RPGWatch Feature - Morrowind Revisited

Originally Posted by pibbur
I knew you would say that!

You're psychic Pib

Btw, I think the Ashlands was one of the most dreary and boring areas, I've ever had the misfortune of "exploring"

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
bland - in pretty much every way.

I certainly beg to differ on architecture, music, lore and spell system.
And there indeed is quite a lot of unique content that should make exploration interesting, especially if you like game´s atmosphere.
Otherwise, yep, bland, but nowadays a lot of issues can be helped with the right mods.

Originally Posted by DeepO
I certainly beg to differ on architecture, music, lore and spell system.
And there indeed is quite a lot of unique content that should make exploration interesting, especially if you like game´s atmosphere.
Otherwise, yep, bland, but nowadays a lot of issues can be helped with the right mods.

I'm sure the lore is great, but the presentation was abysmal

The music, I'll grant you - but that can only carry a game so far.

Spell system? I HATE the TES spell system with a passion.

That pretty much goes for all the TES systems, though.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Spell system? I HATE the TES spell system with a passion.

Hate it all you want, I´m just saying it wasn´t bland .

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
You're psychic Pib

Btw, I think the Ashlands was one of the most dreary and boring areas, I've ever had the misfortune of "exploring"

Dreary? By all means. In fact, that's why I liked them (And in WOW my favourite areas are "Duskwood" and "Desolace"), especially when I turned on permanent rain.

I guess this is another example of why one of the best known Norwegian paintings is "The Scream" (check my avatar), while Hip hip hooray is one of the most famous danish ones.

EDIT: Come to think of it: Dreariness - that's one of the reasons why I like Fallout 3 as much as I do. And now, some music

Originally Posted by DeepO
Hate it all you want, I´m just saying it wasn´t bland .

It was the very definition of bland, if you ask me

Spells need to be predefined, and they need to be DISTINCTIVE, have a UNIQUE purpose, and look COOL AS HELL!

Originally Posted by pibbur
Dreary? By all means. In fact, that's why I liked them (And in WOW my favourite areas are "Duskwood" and "Desolace"), especially when I turned on permanent rain.

I guess this is another example of why one of the best known Norwegian paintings is "The Scream" (check my avatar), while Hip hip hooray is one of the most famous danish ones.

EDIT: Come to think of it: Dreariness - that's one of the reasons why I like Fallout 3 as much as I do. And now, some music

Duskwood dreary? Nah-ah!

Desolace, though, yes - and that was horrible!

Fallout 3 is one big bland area - but at least the dungeons were worth exploring

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
It was the very definition of bland, if you ask me

Spells need to be predefined, and they need to be DISTINCTIVE, have a UNIQUE purpose, and look COOL AS HELL!

Haha, yeah the predefined spells certainly weren´t niftiest of the nifty, but there was quite a lot of use for magic outside of combat and there was a possibility to be creative with custom spells.

Originally Posted by DeepO
Haha, yeah the predefined spells certainly weren´t niftiest of the nifty, but there was quite a lot of use for magic outside of combat and there was a possibility to be creative with custom spells.

Yeah, and I recognise that it's a matter of taste.

Basically, for things to feel "fresh" and "exciting" for me - they need to have a feel of being handcrafted and entirely unique. The same goes for the item system, and so on.

I just couldn't get excited by stuff that I had to create myself, or stuff that was obviously based on a very primitive formula.

Too predictable, and it looked like crap - to boot.

That said, not many games handle loot or spells particularly well.

Too many developers underestimate the value of such "details"

Appreciating unstructured wandering or unstructured whatever is one of the keys to liking Morrowind. Which also explains the huge modding base.

But it does get very repetitive after you've explored everything… Atmosphere and lore kept it interesting.

If I replayed I'd add some of the new huge landmass mods.

Wait. Explore and Morrowind in the same sentence? Everything seemed generic to me, except for the cities. Gothic, all three of them, were really exciting to explore.

Ah, but there are some VERY unique places in Morrowind. I bet you didn't get very far…

Originally Posted by JemyM
Wait. Explore and Morrowind in the same sentence? Everything seemed generic to me, except for the cities. Gothic, all three of them, were really exciting to explore.

seemed and to are the keywords in your sentence.

I don't really like the way the landscapes are constructed in TES III & IV. It's mostly hills and valleys and it feels like the terrain has been procedurally generated. No steep cliffs anywhere, just lots of slopes.

Looking at the Tamriel rebuilt mod, they seem to have done a much better job with world-building, it's more akin to the approach taken in the Gothics and Risen.

DArtagnan: If you want distinctive spells and items there are mods that add those to the game. In Oblivion there are more mods that add spells but there are some in Morrowind also.

Originally Posted by JemyM
Wait. Explore and Morrowind in the same sentence? Everything seemed generic to me, except for the cities. Gothic, all three of them, were really exciting to explore.

I think it's one of the least generic RPG's. It's one of few games where it feels like you've really travelled somewhere and is visiting a new culture when you get to a new region. Gothic's didnt come even close, even though i did like them they werent nearly as "mystical"or felt as "epic".

Oblivion was the opposite felt very generic, was rather boring to explore since everything was mainly a forrest with towns thrown in + the Oblivion gates (which was very dull).

I have to agree with you there, although I've only played G2. Need to check out the others.

Morrowind doesn't get enough praise You left out the expansions though, one thing I feel was done to near perfection in Morrowind.

Tribunal gave us a nice long dungeon romp with improved dialogue and quests and Bloodmoon took us back outdoors with a whole island with a distinctive environment from the rest of the game (SNOWY FORESTS!!!) and werewolves.

Morrowind wasn't perfect and it definitely took a bunch of mods to get it closer to perfection (which mods depends on what the individual player felt was lacking) but I also feel that even with the vanilla game, both expansions went a long way towards making up for some of the original game's shortcomings. So together it makes for one of the greatest RPGs of all time.

Shame about Oblivion

Originally Posted by bemushroomed
I think it's one of the least generic RPG's. It's one of few games where it feels like you've really travelled somewhere and is visiting a new culture when you get to a new region.

Oblivion was the opposite felt very generic, was rather boring to explore since everything was mainly a forrest with towns thrown in + the Oblivion gates (which was very dull).

Totally agree!

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Appreciating unstructured wandering or unstructured whatever is one of the keys to liking Morrowind. Which also explains the huge modding base.

But it does get very repetitive after you've explored everything… Atmosphere and lore kept it interesting.

If I replayed I'd add some of the new huge landmass mods.

I absolutely adore unstructured wandering

I played Morrowind for countless hours, hoping to get excited.

I have no idea what people are talking about, when they claim it's not generic. I saw AT LEAST 60% of the world - and everything was incredibly bland or brown. Sure, you could encounter a few stiff and insane NPCs, or some incredibly annoying monsters with no feedback during combat - but anything unique?

I guess both Jemy and I - must have been INCREDIBLY unlucky in terms of not finding all this stuff you're talking about.

The landscapes did have variety, but within a limited color palette for the most part.

You'd think we've played 2 completely different games with the same name, and I'm not exaggerating here. That's my clear memory of playing the game.

Just as Jemy said, the lore was presented like browsing a wikipedia page, and the combat was absolutely atrocious.

Plenty of dungeons, but they had nothing to offer but endless tableware and samey designs.

If there were artifacts, and I'm sure there were, they were certainly well hidden - and I'm not about to explore 50 identical cookie cutter dungeons, just to find a single artifact.