Interview critical of Bethesda RUBBED OUT

[DwarvenFood]

Ha, this was a nice interview thanks for the necro.

 

[Coyote]

A few year back I read through this. It's not the codex but lulzy nonetheless.

From: Dan Mullen
To: Lowtax
Subject: We are gonna sue you

We as a band Kharibdus really don't aprieciate this fuckin' bullshit. I am gonna personally sue the motherfuckin' shit out of you assholes. For your fuckin information we have alot of fans and your site is just gay. FUCK YOU ASSHOLES. How did you even get a hold of our site. Fuck that it doesn't matter when we fuckin' sue all your dumb asses.

Yours truely,

Dan Mullen, Kharibdus

Edit: For context, all of the next guy's prior e-mails tried to maintain a professional tone, and he's the "Director of Communications" for the company he was speaking for in the letter below.

Richard,
I'm pretty sure that after reading this, you're going to realize that you're only getting yourself deeper in trouble. I've already tracked down quite a bit of information about you.

For example, your address:
PO Box 997
Lees Summit, MO 64063

Did you know that for only $1 someone can go to the post office, fill out a simple form, and find out the street address of the individual who rented the box?

I also know that your wife's name is Megan, and that you two were married on February 13, 2005. I've also tracked down a street address and telephone number for "another" Richard Kyanka. I actually called this telephone number. This was either you or your father. A terrible shame that you don't have the balls to claim your own name, little man. Speaking of little man, I've also managed to track down a couple of pictures of you, which I've attached to this email. You should really spend less time typing away at your computer and a little more time in the gym. Those arms of yours look like spaghetti. And those rosy-red cheeks of yours are quite manly, as well. Bottom line - if you're going to talk tough, you need to be prepared to back that up. To use the old (but in this case, appropriate) cliche, you're letting your mouth write checks that your body can't possibly cash.

Listen - this isn't going to turn out the way you want it to, Richard. Given that you attended Vanderbilt University, you're ostensibly a smart fellow. By now, I'm sure that you're aware of the fact that you're in the wrong by permitting outright libel against Warrior on your website. I'm also sure that you realize that you've only made matters worse for yourself by passing along my email address to your minions so they can harass or threaten me. How cowardly of you to bring in others when you simply lack the fortitude to stand up for yourself! At this point, I've already tracked down two of the emails from your fans - one from Truman State University and one from Sonoma State University. I've had long talks with the IT supervisors at each school. The young men that YOU brought into what could have otherwise been a simple and civil disagreement are now facing disciplinary actions - including suspension from their respective universities - because they were foolish enough to bite on your plea to have your little followers harass or threaten me. I'm sure you're going to swear up and down that you had nothing to do with this escalation. Yet, this is one situation in which you're not going to be able to escape responsibility for your actions.

Your ego has gotten the better of you, Richard. I see by reading a bit of your site that you've been threatened before. However, you're in the big leagues now. This is serious business. Warrior fought a five-year legal battle with Titan Sports to secure ownership of his character - and he prevailed. You're little more than a fly to be swatted to Warrior and myself. And Richard, when we swat a fly - we swat the hell out of it.

Sincerely,
Chris Lewis

Thank you for your quick and professional response. After reading your email, I believe you may not have been aware that your forum was being used this way. Several photos have obvious text added, graphics changed, and digital paint marks added to them. Most angering are the text remarks on photos of children and babies that include words such as "crazy pimp baby- where ma moneys at bitch?" Also, some files are being renamed with words such as "frodofagginsmorelike.JPG"

The SA guy is trying too hard in some of his replies, but most of the letters he received are pure gold.

 

[Serious_Business]

Ah yes the times when Codex actually cared and tried to make a point, the times where the outrage was genuine and inspired

Fucking bullshit. They even put points at the end of their sentences, what is this like I have time for this shit

Ridiculous bozos

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Ah yes the times when Codex actually cared and tried to make a point, the times where the outrage was genuine and inspired

you were so different back then too sb, all chirpy and bushytailed spriteliness, wearing a knapsack filled with bread that you fed little woodland mammals with and by bread I mean joyful discourse and by woodland mammals I mean other members joyfully discoursing all in a very forceful and vibrant way of course reflecting the pioneering energy of hopeful yet constructive criticism in those times

 

[Sceptic]

Thanks for necroing this, I don't remember the interview or the IL drama at all, and I missed the previous necro.

