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I wonder if the people with your kind of humor are just born that way or is there an actual group of brilliant comedy scientists who programmed your brain that way? If the later is true, then would you go into a loop hole if I acted outside your range of expectation? Or would you give me literally bugged responses such as "You are totally out of your mind, [Enter_Soon_To_Be_Dead's_Name_Here]"? I never understood the Radiant AI thing. Towns folk never looked that happy by trying to show their limited wits nor they gleamed in several colors as they went around, so I hardly understand the reason they called it that way. Plus, Oblivion always raised me a fundamental issue: Do the game designers not know that water coming from rain does not go through an outdoor structure that's suppose to shelter you from hypothermia, or are the people in Oblivion horrible at constructing ceilings for balconies? And yes, TES is like Yahtzee's comment about Mass Effect in character modeling. But rather than saying "Which shade of brown hair do you prefer?" you have "How close do you want to be to the vision of nightmarish ugliness?". The illusion of having a beard was just ridiculous. Anyways, all in all, gave me 5 minutes of good reading and I appreciate that. | |
Fantastic thread. I too caught myself more than once doing nothing more in the game than watching the rain fall, and the sound- well, I fell asleep to it more than once as well. I miss the brutality of Marrowind, that was lacking from Oblivion too. In Marrowind, you were actually compelled to stock torches with you, because walking lost and alone through the countryside was dangerous enough without doing it in the dark. I spent the majority of the early game running for my life and I loved it. I think my most paramount memory of the game was climbing up a rain swept hillside to launch myself over a wall between the carefully monitored patrolling of some guards, slipping sodden down a trapdoor in the tower just as the guard turned the corner. Never mind that I slipped sodden down a trapdoor into a room full of 'more' guards, eager to merrily reduce my body mass considerably with a host of weaponry. The unknown, the real danger, the open ended majesty of that game will always sit well with me. I fear that people are afraid to make difficult games these days, as they will scare off potential buyers. A sad thing indeed, as it is a dynamic that really can en richen a game. Especially one so open ended. | |
Cliff....racers *falls into foetal position* | |
Morrowind was the first game where I really felt that I had a world to explore, and no boundaries within it. Early on in the game, I threw on a flying spell, and took off for a couple miles flight along the countryside. I landed in the middle of some slaver colony, entered a house, and met the aquiantance of a mean looking fellow wearing some rather nice armor. Turns out he ran the slave colony. | |
Really good review. Morrowind just has that immersive feel to it that you don't find in Oblivion. Instead of having your hand held throughout the main quest, you are dropped off in a swamp and told to go find a Rubix cube in some steam-punk ruins. This is where I decided not to continue with the silly thing and just go hand out in Vivec(much better than Imperial City I might add) and hunt down Ordinators for their armor and cool hats. Also, I enjoyed the Great house system Morrowind had. It reminded me a bit like Dune, joining the noble Redoran and their honor-bound ranks, hanging out with the sneaky and underhanded Hlallu, or the enigmatic Telvani. It just felt missing in IV, like you never had a personal stake in whatever was going on in the world. | |
Alas, I was too impatient when I first played this game. I missed so many of the subtleties. This article is your best to date (my how prolific you are), it makes me a little jealous of your ability to spot the humor in things without ever falling into the trap of using that "sarcastic game journalism" voice I read so much of on blog sites. Please don't ever stop. I actually enjoy coming here for a reason beyond watching people get bent out of shape by Moogly Googly Great reviews. | |
If Oblivion wasn't in the same series as Morrowind I would probably not think it's so bad. It's pretty, and it's kinda fun in its own right as an action/adventure game. But as the follow-up to Morrowind? They jumped on the popularity of Morrowind, got all the hype going about their super-pretty-shiney-baby and then completely sold out to console tards who can't read and play at the same time. Reading isn't cool eh. | |
Ahh Morrowind, the only game where random encounters can actually kill you | |
