Games in which your character matters

Morrowind is a great game. Of course it's not perfect, no game is, but if you can't see the roleplaying value in Morrowind then you're blind.

Pass my dark glasses, and where'd you put my white cane!!

I beg to differ, old man. Morrowind is an excellent sandbox (as Sammy says) to dig around in. Sure, there's no point to doing it, but it's about as good as it gets for roleplaying just like JDR says. That's not saying it's fun to play, or even a good game, but it does what it does very well.

I remember after I stopped those terrible storms for the first time, it was a glorious moment to step out in the open and all was calm. I think I even wrote gramma sammy and told her, I was so jazzed about it.

Morrowind is a game that if played a certain way, it can be very good, but if you choose to exploit the problems it has (like infinite training) it will go down the tubes pretty quick. Also, just staying on the main quest can help, I think too many people go too far off the rails and get lost and bored in the game without direction. Stick to the linear games if you cant handle the freedom!

I agree with your last point, Sammy. I really got into Morrowind for about a month before I got "lost and bored", and was making inroads in everything, building an alchemist, crafting potions, solving the ghost in the inn quest(one of the funniest I ever played) and camping out under those amazing skies---but it became impossible for my poor brain to keep track of everything I needed/wanted to do, traveling everywhere, talking to hundreds of NPC's, etc….but I thought a lot of Morrowind was extremely well done in the classsic rpg mode.

I never understood Morrowind then. I felt utterly alone. No NPC's ever mattered to me. The dialogue to me absolutely sucked and made every NPC feel more like walking signposts than real people. I fought long and hard to become high priest with my Monk character and the only thing that came out of it was to see the previous high priest tell me that "you are now the high priest", gave me a crappy item, then he walked out of the room. Need I tell you that I forgot the highpriest name, since it never actually mattered to know who he was.

I trained long and hard to get my Hand to Hand combat up to 100 only to discover that there was absolutely no way to deal decent damage with HtH combat so I had to pick up a club and start using that instead. I kept using unarmored combat but I felt no advantage compared to using heavy armor.

All I ever cared about in roleplaying games have been well written non-player characters. I can not stress how important that is from a roleplaying perspective. When there are absolutely nobody in the game to care about, and no NPC act like a PERSON, then I see no roleplaying opportunities in it.

Yes, JemyM, the npcs were often irritatingly generic. If that's the make or break for you, I can understand your disappointment. There were too many of them all saying the same things, IMO.
But the make or break for me was the "too much freedom" thing. I was roleplaying my character just fine(along my non PnP background lines), but in the end there was just nowhere in particular that I could figure out to take her.

I kept a detailed written log, it was the only way to keep track of everything (and their respective locations) that I needed to do.

I dont see how you got to HtoH 100 without dealing any good damage, Jemy. I maxed out my HtoH with one of my chars and by the endgame was able to take on pretty much anything I came across, unarmed. You cant deal the death blow bare-handed, but you can beat the hell out of pretty much anything and have it in the fetal position in a few good blows.

It does feel like an MMO without anyone else logged in at times, especially outdoors in the city of Vivec. Then again, I tend to solo alot in MMOs anyway so it wasnt something that I was all that bothered by. All this MW talk is giving me the urge to play it again, I never played with any mods beside my own tweaks.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
I dont see how you got to HtoH 100 without dealing any good damage, Jemy. I maxed out my HtoH with one of my chars and by the endgame was able to take on pretty much anything I came across, unarmed. You cant deal the death blow bare-handed, but you can beat the hell out of pretty much anything and have it in the fetal position in a few good blows.

HtH really does no damage. Instead it stuns the target. It took like 2 minutes to smack down a opponent with 100 HtH combat and it took me like 1-2 blows with my 2h club.

Havent played it for years, i guess I didnt realize how powerful I was when it came to my final blow(s). I just remember laying out pretty much anything with my hands, then a swat or two with my 2-hander and it was dead.

Morrowind has a lot of good RPG elements, but I never actually enjoyed playing it. I can see that it's a good RPG, and it bothers me that I never completed it, so I keep trying (and I am again right now, actually). But I'm having trouble getting over the fact that I don't really like it.

Bugs aren't my thing, and there's a lot of bugs and buggy stuff in the game. Disease doesn't do much for me, either, and disease is one of Morrowind's main themes. Then there's all that hateful religion that you get caught up in. Sprinkle hateful politics on top, and you're there -- that's my impression of Morrowind.

All of that stuff would be OK if it were just…better, somehow. But it's not, not to me.

I'm looking at it as food that I understand is good, but I don't happen to like. I'm seasoning it heavily with a lot of mods and trying to force it down. Hopefully, I'll make it to the end of the game without choking.

Originally Posted by JemyM
I felt utterly alone. No NPC's ever mattered to me. The dialogue to me absolutely sucked and made every NPC feel more like walking signposts than real people.

