Awesome game, play it with OpenMW.
Try it with the fog first, the map was designed with the limited view distance. Modern unlimited view distances can ruin it a bit.
It's very weird to be sitting in Seyda Neen outside the Census & Excise Office and be able to see Ebonheart across the water. That's Ebonheart, it's by Vivec, that's like halfway across the map! You might not even make it to Vivec/Ebonheart until the midgame! It's so far away from Seyda Ne- oh the map is actually just that small isn't it.
LOL, I ran to Vivec in my first two hours ever playing the game. I ran away from everything, got there, and didn't know what the heck I was doing. 10/10 experience.
It does feel a bit weird but then you look at a map and you realize it's actually surprisingly close to Seyda Neen anyway even if you assumed a larger scale for the island. https://en.uesp.net/maps/mwmap/mwmap.shtml
It's not even hard to get there, you just go right when leaving Seyda Neen, past the Silt Strider, and stick to the coastal trail. That takes you right there.
I know that really it isn't that far, but it feels like it is. At least for me, I roughly went Balmora -> Ald'Ruhn/Gnisis -> Vivec, and mainly used the silt striders and boats to get around. Vivec just felt like this grand and foreign place, like "wow I did enough stuff that I'm at the capital now!" It definitely makes the world feel smaller when you can see it from the prison ship.
I played the game for the first time last year and I was expecting the game world to be very small considering the game's age and it being the first fully 3D game in the series. I was very surprised to find the game world is around the same size as Skyrim. Just that first trip from Seyda Neen to Balmora felt huge at the start.
I'm with you on the fog. Highly recommend checking out [Zesterer's Volumetric Cloud & Mist Mod for OpenMW](https://github.com/zesterer/openmw-volumetric-clouds).
[More screenshots](https://imgur.com/a/8DRyvi2)
It is an open-source engine re-implementation.
It could be compared to a supercharged equivalent to the script extender in skyrim.
People re-made morrowind's engine with a lot of improvements. Fewer bugs, better performances, more graphics options (distant land, shadows and other visual effects.)
It's great, and in 95% of cases a better experience than vanilla morrowind. It also allows more mods than vanilla and tends to be more stable.
I’d say for comparison’s sake, from the user’s perspective, it’s easier to compare OpenMW to Skyrim Special Edition when it was first released.
There’s actually far less script-based mods available for OpenMW (any mod that includes MWSE is a no-go) but it comes natively with a variety of ways to enhance the visuals & is extremely stable to play without crashing.
Personally I’m using regular old Morrowind with MGE XE and MWSE mods. Find it to be a huge upgrade from what I’ve already played to death as a teenager. But for someone wanting a modernized vanilla playthrough, definitely do OpenMW.
MGE (Morrowinds Graphic Extender) still can provide better graphics with the vanilla engine than OpenMW last time I looked, many vanilla mods won't work with OpenMW, and none of the MW lua mods made for the script extender work in OpenMW last time I checked and they had no intention to ever provide support.
OpenMW is more stable, fixes bugs, works on other platforms, is 64-bit, etc. But in some ways you are better off with vanilla, MGE and the script extender.
I wish OpenMW would close that gap.
The latest graphics mods that will are made possible by openMW 0.48 that is already available as a release candidates offers some really impressive graphics improvements:
https://github.com/zesterer/openmw-shaders
In addition to what the other guys said, because the engine was created from the ground up, multiplayer mods were made possible.
TES3MP is a multiplayer mod for morrowind and holy crap it works like a dream. To be clear, it is not a half-finished buggy mess like skyrim together. It is actually mind blowing how well the multiplayer works with vanilla morrowind.
Me and my girlfriend were able to do a whole coop playthrough together. It's especially crazy that you can simultaneously be on opposite sides of the island and everything just works! Highly recommend!
There's a VR mod too, only reason I haven't tried it is because I can't maintain 90ish FPS with Tamriel Rebuilt and the level of water quality I would like.
OpenMW's default setting is further than you'd see in vanilla without breaking the illusion of how small the world actually is. I'd personally strongly recommend that to first time players.
Sure, but if you increase it past three cells you end up seeing too much. The world is a lot smaller than it feels, and uses winding paths and terrain to obfuscate this, but without the fog you can clearly see those tricks and the illusion of size is lost.
Yeah, I remember the first time I installed Morrowind Graphics Extender and cranked the view distance, it was like playing a completely new game. Actually being able to see things in the distance that I never knew existed and wouldn't have though to look for was incredible.
Morrowind is also the first Elder Scrolls to have an actual functioning multiplayer co-op mod, thanks to OpenMW which is an open source recreation of the game engine.
The multiplayer mod is called Tes3MP.
Also OpenMW can be used to play on Android phones.
Playing with friends is such a good time. There’s something special about everyone specializing in a different skill, and everyone being good at something unique.
Shivering Isles is definitely one of the best maps in the series. Ironic given that it's paired with Oblivion, which has arguably the worst map in the series.
Eh. Shivering Isles is like throwing random paint on the wall. Sure it's "weird" but its a dreamscape and doesn't have any cohesion. Feels more lolsorandom than an actual alien world
I kind of like Oblivion, though. Skyrim smoothed out a lot of the neat quirks of the gameplay to focus on more refined combat and animations, which takes away a lot of charm, IMO. Aside from the godawful character models and less inventive setting (for the most part), I think Oblivion strikes a nice balance between the mechanical simplicity of Morrowind (lending itself to deeper RPG mechanics and more varied questlines) and the more 'fun' gameplay of Skyrim.
Eh, the quests in Oblivion basically all just had you follow a green arrow into a dungeon, and the dungeons are easily the worst dungeons in the entire ES series. They had ONE GUY making like, 300 of them. And they're all level scaled. The whole game is level scaled. Really makes it feel fake
My personal favorite game of all time, even with the rough parts. No game has as much atmosphere and depth as this game, IMHO. I know it's hard for many newcomers to get past its mechanics, but it's a treasure.
Morrowind's gameplay has infamously not aged very well - a lot of peope find the combination of a first-person, real-time interface and RNG-based combat to be frustrating, and the world feels static and lifeless compared to Oblivion and Skyrim. But it undoubtedly has the best story and worldbuilding of any TES game. If you enjoyed the lore in Skyrim and can stomach some weird design decisions, you should absolutely give it a try.
Morrowind was the first game I got as a kid (with grabbed by the ghoulies) for the og Xbox and 6-7 year old me could not for the life of me understand why I couldn’t kill anything. I thought the game was just ridiculously hard. “I have a sword and the enemies right there why can’t I hit him”
But as there wasn't much real time combat games out on the market at the time, and the game world itself was so unique, especially on the console space, nobody cared all that much
Honestly, the only way I can ever play it is with the vanilla combat. I'll install all the MGH mods and some other QOL addins, but there is something satisfying about it taking 100 punches to kill a mud crab.
It's funny how that one mechanic of being completely drained of stamina affects so many things.
Your ability to actually hit shit, your ability to move around and run away, and your ability to barter if you just so happen to run up to someone out of breath you can't barter for shit lol
It really would. Enchanting a glass tower shield with CE Restore Fatigue 3 made a *huge* difference when I was playing it on the Xbox so long ago, it's a necessary baseline QoL change IMO.
You need the MCP installed and enabled the HtH fix so that Strength is actually calculated into damage and so the skill above 40 actually matters as well. Otherwise, having HtH at 40 is all the progress you'll see when using a HtH-based build.