I seem to remember the random encouters of Fallout being the utter bane of my existance. This was only stopped once I obtained good equipment. Anyways, yeah Morrowind had its moments of reloading the last save. Anyways on topic: I liked this thread. I agree that while Oblivion had polished out some things a bit better (namely the combat and graphics) Morrowind had a better feel and in general was more fun to me. Oblivion made me feel like I had my hand being held as though I was playing a tutorial level all the time. Morrowind was like "Good Luck" and hurled me face first into a puddle of mud outside the customs house. Good write, keep it up. | |
In the next Elder Scrolls game, that should be how it starts. Literally. | |
I agree with the OP, but have you ever played Daggerfall? That was the Elder Scrolls game before Morrowind (I'll bet some didn't even know about it). That game was frankly much better than Morrowind. The decline from Morrowind to Oblivion is part of a greater decline in the series in general. | |
Daggerfall was a bit before my time, sadly, but I saw quite a lot of it during my days on the Bethesda forums, though I never played it. Couldn't get my computer to run it, and lost the will to try when I had Morrowind to play and Oblivion stretching it's quadriceps and preparing to enter the fray. The sad thing is I wouldn't say I'm a graphics whore- I can forgive a multitude of sins provided enough loot is thrown at me- but Daggerfall falls some way below my 'Minimum Graphics Standard'. I just need to know that when I start playing my eyes won't start bleeding. Daggerfall's kinda like the fat chick with a nice personality at a house-party. What a cruel world we live in. | |
Oh Morrowind, a cruel mistress of a game. Dead within my first ten minutes of playing because I'd ventured into a haunted tomb. | |
Thank you for reminding me of that. It makes the game world seem a lot bigger when you have absolutely no idea of what to do in the first few minutes of the game. It made me feel like an immigrant arriving in turn-of-the-century NYC, excited but rather unsure of what to do. | |
Morrowind was great, in no other game would the bandits in the cave next to the starting town be able to kill you. On the other hand, it also allowed you to become so amazingly powerful you felt like a god, it never forced you one way or another. There were only two things that should be kept from oblivion; fast travel, and the dark brotherhood quests (the only quests I enjoyed in oblivion as much as I had enjoyed morrowind). | |
Cool post. I definitely know that feeling of being hesitant to put a game back in the disc tray after being intimidated by a game. | |
Awesome post, I completely agree. I was to young to appreciate the game back then and quit after a few weeks, but it still haunts me to this very day what that huge world had to offer. I always felt lost, weak, afraid when I ventured out in the dark with nothing but ruins full of strong undead and creeps lurking the shadows. I don't have the time or patience atm to play it again though. Still, oblivion was a huge disappointment for me. | |
Since I'm from Iceland myself I can't hold back: How did you like being here? But on topic. Never played Morrowind and will most likely never do but I've had an in and out relationship with Oblivion. It's been installed and uninstalled like 6 times on my computer by now. There's always something that pisses me off but still I keep coming back like it's going to evolve a little bit and get rid of the stuff I hate. | |
That's pretty much how playing through Morrowind is. You feel alienated by the utter lack of direction the game gives you, but after a while you're drawn back to the familiarity and you start to give yourself your own direction. | |
Great post. | |
I'd only keep the DB, myself. The Morrowind transport system was more realistic...and I kept missing mark and recall on Oblivion. But I still remember sitting there in a hidden library in Vivec, digging through the notes and then just sitting there in shock. That's about when my char decided to commit deicide. | |
True, I think what I'd prefer is a multi-mark system, similar to the ones some people made mods to provide in Morrowind. I like being able to zip back and forth between important locations at will. Maybe they could have it so that you can place more marks the more your skill goes up, say one mark point for every ten points? | |
Now I really want to play Morrowind again. | |
I remember spending hours at a time looking up on clear nights trying to spot all the constellations. Or the feeling of finding that one super rare book in a series you've been searching ages for. | |
