Morrowind - Why Modders Won't Let it Go

Aubrielle · May 24, 2016

PC Gamer takes a look at why Morrowind continues to have a hold on us after all these years, and why we just can't let go of it.

Thanks, Couch.

For millions of players, Morrowind was their introduction to the world of The Elder Scrolls, but even Elder Scrolls veterans who cut their teeth on Arena and Daggerfall left Morrowind with an impression that lasted. For some of those players, Morrowind made such an impression that they never wanted to leave at all. Those fans have spent the past years painstakingly updating Morrowind, brick by brick, texture by texture, into Bethesda’s more modern engines.

Even returning to Morrowind 14 years later, it’s easy to see why. Morrowind's island setting of Vvardenfell offsets a few standard fantasy clichés—a villain who lairs in a wasteland of volcanic ash and dwarven ruins full of monsters—but also more visionary ideas. There's a prison inside a moon floating over a city built on a lake, a transport network of giant fleas controlled by riders who directly manipulate their steeds' nervous systems, and a settlement where most of the buildings are the hollowed-out shells of gigantic dead creatures. Vvardenfell is a memorable place, more outlandish than anything seen in the Elder Scrolls games that preceded or followed it.

Morrowind was also the first Elder Scrolls game to come with a Creation Kit, a gift from Bethesda that gave players the opportunity to alter that world and make it their own. The best mods tended to leave the setting be and instead tinker with the clunky RPG mechanics it was filtered through, changing the way leveling works and the rate skills improve and so on.

...

The Skywind team are doing impressive work on making Morrowind look and sound better, while also helping it become a little less frustrating to play thanks to Skyrim's mechanical improvements, all to allow the Morrowind we built up inside our heads as we first played it to live again. To some degree, though, no matter which game's variety of combat and leveling are applied to it, no matter which level of fidelity it's polished to, that version that will always live inside our imaginations.

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forgottenlor · May 24, 2016

Morrowwind had a lot of flaws. The mana system was broken. The npcs were characterless. For me though it was the most original Elder Scrolls Game, and for its time, the most impressive. Skyrim, Oblivion, and Daggerfall were incredibly unoriginal in their settings. I hope the next Elder Scrolls Game is set in a more incredible, original place.

Sacred_Path · May 24, 2016

forgottenlor said:
The npcs were characterless.

The single biggest flaw for me and the reason why I could never get into the game. The area design and the innumerable hand-placed items could have made it great, but the ridiculous NPC's killed it for me.

azarhal · May 24, 2016

forgottenlor said:
The npcs were characterless.

Caused by lack of voice over and ~3000 individual NPCs being just there to be killed in a cave somewhere. Oh and Morrowind dev teams being 30ish at their max (aka the end of it) with one person worthy of being called writer.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to game development when 30 people could make more features in 2000 than 100 can in 2015.

Hastar · May 24, 2016

Maybe the best setting of all time and the worst combat.

Bedwyr · May 24, 2016

forgottenlor said:
Morrowwind had a lot of flaws. The mana system was broken. The npcs were characterless. For me though it was the most original Elder Scrolls Game, and for its time, the most impressive. Skyrim, Oblivion, and Daggerfall were incredibly unoriginal in their settings. I hope the next Elder Scrolls Game is set in a more incredible, original place.

Skyrim wasn't so bad as the viking aesthetic hasn't been over-done at that point. They also seemed to re-acknowledge that the empire was in fact supposed to be a Roman affectation rather than retconning the uniforms and architecture to a more medieval aesthetic. I remember the YouTube commenter MrBTongue was struck by the exact same thing that hit me in the pocket guide to the empire: the idea of a Roman empire in hot sticky rice paddies and jungle of SE Asia. That would have been Awesome! What a wasted opportunity Oblivion was from that standpoint.

The single biggest flaw for me and the reason why I could never get into the game. The area design and the innumerable hand-placed items could have made it great, but the ridiculous NPC's killed it for me.

Acknowledged. But there's a certain charm to the thing too. Maybe it helped to have played Daggerfall first, but if one exercised their roleplaying imaginative muscle you could kind of grok the coolness of being able to ask an NPC any question you wanted. You just had to sort of pretend that you hadn't jarringly heard the exact same response from three other NPCs. Weird, I know, but it worked with that kind of "let's pretend" attitude.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to game development when 30 people could make more features in 2000 than 100 can in 2015.

They either became indie developers or go hat-in-hand to Kickstarter. There's no publisher support for that kind of development anymore. It's too ambitious, unpredictable, and undisciplined from a project management standpoint. If I were a publisher or investor, if you had a reputation for amazing blue-sky innovation but with the project and schedule discipline of a puppy with ADHD, you would not get one red cent from me. It's harsh, but there are definite financial reasons things sorted out this way and not all of them are because people withe investment dollars are evil bastards. Mostly they just don't like getting into the habit of making small fortunes from large ones.

azarhal · May 24, 2016

Hastar said:
Maybe the best setting of all time and the worst combat.

