Back to Morrowind
 

After reading a few reddit posts about Morrowind, I decided to head back to my entry point into the series. Since exploration is the best thing about the game, I created a highly focused explorer character. So light armor for easy movement, a spear as a stronger walking stick (and to keep things at a safe distance), Alteration for movement spells, and a few other skills to help with movement and solo survival.

With the new Morrowind Overhaul, some mods to increase movement speed and magicka regen, it's a bit faster paced, and now I'm off on my sightseeing tour.

http://i.imgur.com/cH0lWqF.jpg

My destination is the towers just visible in front of the sun.

http://i.imgur.com/kuvtOVS.jpg

Getting a bit closer.

http://i.imgur.com/Fbw4LxD.jpg

Here we are. Not visible, two more cliff racers.

http://i.imgur.com/bCVF7O6.jpg

I've never actually seen that the observatory has an external part.

http://i.imgur.com/nGXsfpf.jpg

The road to Caldera.

http://i.imgur.com/hxtSeyN.jpg

Pelagiad. It's like a little slice of High Rock.

http://i.imgur.com/o2WRjZk.jpg

Heading into Suran after a pilgrimage.

Morrowind can be so pretty with all the mods, I feel the nostalgia coming back….

Sigh, now I want to re-install it.

I would recommend the "Less Generic NPC" mods if you haven't already. Adds a ton of dialog, new quests, etc to the NPCs in the game. Makes the world feel much more alive and makes every NPC truly unique with their own story to tell.

Wow those graphics are pretty nice considering the age of the game. I may have to play it again myself. Course I never finished Oblivion so I am debating doing that first, this time with some mods.

Thanks for the inspiring thread Fluent!

You dont have to do anything really fancy or involved, texture pack, better bodies and faces, better clothes, and it's already 100% looking better.

Morrowind can be a beautiful experience, i played thru last year and was surprised how much difference a few textures make!

Yeah, it can be beautiful, some nice, crisp new textures, better bodies, faces, etc. like you said makes a huge difference.

I was watching my dad play Morrowind today on his 360, and I was pretty surprised how good it looked actually. Completely un-modded. That said, it still feels much better to play the game modded with a fresh coat of paint on it.

If you like Morrowind - I suggest you to try Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim - it has similar climate and soundtrack.

Something that increases the view distance really helps, too. You can appreciate the world a lot more that way, and it's much, much easier to find your way around.

That's MSGO 3.0 right? What are your specs and OS, and what is your average framerate?

That is mighty impressive! I'll have to do a replay at some point, but my gaming schedule is booked for now.

I wanted to install the graphic overhaul myself, but I realized when reading the instructions that I would have to spend at least an afternoon just getting everything set up. It's still my intention to do that, but that scared me off at the time.

Is the same team still working on the Gameplay mod collection as well?

It's not uber-powerful, but it's good enough to get the job done. Win7 64bit, 2.8GHz Phenom II x4 830, 6GB RAM, Radeon 6670. You can see the FPS in the screenshots (16-20ish outdoors), but it doesn't ever feel that low. I've not felt the need to go in and turn any settings down yet. I've seen people with much higher spec systems report lower FPS, so I think it's incredibly variable.

It's not too bad, really. Adding it to an existing install caused problems, but when I did a fresh install it was pretty simple and only took a few minutes. Then it just comes down to how many other mods you want to install.

The last version I tried was 2.0, and it was pretty choppy for me in Win7 64bit with a Phenom II x4 965 and Geforce GTX 470 OC. I had heard that performance was improved with version 3.0.

The framerate was *much* smoother on the same system in Win XP though, so there's the possibility that it just doesn't like Win 7.

I've heard people report choppiness with the Overhaul even with monster setups that should handle it no problem. It seems that mod doesn't like some people's computers.

Yeah I think it has lots to do with the operating system, 3.0 runs nice and smooth on my machine with Vista64 but lousy on Windows 7(I have Dual Operating Systems on this machine).

http://i.imgur.com/RSxNHXj.jpg
Taking a stroll into Gnaar Mok

http://i.imgur.com/RNK7OSp.jpg
Ald'ruhn at dawn

http://i.imgur.com/Vi4zphz.jpg
Maar Gan at night

http://i.imgur.com/UV21GEJ.jpg
More Maar Gan

http://i.imgur.com/sO9Znma.jpg
View from the Ghostfence

I need to stay out of this thread. I REALLY want to start a TES run right now. :)

Yeah, the TES world, particularly Morrowind, has such an Immersive and cozy gameworld that just seeing it makes me want to slip it on like a comfy old worn-in pair of slippers

Aye, though what you can't see in the screenshots is how empty it feels. For the most part, it was tolerable because the setting is so much more interesting than Oblivion. However, spending 10 minutes walking from A to B in the northern wastes only interrupted by annoying cliff racers was so mind numbingly boring it prevents me from firing up Morrowind more often.