I remember Kirkbride being majorly unpleasant from way back, though I always admired his ability to forge quality lore (IIRC he wrote or at least co-wrote the original Redguard Pocket Guide, which set most of the TES lore). It's odd to see him demand so unpleasantly that the review be taken down since it casts him in such a favorable light, but it's not too surprising.

I'm not sure I like a lot of the stuff Goodall wanted in the game though. The mere suggestion that there should've been a clear-cut answer for the player to find makes me glad he didn't have final say after all, and makes any claims he had about Bethesda taking TES lore in a "different direction" from previous games utterly bogus (the lack of a clear-cut answer was lacking from everything post-Arena. Some long-time fan he is). It's odd, it's as if Morrowind ended up with the best of Goodall and Rolston's views: Goodall won with the multiple versions and NPC's not telling you the truth (against Rolston's no-betrayal rule) but then Rolston won the no-clear-answer battle against Goodall's wishes, and the game lore is all the better for both elements.

The one statement that was completely, utterly derp was this one though: "Arena and Daggerfall had more in common with random games (Rogue) than with traditional RPGs (Ultima et al.). Arena and Daggerfall were way ahead of their time, perhaps too far ahead of their time. I felt Morrowind was a step backwards in some ways." I have nothing against Roguelikes, but that's just stupid.

 

[epikitscheesy]

The one statement that was completely, utterly derp was this one though: "Arena and Daggerfall had more in common with random games (Rogue) than with traditional RPGs (Ultima et al.). Arena and Daggerfall were way ahead of their time, perhaps too far ahead of their time. I felt Morrowind was a step backwards in some ways." I have nothing against Roguelikes, but that's just stupid.

I, despite being an immersion-/emergent-/open-ended-/exploration-fag, never liked any of the tes games much, especially for the simple reason of them being too arbitrary, thus not 'supending my disbelief'.
The first two games failed to be a super-sized version of the old crpgs by the means of procedural content generation.
Now, there lies the abandoned thread of pcg as a means to epic crpg.
I can see how somebody who was fond of daggerfall would miss that part in morrowind.
So, the guy's right...'IN SOME WAYS'. Differentiate, man.

Roguelikes are another story, that's beyond question.

 

[Wunderpurps]

Just realized this was old, but great read. It would be funny as an interchange no matter who it was to but considering this is how he acts with the president of what amounts to his fan club it's priceless.

 

[abnaxus]

Never understood why every TES lorefag faps to Kirkbride myself. What did he write, aside from Vivec's Sermons (which are a bunch of self-indulgent, pretentious drivel)?

According to Imperial Library, Ted Peterson wrote the bulk of Morrowind's books:

Just for Morrowind? Looking at the Imperial Library listings: The Ancient Tales of the Dwemer; Fragment: On Artaeum; Mysticism, The Unfathomable Voyage; Notes on Racial Phylogeny; On Oblivion; The Old Ways; Origin of the Mages Guild; An Overview of Gods and Worship; Response to Bero's Speech; The Wild Elves; 2920; Biography of the Wolf Queen; Brief History of the Empire; Dance in Fire; The Firsthold Revolt; Galerion the Mystic; A Game At Dinner; How Orsinium Passed to the Orcs; The Madness of Pelagius; The Pig Children; The Wolf Queen; The Armorers' Challenge; The Axe Man; The Black Arrow; Bone; Breathing Water; The Cake and the Diamond; Chance's Folly; Feyfolken; The Final Lesson; The Four Suitors of Benitah; The Gold Ribbon of Merit; Hallgerd's Tale; A Hypothetical Treachery; Ice and Chitin; Incident in Necrom; Last Scabbard of Akrash; The Locked Room; Marksmanship Lesson; Master Zoaraym's Tale; The Mirror; The Mystery of Princess Talara; Night Falls on Sentinel; Palla; The Poison Song; Realizations of Acrobacy; The Rear Guard; Silence; Smuggler's Island; Surfeit of Thieves; The Third Door; Trap; Vernaccus and Bourlor; Withershins; The Wraith's Wedding Dowry; The Death Blow of Abernanit; The Horror of Castle Xyr; A Less Rude Song; Lord Jornibret's Last Dance; Cherim's Heart of Anequina; Invocation of Azura; The Charwich-Koniinge Letters; The Buying Game... I think that's it...

