Game News New Morrowind expansion - Bloodmoon

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon

Yup, a <A href="http://www.elderscrolls.com/index.php?url=/games/bloodmoon_overview.htm&bg=09">new expansion</a> to <a href="http://www.morrowind.com">Morrowind</a> has been announced today:
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<blockquote><b>Rockville, MD - February 14, 2003</b> - Bethesda Softworks® today announced The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon?, the second expansion for its RPG-of-the-Year, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® for PC. Scheduled for release in May, Bloodmoon takes you to the frozen Island of Solstheim where the Empire is establishing a new mining colony - a venture being threatened by the prophecy of the Bloodmoon and rumors of werewolves.
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Your journey north from Vvardenfell by ship will bring you to a whole new world, where the ashlands and rainy coasts of Morrowind give way to forests and hills covered with snow and ice. In the huge wilderness of Solstheim you'll experience snow, blizzards, and new creatures, including frost trolls, ice minions, and wolves?just to name a few.
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"We wanted Bloodmoon to look and feel completely new for Morrowind players," said Todd Howard, Executive Producer. "Everything from the setting to the storyline to the art makes this expansion feel like a game unto itself."
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You'll have a choice of stories to follow and have the opportunity to defend the colony, take control over how the colony is built up, and eliminate the werewolves. Or, you can decide to join the werewolves and become one of them, opening up a whole new style of gameplay.
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"The chance to become a werewolf adds a new dimension and brings back a memorable part of Morrowind's predecessor, Daggerfall®," said Project Leader Ashley Cheng. "It's something our fans have talked a lot about, and we felt the only way to do it right was in an expansion where we could devote full attention to it."
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The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon is scheduled for release this May for PC. It is the second expansion pack for Morrowind. The first expansion pack, Tribunal?, was released in November 2002.</blockquote>
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What big eyes you have.
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Spotted this at <A href="http://www.ve3d.com">VoodooExtreme</a>.
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[Spazmo]

It's too bad that they're not working on what Morrowind really needs: a full-out dialog system. I can't talk to an NPC in Morrowind without my thoughts racing to Ultima IV.

 

[Sol Invictus]

What it needs is a better combat system. With particle physics. And the Unreal 2 engine.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I will settle (reinstall) on better dialogues and Daggerfall's skill system.

But apparently they've decided to stick to more visuals and milikng it till everybody is sick of it. I guess there is a lot more where this expansion is coming from: roam frozen islands as a werewolf, explore the deepest underwater caves as a merman, set up a house inside an active volcano as a magma demon, visit the cloud city..oops, wrong universe ...well, you've got the idea

 

[Spazmo]

Somehow, I doubt we'll ever see Morrowind: Hot Date.

 

[DrattedTin]

I sure hope they're working on Oblivion...

 

[triCritical]

What it needs is a better combat system. With particle physics. And the Unreal 2 engine.

God NO! Why the hell would replace a stat based game with a engine that clearly uses physics. BTW what do you mean by particle physics, those I what I refer to physicist that essentially have their thumb up their ass. You can add targeting, and called shots to Morrowind, but you don't want to make the interface more cumbersome then it needs to be. Remember there audience is not people that play MGS2 its people that play RPG's. And there is certainly a difference.

t's too bad that they're not working on what Morrowind really needs: a full-out dialog system. I can't talk to an NPC in Morrowind without my thoughts racing to Ultima IV.

I agree, but would it be a possibility considering the huge number of NPC's that there are?

Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, will they actually make a new land, or just a city is allegedly in a new land. I never bought tribunal because I heard it was false advertising.

 

[Spazmo]

Most RPGs will have a bunch of "Townpersons" with generic dialog ("How's the weather?" "Okay. My crops are doing good!") and a minority of named NPCs ("Please! Save my child from the orcs!). I would much rather see that in Morrowind. The dialog just robs the game of all depth. It feels like a search engine.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

God NO! Why the hell would replace a stat based game with a engine that clearly uses physics. BTW what do you mean by particle physics, those I what I refer to physicist that essentially have their thumb up their ass. You can add targeting, and called shots to Morrowind, but you don't want to make the interface more cumbersome then it needs to be. Remember there audience is not people that play MGS2 its people that play RPG's. And there is certainly a difference.