I can not stress how important that is from a roleplaying perspective. When there are absolutely nobody in the game to care about, and no NPC act like a PERSON, then I see no roleplaying opportunities in it.

On one hand I agree with you, on the other hand you just described about 95% of rpg's in general. Morrowind's npc's weren't much worse than most crpg's.

There are a lot of flaws in Morrowind - the mostly lifeless NPCs, the lack of your choices really affecting the gameworld, and the poor combat system really drag the game down.

But I think the key to enjoying it is to get INTO the actual game world. Read some of the books lying around about the history of the place, pat attention to the dialogue - there is a lot of repetetive and useless stuff but if you dig deep enough a lot of what is said is fascinating, as far as it relates to the game world.

If you can get into THAT aspect of the game and try to "become" your
character, it's actually a pretty unique and fun experience - major kudos to Bethesda's art design department, the architecture and general artwork in the game and the immense scope really go a long way to making the game enjoyable. Add to that all the backstory and lore the world of Tamriel has and in that sense it succeeds in a big way as an RPG, it's just one where you have no instant or quick thrills.

I found that if one just compares one playthrough Morrowind has a lot of betters. And the storytelling side of the game is extremely weak. It's a sandbox. It does however have enough quests to allow replays with relatively small overlap (provided one has the discipline to only stick with one or two factions per playthough) while still offering what felt like a whole game worth's of content. One of my biggest gripes with the successor was the drastic cut in the quest department.

the mostly lifeless NPCs

It sometimes puzzles me. Fallout had just as many lifeless NPCs and nobody ever mentions that. The streets of Bloodlines were filled with lifeless NPCs too.

It is Morrowind that has lifeless NPCs, it is Morrowind that has repetitive dialogue, it is Morrowind that doesn't let you affect the gameworld, it is Morrowind that has poor combat.

And compared to for example Divine Divinity and Bloodlines, how did Morrowind not let you affect the world?

Accept the fact that Morrowind is a really good game but it isn't the standard/classic RPG experience but it does things in a different way and many of them in a really interesting way. The mechanics are different but therefore it isn't a lesser RPG. It's just up to your subjectiveness.
RPGs is all about depth and Morrowind had just as much if not even more depth than many "classic" RPGs. Yes, it has flaws but so has any other RPG. It all depends upon what you compare and what you define as a better gameplay component, but that again is dependant upon your subjectiveness.

Subjectiveness?

Morrowind never felt repetitve or lifeless to me. For me the game had a lot of drama, intrigue, conflicts, culture and last but not least words. You have to use the words that surround Morrowind. The books, the dialogues, the papers, the journal.

My main problem with Morrowind is that the world is so real, that it feels static. It needs to be added some dynamic but which aren't caused by the player. Dynamic which a real world also has, whether or not you're there or not. That was negative, but Morrowind wasn't lifeless to me.

What is it dear Mr. Howard said/says: "Live another life, in another world". Morrowind succeded that to a very high extent.

Take a character and "win" the game.
Take a second character and kill 10,000 rats in the swamp outside Seyda Neen.

You character's level and skills are liable to be painfully similar. From a world standpoint, the only difference will be whether the NPCs call you "outlander" or "Neverine".

The player's influence on the world and the world's influence on the character are very limited. That's my gripe with Morrowind. I still readily admit that MW gives more freedom to truly roleplay than any game before and possibly since.

You can argue that Morrowind didn't let you affect the world. But how did V:tM -Bloodlines or Divine Divinity let you affect the world?
I seldom hear them being criticized for the lack of player influence on the world.

I think the combat was fun, actually, I keep seeing people ragging on that and I actually had more fun with my MW combat than I do in Oblivion. Open up with an arrow or two with my summoned bow, then draw my 2-hander and hit em with a thrust when they close in, a swing, (meanwhile jumping back to avoid their blows) then jump in with my sword held over my head for a flying chop right down on the enemy skull!
What's not to like there? i think it was pretty damn fun!

as opposed to half the other RPGs where you just run up and whack away and watch the health meter. There's actually a style to the fighting in MW

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
I think the combat was fun, actually, I keep seeing people ragging on that and I actually had more fun with my MW combat than I do in Oblivion. Open up with an arrow or two with my summoned bow, then draw my 2-hander and hit em with a thrust when they close in, a swing, (meanwhile jumping back to avoid their blows) then jump in with my sword held over my head for a flying chop right down on the enemy skull!
What's not to like there? i think it was pretty damn fun!

It was only when we got internet at my house and I started visiting the The Elder Scrolls boards, that I became aware that people didn't like the combat (weird enough, eh?). But my point is that I've never experienced the combat in Morrowind as flawed.
Though I would've liked to be able to control the shield like in Oblivion. But I only thought of that whilst playing Oblivion.

Originally Posted by Asbjoern
Just as a very small note. There isn't any free roaming rats on the isle of Vvardenfell. They only appear in interior cells.

Actually, I'm running into them outside everywhere.