem that the game relies on the player to not abuse the system. But if I understood you correctly, you never got that far in the game to actually observe this feature.

LoPan said:
I dare say that if I tried as hard as I did to get into that game and I could not find anything and was given nothing and I am one who prefer my games slow and boring then I cannot help but wonder if something else besides my own situation was fundamentally awry.
Hmm, I wonder what "slow and boring" games you prefer then. But yes, the start of Morrowind is slow. One thing that was not well done was that, although I like the "learning by doing" method, skills only rose with successful use and not with failures. As some of the skills had very low success rates, the low ranks were very slow to raise. That's one of the few things where Oblivion did it better.

LoPan said:
Thankfully my preconceptions of Morrowind's story proved false, and that is good as you must well know, preconceptions being dusty old things and of no actual use. Sadly the whole ordeal has now devolved into a series of generic qualifying phrases, insult, accusation and conveniently favourable assumptions.

I derive my meaning of the word 'bullshit' from how I have heard Americans apply it, which is to accuse something of being an obvious and audacious lie. I may have been wrong, but to call me a bullshitter is rather manish don't you think?
Not sure what "manish" means, but you should not be surprised if you get called out on making factually false statements of a game while claiming you know it well enough (well, at least I took your "100 hours" statement as such before you clarified it in your last post). I would have never said anything if you just didn't like the game, as there's no accounting for taste. But it does not look good if you base your dislike on wrong assumptions about the game. I guess you will still not like it with full knowledge, but some of your harshest criticisms were just misattributed. No more no less.

LoPan said:
I suppose in the end I don't really know what I am getting at, the only point I'd raise is that Morrowind is a dumbed down Daggerfall and that its RPG system is rather on the flimsy side.
You know, if you now just had said that Morrowind's RPG system is dumbed down from Daggerfall, there wouldn't have been any contest, because that's how it is. There's no climbing, and a few other things got lost. But "Morrowind is a dumbed down Daggerfall"? No. This just shows that you don't know the game.
 

LoPan

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Yes, some items would help. But nevertheless, fatigue would be no problem with an advanced character, even without items. Regarding the game design, the system has no checks or balances. If you want, you can make yourself completely invulnerable, unhittable and one-shot everything with spells. So you could say that it's a design problem that the game relies on the player to not abuse the system. But if I understood you correctly, you never got that far in the game to actually observe this feature.

Hmm, I wonder what "slow and boring" games you prefer then. But yes, the start of Morrowind is slow. One thing that was not well done was that, although I like the "learning by doing" method, skills only rose with successful use and not with failures. As some of the skills had very low success rates, the low ranks were very slow to raise. That's one of the few things where Oblivion did it better.

I got as far as the arse-end of getting the tribes together, not sure if I should've solved the fatigue problem by then. I was using heavy armour, but I doubt that would be a problem with however the fatigue problem was solved beyond mandatory employ of high endurance.

What I meant to point out with 'slow and boring' was that I am generally averse to fast-paced games, and that I enjoy a game that expects you to take its time understanding it.

Not sure what "manish" means, but you should not be surprised if you get called out on making factually false statements of a game while claiming you know it well enough (well, at least I took your "100 hours" statement as such before you clarified it in your last post). I would have never said anything if you just didn't like the game, as there's no accounting for taste. But it does not look good if you base your dislike on wrong assumptions about the game. I guess you will still not like it with full knowledge, but some of your harshest criticisms were just misattributed. No more no less.

You know, if you now just had said that Morrowind's RPG system is dumbed down from Daggerfall, there wouldn't have been any contest, because that's how it is. There's no climbing, and a few other things got lost. But "Morrowind is a dumbed down Daggerfall"? No. This just shows that you don't know the game.

