Morrowind: Worth a second look?

[Xi]

That was my point, with that mod installed Vivec no longer felt like a dead and static place, the river level slum with all its rope bridge and people living out of boats and ships really made it feel like a living city

Yeah, the Vivec mod was a killer on performance though. It ran far too many scripts. I was more or less agreeing with you, though I didn't actually say it. My bad. I just disliked that city enough to want to self righteously rant about it for no reason.

No.
It was good. It was originally intended to have open cantons, but it would've been to much for the computers back then to bear.

The lack of visually different areas killed it for me. "Where the fuck am I again?" It shouldn't require a map to traverse because everything is a copy/paste design of one canton. Fuck the designer who made Vivec. Technical Limitations should not get in the way of creativity. If Bethesda can outright remove the jungled rain forests of Cyrodiil then they could sure as hell do something different with Vivec. In retrospect, there's probably no one in this world who would give a flying fuck. It's like they released Morrowind while the design of Vivec was in its alpha stages still. Woops!

 

[Frau Bishop]

It was good. It was originally intended to have open cantons, but it would've been to much for the computers back then to bear.

Open cantons... don't get it. Any design pics available?

 

[Section8]

Dear god, why couldn't you have rested on the day you made furries?

 

[User was nabbed fit]

God made furries, and God can take away furries. He said so to me the other night; I think he made me His right hand. No need to thank me, as I'm just doing God's work because he likes to keep a low profile. It's my pleasure, no, my duty to mankind.

 

[hoochimama]

Dear god, why couldn't you have rested on the day you made furries?

And so it begins. . .

 

[Kotario]

Open cantons... don't get it. Any design pics available?

 

[Relayer71]

The lifelessness of the cities was the one thing that probably bothered me the most.

What they should have done for Oblivion was focus on getting an engine optimized for as many NPCs as possible in a given place so the cities feel truly alive.

Heck, in Baldur's Gate I remember that while the NPCs just stood around there was this audio track of people talking and general pedestrian noise. So it created somewhat of an illusion of a bustling city...at least!

In Oblivion/Morrowind everything is just so fucking serene.
You'd think these places were populated solely by senior citizens!

 

[Lumpy]

There's a mod that changes them to look like that (sort of), and it looks much better, but runs like shit. On today's computers.

 

[Amateur]

I largely agree with you.

What is the advantage of the so called stupid unique NPC's in Oblivion. I don't see any difference between them and the random generated townsfolk in Daggerfall. They have schedule blah blah. Just crap, you see a few idiotic npcs eating and sleeping, empty streets an empty world.

The lifelessness of the cities was the one thing that probably bothered me the most.

What they should have done for Oblivion was focus on getting an engine optimized for as many NPCs as possible in a given place so the cities feel truly alive.

Heck, in Baldur's Gate I remember that while the NPCs just stood around there was this audio track of people talking and general pedestrian noise. So it created somewhat of an illusion of a bustling city...at least!

In Oblivion/Morrowind everything is just so fucking serene.
You'd think these places were populated solely by senior citizens!

 

[hoochimama]

Open cantons... don't get it. Any design pics available?

I think this is a pic from an early build of morrowind and it shows the open canton Vivec city, notice how the game also seemed to have more color and somewhat higher-res textures.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Love that map.

 

[dagorkan]

Any Khajit skooma-whore mods?

 

[Kotario]

I think this is a pic from an early build of morrowind and it shows the open canton Vivec city, notice how the game also seemed to have more color and somewhat higher-res textures.

Wasn't there an old mock-Fallout 3 image floating around based on that? Back before Oblivion, right after Bethesda first bought the initial license to make Fallout 3, 4, and 5. I remember it being pretty well-done, but I haven't seen it in years and my memory of it might be inaccurate.

 

[Relayer71]

I always thought those early pics of Morrowind looked much better than the finished product. Much more colorful than the drab brown/grey palatte we ultimately got.. the UI looks nicer too.

 

[Micmu]

They had planned to have Cliff Racers in cities!

 

[Deleted member 7219]

One thing I notice about that screenshot that annoys me is the view distance. It seems further in that shot than in the game, and although purely graphical and not having much effect on gameplay, it is still damn irritating not being able to see more than 20 metres in any direction.

