Elder Scrolls Has there ever been any leaks of the early Morrowind builds or content? +Early Morrowind screenshots

[None]

Nice screenshots but they're so misleading - bunch of NPCs look as if they walk somewhere, creating an illusion of living and breathing environment, lmao.

This was Todd's first main game as director, no surprise there.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I don't know about early alpha artwork/builds for Morrowind but I recently played a few minutes of a STALKER mod that used assets from the alpha. Man, was that thing butt ugly. Best not to try to go back, I think.

 

[Wunderbar]

Nice screenshots but they're so misleading - bunch of NPCs look as if they walk somewhere, creating an illusion of living and breathing environment, lmao.

This was Todd's first main game as director, no surprise there.

he directed Redguard before.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

For some reason, static NPCs in RPGs that just stand there, night and day, 24/7, in fair weather and foul, really annoy me now, and I tend to shun games that do it. I like the idea of NPC schedules or at least giving the illusion that they're more than just droning push-button waxen figures by moving about. I remember attempting to play Circuits Edge (which by all accounts is actually quite decent) but stopped right there when I saw all the whores and the junkies and the pmips and the cyber-scum just standing there. It didn't bother me when I first got into RPGs but it does now. It's probably one reason why I couldn't get into Morrowind.

 

[AW8]

This was back when Morrowind was going to be an MMO right?

Yes. Here's another early screenshot, before they decided to go in a different direction:

 

[Stella Brando]

Look at the last chapter of this video:

 

[deuxhero]

That has been known so long that Tamriel Rebuilt is based on that map.

 

[Stella Brando]

It's news to me.

 

[ind33d]

Beta Morrowind stuff looks really cool. It's really hilarious how whenever a game has a remake or GOTY edition they never add back any cut content.

Pretty weird Roger Ebert considered that games could never be art, he definitely must have known about Morrowind, right? It's not like the Elder Scrolls series is obscure or anything

 

[deuxhero]

ind33d
Roger Ebert was so allergic to video games he assumed that because a licensed game beat the film to release and the movie was bad the movie was based on the game. I'm not sure why people think his opinion on games maters in the slightest.


For the record, the game in question is based on an early draft of the film. This means it is at least coherent, whereas the film outright forgets to explain why the FBI picks a random depressed retiree agent for the case over literally any current FBI agent, but it's clearly a draft in how its written and still has the horrible flaw of forgetting broad daylight murder of law enforcement is bad even if the victims are action movie goons.

 

[cretin]

For some reason, static NPCs in RPGs that just stand there, night and day, 24/7, in fair weather and foul, really annoy me now, and I tend to shun games that do it. I like the idea of NPC schedules or at least giving the illusion that they're more than just droning push-button waxen figures by moving about. I remember attempting to play Circuits Edge (which by all accounts is actually quite decent) but stopped right there when I saw all the whores and the junkies and the pmips and the cyber-scum just standing there. It didn't bother me when I first got into RPGs but it does now. It's probably one reason why I couldn't get into Morrowind.

Morrowind doesn't even attempt the illusion, which is probably what is so infuriating about it. It's not like NPC schedules were an expensive or novel thing of the time either, just about every rpg from 2001 and 2002 have NPC schedules. Fucking BG1 has primitive schedules back in 1998!

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Beta Morrowind stuff looks really cool. It's really hilarious how whenever a game has a remake or GOTY edition they never add back any cut content.

Pretty weird Roger Ebert considered that games could never be art, he definitely must have known about Morrowind, right? It's not like the Elder Scrolls series is obscure or anything

You are talking about Roger Ebert, an actual boomer, and videogames were like crack to these types. Most of the games people were familiar with were japanese (Mario, Resident Evil) and gaming as a whole didn't become mainstream as we know it today in the 21st century. The generation that's having kids right now is most likely the first one that grew up with games and gaming as a normal pastime in their respective households.

 

[Tenebris]

I wonder how different the story would've been had they stuck with the full province.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

The interface is elegant and customizable. Each menu can be placed and sized to your taste.

This, btw, was one of Morrowind's major strengths, and it blows my mind that more games didn't pick this up. The only one I can think of at the moment must be Guild Wars.

This kind of UI doesn't quite work on consoles so this is probably what killed it.

This isn’t really true. There’s fighting games that let you move around and resize the different HUD elements on consoles.

I’d guess it’s more just a factor that it’s something developers don’t think anyone gives a shit about. Or at least not enough people give a shit about it to do it.

Imagine what games could be like if consoles never existed.

Morrowind was their last PC game

and saved them from bankrupcy .. ironically

I’m pretty sure it sold better on Xbox.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

There was some big interview in like PC Gamer or one of those magazines a year or two before Morrowind came out that I believe had that version of the game in it. Was probably using all those same pictures though.