Not to mention Ted Peterson is one of the "founding fathers" of Elder Scrolls, alon gwith Julian LeFay and Vijay Lakshman.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The one statement that was completely, utterly derp was this one though: "Arena and Daggerfall had more in common with random games (Rogue) than with traditional RPGs (Ultima et al.). Arena and Daggerfall were way ahead of their time, perhaps too far ahead of their time. I felt Morrowind was a step backwards in some ways." I have nothing against Roguelikes, but that's just stupid.

I understood it as he saying that he believes Morrowind should have improved on Arena and Daggerfall Rogue-ish characteristics, instead of giving up on them to give the player a game similar to traditional RPGs. It comes down to preference - Daggerfall or Morrowind, which is better and why?

 

[LoPan]

The one statement that was completely, utterly derp was this one though: "Arena and Daggerfall had more in common with random games (Rogue) than with traditional RPGs (Ultima et al.). Arena and Daggerfall were way ahead of their time, perhaps too far ahead of their time. I felt Morrowind was a step backwards in some ways." I have nothing against Roguelikes, but that's just stupid.

I understood it as he saying that he believes Morrowind should have improved on Arena and Daggerfall Rogue-ish characteristics, instead of giving up on them to give the player a game similar to traditional RPGs. It comes down to preference - Daggerfall or Morrowind, which is better and why?

If that is to be discussed we'd be here for twenty more pages of people saying they like x due to a series of generic qualifying phrases. Ugh, I didn't know turning skeptic would be this boring; I did not fancy either, never did fancy the TES series, but I have tried playing almost all of them. Morrowind was the worst, which is the only way I can think of this when comparing them, because it was an open-ended game with nothing in it (arguably descriptive of all TES games). What you did affected nothing, not even the main plot really affected anyone or anything. Morrowind had no actual characters in it or personalities, no motivations that pushed and pulled the grand-sweeping plot, there was no one to care about and no one who cared about you or anything at all. Morrowind was a clumsily designed game where no element seemed to fit with the visual or form of control, more was made with 3D space n Daggerfall than in Morrowind since the only thing Morrowind did with 3D space was make a big 3D world which was impressive at the time but faded within a year as the 3D flare usually does.

Hm, text might be a bit chunky for a fire-starter.



Wonderful necro by the way.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

In a retrospective by 1up.com, the breadth and open-endedness of Morrowind is suggested to have contributed to the decline of single-player RPGs on home computers by leading customers to MMORPGs where they could have a similar experience.

 

[Mastermind]

Morrowind had no actual characters in it or personalities, no motivations that pushed and pulled the grand-sweeping plot, there was no one to care about and no one who cared about you or anything at all.

So it was like Fallout?

 

[LoPan]

Morrowind had no actual characters in it or personalities, no motivations that pushed and pulled the grand-sweeping plot, there was no one to care about and no one who cared about you or anything at all.

So it was like Fallout?

Justify that statement.

 

[Jaesun]

It's Mastermind you dumbfuck.

 

[Mastermind]

Morrowind had no actual characters in it or personalities, no motivations that pushed and pulled the grand-sweeping plot, there was no one to care about and no one who cared about you or anything at all.

So it was like Fallout?

Justify that statement.

Fallout also had unmemorable characters, same motivation driving the plot, and nobody to care about.

Like Morrowind, I remember the characters I interacted the most with in Fallout, and even then I forgot some of their names (like that sheriff guy in junktown). In both cases your motivation is to stop a hidden evil that will conquer and corrupt the world (or at least the gameworld). In both games no characters really had enough of a personality to genuinely get me to care about them. Bringing the water chip back was a chore because I had no connection with my fellow vault dwellers anymore than I had one with the people of Morrowind.

What Morrowind had going for it was much better lore, spread across a much bigger world making exploration genuinely rewarding. Not to mention the far bigger array of gameplay options. My biggest disappointment with fallout was the huge world map that contained very little other than a few towns and a handful of shitty random encounters. Adding some generic locations/dungeons, even if they don't contain anything of note, helps a lot with making the world feel less gamey. The type of story Morrowind tells is suited perfectly by the "read a novel" conversation style. In fact I hold Fallout directly responsible for the shittification of that interaction in Oblivion.

 

[LoPan]

It's Mastermind you dumbfuck.

I know, but I am currently reading Volpone, and it has put me in a humouring mood.

Morrowind had no actual characters in it or personalities, no motivations that pushed and pulled the grand-sweeping plot, there was no one to care about and no one who cared about you or anything at all.

So it was like Fallout?

Justify that statement.

Fallout also had unmemorable characters, same motivation driving the plot, and nobody to care about.