morrowind is up there with smash bros melee and deus ex as one of my all time favourite games. funny that i had a fairly similar start to you. i remember getting it for christmas about 5 years ago on the xbox, along with unreal championship. i was so psyched for morrowind after reading many reviews praising the game, so stuck it in the moment i got it. wandered about seyda neen, the starting town, was wow'd by the water (best in-game water of its day, hands down!), but had absolutely no clue what to do. every person i spoke to seemed to babble nonsense whilst simultaneously having a dislike to me for some unknown reason. i remember being told to go meet some contact in a city. whipped out the paper map... my thoughts were along the lines of 'what the hell is this game, it cant be expecting to walk all that way?!' so i investigated a little further, and discovered that giant insect thing which was morrowind's answer to the bus, but of course i had no money. "fuck this game, its ridiculous!" and stuck unreal championship in. aha. linearity, my solid home. i never knew id miss you so much. so i spent the rest of the day playing UC. later that night i felt that same calling to go back to morrowind. one last time before i stuck the bastard on ebay in exchange for a copy of 'bland shooter 12 - introducing latest innovation: a triple barrelled shotgun'. so i stuck morrowind back in the xbox. pained by the ridiculous loading time, i thought i was back for one last laugh in the hope i might murder the village's population before quitting. of course i attempted that and got my backside slammed up in jail for it. so, on the edge of giving up completely, i stepped outside of the village a little. THWACK. some oddly dressed bloke just hurtled into the ground in front of me. investigating the body i find a spell, and applying it to myself i leap 2000ft into the air, only to meet the same fate of the poor chap who used it and landed in front of me. well, that was cool i guess. i ventured a little further, sighting a farm in the distance. off i wandered. sure, i couldnt take out a village, but one farmer wont be any hassle. getting nearer, i drew my rusty dagger. "HEY YOU" a man approaching me said. it turned out he wanted 50 pieces of my non-existent gold or he would kill me. the game had turned to night by now and the realisation that i was being mugged by some in-game chav scum with an axe at around 2 in the morning was slightly eerie, and not just because of the position i was in, but because this is what it took for me to realise that this game was beyond anything i had played in years. im not sure if unreal championship, let alone any other game, went back into my xbox for a good 2 weeks after that. now im itching to play it again siiigh. | |
Robfoughtrome- that bit with the chap falling out of the sky really stuck in my mind too. Sadly I had to stop typing at some point, or the review would have tipped the 18,000 word barrier. It's when you search his body, find the scroll and some sort of note warning you what will happen if you use it, think for a second, use it, jump...you're about 2 miles away in mid-air when it occurs to you 'wow- how's the game gonna' stop me getting killed from THIS?' And you continue to wonder that until your corpse smashes into the ground and liquifies your brain. And then you realise that Morrowind's not like other games because if you get into trouble, it's not going to lift a finger to help you. Sometime's it's even going to GET you into trouble on purpose, just so it can chuckle at you. Brilliant stuff. The worst thing about it that stuck in my mind was a very persistent 'dirty disc error' that meant it crashed whenever I looked at my inventory, or looked at the map, or moved my character. | |
Oh man, I just got Oblivion and now I want to go play Morrowind again. I too shared a tranquil moment or two next to the mud crabs, watching the rain falling on the sea. Before they noticed me and went on to knaw at my leg. I still have nightmares about cliffracers...that horrific squawking... | |
Anyone else played Arx Fatalis? Its a much more condensed game than Morrowind, but still really feels like a game where you can make your own adventure and be punished and treated like a bitch when you explore its rich world. There are so many moments I remember in it which stick out as golden gaming. Discovering the ancient Dragon deep within the near-impossible to reach caves... and to have your ass whooped again and again for daring to attack it. Stealing the key which unlocks the gate to the outside world... only to open the door and have your character freeze to death. On the night of my last high school end of year ball, I came home drunk and loaded up Arx Fatalis. I plunged my young wizarding knight deep into the underbelly of the subterranean world, running past hordes of monsters as they chased me in the night. Then I came across I giant hole, occupied by a huge, pulsating worm. It took me about 10 minutes to slay the beast, but I finally did it, then entered the hole and descended deeper into the abyss. Because I was drunk, I don't really remember how I got there, but I eventually found myself at the very bottom of the world, in group of chambers full of ancient lava pits and iron forges. I was chased by some bizarre monster who scared the daylights out of me. I think I killed it, tripped it down into the lava or something. The rich history of that imaginary world really reminded me of the ancient Dwemer world of Morrowind: when you come into contact with the last survivor of that ancient race, its a really cool feeling, and evokes Tolkien's technique of having a past far more grand and fantastical than the present. | |