I was not aware I was exhibiting surprise, I was going for delight, and I never claimed to know the game well enough, in fact I repeatedly claimed I could not remember it all too well. What does irk me however is to be dismissed with phrases like "you don't know the game", if you do you should be able to destroy me with wondrous knowledge. From knowledge of something you usually gain a greater understanding; I prefer to be put in my place to being dismissed by a say-so. If what I write here colours me a fool to you then surely you should know why that is, as it is usually the fool who doesn't.

"Morrowind is a dumbed down Daggerfall", not sure how that took offence since you previously agreed with me. Perhaps the phrasing is not right, or are you getting at Morrowind, in some aspects, being better than Daggerfall and that solely the RPG system of Morrowind was dumbed down from Daggerfall?

Manish is rather obscure; the assurance to accuse someone's character from a perceived--often recently perceived--gain of higher ground, but don't worry, it's probably all assumption.

The odd thing I have observed through this is that though a vouch and decent enough argument for the story of Morrowind exists, there seems to be no redeemable qualities about the gameplay except in theory and not actual execution, not sure a single good thing was said or unearthed about it that wasn't preferential. The one thing holding me back the most when playing Morrowind was the actual gameplay, the advanced, proper, way of which seems to either be exploit or flimsy design. The only argument I can fathom that remains for the merit of Morrowind is that the story makes up for the gameplay, unless of course you like that sort of thing. I have enjoyed a great many flawed game designs in my time, knowing all the flaws and exploits can be rather entertaining in some cases.

If the gameplay of Morrowind truly does end in exploit and abuse then you'd assume someone playing it for the first time would enjoy it the most, not having been spoiled by the full details of the gameplay. Though from what has been said so far of it, that does not seem the case.

I will return to Morrowind now, after all this I have become strangely intrigued, and though I will try once again, hopefully with a new and more useful perspective, to fathom the appeal of it, as it stands it is entirely a mystery to me, especially considering that Daggerfall is readily available yet curiously disowned from these sort of discourses.
 

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LoPan said:
They made it something else. 'New' is too favourable of a word that under scrutiny ends up a fair bit too ambiguous for use in that context as what is new is usually a matter of personal experience, and I found Morrowind to be nothing but basic fantasy and from here we can only confuse ourselves.

I think that if you found it to be "basic fantasy", it doesn't speak well to your ability to acquire experience. :smug:

don't remember it much to be honest (which is not a good sign for any story)

Isolated from context that is true. But right now, the context is:

a) Someone who does not know much about the story does not find it memorable.
b) Someone who took the time to understand it does.

I would say this is an excellent sign for a free world game's story. Games are not books, nor should they be.

I never did get into spells, the non-regenerating magicka was a bother I was repeatedly unwilling to surmount, but melee and ranged had little implication. Different melee weapons didn't matter, and anything but Long Blade was little but a fancy since, as I recall, long blades were the most common weapons, it could all work mind you but it didn't really matter what melee weapon you took.

It did. While melee combat was far from complex, heavier weapons could stagger enemies more, daggers could hit faster (which works well if they're enchanted), not to mention that the black hands dagger was the best weapon in the game.

Ranged quickly turned to melee so that was that.

Not for me. :smug:

Alchemy was as messy as it was in Oblivion, doable but ridiculously simple yet strenuously time-consuming and requiring a great deal of personal knowledge.

How is it "ridiculously simple"? As far as RPGs go I can't think of one with more complex alchemy. Usually it's just mix ingredient a with ingredient b. Morrowind has different ingredients with a multitude of effects which you have to discover and combine on your own. It's the alchemical equivalent of drawing your own map.

Note that I don't particularly like the Morrowind/Oblivion alchemy system, but it's not complexity that it lacks.

You make enchanting sound like its broken. A dozen is not a lot, and you really need to look up the word 'array'. Suppose what I am getting at is that complexity is surely a bit too generous of a word.

Enchanting is broken. So is alchemy actually, but that's another issue altogether.