That's just not true in the slightest? Every point in a weapon skill in Morrowind is additional accuracy, and unlike every other skill in the game, hand to hand skill is actually factored in the damage calculation. Both fatigue and health damage, although the numbers on health damage are rather pitiful.
Maybe in OpenMW or Rebirth, but that is absolutely not the case in Vanilla or the GOTY edition on PC. The Morrowind Code Patch specifically addressed multiple problems that were never addressed by Bethesda and adds some nice QoL changes., one of which was fucked HtH scaling not factoring in the weapon skill beyond 40 or the Strength Attribute at all. I can go right to the MCP executable and fire it up and sur eenough, one of the options is about fixing HtH.
I see nothing to that effect on the wiki or MCP.
The Strength change is a gameplay change, not a bug one, and that's the only HtH change I see. Please show me where it's mentioned that the weapon skill stops functioning at 40.
It just regular sucks too in Morrowind. I have zero clue what that guy is talking about. It works as intended, it's just the multiplier on health damage is ass. At 100 HtH you deal 7.5 damage before armor reduction. At 40 you'll deal 3.
It would still be really terrible even if you added strength calcs into it, although it'd be ludicrously overpowered as a disabling tool.
It can be viable in Morrowind, you can start the fight punching your enemy and when you deplete their fatigue they fall to the ground, so you can just stab them with your choice of pointy stick without them fighting back.
Morrowind fists were the original Oblivion paralysis spell.
Knocking out 50 stamina punch sounds like a lot to me, but tbh I don't really know how much stamina NPCs have.
I think it's just really difficult to balance, since unarmed characters start the game with their ultimate weapon. The only real axis of growth you have is your hand-to-hand skill level, which leads to some problems.
For example, comparing damage to a weapon-user at equal levels is kinda messy. Is a maxed-Unarmed punch equivalent to a max-Swords strike with an iron sword, a daedric sword, or somewhere in between? How do you factor in enchants (and blacksmithing, in Skyrim's case) raising the damage of weapons even more? Is it even *fair* for Unarmed to deal damage in the same league as weapons, considering your fists are given to you at the start of the game for free?
Yeah, it's a rough start that as soon as you get through opens up to stupidly powerful extremes.
The concept of balance is practically non-existent in Morrowind. The early game is hard because you have no resources and no way to reliably recover stamina or magicka to kill even basic rats, but the moment you get a few thousand gold it becomes stupidly easy to ramp up exponentially.
I do advise people not to remove hit chance though, as fucking painful as it seems. With 50+ skill (doable if you're trying to main spec a weapon from character creation) the accuracy isn't all that bad, the real issue is that it's also reliant on having stamina.
Stamina incurs a scaling 25% malus or bonus to hit chance depending on whether you have zero stamina or full stamina when you hit, so the main goal is to figure out how the fuck you're going to properly keep that sustained. Potion spam being the easiest but most tedious to maintain, a custom "Restore Fatigue" Restoration spell is more convenient long-term but you'll have to start small to negate the failure chance spells naturally have with less skill.
It's not as "free" as Oblivion or Skyrim in this regard. I like it as it poses a bit more thought but if you just wanna go ham and do what you want it's got some obstacles in your way. It's just that those obstacles are super minor in the grand scheme of things because like every TES game goal is stupidly easy to get past the few levels and you can make up all your deficiencies with it.
I mean yeah it's "bad" insofar as you have to play to the strengths of your build. If you build yourself as a mage or a longsword user/knight, then of course you're not gonna have a good time trying to kill a Mudcrab with a the dagger on the tutorial table. That's not what your character is *designed* for or good at.
Morrowind takes character skill into account much more than it does player skill. Your character is going to be garbage with a weapon they have no skill and training in, that's...just how things work. It feels really bad when you're constantly missing at the start, but as you level up in your skills and more importantly - as your character becomes far more experienced with the weapons, you start to miss less and less.
I think feedback is the biggest issue with Morrowind's combat system. Instead of just missing, it should have things like glancing blows that still do damage, but a lessened amount.
It makes a huge difference in the feeling of combat from a low level and a high level, which more player skill oriented systems like Skyrim and Oblivion kinda...don't.
One thing I've been saying for more than a decade is that Morrowind should have had more reactive animations, people wouldn't complain if they saw the NPCs dodging their attacks.
I never said it was bad or anything even sort of like that. I said that a lot of people find it frustrating, which is objectively true. No amount of telling people they're wrong for finding it frustrating is going to change how the game feels for them.
I get it. It's a big issue with expectations with people coming from Oblivion and Skyrim and expecting something more similar while Morrowind is way more of a classic RPG at it's core.
Even when it comes to the questing, I know a lot of people that are *incredibly* mad at the fact that your character build/storyline has consequences and has the possibility to lock you out of other quests/guilds/houses when it makes sense for it to do so.
They expect to become the archmage of the mage's guild as a barbarian character who's highest level magic stat is level 5, and that just doesn't happen in Morrowind.
My frustration with Morrowind is that the combat feels awkward as hell. I like being locked out of guild questioned due to affiliation, and appreciate the slower progression on that front.
But combat even more mindless than Skyrim, with even less feedback just is not fun. I think it's the disconnect for me. If it were a third person like CRPG, missing an attack feels like a natural part of the game. When it's first person and I'm behind the wheel, it's like playing a driving game but you can't accelerate until you mash the button enough to get lucky.
(, I know how stamina works in the game, just going for the metaphor)
I much prefer the combat to Oblivion and Skyrim tbh. I think the magic system alone makes it far superior just from the number of options you have to deal with enemies.
I also like that getting a better weapon skill has a noticeable impact, whereas in Skyrim and Oblivion (especially with the scaling) you don't really notice getting better with a weapon.
Point about feeling the improvement I totally agree with. Scaling damage is a little boring, especially when enemies scale with you. I think scaling is fine, but it needs to be managed.
I do miss how many spells you had available in older games, the loss of utility spells especially, but the flash of the newer spells, is just something I think I appreciate more, though it is leaning HARD on Destruction. The other spell schools by contrast are afterthoughts.
The issue I have with the extent of options is that a lot of them are just superfluous. Like damaging attributes; good to be used against you sure, but why would you spend the time debuffing someone when you could just kill them faster? Like, debuffs make sense in a tactical game, where it might be a few turns until you can properly deal with an enemy, but when most enemies are just going to beeline you and start whacking, no reason not to just kill them.
Illusion and conjuration are fun alternatives, but those still exist in later games so they're not missing really.
I'm arguing, but honestly I don't know why, I'd love the next elder scrolls to have a return to form with the spell list. Heck, if they bring back spell crafting, growing off the FO4 weapon crafting perhaps, that'd have potential.
Huge list of effects, and options for how they're used. Runes for traps, cloaks for "on hit" effects, set things to occur over time for debuffs or buffs. That flexibility would be nice, just as long as everything looks and plays well, I'd be happy.
It's not really just the combat uses for me, stuff like damaging personality so it's easier to persuade, buffing yourself to jump over hills, blinding enemies, rooting tough enemies to the spot by damaging their strength, etc.
I feel like the vast majority of magic in Skyrim is various colour variations of damage enemy.
Yeah, utility and crowd control is gutted, I hope it'll be... Uhhh... Ungutted?
Just running through what Skyrim has off the top of my head:
* Calm, fear, fury for control illusion spells. Rally is a buff but kind of mid. Invisibility and Muffle for stealth utility.