I hope to never hear the phrase 'Then I came across I giant hole, occupied by a huge, pulsating worm' again in my life. I find it disturbs me in novel and unusual ways. | |
I liked Morrowind too, but this nostalgia is almost making me sick >_< Morrowind is also one of the only games that almost forces you to abuse the game system or cheat. Yes, picking a random direction and just walking in it was fun for the first hour, up until you ran across just about any monster or enemy, which proceeded to disembowel you instantly. If by some rare chance you were high enough level/good enough to kill stuff, you would end up with some [insert MW animal here]'s meat, about 30 gold, and some plants to show for it at the end of that hour. The only way to really advance was to, as someone above mentioned, abuse the game by getting in an area impossible to reach by the AI, and then killing guards or other high-level things for their items. Or stealing that soul gem in the mages guild in Balmora. Or randomly killing store owners and stealing all their stuff. The quests were nice, but I honestly preferred Oblivion's more straightforward, "go here and do something" than MW's "I want you to find something halfway across the world map, hiding under a rock in a place that is not marked anywhere, especially not on the map that came in the game box, and that will force you to finally give up in frustration and look online for where it is" quests. Also, the graphics were painful because you had to turn the gamma up a ton in order to play. Why? Because (don't lie) once you found the boots of blinding speed, you never took them off. Ever. The Keening and Sunder were a daggar and a hammer. Which was cruel, because the only weapon spec anyone used was longsword or maybe axe. That brings me to another point: everyone's end game character looked pretty much the same. A warrior that occasionally dabbles in magic because his backpack was filled with things like, "scroll of the Apocalypse" and the vendors sold "Liquefy Thy Enemies" spells. Finally, I'm really just bitter because I nearly failed highschool looking for those goddamn daedra shrines. | |
Ha I know exactly what you mean, that did get quite annoying, and a little game breaking.
I hear you again. It was ironic because my entire time spent leveling up my longsword abilities was wasted. Which was like a month's work. | |
Custard on ham? | |
I guess I am one of the few thief's in Morrowind, that practiced alchemy... uhhhg collecting the right things for my water walking potions was a pain. I had to get a silver dagger to kill ghosts to harvest the ectoplasm to cancel the stat draining effect that the other component of the water walking potion was a pain. I spent weeks on training my magic by finding a 'safe' place to sleep so I could train my illusion magic and stealth in peace. The fact that it is illegal to sleep anywhere inside town was a hindrance if you where caught. Aha, waking up half healed to the sounds of war cries as you were chased halfway to the Dwemer ruins and back only to be gutted like a slaughter fish... Once I found the right components for my water breathing potion I spent the better part of my time exploring many of the wreaked ships around the many cliffs of Morrowind. I found many a strange beasts hindering my path, all of whom where crap octopus hybrids and schools of slaughter fish big and small. Cliff-racers I found can get caught in trees and shot until they would resemble a pincushion if the arrows did not disappeared when they hit. I still play it today, my Wood Elf works hard to collect his harvest and sells his failed potions to the nearest shop when he comes to a small port town then has his many daggers repaired. It is always helpful to have at the least four of the same weapon, and don't forget to filch some fresh bread to eat. It improves your alchemy. | |
Sanguinans Sabulum- you say 'The Keening and Sunder were a daggar and a hammer. Which was cruel, because the only weapon spec anyone used was longsword or maybe axe.' That was kind of my point. It sums up the contempt Morrowind treated you with that, even when you got the game's ultimate weapons, you'll barely able to use the bloody things. It's a massively and consistently flawed game, but it makes you feel like you earn your place as saviour of the world, even if it's just through beating the game mechanics. I never really got that feeling with oblivion, which has rather more of a 'greatness thrust upon you' air about it. | |
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I mentioned Morrowind the other day in a piece I wrote about linearity in games. I think I also made a passing reference to it in a review of Crysis that I posted. And I may have tried to strike up a conversation with the girl who served me in Iceland the last week about whether she preferred Sunder or Keening (she was a Keening girl, so the relationship was doomed from there).