Also, I did not say "a dozen". I said "dozens". 137 different effects to be exact. This of course does not take into account other factors like spell duration, magnitude, type, etc. Again, not the best system, but in terms of complexity blows most RPGs out of the water and easily dwarfs simplistic shit like Fallout with its array of dysfunctional skills and the few that have any degree of complexity (pretty much just guns) still not able to hold a candle to Morrowind's near countless options.

The problem with the RPG system of Morrowind is that it seems you could do with being good at anything, hence the use of magic because it can cover all areas. The last choices after that is just sneaking or not sneaking and bow or melee or both.

Invisibility covers sneaking quite well. Balance-wise Morrowind is a mess, no doubt, but that's to be expected with a game that offers so much variety. The point wasn't that they are all equally effective, but you can play just about anything in Morrowind (except a diplomat, which is just as well given how terribly the option is implemented in games like fallout), and it will work.

The system lends itself to exploit, you'll have to play the game a great deal or read a faq to know that High Elf is hands down the best race, that all but the atronach is wishy washy and that the ebony mail is the best armour, the fact that there is one greatest way to play the game is not to its favour, being an RPG, and it is an even worse sign when knowledge of the games system is to combat the exponential growth of tedium.

There is always one greatest way to play the game. In Fallout it was combat. The speech resolution was downright retarded and all three paths end the exact same way so there's no reason for me to put up with its atrocious speech or sneak system when I can watch the very well done death animations over and over and over instead.

:yeah:


Of course all that is lovely, but not in all games and many have done it better than Morrowind (see Daggerfall),

Eh? Daggerfall did not do it better. The density of useful skills was much lower (rivaled Fallout's, actually), the spell system was largely inferior, as was the alchemy which was pretty much just "fetch x ingredients to create y" where y is a limited selection of potions to choose from. I literally cannot think of anything Daggerfall has that Morrowind doesn't have, other than climbing. I'll spare you a complete rant about what a shitty game Daggerfall is.

It does seem the story of Morrowind is that of the faux chosen one, see Arcanum for how its done properly.

I would, if only Arcanum was a game instead of a torture device. In that regard it is the second coming of Daggerfall.


I can remember very little, all that expositional noise did not stick with me; then again, I'm a reader. Bill Hicks joke there I believe, of all things. I must have clocked over a hundred hours trying to play Morrowind, I gave that game more of a shot than I have ever given a game I despised in all it was. I read everything, I talked to everyone, I tried to do any quest and interact with anything but that god forsaken magicka system (and if that was my demise then don't say it as it will ruin your upholstery) and I got nothing out of it. My bother with Morrowind is not really the story, to claim it is about the story seems foolish to me because it is about the experience of an open world and it is in that I found Morrowind performed the worst; the world is large, you have to run around everywhere which destroys your fatigue, ruining melee combat when travelling; the RPG system does not lend itself to enough variety of play for an open-world game; there are no characters or personalities, only exposition and back story, making the world feel stale and lifeless, something that could have been amended with proper writing.

To argue the merits of Morrowind's story is to try and give pretentious meaning to it because the game does not tell a story, a story can be read about but it is not told. The sadness of this preposterous argument is that you are measuring Morrowind against Fallout and in the aspect of story of all things. Fallout tells a story, Morrowind is an open-world RPG like its predecessors and it should be compared to its predecessor as that is what it came from, and Morrowind is a dumbed down version of Daggerfall. Bethany already made Morrowind better and then, sadly, they made Morrowind.

That's funny, the usual reply I get from Fallout fanboys when I criticize the story is that "fallout is not known for the story, it's all about the C&C mang *snorts more coke*".

I never said it was about the story, I said you were horribly misrepresenting the story due to ignorance, which you yourself admit. You do not like the presentation, and there is little I can do about that. On my end I prefer reading walls of generic text to listening to some pretentious fuck's pseudo-philosophical drivel or attempts at reproducing a real, living world. It seems that a lot of the codex has something of a fetish for games that merely do something, regardless of whether they do it well or not.
 