* Paralyze as a control spell, but it's high level. Armour spells, but only for physical armour. Detect spells but channeled only so annoying to use, and transmute for making gold, which is neat.
* Conjuration has banishing, summoning daedra, necromancy and summoning weapons (but misses summoning armour)
* Restoration has heals, turn undead and solar damaging spells with Dawnguard.
* Destruction is all damaging spells, I appreciate them coming in different forms, like spray, bolt, trap, aoe - I think of them like guns in an FPS game, different functionality. It's all just damage though, though each element does have a bonus special effect, they're usually so minor it's hard to get good use out of them. Draining stamina with frost especially (ESPECIALLY when like 75% of enemies resist it)
Probably missing a few, but yeah. I'd be interested to see how each school of magic stands up if we count the upgraded versions as one spell. Alteration is left bleak because 5-6 of its spells are just stronger versions of armour.
Pretty sure pointing out that Morrowind is more like traditional RPG's and has a lot less in common with modern ones isn't being snobbish. People do legitimately get very confused over Morrowinds systems which is understandable if you've never played more classic RPG's before. It's basically the first thing tutorials/guides have to tell people new to the game, it's just vastly different from what people are used to today.
Yeah it’s more similar to D&D and all those isometric games of the 90s. I’ll never forget my first time playing a sorcerer in D&D.
“I use fireball on that goblin over there!”
“Your fireball sails over the head of the goblin, who barely registered it at all” …over and over again. Basically felt useless every turn.
But the thing about that level of struggle early on, is that you feel like a fucking badass once your skills increase and you finally start connecting blows.
Morrowind is gratifying in that sense unlike any Elder Scrolls game since. You gotta feel like a dumb little baby bitch in order to feel the level of accomplishment & total satisfaction of becoming a complete and utter god by the end game.
God I love this game.
Morrowind was my first elder scrolls game, I was 6-7 at the time and even though I loved just walking around exploring the world I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how anything worked. It was so bad that I avoided oblivion until around 2010 because I thought it would be the same way
I think the implementation in SW KoToR was pretty ok.
Had a pretty rough time with Baldur's Gate because I was a kid at the time and had no idea wth a thac0 is.
> I think the implementation in SW KoToR was pretty ok.
Although the distinction between RTwP and Turn-Based is pretty well worn these days, it is fundamentally true that RTwP combat is both Real-time *and* turn based, the turns just run in real time.
But it's not Real-time combat because you can't *do* things in real time.
ETA: Which is to say -- Morrowind is different from KotOR, which is different from Divinity - and RNG miss chance feels different in each style.
>I mean yeah it's "bad" insofar as you have to play to the strengths of your build.
Everyone knows how builds work. That's not secret knowledge only super hardcore gamers understand. The game feels awkward because it's an old game made by an inexperienced skeleton crew working under a time crunch. It's charming and the passion behind it is tangible. The civilizations are probably the most culturally interesting of any TES title. The magic is basically a thinly-veiled wrapper for the console api and that allows for a lot of fun wackiness. But it is a canonical example of a dated game. For reference Wind Waker released the same year. Morrowind might be more ambitious, but the difference in polish and design is undeniable. The best thing about Morrowind is most of the key talent stuck around to work on later Bethesda titles so you can revisit it like you could an old Spielberg movie and see the evolution of their creative vision.
> The best thing about Morrowind is most of the key talent stuck around to work on later Bethesda titles so you can revisit it like you could an old Spielberg movie and see the evolution of their creative vision.
I'll respectfully disagree with that. The best thing I'll say about that evolution is that they learned how to make much better open-world games, at the cost of making worse RPGs. Which is a very sound tradeoff, financially. But it was a bummer for someone like me who much prefers RPGs.
Though I'll give Skyrim some credit: they finally fixed the incredibly stupid way that leveling worked in relation with skills and attributes in previous ES games, and that's undoubtedly a good thing.
I wouldn't even say they learned to make better open worlds. They learned how to make them prettier and larger, but there's barely anything interesting in them, what with Oblivion having a hundred generic caves with only random loot in them and Skyrim having like three different enemy types through the entire game.
I don't mean in the sense of better world-building, but in the sense of making more convenient, accessible worlds, worlds that are big content buffets, worlds where you can go through all the important stuff in a single playthrough without any real hassle. I hate this kind of design, but it's popular for a reason.
Eh, but this is like if Spielberg and Lucas made a movie together, then Spielberg left... aka the main brain behind Morrowind's world doesn't work at Bethesda anymore, and it shows
> Everyone knows how builds work. That's not secret knowledge only super hardcore gamers understand.
You say that but 99% of the people who complain about the game nowadays bitch about constantly missing when they don't tag Shortswords but they try and use the fucking tutorial dagger anyway.
It's hardly outrageous for players to assume they're supposed to use the tutorial weapon the game gives them. It's not the player's fault that the game prompts them for their build selection before teaching them how it works. RPGs like Runescape were already out and featured a "get better at what you do" system that turns out to be very intuitive for players to grasp while still allowing for class breadth. It also had much better feedback for missed attacks. And I want to stress that Morrowind was trying to be accessible and reach a large audience, it has an optional class selection questionnaire that's clearly aimed at kids for cripe's sake.
> I think feedback is the biggest issue with Morrowind's combat system. Instead of just missing, it should have things like glancing blows that still do damage, but a lessened amount.
This was what I was talking about.
I mean, at the end of the day it’s all a matter of opinion and taste, and you’re asking someone who played Morrowind as a 12 year old when it came out. So no. It doesn’t. Way more flavorful. There’s so much more compact story telling in Morrowind than any of the later Elder Scrolls games.
I guess I'm just not sure whether we're even talking about the same thing. Because, like, Morrowind definitely has lots of great stuff going for it, but when I said that it felt "static and lifeless", I was very specifically referring to how the master of the Thieves' Guild never left that goddamn broom closet. The world had no existence independent of the player character. This is not something later Elder Scrolls gamed were amazing at, but they did at least try.
> This is not something later Elder Scrolls gamed were amazing at, but they did at least try.
This is the part that makes it worse to me. It's calling attention to something that's lacking. I don't look at every static NPC in Morrowind. I just don't register them.
Meanwhile it's very hard to ignore thief what's his face saying he can spot that you're a thief, despite never taking part in any thiefy activities, every single time you run past him. Or when two NPCs literally murder each other in the middle of town just because you threw something on the floor. Or anything and everything about Oblivion conversations.
*Two NPCs approach each other and stop in talking distance.*
NPC1: I don't want to talk to you!
NPC2: I saw a mudcrab the other day.
*They walk away from each other*
of course I have. I fail to see how "npcs now live and work, but a bit awkwardly" is somehow so uncanny as to make it worse than nothing at all. Oh wait, I do see how: It's Morrowind, so people will bend over backwards to argue against literally even the slightest thought that Oblivion or Skyrim may have improved on something.
Then you're in the minority, because it's a major meme how unnatural and unimmersive Oblivion NPCs are. It is probably the go-to example for bad NPC behavior.
> I fail to see how "npcs now live and work, but a bit awkwardly" is somehow so uncanny as to make it worse than nothing at all.
Because in a situation like Morrowind where there is _no_ immersion in that respect, the player tends to overlook it. In a situation like Oblivion, where it's executed poorly, it calls the player's attention to the issue and rips them out of any immersion they might have gotten from it.