It would not, I think it fair to say, take a great deal of knowledge of the more intricate workings of the human psyche to conclude that I have Morrowind on the brain. Fearing that I cannot otherwise capture the scope and majesty of the game, I'll be producing one article for every hour I played the game. So...
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Part 1 of 492
Many critics lament Morrowind's wooden characters. 'Look at them' they say, 'standing their, rigid, watching the world pass by, time flowing over their motionless and quite emotionless (what a difference an 'e' makes) forms like so much custard over ham.' These same critics, then, must've been positively spunking themselves with joy when Oblivion's Radiant AI system smashed through the wall, had sex with their wives, and gave us such gems as:
NPC 1: I wonder what happened to my brother? I haven't seen him in several days now, since he went to slay that colony of ogres in Certaindeath Cave.
NPC 2: Good day. Any news from the provinces?
NPC 1: YOU KILLED MY BROTHER! FIEND! I SHALL END YOU!
NPC 2: I hear Fa'Saar has a bad case of the shits at the moment. Perhaps he's been eating too many of Ventraal the kitten breeders dodgy kebabs. Some brave adventurer should investigate what he puts in those...
NPC 1: I don't have time to talk to you right now. I have to go stand in my house.
NPC 2: Good day.
NPC 1: MURDERER! Good day.
I think we can agree that not all of the advancements between TES III and TES IV were necessarily forward advances. Would we rather have a system which encourages/demands a bit of imagination on the part of the player, or a system that provides the most achingly stilted exchanges since my 'friends' invited my ex-girlfriend and the man she left me for to come sit next to us at the pub last Thursday? I know which I'd choose (but I guess I have a vested interest with my choice of metaphor).
We can say without any degree of 'Hardcore gamer' snobbery that Morrowind, as a game, requires rather more of the player than Oblivion. If Oblivion were your mother it would make sure you had some shoes on before you went outside. If Morrowind were your mum it would fill your shoes with broken glass and scorpions and THEN make sure you had your shoes on before you went outside. In a way, Morrowind is the better parent. Little Johnny Morrowind will know how to look after himself in the playground: li'l Jimmy Oblivion will be dangling from a coathook by his underpants somewhere. Looking after yourself is key in Morrowind.
The first time I went off for a stroll in Morrowind was an eye-opener. It was also an eye-closer, because I found myself rapidly dead, floating in a swamp with a rat nibbling my buoyant corpse. 'Fuck' I thought. Not fuck anything in particular, just a general sense of...having got something wrong. Being punished.
So next time I take a bit more care in the preparations- I do some odd jobs, steal some forks, vases, whatnot, and sell them, perform some...services for some sailors. My character is soon the proud owner of a nicely bump-mapped silver sword, a rusty but solid looking shield and a pair of greaves which I can only hope are made out of rat skin (psychological warfare). I stride off to meet my destiny. My destiny kills me with it's sharp little rat teeth. 'Fuck' I thought, then I continued the thought: 'Fuck this for a laugh.' Xbox off. Terrible mistake buying this.
Clearly I returned to the game at some point. These fond memories must have come from somewhere. I do recall a great sense of foreboding at putting that disc back in, listening to that title music (stirring enough to make the most resolutely heartless of geese pimpley), and loading up my twice perished avatar. I discovered that you need to adjust things to Morrowind's pace, and fully expect that, if you get ahead of yourself, someone would bludgeon you to death for stealing a pen. 'Slow down' Morrowind intoned. Even the name is evocative of it's attitude: 'Morrowind'- it sounds like an ancient, moss covered statue, standing forgotten on a cliff as the waves play on the rocks below. What's 'Oblivion'? It's a car with racing stripes and flames on. It's the end of a trailer to a summer blockbuster: 'Welcome... to 'OBLIVION!' It's got a pun in the bloody name (obl-IV-ion). Inauspicious stuff.
