Yet Another Morrowind Thread

Where are her face markings?

Oh wait this is TES Online artwork. Carry on.

 

It's a shame you never see any fanart of Almalexia in that mask thing she wears during the battle. It's just hilariously weird, especially if you've got the fancy graphics mods and only catch glimpses of it in the darkness.

 

Need a Morrowind nerd to curate a big drop-in mod compendium with all the dependencies managed for people that don't wanna fuck wit it

As far as picking the right ones I trust your taste a lot more than I trust my ability to give a shit while sifting through over a decade of mods

 

Morrowind Graphics Sound Overhaul (MGSO), despite its name, includes a bunch of bugfixes and gameplay tweaks as well as just graphics.

Take care in picking the graphics options, though, because there's a 90% chance that it'll end up either looking like shit or looking good but running at about 10 FPS.

 

There's also this list.

http://btb2.free.fr/morrowind.html

Made with the intent of avoiding conflicts, it's basically a guide of how to install the guy's own HARDKORE mod + useful stuff + some graphical things, but you can skip what you aren't interested in and it'll still work.

 

Wow. Though I've had the pleasure of delving in such an install before, that is still an impressive list. *Whistles* Pity it's mostly graphical 'enhancements' though...

Gotta thank you though, as I've no doubt to be installing Morrowind again with my usual vanilla-esque combo of Bug fixes, 1st Person Armor (aka. No Motion sickness) mod, and whatever one it was that made nights dark and creepy. There's definitely a couple of gameplay mods in there that do look plenty interesting in there, so a good tip o' my hat goes to you sir.

 

I'm a pretty big defender of the average around here but liking Dragon Age 2 is beyond the pale.

 

I have to agree, DA2 was a horrible cashgrab at best, and incredibly extortionist in both its contents and its marketing. The use of constant repeat terrain, and the plot having basically no connection to an overarching storyline of the series, strikes me as an attempt to capture the audience that aSoF&I was building at the time. There are rampant disconnects between narrative(What is shown) and plot(What is implied) that are immediately obvious at the very start of the game. You fight dark spawn, you kill dark spawn, you flee the blight, you arrive in big ass city, and then it's years later, you are forced to basically accept that you have all these connections, these friends and these enemies, all while not really knowing what's going on.

This disconnect between plot and narrative is even more apparent when you consider that you can play as a mage, in this, the templar city. A city based around the oppression of magic. And you can just firebolt any old bum, and have basically no consequences, even from the get-go when you have virtually no reason to be allowed to do this. No connections that would warrant the not getting immediately rofl pwned by every templar in the city. I stopped playing about the time I used magic to murder my way through an entire templar regiment, and then had the leader of that regiment not realize I used magic to kill all of his/her men.

This was honestly done better in Morrowind. The story there had similar themes, a character forced into an area where they are a foreigner, where the locals are resisting the pull of foreign cultures. But even then in Morrowind, there were consequences inherent to nearly each major action your character takes. Certain quests become impossible, certain areas become locked for times. There's a narrative undertone that is consistent with what the plot overtly shows. And it leads to a much more consistent experience.


You could draw parallels with the more modern thief releases. Where the gameplay was technically, at least competant, but the story built up around it, the tension, the whole of the games stories, were ultimately compromised by the slipshod plots.


So yes, while to your perceptions of the game stated it wasn't flawed, there was an objective lack of effort, and speaking from both a closed system of just dark souls 2 and a comparison to some of it's peers. It was objectively flawed, and those flaws are immediately apparent if you have a single bone in your body that seeks to question what each character is doing at anyone time.

 

BIODRONES don't even like DA2. If you genuinely don't think it's bad, on the codex of all places, well. . .

 

Fixed.

At least when it comes to spellmaker.

 

This was obviously done to avoid any disconnect from the first game . I still have good memories of my cabal of blood mages, hunting blood mages, from DA:O .

Both games suffered from this. Which led to this specific "why am I playing this game again" feeling.

 

I was about to ask you to explain on that (which would no doubt result in a fairly educational rant of decent length), but after reading through the write-ups of each mod it's really funny how whenever the spellmaker is mentioned (or enchanting in general, dear lawd) you can really feel that impatience to mention how it's been 'fixed' or 'improved upon' in his own mod.

Umm, yeah, no thanks.

On the other hand, reading through that list did make me see a couple of interesting fixes/adjustments attached to mods that don't interest me, so I'll probably start a little mod to put 'em in myself. Hopefully this won't lead to a release of 'stabby's French Vanilla pack' with me going full drama queen on 'wai itz teh betters!' ...

Impending future nightmare aside though, the descriptions of HotFusion's Economy Adjuster & the Service Requirements mod make it sound like they may be worthwhile additions for my typical install. Those two do work as advertised and don't add anything super game changing, right?

 

A dark and creepy night time mod? Sounds like just the thing I need for my next playthrough, someone link me, please.

 

Question to all those who have played Tribunal and Bloodmoon.

Are these expansion worth a try, or just skip it and stick to the main game only for another replay?

 

They're both worth playing. You should use the de-boar mod for Bloodmoon, though, and Delayed DB for Tribunal. And the No-Lore mod, because every single NPC telling you to piss off to Solstrim is kind of jarring.

 

Morrowind is such a completely fucked up terrible-yet-good sum-of-its-parts game I dunno how to recommend internal elements of it... I liked them well enough when I played them but it's been ages.

 

None of the expansions has the depth of the story of the original. Tribunal introduces some improvements to how the journal works, so there's that. The Tribunal quest lacks motivation though, as both quest givers are throroughly unlikable. Combat difficulty goes up quite a bit, but who plays Morrowind for combat. Also, you can't see any goblins anymore after a while. On the plus side, you get some exposition regarding the titular powers, so there's that. Although there are enough of these "why am I doing this again" moments.

Bloodmoon is different, which may be a good thing or a bad one. It's Skyrim light. Story is flat, the land is littered with suicidal creatures, but it's quite pretty. No real connection to Morrowind though.

 

Okay, I *think* it's this one: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=609

Sorry, the reason I'm not sure is because I couldn't remember the name of it myself, and it seems it was a mod I picked up after the last time I backed up my install

Regardless, the mod I remember just made nights & caves properly dark (and I do mean proper as even with a torch I found myself getting turned around in caves I thought I knew by heart), and it works well if you extend the length of the day/night cycle. Being chased by something at night while not being able to see where you're headed because your last torch burned out and it's a long while before the sun comes out? Yes please!

 

They're both worth it, but Tribunal pisses a lot of people off because it's about 95% combat and the plot requires the player character to be a complete retard. It's worth it for the clockwork city though.

 

Tribunal is mainly awesome for 1) improved journal and 2) endless dungeon caverns that make you think of Daggerfall.

 

If you take out Hircine (but keep everything else, werewolves included), it pretty much boils down to "lolvikings".

And an easily-accessible fortify skill spells, which can transform even rag-wearing healer into a real powerhouse

 

Play them both. Tribunal is mostly dumb, but it certainly settles the issue of the Almsivi tribunal. Bloodmoon has a good location, different from the rest of Morrowind, two main quest lines, one of which is building a settlement, which is cool. Neither are as good as the main game.

 

Morrowind is the kind of game I can only recommend to people who have already played it. Otherwise I will feel bad.