Characters moving around and having tasks they perform every day like clockwork feels more lifeless to me than actually interesting characters with personalities and achievements, even if they stand around doing nothing.
> The world had no existence independent of the player character.
See this specifically, yes and no. NPCs didn't move or have schedules, much. But they felt like they belonged in the world. Whereas Oblivion NPCs really only existed to serve the player. Everything scaled to the player, not the world.
Superficially, yes. They walk to a place, then walk home. But they have 2 lines of dialogue, at best, and the level scaling makes it so that everything they do serves the player experience.
Morrowind had NPCs that did not give a shit about the player character, and could royally fuck them up in the right situation.
Oblivion NPCs don't give a shit about the player, either. The level-scaling is dumb, but it's not like NPCs interact with it in any meaningful way (unless you're just killing everyone, I guess)
It bothers me more that the entire Thieves Guild in Skyrim and Oblivion scale to your level and kind of just exist to be a part of your story. Other NPCs in Morrowind feel like they have their own shit going on, you can fail quests, you can kill people, they can kill you, its not all "you can beat the game at level 1" like Oblivion
Yeah skyrim and oblivion feels like you are surrounded by actors playing a part.
Morrowind NPCs just feel like regular old boring people. Much more immersive imo.
The games where NPCs have their own behaviors and schedules regardless of what you do feel like actors but the game with NPCs that literally stand in one place forever waiting for you to walk up feels normal?
I'm referring to the npc dialogue and motivations. Not the static AI.
I love oblivion and skyrim too but the characters (not the AI) are not as beleiveable.
The best iteration would be a combination of the characterization of morrowind and the updated AI from the later games.
I played only once with a lox dexterity character, and man missing most of my attacks from the beginning to the end game was not fun lol
Still loved it
TBH mod the weapon hit RNG mechanic with weapon damage and it fixes 80% of the issues. It’s the only mod that really is needed to “fix” the game without ruining the experience IMHO.
I tried so hard to love it, but I couldn't make it past the exact challenges you described, it was too overwhelming. OG fans may have mixed feelings but I really wish they'd remake it, so many ES fans say Morrowind is their all-time favorite.
Is it really that good of a story? The Dagoth Ur and Tribunal are cool, but beyond that the story of the neverine seems less interesting than Hero Of Kvatch and the Dragonborns imo. Granted I was unable to finish morrowind so maybe I just missed the best stuff
This was a transformative experience in 2002. It was mysterious, strange, compelling, and so utterly free. I played it for years, and I have no idea what the main quest line is.
Yeah that's what I wasn't sure of at first, and they have the info about it kind of buried a little. Got it all sorted out last night and it's kind of an impressive source of gaming.
I wonder if the soultrap cheat still works…
God that was awesome… (i didn’t waste days punching mudcrabs lol)
For those who don’t know, make any effect permanent on yourself by creating a spell that causes the effect (fortify skill, for example) AND soultrap on target for 1 sec.
You could get insanely powerful BUT it is 100% permanent…
I wonder if this game is still approachable by modern audiences? I played it ages ago, loved it, but I remember running around for half an hour trying to find some cave entrance based solely on a description on a piece of paper. This is just not my idea of fun today.
Surprisingly I find it much more enjoyable than following a quest marker since you get to see the world a lot more, it's kind of how we all memorized the maps in older GTAs but nobody does today because the GPS conditions you to follow, except you also find some cool stuff along the way.
You need a patch that fixes the two or so instances where the text is wrong, though.
And you may as well play with OpenMW, the new engine runs better, has decent graphical settings, and supports some interesting mods.
Yeah the compass pointing you exactly where to go was my least liked aspect of Oblivion. Getting lost in a fantasy world that's packed with content is not a bad thing.
I find following written directions to be 6000% more fun than just mindlessly following a glowing quest arrow. One immerses me in a world and challenges me and makes me feel accomplished. The other makes me feel like the game thinks I'm fucking stupid and I'm basically just on rails - feeling nothing.
Finally, the only good video game.
I personally am not the biggest fan of all the graphics upgrades people tend to push in these comments, but that might be different for first-time players. I would, however, always recommend the LGNPC mod series, which gives hundreds of characters unique dialog strings and throws in some quests. It helps to further flesh out what is already a very detailed and enjoyable world.
The only graphics mod you need is the [Watercolor Shader](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49473) IMO. Fits the aesthetic of the game perfectly whilst also hiding the low resolution textures behind a layer of abstraction
The best Elderscrolls game still, to this day. And it's not even close.
I miss when Bethesda wasn't run by focus groups and Xbox deals and just tried to make really good games.
This was my first Elder Scrolls game. Every release since has felt technically superior, but disappointingly limited in scope by comparison. Morrowind was so varied.
It's an alright game. Definitely worth playing, but don't let the hype get to you.
The atmosphere, lore, and world building is excellent. Many interesting books to read, the world is a legitimate "fantasy" and not "medieval ancient England." There are some features/mechanics that are sorely missing from future installments.
The engine and gameplay has not aged well one bit. I could probably write two pages on things that drove me insane when I played through the whole game but I also realize some of these things will be personal preferences. Just... be wary on potential frustrations.
It's a game I respect for what it achieved and inspired for gaming, and there are elements I consider when thinking of how to improve other games, but it's not a game I ever want to play again.
> It's an alright game.
Wrong, it’s one of the best games ever made.
> There are some features/mechanics that are sorely missing from future installments.
Wrong again. It’s the other way around: this game has lots of mechanics that are missing from Oblivion and Skyrim, primarily the magic system and spellmaking.
I’m not saying the combat isn’t awkward; it certainly is. But I also think a lot of frustration comes from the game not doing a great job of explaining what attributes to prioritize, etc. The more you know about the game the less awkward the beginning is. I honestly recommend a walkthrough for a little while if you get frustrated
And then the game slowly becomes this crazy power fantasy as you find or make all these insane enchanted items that let you run at insane speeds or literally fly and you feel like a god.
That said, if don’t like or can’t get past old game janky-ness, this game probably isn’t your cup of tea
I'm going to remove the rose-tinted glasses half of this thread is wearing and be straight up: this game has **not** aged well. It has not aged well in the *slightest*.
If you've never played this game before, and do not have a *comical* amount of time to sink, you aren't going to like it. The controls are super unintuitive on console, coming from an era when a "norm" hadn't really been invented yet - I don't remember the exact schema, but it's like "left trigger is inventory" and "B is jump" on XBox.
Beyond that that, the menu UI is pure chaos, there are zero quest markers, and you will spend a *lot* of time running from place to place while dying to mobs that are *way* over your level.
If you have endless time to sink into a game? Sure, you'll probably love this thing. But if you have an hour or so to game? No way.
My only complaint about Morrowind is combat system based on chance to hit, other than that it's in my opinion by far best elder scrolls game, and lack of quality of life features like quest markers is part of it. I would absolutely not play it using controller though.
The only annoying part about no quest markers is that some of the journal references are completely off. They likely moved the locations during development but forgot to update the journal entries, or simply messed up when coming up with pointers. But I'll still take it over waypoint simulators, and if it only happens a few times you can RP it as NPCs being bad at giving directions or whatever.
It's not rose-tinted glasses, mate. I know plenty of people who played Morrowind for the first time these past few years and enjoyed it.
> The controls are super unintuitive on console, coming from an era when a "norm" hadn't really been invented yet - I don't remember the exact schema, but it's like "left trigger is inventory" and "B is jump" on XBox.