 

[Nog Robbin]

And hoods? Were there hoods in MW? I don't recall them...

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

That screenshot was a mockup pre-render, real art assets, but rendered in 3Dstudio.

Hoods: only from mods.

It's hard to recommend mods, because there is such a huge list of them, and you can really twist the game to your liking quite a bit. There are some good lists on the internet that list selection of mods for various aspects.
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index ... try1772836

Telesphoros list is pretty good, e.g..

I always liked, no loved, MW, it is in fact my favorite game. So I obviously disagree with Section8 and others about it's merits, but I don't have the stomach to go through that discussion again. It's a different type of game than thos championed here, but there is far more depth in it than in Oblivion, IMHO. I'd just say if there is something that appealed to you in Vanilla MW, then it's likely you can find mods to make the experience quite enjoyable by modding in things you missed and modding away things you didn't like.

Final advice, use one of the mod organizer tools.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

One thing I notice about that screenshot that annoys me is the view distance. It seems further in that shot than in the game, and although purely graphical and not having much effect on gameplay, it is still damn irritating not being able to see more than 20 metres in any direction.

Something relieved early on by the MW fps optimizer, and recently by a project completely eliminating the fog, basically allowing Oblivion scale view distance.

 

[mindx2]

Ghan: Which mod orginizer tool do you suggest and where is the mod to eliminate the fog?

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Ghan: Which mod orginizer tool do you suggest and where is the mod to eliminate the fog?

I used various tools over time (TESAME, overunity are two I can recall), but I think a newer and better option is supposed to be wrye mash. A list is here:
http://www.mwmythicmods.com/starting.htm#tools

View distance - disclaimer: I have no experience myself with it, but Morrowind Graphics Extender is the project that removes fog and adds other graphical effects, links here:
http://www.mwmythicmods.com/MWE.htm#MGE
(check out the other cool stuff on that page, too)

FPS optimizer lets you extend the view distance quite a bit adds some other neat features and is probably less intrusive and resource hungry than MGE.
http://www.mwmythicmods.com/MWE.htm#fpsopt

 

[Lumpy]

I wouldn't say Morrowind is such a good game.
Its strength is the setting, but not really. On one hand, the concept is infinitely cool. The interplay between the civilized but fanatic Dunmer, the nomadic and superstitious Ashlanders, and the capitalistic Imperials, could have been done in a grand way. The living gods religion, and the way the Tribunal interacted with the people also had lots of potential. One need only look at the concept art to see that.
However, it ended up average to good. For the reasons Douglas Goodall talked about. One need only look at the concept art to see the discrepancies between the original intention and what it ended up being.

 

[cutterjohn]

One thing I notice about that screenshot that annoys me is the view distance. It seems further in that shot than in the game, and although purely graphical and not having much effect on gameplay, it is still damn irritating not being able to see more than 20 metres in any direction.

OK, this bears repeating, if you want MORE view distance use:
Morrowind Graphics Extender

[EDIT]
See GBG's post for a link...

If you don't have a decent CPU + GPU though it's going to KILL your machine unless you basically turn everything down... The NetImmerse engine really sucked as it was used, i.e. Bethesda apparently has no programmers and couldn't optimize anything, or IOW all they could do was paste the pieces together, but MGE really does make MW look good, you can also overlay you rown shaders or use some of the builtin ones to do thinks like a pseudo HDR, etc.

 

[Lumpy]

Morrowind concept art
Vivec's birthday:

Ashlander village:

Ashlands stuff:

Redoran concept art:

And to compare, Oblivion concept art.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

I wouldn't say Morrowind is such a good game.
Its strength is the setting, but not really. On one hand, the concept is infinitely cool. The interplay between the civilized but fanatic Dunmer, the nomadic and superstitious Ashlanders, and the capitalistic Imperials, could have been done in a grand way. The living gods religion, and the way the Tribunal interacted with the people also had lots of potential. One need only look at the concept art to see that.
However, it ended up average to good. For the reasons Douglas Goodall talked about. One need only look at the concept art to see the discrepancies between the original intention and what it ended up being.

As I said, I don't want to get into this discussion again, and I don't claim it was perfect in any way. It simply was some of the best and certainly the longest lasting fun in gaming, for me personally. A mini-explanation on my part is here:
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost ... tcount=176