I have to agree with this. There really isn't a reason why a CRPG would need a robust physics engine, since it's a rather abstract model based on the skill levels of the living things in the world. CRPGs should basically have the mantra of Living->World, which is different from the robust physics modelled games which are World->Living. The world shouldn't affect the gameplay and player nearly as much as the player should affect the world and gameplay.

I agree, but would it be a possibility considering the huge number of NPC's that there are?

Prelude to Darkness handles this well. Basically, most everyone in the game has a point and some dialogue. Some of the people won't say anything until you've done something though. In that event, you can gossip with them.

I don't care too much for CRPGs who pack towns with pointless people just for the sake of adding scenary. There was a discussion in #blackisle once where some idiot said he'd like to see a CRPG actually model a city in Forgotten Realms, and listed how some of them had millions of people and were incredibly large. I had to point out that there were a number of reasons why this would suck, such as lots of pointless walking through the large streets, lots of pointless people roaming around that serve no purpose other than being there, all the asset work that would take, and so on.

He still didn't get why it wouldn't be worth it. So, I had to point out that if a town had 7,000,000 people, it'd be nearly impossible to find those few people who are actually important or useful. I had to point out that every single person in that city would require both memory and CPU time to deal with. All those people would require a lot of artists to make them look unique enough and designers to name them and place them and give them something to do.

I'm still not sure he understood what I was saying.

 

[Spazmo]

[geek] Well, actually, the biggest city in the Realms has about a million people, maybe a million and a half. [/geek]

Of course, it's still unfeasible.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Really? I think this guy was saying Waterdeep had seven million people.

 

[Jarinor]

You know, maybe this expansion will actually be good - Tribunal was horrible. It was far too easy, too linear, and the twists as such could be seen from miles off.

My biggest gripes with Morrowind were the dialogue system and the combat system - you'd THINK that collision detection would have made it into the game, but apparently not. Other than that, it was a fun game.

I'm still waiting for a game where you can actually simulate being a medieval assassin. So far all efforts have been limited to stab repeatedly with a low damage knife until they die, or shoot repeatedly from afar with a low damage bow. And no matter how well hidden you are, everyone can see you, and knows that it was you. But hey, that's just a small part of what I want to see in a game.

 

[Spazmo]

Really? I think this guy was saying Waterdeep had seven million people.

Yes, well, this guy was wrong. The exact, official figure, from the 3rd Ed. FR campaign setting (I told you I was a geek) is 1,347,840 citizens. And that's just about the biggest city on Faerun (I am not going to bother with the accents). It would take an entire nation, and a big one at that, to make the seven million mark.

 

[HanoverF]

You know, maybe this expansion will actually be good - Tribunal was horrible. It was far too easy, too linear, and the twists as such could be seen from miles off.

My biggest gripes with Morrowind were the dialogue system and the combat system - you'd THINK that collision detection would have made it into the game, but apparently not. Other than that, it was a fun game.

I'm still waiting for a game where you can actually simulate being a medieval assassin. So far all efforts have been limited to stab repeatedly with a low damage knife until they die, or shoot repeatedly from afar with a low damage bow. And no matter how well hidden you are, everyone can see you, and knows that it was you. But hey, that's just a small part of what I want to see in a game.

Try Thief and Thief 2

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

I was hardcore addicted to Morrowind for a while. After I reached level 27 or so, the game kinda lost its flavor for me. I still have it installed and may go back to it someday, but combat became too easy and I had pretty much explored all of Vvardenfall (or whatver it is called). I had a lot of fun with it for quite some time tho especially wandering around and coming across some weird tomb or what have you. Eventually the game just became more of the same for me... tombs were all the same, Dwemer and Dunmer ruins are all pretty much the same, combat was a breeze, etc..It was fun while it lasted (which admittedly was quite some time), but it got dull.
Actually I find most of the games I play nowadays suffer from this mid game slump and I end up uninstalling them. About halfway thru the game I just feel like I have pretty much seen all there is to see. Precious few games keep me playing through to the end.
I bet almost no one will agree but the only game I have played recently that kept me interested to the end was Mafia.
In the meantime I await ToEE.

 

[Jarinor]

I'm actually playing through Jagged Alliance 2 now...well, trying to play through. I keep on screwing up my game and having to start over, by getting myself in too deep and whatnot. But I agree with you about the Morrowind. When I first got it, I would have rated it about 9/10. Based on my current opinion after having played it for ages, I'd give it about a 6/10.