Still, I will do it one day, no doubt about it.

Can't say I ever felt bored while playing Morrowind. At least not until I had sunk well over 100 hours into it.

I assume you spent that time in the south and west then. North and east is as barren as a desert. With the possible exception of cliff racers.

Increase view distance, find a mod to increase your movement speed (Speed and Stamina's good), turn down cliff racer aggression, and you're sorted. When you can see distant caves and the towers and spires of the ruins around you it really is much better.

I explored the entire map except for Red Mountain. Honestly, I don't recall those areas being as barren as you describe, especially the east. I remember the east having a ton of tiny islands you could explore with lots of caves and tombs.

This map illustrates the issue:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:FullMap_TravelRoutes.png

Basically, the entire area between Maar Gan, Vos and north of the red circle holds nothing. You might find a grand total of two ruins and a cave there or some such thing, but basically it's just black, ash landscape as far as the eyes can see, and that's a good 25% of the landmass. Also, the area south east of the red circle is quite barren as well, and that's another 15% or something.

So yes, the islands in the east are quite fun, as are the areas south and west, but the massive areas inbetween are borderline empty. You need to know exactly where you're going, most likely by using an online map or some such thing, to find the few points of interest in the empty regions.

I was never bored. I ran the overhaul with the OP's shaders enabled and played the core game and both expansions. I also really enjoyed the main plot because of the lore aspect. I explored every nook of the game and hunted down every piece of daedric lore. Fantastic experience. Every game morning watching the godrays coming over the mountains and through the trees…priceless.

There are no trees in the north or east. The whole region looks like black concrete.

Edit: A few examples:
Falasmaryon, north west: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-place-Falasmaryon.jpg
Indaren tomb, east of Falasmaryon: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-pla…stral_Tomb.jpg

The landscape you see in the pictures is the only landscape visible in the northern region. The only people are a few dunmer camps that offer no quests or anything else except some main quest related info that force you do that lengthy journey into no man's land. There are virtually no animals except cliff racers, and no points of interest except a few tombs.

It's simply put the single most barren place I've ever seen in a game. I would love to see examples of game regions that actually have less content, but I doubt such a thing exists. Maybe some under developed MMO.

Edit 2: I'm sounding like I hate Morrowind. I don't, I think it's great. I just think the northern region (and the one quest related to it) is a complete waste of space and time, and it prevents me from playing it more often. The west and south are great though.

I don't have any issues with those areas.

Are they supposed to make sure there's a certain number of points of interest in every area on the map? That would be quite unrealistic and would actually decrease the immersion for me. Every area can't be content dense.

If a region as big as Gothic contains only birds that you can kill with one hit, I'd say the content density is getting a little extreme.

Like I said, I can't find a single example with lower content density. Not one. Doesn't mean people have to find it boring, as that's a matter of taste, but it does mean the region is fairly empty.

Doesn't the Overhaul mod also take care of the cliff buggers or do you need some other mod to remove them? Which mods are included in the Overhaul BTW, I can't seem to find it.

It's a barren region by description. I think they made the area exactly as it should have been except for maybe having a few more enemies. The game certainly wasn't lacking in content overall, and having a desolate region there fit with the lore.

I'm glad they didn't put more there just for the sake of having it.

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker? :p

I'm with JDR. I never was bored with Morrowind, even if some of the landscape is desolate. They give you enough good content in other areas to enjoy so having a barren area is no big deal really.

Haven't tried it, so it could be similar without me knowing it.

As for the barren region - I wouldn't mind a barren region that I could simply avoid. I know there is one in Two Worlds 1 for example. Unfortunately, the main quest forces the player to visit the region, which means hours of walking through nothing but cliff racers and sandstorms.

I could use a mod or cheat to speed the movement speed, but that would affect every other aspect of the game as well, including combat.

Haha, those screenshots are having the same effect on me, as well of waves of nostalgia. :)

not to mention the underwater areas, grottos, and pearl diving. :)

When I played it, There were plenty of other kinds of attackers in the area, too. Especially around Daedric ruins, and hostile camps. But I know that you like to play games VERY quickly and probably get bored if the pace is slowed down from other areas.

I tried to get a screenshot while using a Scroll of Icarian Flight just for you, Thrasher, but with MGSO it's too much for it to display anything. :p

haha. Once I explored by foot (and by swimming) everywhere (and I really mean everywhere, Todd remembers), I made a constant enchantment ring of levitate and flew around to finish the main quest. MUCH, MUCH, faster. Also, nothing like fighting a trail of cliffracers following you as you fly from one end of Vaardenfell to the other. ;)

Just keep a bound longbow in hotkey for about 10 sec duration. That pretty much takes care of the cliff racer problem!