Yet Another Morrowind Thread

[markec]

When trying to find out if some gaming reviewer has any standards just look at his opinion on Oblivion.

I remember on NMA just prior of F3 release one guy posted a early review on some german gaming site that gave F3 9/10 and said how thats a hard core reviewer and its proof that F3 will actually be good. So I checked his Oblivion review and the same guy gave it 10/10 and called it something like the greatest RPG of all time.

 

[DraQ]

The nice thing about this blog is I can safely disregard any of his opinions once he said:

THE ELDER SCROLLS IV - OBLIVION

Expecting maybe Morrowind, or Skyrim here? Not quite. The funniest part about this game, is that I've owned it four times over a period of four years, and maybe played a good half hour of it. Why is it here you may ask? I've gotten the RPG itch it seems, despite hating RPGs with a passion. Maybe it's the invisible dice rolls, the calculations of all the stats playing out in the code, blind to the human eye. This game is different.
For one, it's all real-time combat, which makes it playable for me. If I had to wander around in first person, and have to stop for some elaborate turn based combat system to start, I would have forgot this game the first time I sold it. Thankfully, the combat is straight forward, swing-a-sword-until-something-dies affair. It's also one of the only RPGs that gives a shit about starting you off to a good pace with a clear fucking objective.

Confirmed moron.

Fixed.

He just went full n'wah.

 

[Drax]

Stupidity is always painful for those around.

 

[ED-209]

Daggerfall is a shitty Rogue-clone.

Rogue: Turn-based combat, top-down perspective, randomly-generated dungeons, no cities or towns, permanent death.
Daggerfall: Real-time combat, first-person perspective, pre-made dungeons, thousands of cities and towns, six saves slots.

 

[Bubbles]

Daggerfall is a shitty Rogue-clone.

Rogue: Turn-based combat, top-down perspective, randomly-generated dungeons, no cities or towns, permanent death.
Daggerfall: Real-time combat, first-person perspective, pre-made dungeons, thousands of cities and towns, six saves slots.

Yes, that's why it's a shitty clone instead of a good one.

 

[octavius]

EDIT: What the flying fuck, I just noticed that every single Elder Scrolls game has an age rating of 18. Shouldn't they be like 12 or 15 or something? I guess Daggerfall could push 18 under a really really strict rating system, but the others?

They contain (fictional) drugs, slavery, (fantastical) racism, sexual themes here and there, and of course a lot of blood. While those themes are never treated as the srs bsns they imply, their presence warrants a more strict age rating than the average game. Not that anyone listens to those ratings anyway.

Funny things is that the Bethstapo forums have rules to protect innocent little 13 year olds, so "we are not allowed to discuss that". And then the same 13 year olds are not even allowed to play the games?
Seems rather retarded to include mature themes in the games, and then not be allowed to discuss them on the publisher's forums.

 

[ED-209]

I guess Rogue is just a shitty clone of Tennis for Two.

 

[Broseph]

Other than the lame combat and shit graphics Morrowind is a great game. Daggerfall is a shitty Rogue-clone.

I know the character models and animations were bad even for the time, but IMO vanilla Morrowind still looks good today. Miles better than shitty plastic-looking Oblivious.

 

[DalekFlay]

Morrowind still looks fuck amazing, without mods, and ban anyone who says otherwise.

 

[Caim]

Morrowind looks great through its style. Sure, the models themselves look like ass these days, but the overall design and style make it look unique.

 

[Xbalanque]

Morrowind looks great through its style. Sure, the models themselves look like ass these days, but the overall design and style make it look unique.

Some maybe, but they do look better than in Oblivion. I don't know but the plumpy-faced Golden Saints didn't really feel Daedric for me. In my opinion the morrowind models are in fact more realistic than Oblivion ones (I haven't played Skyrim though)

 

[Lemming42]

The only shit part of vanilla Morrowind's graphics is the draw distance, but I'm pretty sure you can fix that with MGE without changing anything else.

 

[Akratus]

But only up to a point. I've not played with large draw distances, but I hear immersion takes a toll if you see the actual size of the island from any point.

 

[Turjan]

But only up to a point. I've not played with large draw distances, but I hear immersion takes a toll if you see the actual size of the island from any point.

Unfortunately that is true. The island has been built with the original draw distance in mind. With clear sight, it looks like a theme park, and the mighty Red Mountain looks like a mole hill. It's definitely a trade-off to change that.

 

[Lancehead]

I'd say drawing one additional cell over the vanilla makes the game look better without spoiling or ruining the landscape.