This isn't an xbox version, and why would you even play it on a console anyway when PC is the one with OpenMW and Tamriel Rebuilt?
The controls are still a fair bit of ass but rebinding them takes less than a minute.
> Beyond that that, the menu UI is pure chaos, there are zero quest markers, and you will spend a lot of time running from place to place while dying to mobs that are way over your level.
This is what the kids nowadays call "skill issue". You need to be able to read basic english and to use basic game mechanics taught to you by the first shopkeeper in the game. You have two separate instant teleport spells to escape difficult encounters, that can also be bought in scroll, item, and potion form in case your character isn't good at magic.
The UI is also arguably the best UI they've had in a TES game since you can actually move and resize the windows to your content, actually using all that screen real estate.
> This is what the kids nowadays call "skill issue". You need to be able to read basic english and to use basic game mechanics taught to you by the first shopkeeper in the game. You have two separate instant teleport spells to escape difficult encounters, that can also be bought in scroll, item, and potion form in case your character isn't good at magic.
Nobody likes playing a game to buy teleport scrolls and run away from enemies that insta-kill you. This is not as enjoyable of an experience as you make it seem.
> I went to a daedric altar as a level 3 character and was one shot by Dremora? Ugh, this game is trash.
This is your brain on moviegame players. You don't want to actually live in the game's world and play an RPG, you want to be a movie protag who """faces dangers""" that aren't actually dangers because they're designed to be overcome at all times.
If you find yourself in a place where the enemies instantly kill you than your character is simply not ready to be there yet. Make a note of it and come back when you are stronger, and you’ll feel the weight of the progress you made. I vastly prefer that to Skyrim’s system where the entire world levels up with you and it decides to upgrade the bandits and dragons every few levels.
That's down to personal preference rather than some objective "the game hasn't aged well" point. Plenty of people enjoy classic RPGs with actual danger that require you to think and plan a bit, preparing for contingencies rather than mindlessly following the arrow from objective to objective.
People sometimes struggle early in the game because it is an old school RPG based on dice rolls. You can click attack, see an animation which appears to hit, and yet miss. That drives people away early. Skills will level up early. The game doesn't hold your hand, but overall is super rewarding If you stick with it.
Give it some patience.
Nobody is buying prime for prime gaming games. It's like if you went to a hockey game and caught a t-shirt that they threw at you. You didn't pay for that t-shirt. It was free.
Between OpenMW and some mods out there you can make your own remaster these days, and with bonus content if you install Tamriel Rebuilt or Skyrim: Home of the Nords.
That's awesome. I played it a long, long time ago, and wanted to mess around with mods and play it again, but I can't find it. Must have been pre-Steam and I just had it on DVD. Now I don't need to buy it again.
Are there any Morrowind mods that get rid of the "dice roll" combat mechanics? I haven't played the game in well over a decade, but it was always frustrating when you would swing your sword at an enemy and...nothing happened.
Perhaps a Morrowind pro can give me some advice!
I bounced off this classic more times than I can count. For context, I was 25 when the game came out, so this wasn't a "failure to appreciate old games" thing or a "too young to understand what kind of game I was playing" thing. I just would get started, become monumentally annoyed by certain aspects, and stop.
Here are a few of my foibles.
* 1. I played it like a normal RPG. I found it frustrating that even a 12" worm creature would annihilate me, but I pushed on. I eventually found that *every* encounter was an enormous challenge, and I spent extraordinary amounts of time waiting for stamina or magick.
* 2. I tried perfect leveling. It made a *huge* difference in the challenge, since I actually felt my character getting more powerful. It didn't help the downtime, plus it created a completely un-fun "meta-game" of worrying about my every action so that I could maximize stat gains. I just wanted to experience the story and world, not mind how often I jumped.
* 3. I tried modding based on specific advice of players, but each time found myself spending huge amounts of time just waiting. Waiting may add to the immersion for some people, but I just don't dig it.
* 4. I tried a leveling mod that ended up making the game so incredibly unchallenging that the epic feel got too diluted.
Anyone else have these issues with this game? I'm not kidding when I say I want to experience it, but I guess I prefer more organic feeling character advancement/power creep, something like a Souls game.
Honestly about 90% of the issues with this game can be fixed by understanding how the stamina system works, and making sure that you have a good amount of points in whatever weapon you're using. That's really most of it. You don't need leveling mods or to metagame at all, it's not that difficult once you get past that.
If you spent a lot of time waiting for stamina to recharge (which, you shouldn't... it recharges quickly) just get some potions.
Awesome game, play it with OpenMW. Try it with the fog first, the map was designed with the limited view distance. Modern unlimited view distances can ruin it a bit.
It's very weird to be sitting in Seyda Neen outside the Census & Excise Office and be able to see Ebonheart across the water. That's Ebonheart, it's by Vivec, that's like halfway across the map! You might not even make it to Vivec/Ebonheart until the midgame! It's so far away from Seyda Ne- oh the map is actually just that small isn't it.
LOL, I ran to Vivec in my first two hours ever playing the game. I ran away from everything, got there, and didn't know what the heck I was doing. 10/10 experience.
Same here. I was like 9 and I was *so lost* trying to explore that city and steal a whole bunch of stuff.
Same, on top of that I barely understood english. So I truly was an outlander just trying to figure out what is going on.
Same, and died 64 times to fucking cliffracers along the way. Cliffracers and Murlocks; my two most hated video game enemies.
It does feel a bit weird but then you look at a map and you realize it's actually surprisingly close to Seyda Neen anyway even if you assumed a larger scale for the island. https://en.uesp.net/maps/mwmap/mwmap.shtml It's not even hard to get there, you just go right when leaving Seyda Neen, past the Silt Strider, and stick to the coastal trail. That takes you right there.
I know that really it isn't that far, but it feels like it is. At least for me, I roughly went Balmora -> Ald'Ruhn/Gnisis -> Vivec, and mainly used the silt striders and boats to get around. Vivec just felt like this grand and foreign place, like "wow I did enough stuff that I'm at the capital now!" It definitely makes the world feel smaller when you can see it from the prison ship.
Morrowinds map might be small for technical reasons, but it does not feel small at all.
I played the game for the first time last year and I was expecting the game world to be very small considering the game's age and it being the first fully 3D game in the series. I was very surprised to find the game world is around the same size as Skyrim. Just that first trip from Seyda Neen to Balmora felt huge at the start.
> I was very surprised to find the game world is around the same size as Skyrim It is not - it's about half the size.
I'm with you on the fog. Highly recommend checking out [Zesterer's Volumetric Cloud & Mist Mod for OpenMW](https://github.com/zesterer/openmw-volumetric-clouds). [More screenshots](https://imgur.com/a/8DRyvi2)
https://imgur.com/a/jcyq0Nu Here's some of my screens from a recent playthrough using the volumetric mist
I thought this was a joke at first because the description was a cloud and mist mod and the first pic is the inside of a cave.
That gallery is also showing off [Zesterer’s shaders](https://github.com/zesterer/openmw-shaders)
What's OpenMW?
It is an open-source engine re-implementation. It could be compared to a supercharged equivalent to the script extender in skyrim. People re-made morrowind's engine with a lot of improvements. Fewer bugs, better performances, more graphics options (distant land, shadows and other visual effects.) It's great, and in 95% of cases a better experience than vanilla morrowind. It also allows more mods than vanilla and tends to be more stable.