I think the same issue also had some stuff about Lineage and Diablo 2 players trading stuff for real money not being something that was going over well in Korea...and they’re big in Korea so that actually mattered. The Diablo bit was interesting because it was very clear back then, at least from reading that, that the Auction House was a thing that was going to happen whenever Diablo 3 happened.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Riding a gondola in the canals of Vivec. Travel in Morrowind is often done by buying passage with a caravan or boat. In Vivec, the gondolas serve as a quick way of traveling around the sprawling city.

Like Venice, Vivec is an ancient city of canals, arching bridges, and weathered classic architecture.

Love this one.

 

[Tweed]

Promo shots are always fake and gay.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

You are talking about Roger Ebert, an actual boomer, and videogames were like crack to these types. Most of the games people were familiar with were japanese (Mario, Resident Evil) and gaming as a whole didn't become mainstream as we know it today in the 21st century. The generation that's having kids right now is most likely the first one that grew up with games and gaming as a normal pastime in their respective households.

Roger Ebert famously wrote a glowing review of obscure Japanese computer game Cosmology of Kyoto for Wired Magazine in 1994:

The Cosmology of Kyoto CD-ROM comes with a bare minimum of instructions, informing me in a few words how to move within the images. No goal is established and no points are scored; the game never informs me what the object is, although it discreetly tracks the levels of karma and cash I have attained and keeps an inventory of my possessions. The disc comes packaged with a large fold-out map showing the streets and principal buildings of Kyoto - circa 900, when, as Heiankyo, it was the capital of Japan. I begin to wander the streets.

The richness is almost overwhelming; there is the sense that the resources of this game are limitless and that no two players would have the same experience. I have been exploring the ancient city in spare moments for two weeks now, and doubt that I have even begun to scratch the surface. This is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of information, adventure, humor, and imagination - the gruesome side-by-side with the divine.

In this medieval Kyoto, people exist alongside ghosts, demons, and goblins. On my travels I have met - and interacted with - a dog eating entrails, long-winded old farts, tradespeople (who offered me medicines, dried fish, cloth, rice cakes, amulets, and a chance to lose money on a cock fight), a monk leading a prayer meeting, kids playing ball in the streets (one is beheaded by a passerby), a friendly guide dog, a maiden with an obscenely phallic tongue, and a gambler who taught me a dice game.

The graphics are hauntingly effective, using a wide-screen landscape format. The individual characters are drawn with vivid facial characteristics, a cross between the cartoons of medieval Japanese art and the exaggerations of modern Japanimation. The speaking voices are filled with personality, often taunting, teasing, or sexy. There is the sense, illusory but seductive, that one could wander this world indefinitely. This is a wonderful game.


Considering that Ebert writes "this is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered", he would seem to have played at least few videogames prior to this one.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Video games aren’t art. There’s artistry that goes into them, but they aren’t art, they’re games. They’re a fictional tool that’s meant to be played. I doubt anyone would find it controversial if someone said chess, baccarat, baseball, laser tag, Civilization, Monopoly, Candy Land, Risk, Battleship, Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering aren’t art. It’s only digital games where people start getting weird about some game not being called art, as if not being art somehow made the thing (and their enjoyment of it) lesser.

Ebert wasn’t wrong about games not being art. He would however phrase that idea in very stupid ways sometimes from what I remember.

 

[Kalon]

Video games have, or used to have, some form of inferiority complex towards other entertainment media. Hence perhaps the ever-recurring question of whether it's art or not. Given that it's already quite difficult to clearly establish what is art, it's a rather unending debate anyway.

 

[Cryomancer]

Imagine what games could be like if consoles never existed.

The decline would happen a bit later with mobile...

 

[Jack Of Owls]

For some reason, static NPCs in RPGs that just stand there, night and day, 24/7, in fair weather and foul, really annoy me now, and I tend to shun games that do it. I like the idea of NPC schedules or at least giving the illusion that they're more than just droning push-button waxen figures by moving about. I remember attempting to play Circuits Edge (which by all accounts is actually quite decent) but stopped right there when I saw all the whores and the junkies and the pmips and the cyber-scum just standing there. It didn't bother me when I first got into RPGs but it does now. It's probably one reason why I couldn't get into Morrowind.

Morrowind doesn't even attempt the illusion, which is probably what is so infuriating about it. It's not like NPC schedules were an expensive or novel thing of the time either, just about every rpg from 2001 and 2002 have NPC schedules. Fucking BG1 has primitive schedules back in 1998!

That's one thing Oblivon did accomplish, at least - NPC schedules, or certain scripted events that at least gave the illusion of that.

 

[dreughjiggers]

If vidygayms aren't art, then neither are movies, novels, mosaics, or cave paintings. Novels were reviled, not too long ago. Literacy was ridiculed for instilling effeminacy in young boys. Vidya's as close to an ideal art as we have, right now. Software's the best medium: it can tell fancy stories, and channel a boy's competition into something as real as any report card.