When it released the combat was pretty standard for a RPGs and I remember finding it super cool. It even caused an uproar among the fans when they announced they were changing it in Oblivion.

ikbenrichard · May 24, 2016

Amen.

The RPG with the most fond memories i have ever played. Well ok, and fallout 1/2.

Truly looking forward to skywind. Even more so then the next elder scroll game.
It looks amazing, great work !

JDR13 · May 24, 2016

forgottenlor said:
Morrowwind had a lot of flaws. The mana system was broken. The npcs were characterless.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the economy. That was the most broken part in the game imo. Most of the merchants had a ridiculously small amount of gold, and you were forced to part with much of your loot for much less than it was worth.

Not really sure what you mean by the NPCs being characterless.

azarhal · May 24, 2016

JDR13 said:
Not really sure what you mean by the NPCs being characterless.

Most of the the 3000+ unique NPCs had not backgrounds and spouted the same lines for subjects I bet.

Deleted User · May 24, 2016

Combat wasn't bad to me, especially if you built your typical character as a character that had decent enough skills. If you start the game with a 0-15 or whatever in your weapon or magic skills, yeah, it's gonna be rough. If you build your character in a way that gives you a better start, it's not even a problem at all (the missing attacks part, that is).

Mages in Morrowind often cast all sorts of different spells at you. And there were many, many interesting spells you could use to solve a combat encounter. I loved it and still do.

At the end of the day in an RPG, I'd rather have a dice-roll to-hit system than a "always hit if you're inside the hit-box" system. That's just me. I love going back to Morrowind even today and playing it.

I'm currently also watching a younger friend of mine play it on Twitch, and it's very fascinating to get his 18-year old first-time Morrowind player opinion and view on it.

Arahael · May 25, 2016

Bedwyr said:
I remember the YouTube commenter MrBTongue was struck by the exact same thing that hit me in the pocket guide to the empire: the idea of a Roman empire in hot sticky rice paddies and jungle of SE Asia. That would have been Awesome! What a wasted opportunity Oblivion was from that standpoint.

The Black Marsh, home of the Argonians, is full of dense rain-forests, swampy inland rivers, and mangroves. A game set there would involve the imperial legions, and a setting similar to what you described.

Deleted User · May 25, 2016

Arahael said:
The Black Marsh, home of the Argonians, is full of dense rain-forests, swampy inland rivers, and mangroves. A game set there would involve the imperial legions, and a setting similar to what you described.

Eh, southern parts of Cyrodiil, near Leyawiin and south of Bravil, were pretty cool, actually, and were a start for what The Black Marsh would be like. Swampy, marshy, very neat places to explore.

I actually thought Oblivion had all sorts of varied terrain. The "in" thing seems to be to say it was all "generic forests" or something, but I noticed a lot of subtle world-building in the game that I really liked. Near Leyawiin, near Anvil, Bruma, etc.

Goraidh · May 25, 2016

azarhal said:
Caused by lack of voice over and ~3000 individual NPCs being just there to be killed in a cave somewhere. Oh and Morrowind dev teams being 30ish at their max (aka the end of it) with one person worthy of being called writer.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to game development when 30 people could make more features in 2000 than 100 can in 2015.

Skyrim and Oblivion both have voiceovers still characters are bland and I cant any names. AND CAIUS COSAIDES STILL LIVES IN MY HEART THAT NAKED BASTARD. I can add that i still remember how to move around Balmora, probably better than around my homecity.

What I wonder is that today one person in his free time (stardew valley for example) can make a game more rich than 100 people with money.

TheSHEEEP · May 25, 2016

fluent said:
at the end of the day in an rpg, i'd rather have a dice-roll to-hit system than a "always hit if you're inside the hit-box" system. That's just me. I love going back to morrowind even today and playing it.

y e s !

Bedwyr · May 25, 2016

Arahael said:
The Black Marsh, home of the Argonians, is full of dense rain-forests, swampy inland rivers, and mangroves. A game set there would involve the imperial legions, and a setting similar to what you described.

Boy would it.

It doesn't change what Cyrodiil turned into, which is still sad, but I do note that if Bethesda still makes it a habit to change provinces every game they're running out of "standard fantasy" ones as settings.

It's nice that they made one of the Skyrim DLCs set in Solstheim and brought mushrooms back in. That shows at least they respect the setting and what it means for Nirn.

KaosWarMonk · May 26, 2016

Yes, MW lover here too, although shamefully I haven't fired it up for a long while. In my defence I've got Morroblivion running very nicely and have played that a fair bit in the last year. I've got multiple MW installs on my PC and my main characters have existed for years.

I actually came to MW via Oblivion to start with. My PC couldn't run OB that well so I installed MW to try it and then I discovered the plethora of mods available and thus the journey began. A while later when I started to really play the game seriously I discovered things like the spell maker and I was hooked for a long time.

Yes it had some short comings but in the scheme of things these were far outweighed by what was good about the game. Definitely one of my all time favourites.

-kwm

Morrowind - Why Modders Won't Let it Go

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