Like Morrowind, I remember the characters I interacted the most with in Fallout, and even then I forgot some of their names (like that sheriff guy in junktown). In both cases your motivation is to stop a hidden evil that will conquer and corrupt the world (or at least the gameworld). In both games no characters really had enough of a personality to genuinely get me to care about them. Bringing the water chip back was a chore because I had no connection with my fellow vault dwellers anymore than I had one with the people of Morrowind.

What Morrowind had going for it was much better lore, spread across a much bigger world making exploration genuinely rewarding. Not to mention the far bigger array of gameplay options. My biggest disappointment with fallout was the huge world map that contained very little other than a few towns and a handful of shitty random encounters. Adding some generic locations/dungeons, even if they don't contain anything of note, helps a lot with making the world feel less gamey. The type of story Morrowind tells is suited perfectly by the "read a novel" conversation style. In fact I hold Fallout directly responsible for the shittification of that interaction in Oblivion.

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. They never really did anything with the Dwemer and the particulars of a sentient race of catmen and lizards was never explored and they were treated as if they were entirely human. Nothing was really done with the lore in Morrowind.

What do you mean by 'bigger array of gameplay options'? Morrowind, like TES in general, has an appaling RPG system based entirely on how much you want to bother. Taking anything but long blade, heavy armor and no magic was nothing but added trouble, same goes with playing anything but a Dark Elf. The RPG system of Morrowind does not create variety because the skills have no effect on the outcome of the game or the play-style above how much you want to bother yourself. 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.

The type of story Morrowind tells is that of the epic, chosen one, climactic malarky. It is barely a story. In Fallout you are sent out of the vault and into the wasteland to find a water chip and save your people, not necessarily from dying of thirst, but from having to interact with the outside world. In many ways you play a typical hero out to save your home, but as you attempt this quest of sorts you find a greater world with greater problems that have far more dire consequences. Unbeknownst to the world, you save it, but with the resolving of this greater threat you have outgrown the vault and are turned away into exile because you are no longer part of that small, insulated world. The Overseer fears what you have become and the world owes you nothing. The story ends on the tragic note that being the hero is essentially about being the martyr. What the fuck is Morrowind about?

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.

Personality cannot be quantified and forming a connection with someone or a group of people is not necessary for sympathy or care for them, that is something a movie critic would say and Fallout is a game, and games, in some ways more so than books, fidget with the theatre of the mind.

"Fallout also had unmemorable characters, same motivation driving the plot, and nobody to care about." This means nothing, it is an unjustified opinion, at best a reaction stored in the memory. In Fallout what you did had an effect on the game world, if you were a scumbag the game became very different and there were ways to handle many situations such as that of the super mutants and ghouls that you could fail or succeed in different ways to different successions, and failure did not mean you had failed entirely, but that another effect had simply been had. Fallout was no pinnacle of this, but Morrowind did not even try.


You're not giving me much to work with here other than that you seemed as bored with Morrowind as you did with Fallout, or you're trying to tell me that Fallout is worse than Morrowind as if they are not vastly different games.

 

[Turjan]

What the fuck is Morrowind about?

Yes, tell us. You do not seem to know.

 

[LoPan]

What the fuck is Morrowind about?

Yes, tell us. You do not seem to know.

I never finished it, but what I gathered was that it was about how you were the incarnation of Nerevarine and there was that Dagoth fellow part of some secret sixth house who hung around the red mountain causing disease and invading peoples dreams, though thematically they never really did anything with either of those two things, and then you have to prove yourself to be the incarnation of an ancient thing in order to destroy the powerful artifact of the other ancient thing.

If there is more to it than that then I suppose I really don't know what it was about. Go on why don't you.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

perhaps mastermind is less of a people person than he lets on here

 

[Mastermind]

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.

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 never really did anything with the Dwemer

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.

and the particulars of a sentient race of catmen and lizards was never explored and they were treated as if they were entirely human. Nothing was really done with the lore in Morrowind.

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.

What do you mean by 'bigger array of gameplay options'?

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.

Morrowind, like TES in general, has an appaling RPG system based entirely on how much you want to bother. Taking anything but long blade, heavy armor and no magic was nothing but added trouble, same goes with playing anything but a Dark Elf.

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...

The RPG system of Morrowind does not create variety because the skills have no effect on the outcome of the game or the play-style above how much you want to bother yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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 is barely a story.

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.

In Fallout you are sent out of the vault and into the wasteland to find a water chip and save your people, not necessarily from dying of thirst, but from having to interact with the outside world. In many ways you play a typical hero out to save your home, but as you attempt this quest of sorts you find a greater world with greater problems that have far more dire consequences.