 

[triCritical]

I'm actually playing through Jagged Alliance 2 now...well, trying to play through.

Jagged Alliance 2 is one of the best games ever made. But for some reason it doesn't work on my new system.

I was hardcore addicted to Morrowind for a while. After I reached level 27 or so, the game kinda lost its flavor for me. I still have it installed and may go back to it someday, but combat became too easy and I had pretty much explored all of Vvardenfall (or whatver it is called). I had a lot of fun with it for quite some time tho especially wandering around and coming across some weird tomb or what have you. Eventually the game just became more of the same for me... tombs were all the same, Dwemer and Dunmer ruins are all pretty much the same, combat was a breeze, etc..It was fun while it lasted (which admittedly was quite some time), but it got dull.
Actually I find most of the games I play nowadays suffer from this mid game slump and I end up uninstalling them. About halfway thru the game I just feel like I have pretty much seen all there is to see. Precious few games keep me playing through to the end.
I bet almost no one will agree but the only game I have played recently that kept me interested to the end was Mafia.
In the meantime I await ToEE.

I think part of the problem with Morrowind is partially the combat. There is no real difference when playing a melee or range character when fighting a 1rst level monster or a 20th level monster. Its ver stagnant in those respects. I think the main push for replayability with Morrowind is iin playing different characters. Unfortunately since the quest are always the same, you may get bored of doing a lot of the quest over and over again. I think a non-buggy daggerfall random quest generator would have really helped MW and replayability.

 

[Flarnet]

So you can't even play JA2: Gold? That sucks.

The thing is that whenever I try to point out my second biggest gripe (the biggest being the unbalanced and uninteresting combat) about Morrowind, which are the far to plentiful generic dungeons, someone will always step in and say that "dude, the huge world rocked man, it made MW great. 200 dungeons is sooo cool."
All I'm saying is that they should have removed 75% of the generic dungeons. Sure, the first couple of playing hours the feeling of finding a dungeon is awesome. "Damn, I just walked over this hill and hidden under this tree is this tomb! I bet I'm the only one who found this" etc. Very nice. But as you travel the lenght of the land, the abundance of caves/tombs (dungeons) becomes boring. They look alike, they contain nothing interesting, they do not surprise you or bring a smile to your face.
With fewer dungeons they would all be interesting to the player. They would all be of a higher quality.

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

Tricrit - try JA2: Gold.
If that doesn't work you have my condolences. Not being able to play JA2 is almost as bad as not being able to play Fallout. It is interesting to me that JA2 is essentially the same game throughout and pretty exclusively one thing: combat. However it does not get old at all and is in fact fun from start to finish. Game design kiddies - shame so few game creators get this.

 

[triCritical]

Tricrit - try JA2: Gold.
If that doesn't work you have my condolences. Not being able to play JA2 is almost as bad as not being able to play Fallout. It is interesting to me that JA2 is essentially the same game throughout and pretty exclusively one thing: combat. However it does not get old at all and is in fact fun from start to finish. Game design kiddies - shame so few game creators get this.

I got JA2 gold for 14.99 thinking it would work on my new machine and it does sort of. It crashes right after I leave for drassen. Once I talk to the rebels in Orulco it will crash no matter what I will do. It works fine on my older machine, the problem with that machine is the moniter is old too, so at night (game night) the game is virtually unplayable.

As far as JA2 combat goes, its the best. No other way around it. It is the most extensive, complex and at the same time most intuitive system ever made. Its fun, serious and smart.

 

[Psilon]

It's too bad that they're not working on what Morrowind really needs: a full-out dialog system.

It's very unlikely that they'll ever do it themselves, even for just an expansion, but it is possible in the editor. Just very time-consuming. And not very Elder Scrolls-ish. I never played Arena, but Daggerfall's system was very much like Morrowind's.

 

[Jarinor]

My only gripe with JA2's combat is that the enemy seems to have handguns with unlimited range - why else can they accurately hit me with them when they're out of the range of my rifles? It would also be good if my chances of making the shot were displayed. But hey, gripes on what is otherwise a pretty good game.

 

[Mad_Dog]

My only gripe with JA2's combat is that the enemy seems to have handguns with unlimited range - why else can they accurately hit me with them when they're out of the range of my rifles?

The AI cheats like nothing I've ever seen. Still addictive as anything, I have to finish it sometime.

 

[Astromarine]

hehe I'm currently playing JA2 again... in Linux