Have you ever stood quite still and watched water? My overriding memory of Morrowind is walking along a long road. It 's getting dark, and storm clouds are assembling themselves above my my rat-gnawed head. There are lights up ahead: a small fishing village, barely anything on the map (Ah! The map. Later, later...) but all one could ask for at that moment. I break into a jog just as the raindrops begin hurtling earthward, taking shelter under the porch of an inn. And I watch the water. It is, I think, the calmest I've ever felt. And I'm not talking about the calmest my character has ever felt in his existence, brief and oft-terminated by rats as it was. That affected me, sitting in front of a TV, dunking a custard cream in some tea. By the time I came to, my custard cream was quite ruined, and the tea full of biscuit gunk. The water in Morrowind, you see, was the first time I'd seen water in a computer game and thought 'wow, that looks wet.' It didn't reflect much, not in a real-time sense anyway. But real water doesn't normally reflect all that much unless it's almost completely still. Morrowind wet stuff rippled when you walked through it, swam in it, shot an arrow into it, but most notably it rippled when the rain fell. To sit there, watching the rain patter onto the waves, listening to the precipitation pattering on the roof above you, temporarily in sanctuary from a world full of deadly rodents: that still brings me back to my happy place.
But it's not all quiet awe and grandeur, because Morrowind is, and let no-one ever tell you otherwise, a deeply silly game. You could fix a bead on a particularly disagreeable looking Wood Elf (actually they were all pretty fugly), whip out your bow, take careful aim, and then shoot with just a tap of the trigger: the arrow would leave the bow at about three miles an hour and arc inexorably toward it's target, bearing down on them like a steamroller on a bowl of soup. Provided you had the appropriate speed statistics, maybe a specific pair of magic shoes, you could easily run alongside the arrow as it inched toward it's destination. The elf, having seen the arrow coming for about twenty seconds now, would eventually be struck, receiving about one hit-point of damage but suddenly full of murderous rage directed at you. Fortunately they'd never be able to catch you because you were so fast that, when you ran and switched to the external view, you looked like a cartoon character who's just run off a cliff, legs a blur of movement. It looked ridiculous, but it was indicative of Morrowind's casual and absolute lack of regard for the rules.
I followed the development of Oblivion quite keenly and, trawling the Bethesda forums, found that the two most common complaints were:
1.WAT???! NO REEL TIME SH4DOWZ? (long story, quite boring by coincidence)
2.WAT???! NO LEVEETATION?
Morrowind, fabulously, had a quite readily available spell that had the rough effect of turning on the 'fly' command found in most First Person Shooters. Put on 100% Chameleon enchantments, Boots of Absurd Speed and a levitation spell and you would have an invisible, flying, lightning fast character hurtling across the countryside like a vengeful thunderbolt. Morrowind may have a slower pace of life than Oblivion in many ways, but it also let the player's imagination go fucking crazy with it. It's like a well-to-do city trader visiting his second home in the country and finding out that, while he's not there, all the servants have the most spectacular and gratuitous orgies in every room of the house. It is, in short, not so dry and dull as we may initially assume.
So many other things I'd want to write about: breaking into a family vault and finding it stacked with diamonds, rubies, priceless weapons and armour, you find yourself thinking 'God, I can't carry all this stuff'. You have to choose, knowing that returning for more will almost certainly lead to a sword being rammed into your eye-socket. Or the time that, poring over that fabulous paper map that came with the game, you notice a lonely ruin on the coast. Traveling there you find little of note, but glancing at the sea, you see something under the waves. Casting a spell to allow you to breathe underwater you swim down, and find that the ruin on the map is all that has survived of a sunken, much larger ruin. You see a statue's head, lying on the sea-bed and, on interacting with it, it speaks to you, bidding you perform a quest...I''ll stop there, but clearly, few computer games evoke so much in such large quantities.
Of course, you take the good with the bad. Morrowind is riddled with absurdities: steal a loaf of bread in the wilderness and every fucker in the world will know instantaneouly of your sin. Guards will chase you over mountains and across oceans to enforce the law and render your internal organs rather more external. Combat is the embodiment of clunkiness, often bordering on farce. The economy is as balanced as a one-legged tripod. A fully equipped character, bedecked in non-colour coordinating magical helms and robes, looks like a tramp who's been through the bins at the back of Oxfam. Two big questions then: would I go back and start a new game, right now? Probably not. But, given half a chance, would I quite happily go live in that little fishing village and watch the rain meet the sea? Almost certainly.