Interview Bethesda Q&A at GameBanshee

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon

<a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/">GameBanshe</a> has posted <A href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/morrowind2-1.php">another interview</A> with <b>Todd Howard</b> about <A href="Http://www.morrowind.com">Morrowind</a> as well as <A href="http://pirates.bethsoft.com/main.html">Sea Pirate Dogs of the Carribean 2</a>. Here's a bit of fun:
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<blockquote><b>GB: With Bloodmoon about to start shipping, how do you feel looking back at the huge success of Morrowind and its expansions? If you could do it all over again, would you do anything differently?
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Todd:</b> We?re ecstatic with the way everything came out. We hit our dates with quality products, and the expansions were a blast to create. It?s nice to work with a code-base and tool-set that is stable and tested. Anything different? Oh sure, always. We?re our own worst critics. Nothing is ever perfect in our eyes, so we can look at almost any part of the game and find some way of improving it. </blockquote>
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That beats the typical <a href="Http://www.bioware.com">BioWare</a> answer, which is <i>Everything we do is the best thing EVER! It's hard for us because we're so perfect!</i>
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Spotted this at <A href="Http://www.shacknews.com">ShackNews</a>.

 

[Psilon]

Yeah, because look at their expansions.

Tribunal had a pretty good political story, more items, another big city, NPC followers, and they listened to the fans. Everyone had complained about the journal, so they added quest sorting--even for the original game.

Bloodmoon (which I don't have) added another faction, a stronghold, the lycanthropy everyone's been asking for since Daggerfall, meaningful reactions to said lycanthropy, and another large island.

SoU has another average NWN story that seems slightly better than the OC, grenades (which had already been pseudo-implemented in Witch's Wake), four munchkin prestige classes, one useless prestige class, a few easy-to-code spells, a few feats, and three more tilesets.

HotU looks lke it's going to be epic levels, more spells, and thousands of Drow to kill and/or seduce.

Also, compared to BioWare, they're much looser on hard-coded stuff in the engine. Extra spells, spellcasting classes, and whatnot seem a lot easier to implement in Morrowind.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Not to mention that TES editor is much more capable in terms of game enhancement, customizations, quests, locations, and every fucking little thing that crazy modders can think of.

 

[Astromarine]

The main advantage of Morrowind over NWN in terms of modding is the following: in MW, every single mod, quest, landmass, etc is in one, continuous, world. You can have mods that do nothing but change a couple variables for balance, and huge quest mods, and playing one will not prevent you from having the other. I have started Morrowind games with over 50 mods, and I've heard of people who did it with close to 200. All at once, all non-conflicting.

 

[Volourn]

Yeah. The same ugly, boring world. Thumbs up to that.

 

[Psilon]

What? Note that Morrowind has more than two architectural styles when in town, and Vvardenfell has more outdoor terrain types than just forest and grassland.

 

[Astromarine]

Volourn, I respected your intelligent discussions of NWN's strengths, so please don't destroy that respect by spouting off nonsense. Morrowind is not Half-Life-2 pretty, but it very damn well wallops "generic town #3" in NWN to the fucking *ground*. But even if you simply disagree on the graphic quality (BTW, try the NPC replacer 3.15 mod for pretty-head-goodness, the face models in the game are the worst graphical feature of it) you cannot argue that in terms of modding an RPG, it's a lot better to extend a character's choices to explore one world than having every single little location be a separate module. In Morrowind *one* character can experience the OC, both expansions, and ALL of the mods without any "warping around".

 

[Volourn]

Huh? I just find MW ugly is all. As as the mods in one world vs. mods in different world; I prefer NWN's method because that way you aren't limit to a player's conception of Bethesda's world. Plus, I don't want to be forced to play in the OC multitude of times - espicially considering I could barely stand MW for 2 or so hours.

As far as comparing MW and NWN's tool kits; I honestly can't since I have neevr touched MW's; nore have I tried any of its mods. on't plan to. It's campaign was so awful or at least what I played of it; I couldn't stomach the game anymore.


Psilom, while it is true, that NWN is limited in variety due to tielset; I am still impressed by what modders have done with it. It's only a bad mod that makes me feel the "been there; done that" gut feeling.

Astro: Calling me intelligent? Them's fighting words. And, words many would disagree with.

Anyways, I should stop this as I've gone too far. I don't really discussing games to death when I'm not a fan of them. I'd rather forget.