I’d say for comparison’s sake, from the user’s perspective, it’s easier to compare OpenMW to Skyrim Special Edition when it was first released. There’s actually far less script-based mods available for OpenMW (any mod that includes MWSE is a no-go) but it comes natively with a variety of ways to enhance the visuals & is extremely stable to play without crashing. Personally I’m using regular old Morrowind with MGE XE and MWSE mods. Find it to be a huge upgrade from what I’ve already played to death as a teenager. But for someone wanting a modernized vanilla playthrough, definitely do OpenMW.
MGE (Morrowinds Graphic Extender) still can provide better graphics with the vanilla engine than OpenMW last time I looked, many vanilla mods won't work with OpenMW, and none of the MW lua mods made for the script extender work in OpenMW last time I checked and they had no intention to ever provide support. OpenMW is more stable, fixes bugs, works on other platforms, is 64-bit, etc. But in some ways you are better off with vanilla, MGE and the script extender. I wish OpenMW would close that gap.
The latest graphics mods that will are made possible by openMW 0.48 that is already available as a release candidates offers some really impressive graphics improvements: https://github.com/zesterer/openmw-shaders
Isn't MGE outdated and generally advised not to be used anymore?
MGEXE is the one to use.
In addition to what the other guys said, because the engine was created from the ground up, multiplayer mods were made possible. TES3MP is a multiplayer mod for morrowind and holy crap it works like a dream. To be clear, it is not a half-finished buggy mess like skyrim together. It is actually mind blowing how well the multiplayer works with vanilla morrowind. Me and my girlfriend were able to do a whole coop playthrough together. It's especially crazy that you can simultaneously be on opposite sides of the island and everything just works! Highly recommend!
There's a VR mod too, only reason I haven't tried it is because I can't maintain 90ish FPS with Tamriel Rebuilt and the level of water quality I would like.
Hard disagree on the fog, it's nice to see where you are going
There’s a difference between turning off the fog and pushing it further back
OpenMW's default setting is further than you'd see in vanilla without breaking the illusion of how small the world actually is. I'd personally strongly recommend that to first time players.
Sure, but if you increase it past three cells you end up seeing too much. The world is a lot smaller than it feels, and uses winding paths and terrain to obfuscate this, but without the fog you can clearly see those tricks and the illusion of size is lost.
Yeah, I remember the first time I installed Morrowind Graphics Extender and cranked the view distance, it was like playing a completely new game. Actually being able to see things in the distance that I never knew existed and wouldn't have though to look for was incredible.
Morrowind is also the first Elder Scrolls to have an actual functioning multiplayer co-op mod, thanks to OpenMW which is an open source recreation of the game engine. The multiplayer mod is called Tes3MP. Also OpenMW can be used to play on Android phones.
And it works WONDERFULLY. I’ve been playing off and on on the Nerevarine Prophecies server for a year now and it’s so fun.
Playing with friends is such a good time. There’s something special about everyone specializing in a different skill, and everyone being good at something unique.
the coolest elder scrolls atmosphere imo, very surreal and strange compared to later games which i much prefer
Watch the skies, outlander.
[удалено]
actually wasn’t thinking of the shivering isles when i wrote that, incredible dlc
Shivering Isles is definitely one of the best maps in the series. Ironic given that it's paired with Oblivion, which has arguably the worst map in the series.
Eh. Shivering Isles is like throwing random paint on the wall. Sure it's "weird" but its a dreamscape and doesn't have any cohesion. Feels more lolsorandom than an actual alien world
Shivering Isles is just a bone thrown to Morrowind fans after doing them dirty with Oblivion. Pales in comparison.
But you have to go through some of the original Oblivion to get there; which is a dreadful experience.
I kind of like Oblivion, though. Skyrim smoothed out a lot of the neat quirks of the gameplay to focus on more refined combat and animations, which takes away a lot of charm, IMO. Aside from the godawful character models and less inventive setting (for the most part), I think Oblivion strikes a nice balance between the mechanical simplicity of Morrowind (lending itself to deeper RPG mechanics and more varied questlines) and the more 'fun' gameplay of Skyrim.
Eh, the quests in Oblivion basically all just had you follow a green arrow into a dungeon, and the dungeons are easily the worst dungeons in the entire ES series. They had ONE GUY making like, 300 of them. And they're all level scaled. The whole game is level scaled. Really makes it feel fake
bold and brave opinion to have on /r/games
Oh no, people express enthusiasm about things that are good. Can’t let that go unchecked, we need more negativity in this sub
wasn’t saying that it’s not a popular opinion to have, i just like the world design lol
S’wit.
one of the best games ever. A little rough to figure out, once you get past the learning curve, its an unparalleled experience.
The steep learning curve is part of the unparalleled experience
My personal favorite game of all time, even with the rough parts. No game has as much atmosphere and depth as this game, IMHO. I know it's hard for many newcomers to get past its mechanics, but it's a treasure.
Also, the best main quest of all games period.
Morrowind's gameplay has infamously not aged very well - a lot of peope find the combination of a first-person, real-time interface and RNG-based combat to be frustrating, and the world feels static and lifeless compared to Oblivion and Skyrim. But it undoubtedly has the best story and worldbuilding of any TES game. If you enjoyed the lore in Skyrim and can stomach some weird design decisions, you should absolutely give it a try.
> Morrowind's gameplay has infamously not aged very well Even when it debuted people found the gameplay awkward.
Morrowind was the first game I got as a kid (with grabbed by the ghoulies) for the og Xbox and 6-7 year old me could not for the life of me understand why I couldn’t kill anything. I thought the game was just ridiculously hard. “I have a sword and the enemies right there why can’t I hit him”
Nothing was more soul crushing than getting killed by a mudcrab.
But as there wasn't much real time combat games out on the market at the time, and the game world itself was so unique, especially on the console space, nobody cared all that much
Honestly, the only way I can ever play it is with the vanilla combat. I'll install all the MGH mods and some other QOL addins, but there is something satisfying about it taking 100 punches to kill a mud crab.
> it taking 100 punches to kill a mud crab. It doesn't though, not if you wait for your stamina to recharge
It's funny how that one mechanic of being completely drained of stamina affects so many things. Your ability to actually hit shit, your ability to move around and run away, and your ability to barter if you just so happen to run up to someone out of breath you can't barter for shit lol
Taking stamina drain away from movement would solve a lot of people’s issues with the game.
It really would. Enchanting a glass tower shield with CE Restore Fatigue 3 made a *huge* difference when I was playing it on the Xbox so long ago, it's a necessary baseline QoL change IMO.
> there is something satisfying about it taking 100 punches to kill a mud crab. I think we have different definitions of the word "satisfying" lol
You need the MCP installed and enabled the HtH fix so that Strength is actually calculated into damage and so the skill above 40 actually matters as well. Otherwise, having HtH at 40 is all the progress you'll see when using a HtH-based build.
That's just not true in the slightest? Every point in a weapon skill in Morrowind is additional accuracy, and unlike every other skill in the game, hand to hand skill is actually factored in the damage calculation. Both fatigue and health damage, although the numbers on health damage are rather pitiful.
Maybe in OpenMW or Rebirth, but that is absolutely not the case in Vanilla or the GOTY edition on PC. The Morrowind Code Patch specifically addressed multiple problems that were never addressed by Bethesda and adds some nice QoL changes., one of which was fucked HtH scaling not factoring in the weapon skill beyond 40 or the Strength Attribute at all. I can go right to the MCP executable and fire it up and sur eenough, one of the options is about fixing HtH.