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Mastermind said:
The point wasn't that they are all equally effective, but you can play just about anything in Morrowind (except a diplomat, which is just as well given how terribly the option is implemented in games like fallout), and it will work.
I'm not sure what exactly you mean with "diplomat", but I noticed one thing about Morrowind: You can solve many quests in a non-violent way. The first time, I made the mistake of playing the game as a Dunmer with the pure mage class. A double mistake, so to speak. I noticed the error early, but decided to stick to the char. He was pretty incompetent in many fights up to level 17 or so, which meant I had to find other ways to solve quests than just to kill the target. Which worked surprisingly well.
 

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SCO said:
Dialog trees all the way.

Dialog trees are the health regeneration and cover of interpersonal interaction in video games. The sooner it dies, the better. A monocle character interaction interface should look like the dashboard of a 747.
 

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Turjan said:
Mastermind said:
The point wasn't that they are all equally effective, but you can play just about anything in Morrowind (except a diplomat, which is just as well given how terribly the option is implemented in games like fallout), and it will work.
I'm not sure what exactly you mean with "diplomat", but I noticed one thing about Morrowind: You can solve many quests in a non-violent way. The first time, I made the mistake of playing the game as a Dunmer with the pure mage class. A double mistake, so to speak. I noticed the error early, but decided to stick to the char. He was pretty incompetent in many fights up to level 17 or so, which meant I had to find other ways to solve quests than just to kill the target. Which worked surprisingly well.

I was thinking of the speechcraft and mercantile skills. Money is abundant so you don't even have to abuse illusion to get a high disposition out of people since you can just bribe them instead. And the best merchants don't give a shit about your mercantile skill.

You're right though, a lot of quests (though by no mean all) can be solved by just talking to people.
 

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LoPan said:
"Morrowind is a dumbed down Daggerfall", not sure how that took offence since you previously agreed with me. Perhaps the phrasing is not right, or are you getting at Morrowind, in some aspects, being better than Daggerfall and that solely the RPG system of Morrowind was dumbed down from Daggerfall?
Yes, I think Morrowind did a few things better than Daggerfall. I liked Morrowind's handcrafted dungeons better than those endless corridors in Daggerfall, but of course this will depend on how your patience for dungeon-crawling is. I also liked the faction dynamics in MW (even if the word "dynamics" might sound strange with regard to MW :D). Leave the main quest alone for a while. Also, don't do the boring factions, like the Imperial Cult or Redoran. Not all factions are as interesting as Telvanni, but I also liked the Temple quests (some people hate them with a passion, though). The Legion has some more interesting late quests, the Fighter's Guild quests have some twist (well, not too surprising, though), the Mages Guild gives you some insight into Dwemer (not much beyond the main quest, though), and even Hlaalu quests are not as dry-cut as they might seem, and you might miss the nuances if you are used to getting stumped with your nose on every detail.

LoPan said:
I will return to Morrowind now, after all this I have become strangely intrigued, and though I will try once again, hopefully with a new and more useful perspective, to fathom the appeal of it, as it stands it is entirely a mystery to me, especially considering that Daggerfall is readily available yet curiously disowned from these sort of discourses.
I admire your resolve, but I'm not very hopeful that you will like the game this time. Especially if you loved Daggerfall.
 

Turjan

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Mastermind said:
I was thinking of the speechcraft and mercantile skills. Money is abundant so you don't even have to abuse illusion to get a high disposition out of people since you can just bribe them instead. And the best merchants don't give a shit about your mercantile skill.

You're right though, a lot of quests (though by no mean all) can be solved by just talking to people.
Uh, Mercantile. A typical case of "modders will fix it" :D.
 
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Modders did fix it, or at least made it bearable. I remember playing vanilla MW the first time, I went into Arrile's shop first thing and got out fully fitted with the best armor and weapon available, something not even jrpgs let you do.
 

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