 

[Elwro]

Huh? I just find MW ugly is all. As as the mods in one world vs. mods in different world; I prefer NWN's method because that way you aren't limit to a player's conception of Bethesda's world.

I don't understand. Could you elaborate on this subject? If you don't like one player's conception of Bethesda's world, just don't play his mod - there are more than 1600 others.
But I think you wanted to say something else, which I couldn't grasp...

Plus, I don't want to be forced to play in the OC multitude of times - espicially considering I could barely stand MW for 2 or so hours.

No one forces you to play OC again. If for example a guy created a new guild on a new island, this island just appears in the game. If you don't like the main quest you can forget all about it.

As far as comparing MW and NWN's tool kits; I honestly can't since I have neevr touched MW's; nore have I tried any of its mods. on't plan to. It's campaign was so awful or at least what I played of it; I couldn't stomach the game anymore.
.

I tried both and I found MW's tools to be more usable; but I have to admit that I didn't dwell deep into Aurora's secrets.

Come on, dropping the game after 2 hours means that you *MIGHT* still enjoy it sometime and realise you just had a bad day or a weak computer.
And if there's one thing that cannot be said about MW it's that it has ugly graphics. Even on my GeForce 2 MX it beats all other games hands down.

EDIT: of course, de gustibus non disputandum est (or sth).

 

[EEVIAC]

I always get the feeling that I'm missing something important in Morrowind because I don't get to see all of its graphical features running at a steady clip (on a computer that scores over 10 000 3D Marks (01 SE)). I have very little idea of what the actual game is like, beyond a dozen or so fed-ex quests from Balmora. I did spend a week or so with a hacked character, running around the island and visiting cities and tombs. I guess I got my money's worth, but not in the way that was probably originally intended. Its a testament to the world they created that I stayed that interested in the game just looking at things.

And the combat was horrible, maybe that's why I chose the explorers path. I'd love a Morrowind expansion that was entirely non-combat based, with similar career paths to those suggested in Hajo's planned space trader.

 

[triCritical]

Huh? I just find MW ugly is all. As as the mods in one world vs. mods in different world; I prefer NWN's method because that way you aren't limit to a player's conception of Bethesda's world. Plus, I don't want to be forced to play in the OC multitude of times - espicially considering I could barely stand MW for 2 or so hours.

What? You don't want to be forced to Bethsoft's world, but your OK being forced with Biowares world. I mean there are only a few types of buildings, walkways, everything is flat.. I mean there is know curvature. The fact is no matter how many times you mod NWN it will still look the same. If I make a BG mod, then a BG2 mod, and an IWD mod, all the cities and outdoor areas will look exactly alike, you are alwauy forced into Biowares look of a generic game.

MW on the other hand looks vastly different from regeon to region and contrary to popular belief has an enormous color palette. The swamps look different then mountains, which look different then the deserts, which look different then the forest, which look different then the islands, which look different then Bloodmood. Not to mention the 4-5 distinct architectual types for towns. The dungeons are a bit redundant, but they always have neet surprises, which is something that was lacking in NWN.

 

[Volourn]

Geez.. I don't really want to get into a Mw debate here because it's just not mucp of my tea; but golly; I'm not one to avoid debates...

Elwro: The lsland may appear, and it may be different. However, in order to get there you have to travel through the pre made areas.

With NWN, if one hates the OC (which many do); you can COMPELETLY have nothing to do with it when downloading mods since they are completely within the mod.

Also, of note, it is very possible to make mods to be incorporated into the OC if one wishes. There are mods that do this. Some greatly improved the henchmen; others supposedly in the works also make the game tighter by ridding the OC of the various garbage stuff.

So, in this NWN gives you more choice than MW as you get the best of both worlds if you so choose.

Sorry. I stopped playing MW after 2 hours as I ahted it. Period. There ave only been 3-5 games that Ihave ever atually done that. MW is just one of the few. And, sorry, MW's graphics are ugly to me and I also have a GeForce2 vid card. I won't be giving it another chance.

Tri: Huh? What graphics does this have to with this point? See above for that. I have more thana few mods; the goods ones do not look the same. Period. Only the bad ones aren't original enough to at least make things feel different. NWN graphics at least don't make me want to puke.

Surprised in MW? Not from what I saw, and what I have heard from unbiased people. Hmmm...