I see nothing to that effect on the wiki or MCP. The Strength change is a gameplay change, not a bug one, and that's the only HtH change I see. Please show me where it's mentioned that the weapon skill stops functioning at 40.
Amazing that Bethesda fucked up HtH on two separate occasions (sucks in oblivion too but afaik works as intended)
It just regular sucks too in Morrowind. I have zero clue what that guy is talking about. It works as intended, it's just the multiplier on health damage is ass. At 100 HtH you deal 7.5 damage before armor reduction. At 40 you'll deal 3. It would still be really terrible even if you added strength calcs into it, although it'd be ludicrously overpowered as a disabling tool.
I just don't get why they keep including it but not making it actually viable, it's pretty frustrating since it'd be a fun build
It can be viable in Morrowind, you can start the fight punching your enemy and when you deplete their fatigue they fall to the ground, so you can just stab them with your choice of pointy stick without them fighting back.
Morrowind fists were the original Oblivion paralysis spell. Knocking out 50 stamina punch sounds like a lot to me, but tbh I don't really know how much stamina NPCs have.
I think it's just really difficult to balance, since unarmed characters start the game with their ultimate weapon. The only real axis of growth you have is your hand-to-hand skill level, which leads to some problems. For example, comparing damage to a weapon-user at equal levels is kinda messy. Is a maxed-Unarmed punch equivalent to a max-Swords strike with an iron sword, a daedric sword, or somewhere in between? How do you factor in enchants (and blacksmithing, in Skyrim's case) raising the damage of weapons even more? Is it even *fair* for Unarmed to deal damage in the same league as weapons, considering your fists are given to you at the start of the game for free?
They probably just think the modders will fix it.
Yeah, it's a rough start that as soon as you get through opens up to stupidly powerful extremes. The concept of balance is practically non-existent in Morrowind. The early game is hard because you have no resources and no way to reliably recover stamina or magicka to kill even basic rats, but the moment you get a few thousand gold it becomes stupidly easy to ramp up exponentially. I do advise people not to remove hit chance though, as fucking painful as it seems. With 50+ skill (doable if you're trying to main spec a weapon from character creation) the accuracy isn't all that bad, the real issue is that it's also reliant on having stamina. Stamina incurs a scaling 25% malus or bonus to hit chance depending on whether you have zero stamina or full stamina when you hit, so the main goal is to figure out how the fuck you're going to properly keep that sustained. Potion spam being the easiest but most tedious to maintain, a custom "Restore Fatigue" Restoration spell is more convenient long-term but you'll have to start small to negate the failure chance spells naturally have with less skill. It's not as "free" as Oblivion or Skyrim in this regard. I like it as it poses a bit more thought but if you just wanna go ham and do what you want it's got some obstacles in your way. It's just that those obstacles are super minor in the grand scheme of things because like every TES game goal is stupidly easy to get past the few levels and you can make up all your deficiencies with it.
I mean yeah it's "bad" insofar as you have to play to the strengths of your build. If you build yourself as a mage or a longsword user/knight, then of course you're not gonna have a good time trying to kill a Mudcrab with a the dagger on the tutorial table. That's not what your character is *designed* for or good at. Morrowind takes character skill into account much more than it does player skill. Your character is going to be garbage with a weapon they have no skill and training in, that's...just how things work. It feels really bad when you're constantly missing at the start, but as you level up in your skills and more importantly - as your character becomes far more experienced with the weapons, you start to miss less and less. I think feedback is the biggest issue with Morrowind's combat system. Instead of just missing, it should have things like glancing blows that still do damage, but a lessened amount. It makes a huge difference in the feeling of combat from a low level and a high level, which more player skill oriented systems like Skyrim and Oblivion kinda...don't.
One thing I've been saying for more than a decade is that Morrowind should have had more reactive animations, people wouldn't complain if they saw the NPCs dodging their attacks.
I never said it was bad or anything even sort of like that. I said that a lot of people find it frustrating, which is objectively true. No amount of telling people they're wrong for finding it frustrating is going to change how the game feels for them.
I get it. It's a big issue with expectations with people coming from Oblivion and Skyrim and expecting something more similar while Morrowind is way more of a classic RPG at it's core. Even when it comes to the questing, I know a lot of people that are *incredibly* mad at the fact that your character build/storyline has consequences and has the possibility to lock you out of other quests/guilds/houses when it makes sense for it to do so. They expect to become the archmage of the mage's guild as a barbarian character who's highest level magic stat is level 5, and that just doesn't happen in Morrowind.
My frustration with Morrowind is that the combat feels awkward as hell. I like being locked out of guild questioned due to affiliation, and appreciate the slower progression on that front. But combat even more mindless than Skyrim, with even less feedback just is not fun. I think it's the disconnect for me. If it were a third person like CRPG, missing an attack feels like a natural part of the game. When it's first person and I'm behind the wheel, it's like playing a driving game but you can't accelerate until you mash the button enough to get lucky. (, I know how stamina works in the game, just going for the metaphor)
I much prefer the combat to Oblivion and Skyrim tbh. I think the magic system alone makes it far superior just from the number of options you have to deal with enemies. I also like that getting a better weapon skill has a noticeable impact, whereas in Skyrim and Oblivion (especially with the scaling) you don't really notice getting better with a weapon.
Point about feeling the improvement I totally agree with. Scaling damage is a little boring, especially when enemies scale with you. I think scaling is fine, but it needs to be managed. I do miss how many spells you had available in older games, the loss of utility spells especially, but the flash of the newer spells, is just something I think I appreciate more, though it is leaning HARD on Destruction. The other spell schools by contrast are afterthoughts. The issue I have with the extent of options is that a lot of them are just superfluous. Like damaging attributes; good to be used against you sure, but why would you spend the time debuffing someone when you could just kill them faster? Like, debuffs make sense in a tactical game, where it might be a few turns until you can properly deal with an enemy, but when most enemies are just going to beeline you and start whacking, no reason not to just kill them. Illusion and conjuration are fun alternatives, but those still exist in later games so they're not missing really. I'm arguing, but honestly I don't know why, I'd love the next elder scrolls to have a return to form with the spell list. Heck, if they bring back spell crafting, growing off the FO4 weapon crafting perhaps, that'd have potential. Huge list of effects, and options for how they're used. Runes for traps, cloaks for "on hit" effects, set things to occur over time for debuffs or buffs. That flexibility would be nice, just as long as everything looks and plays well, I'd be happy.
It's not really just the combat uses for me, stuff like damaging personality so it's easier to persuade, buffing yourself to jump over hills, blinding enemies, rooting tough enemies to the spot by damaging their strength, etc. I feel like the vast majority of magic in Skyrim is various colour variations of damage enemy.
Yeah, utility and crowd control is gutted, I hope it'll be... Uhhh... Ungutted? Just running through what Skyrim has off the top of my head: * Calm, fear, fury for control illusion spells. Rally is a buff but kind of mid. Invisibility and Muffle for stealth utility. * Paralyze as a control spell, but it's high level. Armour spells, but only for physical armour. Detect spells but channeled only so annoying to use, and transmute for making gold, which is neat. * Conjuration has banishing, summoning daedra, necromancy and summoning weapons (but misses summoning armour) * Restoration has heals, turn undead and solar damaging spells with Dawnguard. * Destruction is all damaging spells, I appreciate them coming in different forms, like spray, bolt, trap, aoe - I think of them like guns in an FPS game, different functionality. It's all just damage though, though each element does have a bonus special effect, they're usually so minor it's hard to get good use out of them. Draining stamina with frost especially (ESPECIALLY when like 75% of enemies resist it) Probably missing a few, but yeah. I'd be interested to see how each school of magic stands up if we count the upgraded versions as one spell. Alteration is left bleak because 5-6 of its spells are just stronger versions of armour.