Sounds originallike every fucking jrpg.

Unbeknownst to the world, you save it, but with the resolving of this greater threat you have outgrown the vault and are turned away into exile because you are no longer part of that small, insulated world.

That's deep, mang.

The Overlord fears what you have become and the world owes you nothing. The story ends on the tragic note that being the hero is essentially about being the martyr.

Except you're not really a martyr, because you don't die to save the world, you are exiled because the Overlord's a dipstick. It's more of a "thanks for the help, now fuck off" story.

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.

Personality cannot be quantified and forming a connection with someone or a group of people is not necessary for sympathy or care for them, that is something a movie critic would say and Fallout is a game, and games, in some ways more so than books, fidget with the theatre of the mind.

Well said. I enjoyed the Morrowind world and its characters as a group so I did not wish to see it destroyed. I literally did not give a fuck about the Fallout world and its bland NPCs, though I saved it anyway just so I can say I beat the game properly. At least the combat was enjoyable thanks to the pretty death animations.

"Fallout also had unmemorable characters, same motivation driving the plot, and nobody to care about." This means nothing, it is an unjustified opinion, at best a reaction stored in the memory.

I finished Fallout 3 times. I see in your other post that you didn't even finish Morrowind once. The first and last point are entirely subjective, but the same motivation driving the plot (to save the world) is identical in the two. It's in the details that Morrowind clearly wins out.

In Fallout what you did had an effect on the game world, if you were a scumbag the game became very different and there were ways to handle many situations such as that of the super mutants and ghouls that you could fail or succeed in different ways to different successions, and failure did not mean you had failed entirely, but that another effect had simply been had.

Yeah, I remember when I joined the master and helped him crush the wasteland. Oh wait, actually I just died, kinda like you die if you lose a fight. I can be a scumbag in Morrowind too, and the gameworld reacts by putting a bounty on my head and killing me (or trying to, the game wasn't very hard ) if I don't pay or if I get too much of it. You can also join just 1 of three great houses which changes the world somewhat. The fighters' guild also has two paths you can choose between. The density of these choices is not as big as Fallout, but it is merely a matter of personal opinion that these things matter to the point where Morrowind, which is vastly superior in every other way, becomes the inferior game overall. A personal opinion built on the Biowarean philosophy that story matters more than gameplay at that too.

Fallout was no pinnacle of this, but Morrowind did not even try.

Yes it did.

You're not giving me much to work with here other than that you seemed as bored with Morrowind as you did with Fallout, or you're trying to tell me that Fallout is worse than Morrowind as if they are not vastly different games.

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.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Fuck all this deep shit, I'm gonna play Kingdom Hearts and watch Donald Duck fuck shit up with fireballs.

 

[Turjan]

What the fuck is Morrowind about?

Yes, tell us. You do not seem to know.

I never finished it, but what I gathered was that it was about how you were the incarnation of Nerevarine and there was that Dagoth fellow part of some secret sixth house who hung around the red mountain causing disease and invading peoples dreams, though thematically they never really did anything with either of those two things, and then you have to prove yourself to be the incarnation of an ancient thing in order to destroy the powerful artifact of the other ancient thing.

If there is more to it than that then I suppose I really don't know what it was about. Go on why don't you.

Yes, there is more to it. Although, superficially, the story and backstory look like this.

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.

 

[Wunderpurps]

There are narratives that are character based and those that aren't.

I am not sure if mastermind is just trying to say neither game is character driven, but if so it's not a totally ridiculous comment. But morrowind and elder scrolls in general have absolutely zero of that. Which is not necessarily bad but in fallout you do have characters and they are fairly memorable to people who aren't total trolls.

The overseer, harold, the master, even gizmo and dogmeat are memorable. Those are pretty good characters even for an A list movie. For morrowind the characters don't matter at all. That's not necessarily bad and doesn't make it a bad game. It's a bad game because it's barely a game at all and only appeals to people who like collecting "lore" written by pretentious asshats like kirkwood and feel that their first steps in a first person hiker were seminal moments of gaming.

I imagine the typical avid morrowind fan has no ability to bond to other humans, participates in odd activities like collecting miniatures or writing fanfics, and has a tenuous grasp on reality and how to act normal. People like mastermind and others linked to in The Best Thread Ever have only reinforced this hunch.

 

[Mastermind]

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.

 

[Wunderpurps]

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.