Also, of note, since we are talking modding, surprises aren't lacking in NWN if the modder does their jobs. As far as OC's go; sorry MW loses big time.

 

[Psilon]

Elwro: The lsland may appear, and it may be different. However, in order to get there you have to travel through the pre made areas.

No you don't. Not only can you move the game's start location so you start in the new island, but you can also just dump a teleport ring in Seyda Neen or Balmora which zaps you off to the island.

Also, of note, it is very possible to make mods to be incorporated into the OC if one wishes. There are mods that do this. Some greatly improved the henchmen; others supposedly in the works also make the game tighter by ridding the OC of the various garbage stuff.

From an engineering perspective, the way these OC mods are generally done is frightful. Unless you're tweaking some 2DAs, you effectively have to create an entirely new copy of the module. As a result, there's no real way to combine OC mods without manually merging the changes. Morrowind lets me play a game halfway through then add arbitrary mods at will.

Tri: Huh? What graphics does this have to with this point? See above for that. I have more thana few mods; the goods ones do not look the same. Period. Only the bad ones aren't original enough to at least make things feel different. NWN graphics at least don't make me want to puke.

They're not completely hideous, but Wizardry 8, Dungeon Siege, and Morrowind all kick NWN's ass when it comes to them three-dee graphics. If BioWare doesn't redo all the models for NWN2 they'll lose the graphics whores (including the majority of the gaming press) immediately. It's obvious they started doing the graphics in 1999; the polycounts are way too low for today's standards.

 

[triCritical]

I have more thana few mods; the goods ones do not look the same. Period. Only the bad ones aren't original enough to at least make things feel different. NWN graphics at least don't make me want to puke.

They all come from the same overly limited set of tiles. How could they possibly look any different. I don't think so!

BTW, at least MW graphics don't want to make me puke! That was brought to you by how to make a senseless and stupid argument for 13 year olds. Good one.

 

[Volourn]

Psion: Nice thing about that changing start points. At least that makes it much easier.

I wouldn't know how difficult it is t change things with the OC as I wouldn't bother with such. Heck, I haven't even downloaded the mods for it as I'd rather play new stuff.

The mods I play for NWN are actually full fledge games themselves - just using the engine. Those are the ones I prefer.

I agree that DS ha sbeen graphics. I haven't played W8 so I can't comment on it. As for MW, sorry, I just don't it. I find them ugly. Though; I must say I am not a fan of NWN character models. They definitely don't impress me.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Common, Volourn, play fair. MW has many shortcomings that we discussed here http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1123, but graphics always were the strongest undisputable point. You are not blind, and your card was not THAT bad, so why are you so biased? If you say that you don't like faces, that would be one thing, but to claim that the overall graphics are ugly :shock: is .... simply not true.

Out of curiosity, you said that you played only 2 hours and hated it. While 2 hours is a very short time to evaluate such a huge game, I want argue that as we all have things that we like and things that we hate, but let me ask you, beside the graphics, was there anything else in particular that resulted in such a strong emotion?

 

[Elwro]

Well actually, repeatedly telling Volourn that MW graphic is OK isn't going to make him like it. A few more times and he'll hate the game even more.
Volourn: can you tell me what 'full fledged games' (being mods for NWN) you found interesting (as you've said above)? Is for example Eye of the Beholder any good? [I still love this game... I hear it got released on GBA, too.]

 

[Vault Dweller]

Well, I'm not asking Volourn to like MW just as I did not ask him to hate NWN, and I'm not even talking to Volourn, I'm trying to reach Volourn's common sense I'm sure it's till there somewhere.

 

[Volourn]

To start with, no one can reach my 'common sense'; not even those those who'd agree with me on thinsg. Besides, Volourn and 'common sense' is an oxy moronic statement indeed. Heh.

Anyways, time to get serious...

Let's deal with the graphics thing first. I know most people think that MW's graphics rules. To be honest, I don't know why; but I just find them ugly; or perhaps the better word for it is displeasing. There is no factual things I can do to describe it; I just dislke them immensely.

VD, yes there were things I disliked about MW other than graphics. In fact, graphics are such a small part of it; it's amazing. The characters are plainly cookie cutter who basiclaly repeat verbatim what every other character says. I know, the two towns I went in, they ahd a nice huge list of things they talked about; but nothing original was added. Frankly, I found the npcs flat. People complain about the "boring" npcs in NWN; but at last they had something resembling personality - even if most of them are just sterotypes of one kind or another.