 

[Turjan]

I'd say drawing one additional cell over the vanilla makes the game look better without spoiling or ruining the landscape.

True. I definitely increase the draw distance, just not too much.

 

[DraQ]

I know the character models and animations were bad even for the time

Given that on basic level animations pretty much involve animating a stick figure to which the actual model is rigged, or, for older games, animating the model itself, but with similar result, there is no "for the time".

At worst, old animations may lack detail like facial expressions, but fully scripted animations that looked good in early '90s will look good today, and shitty animations today would have looked bad in early '90s.

Morrowind happens to have shitty anims period, not "even for the time".

I guess Rogue is just a shitty clone of Tennis for Two.

If you say so.

But only up to a point. I've not played with large draw distances, but I hear immersion takes a toll if you see the actual size of the island from any point.

You can always set the draw distance for terrain far, but let the fog end around 3 cells max (and only draw statics as far as they can actually be seen with such setup).

You eliminate ugly-ass clipping, gain horizon (and upgraded water), but don't break the immersion:

Pictured: improved water, vanilla assets and subtle Red Mountain's silhouette.
Not pictured: Immersion breakage, bloom, DoF, derpy postprocessing, overdone and tasteless asset replacers.

 

[octavius]

Oblivion definitely had better distant lands if you removed all fog. Morrowind looked better with some fog.
Standing on top of the Imperial Tower (I think it was called) in the Imperial City the distant lands in Oblivion looked realistic, while in Morrowind it looked fake, at least with the old version of MGE I tried.

The more I played Morrowind the more the staticness of the world bothered me, so despite the blandness, gernericness, dumbing down, excessive voice acting of generally much lower quality, and level scaling, I couldn't bring myself to hate Oblivion. At least in Oblivion unexpected things could happen, even when the player character was not around.

The third thing Oblivion did better was to prevent much of the abuse of alchemy and potions. You could only have three potions in effect at any given time. So potent potions with short duration were valuable.

The fourth and last thing I can think of that Oblivion did better than MW was to provide a more steady challenge, at least when using OOO and/or FCOM (I never played vanilla). No matter how much I tried to nerf my character, and no matter which mods I used, my character would always end up an invincible demigod by level 20 in Morrowind.

 

[DalekFlay]

But only up to a point. I've not played with large draw distances, but I hear immersion takes a toll if you see the actual size of the island from any point.

Unfortunately that is true. The island has been built with the original draw distance in mind. With clear sight, it looks like a theme park, and the mighty Red Mountain looks like a mole hill. It's definitely a trade-off to change that.

It's really only in a few places that the expanded draw distance harms the world. Seeing Vivec from Seyda Neen is the one people always mention, which is a bummer. 90% of the time walking around though, it's actually pretty nice. So it depends on priorities. I use a pretty far distance myself, but I totally get why some only push it by one or two cells.

 

[Turjan]

The fourth and last thing I can think of that Oblivion did better than MW was to provide a more steady challenge, at least when using OOO and/or FCOM (I never played vanilla).

That's probably the reason for that impression. If you didn't play the leveling metagame in Oblivion, the game got actually harder the more you leveled. Completely asinine.

 

[DalekFlay]

That's probably the reason for that impression. If you didn't play the leveling metagame in Oblivion, the game got actually harder the more you leveled. Completely asinine.

Well, more like it got harder from levels 5-15 or so, and then was typically super easy at the end.

 

[Turjan]

That's probably the reason for that impression. If you didn't play the leveling metagame in Oblivion, the game got actually harder the more you leveled. Completely asinine.

Well, more like it got harder from levels 5-15 or so, and then was typically super easy at the end.

I would have to look how far I actually got. I don't think it was much higher than the lower 20's.

 

[DalekFlay]

I would have to look how far I actually got. I don't think it was much higher than the lower 20's.

Every monster in the game has a range of levels it can be at, like a Bear could be level 7-14 for example, something like that. So when you're level 7 and bears start appearing they are way too strong for you, typically. After you pass level 20 though most enemies remain about the same while you get stronger and stronger, so very quickly you become a super god who can't even be hurt. The enemies still have a ton of HP though, so the whole game becomes a massive bore as you wade through dungeons hacking everything 20 times while it can barely scratch you. Meanwhile 10 levels earlier you had to quicksave every thirty seconds in the wild for fear you might stumble on a Spriggan and be instantly killed.

It's a very weird game.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I just turned the difficulty down after a while. Enemies won't kill you in three hits and you won't one-shot everything.

 

[Turjan]

I just turned the difficulty down after a while.

Well, sure, so did I. It's just psychologically unsatisfying.