Exploring is something else is irked. While the ability to travel freely as one wishes is definietly a MW strength; it is ruined by the fact that no matter where you go; everything is absically the same. In the little bit I played I spent a lot of time traveling, and ran into three caves. These caves had absolutely no backstory what-so-ever, and wer ebasically there to kill monster. *yawn* I'll take an example from NWN, and one of the worst caves in that game. That being the goblin/orc/hobgoblin caves. While there was way too much hack n slash in that cave; at least the caves themselves served a purpsoed and furthered the story and game. It even had at least few interetsing interactions including the bugbear prisoner and the ogre magi. The MW caves lack even the most basic of things. Freedom to travel is not a warrant for freedom to bore.

The view in MW sucks for me. It takes a great 1st perosn view for me to like that type of game. MW didn't have it. No big deal. MW was nice enough to include a 3rd person view for people who prefer that. That was a nice. I thought so.. until I tried it, and found out it was the worst 3rd person view I've seen. Annoying as heck when trying to fight, and the camera angle is all over the place as enemy chops off your legs.

The list can go on; but it'll stop there. Of course, as I've stated I've played two hours or so of it. Not much deeper than that. However, I've been told again,a ndn again but things like character interaction, or story doesn't really improve s the game goes along. In fact, the only things people stress to me when defending MW is its graphics (*puke*); and its freedom of movement which they seem to forget lacks anything resembling substantial.

Elwro: Please don't get me started on EOTB. 'Tis the only dnd game that reminds me of POR2 in terms of quality other than DTU.

As for mods. Here are some of the ones I personally liked. I find them all playable; but some fo thema re very good; and of decent length to boot. Reaching upwards of 20 hours or so. They are, but are not limited to, the following: An Ancient Heart, Bone Kenning 1 (I hope the rest of the series comes out), CC1: Gates of Myth Drannor, and The Vethboro Dragon,.

And, yes, I'm quite aware of some very crappy mods. One prime example is the wannabe BG3: Alaundo's Prophecy. Utter crap.

Now, after this long post, a bit of self promotion. I am also making a mod that I hope will be done by the end of next month. Perhaps, you should check it out once it's released. Or not. Heh. It'll be called Hideout. Yeah, yeah, I know, not the most super of titles; but it fits.

Have fun. :D

 

[Elwro]

Elwro: Please don't get me started on EOTB. 'Tis the only dnd game that reminds me of POR2 in terms of quality other than DTU.

I remember DTU (especially) and POR2 as being really crappy. So I hope your post implies either
(1) the GBA port of EOTB is crappy
or
(2) the EOTB mod for NWN is crappy.

You're not comparing the Old Classic of Almost Pure Dungeoneering, EOTB, to POR2, aren't you?
/I just asked about info on the NWN mod, and not the original game./

Thanks for all the NWN mod information. If I have some free time waiting for ToEE and Lionheart, I'll check them out.

 

[Elwro]

Elwro: Please don't get me started on EOTB. 'Tis the only dnd game that reminds me of POR2 in terms of quality other than DTU.

I remember DTU (especially) and POR2 as being really crappy. So I hope your post implies either
(1) the GBA port of EOTB is crappy
or
(2) the EOTB mod for NWN is crappy.

You're not comparing the Old Classic of Almost Pure Dungeoneering, EOTB (released in 1991), to POR2, aren't you?
/I just asked about info on the NWN mod, and not the original game./

Thanks for all the NWN mod information. If I have some free time waiting for ToEE and Lionheart, I'll check them out.

 

[Volourn]

I haven't tried the NWN mod, or the GBA version of EOTB; so I couldn't comment on it; but I hear good things about the GBA version and how well it actually converted it to 3E. I did not like the original version. Anyways, this thread shouldn't be taken up by what games Volourn dislikes.

I hope you all enjoy MW; and I'll move on now. Heh.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Anyways, this thread shouldn't be taken up by what games Volourn dislikes.

Why not? It's a slow day in a slow week news- and events-wise, so discussing your dislikes is as much fun as keeping posting in the Neverending Story thread So, you don't like Morrowind huh?

 

[Volourn]

No, no I don't.

And, if you ask why I gave a serious answer to an obvious question; it's because it's rude not to answer someone's qustion. Heh.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Hmm, actually I asked you because I was really curios what your experience was, so I appreciate a seriuos answer.