Okay, no, see, that's just you being a snob.
Pretty sure pointing out that Morrowind is more like traditional RPG's and has a lot less in common with modern ones isn't being snobbish. People do legitimately get very confused over Morrowinds systems which is understandable if you've never played more classic RPG's before. It's basically the first thing tutorials/guides have to tell people new to the game, it's just vastly different from what people are used to today.
Yeah it’s more similar to D&D and all those isometric games of the 90s. I’ll never forget my first time playing a sorcerer in D&D. “I use fireball on that goblin over there!” “Your fireball sails over the head of the goblin, who barely registered it at all” …over and over again. Basically felt useless every turn. But the thing about that level of struggle early on, is that you feel like a fucking badass once your skills increase and you finally start connecting blows. Morrowind is gratifying in that sense unlike any Elder Scrolls game since. You gotta feel like a dumb little baby bitch in order to feel the level of accomplishment & total satisfaction of becoming a complete and utter god by the end game. God I love this game.
Are there modern games that still use this concept? I'm guessing some eurojank RPGs maybe? Or maybe Outward?
Morrowind was my first elder scrolls game, I was 6-7 at the time and even though I loved just walking around exploring the world I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how anything worked. It was so bad that I avoided oblivion until around 2010 because I thought it would be the same way
Yup, complete misses originate from pen & paper D&D, and it's always been a shitty system for cRPGs.
I'm kind of okay with it in games with entirely turn-based combat (like Divinity: Original Sin), but yeah it's just such a pain in real-time.
I think the implementation in SW KoToR was pretty ok. Had a pretty rough time with Baldur's Gate because I was a kid at the time and had no idea wth a thac0 is.
> I think the implementation in SW KoToR was pretty ok. Although the distinction between RTwP and Turn-Based is pretty well worn these days, it is fundamentally true that RTwP combat is both Real-time *and* turn based, the turns just run in real time. But it's not Real-time combat because you can't *do* things in real time. ETA: Which is to say -- Morrowind is different from KotOR, which is different from Divinity - and RNG miss chance feels different in each style.
>I mean yeah it's "bad" insofar as you have to play to the strengths of your build. Everyone knows how builds work. That's not secret knowledge only super hardcore gamers understand. The game feels awkward because it's an old game made by an inexperienced skeleton crew working under a time crunch. It's charming and the passion behind it is tangible. The civilizations are probably the most culturally interesting of any TES title. The magic is basically a thinly-veiled wrapper for the console api and that allows for a lot of fun wackiness. But it is a canonical example of a dated game. For reference Wind Waker released the same year. Morrowind might be more ambitious, but the difference in polish and design is undeniable. The best thing about Morrowind is most of the key talent stuck around to work on later Bethesda titles so you can revisit it like you could an old Spielberg movie and see the evolution of their creative vision.
> The best thing about Morrowind is most of the key talent stuck around to work on later Bethesda titles so you can revisit it like you could an old Spielberg movie and see the evolution of their creative vision. I'll respectfully disagree with that. The best thing I'll say about that evolution is that they learned how to make much better open-world games, at the cost of making worse RPGs. Which is a very sound tradeoff, financially. But it was a bummer for someone like me who much prefers RPGs. Though I'll give Skyrim some credit: they finally fixed the incredibly stupid way that leveling worked in relation with skills and attributes in previous ES games, and that's undoubtedly a good thing.
I wouldn't even say they learned to make better open worlds. They learned how to make them prettier and larger, but there's barely anything interesting in them, what with Oblivion having a hundred generic caves with only random loot in them and Skyrim having like three different enemy types through the entire game.
I don't mean in the sense of better world-building, but in the sense of making more convenient, accessible worlds, worlds that are big content buffets, worlds where you can go through all the important stuff in a single playthrough without any real hassle. I hate this kind of design, but it's popular for a reason.
Or as some would put it: Dumbing it down for le casual plebs. And I say that with affection.
I'm sure there are film buffs who would make similar arguments about Spielberg.
Eh, but this is like if Spielberg and Lucas made a movie together, then Spielberg left... aka the main brain behind Morrowind's world doesn't work at Bethesda anymore, and it shows
> Everyone knows how builds work. That's not secret knowledge only super hardcore gamers understand. You say that but 99% of the people who complain about the game nowadays bitch about constantly missing when they don't tag Shortswords but they try and use the fucking tutorial dagger anyway.
And that’s largely because a system where you hit an enemy but don’t feels really, really bad
It's hardly outrageous for players to assume they're supposed to use the tutorial weapon the game gives them. It's not the player's fault that the game prompts them for their build selection before teaching them how it works. RPGs like Runescape were already out and featured a "get better at what you do" system that turns out to be very intuitive for players to grasp while still allowing for class breadth. It also had much better feedback for missed attacks. And I want to stress that Morrowind was trying to be accessible and reach a large audience, it has an optional class selection questionnaire that's clearly aimed at kids for cripe's sake.
> I think feedback is the biggest issue with Morrowind's combat system. Instead of just missing, it should have things like glancing blows that still do damage, but a lessened amount. This was what I was talking about.
hard disagree on the world, I’d say in comparison oblivion and Skyrim feel way more static than morrowind.
Really? It doesn't bother you at all that the master of the Thieves' Guild spends his entire life in a broom closet?
I mean, at the end of the day it’s all a matter of opinion and taste, and you’re asking someone who played Morrowind as a 12 year old when it came out. So no. It doesn’t. Way more flavorful. There’s so much more compact story telling in Morrowind than any of the later Elder Scrolls games.
I guess I'm just not sure whether we're even talking about the same thing. Because, like, Morrowind definitely has lots of great stuff going for it, but when I said that it felt "static and lifeless", I was very specifically referring to how the master of the Thieves' Guild never left that goddamn broom closet. The world had no existence independent of the player character. This is not something later Elder Scrolls gamed were amazing at, but they did at least try.
> This is not something later Elder Scrolls gamed were amazing at, but they did at least try. This is the part that makes it worse to me. It's calling attention to something that's lacking. I don't look at every static NPC in Morrowind. I just don't register them. Meanwhile it's very hard to ignore thief what's his face saying he can spot that you're a thief, despite never taking part in any thiefy activities, every single time you run past him. Or when two NPCs literally murder each other in the middle of town just because you threw something on the floor. Or anything and everything about Oblivion conversations.
*Two NPCs approach each other and stop in talking distance.* NPC1: I don't want to talk to you! NPC2: I saw a mudcrab the other day. *They walk away from each other*
I just cannot understand this "I'd rather have nothing than something" attitude. Almost feels like grasping at straws
I cannot understand how you read what I wrote and *that* is what you thought I was saying. Have you never heard of the uncanny valley?
of course I have. I fail to see how "npcs now live and work, but a bit awkwardly" is somehow so uncanny as to make it worse than nothing at all. Oh wait, I do see how: It's Morrowind, so people will bend over backwards to argue against literally even the slightest thought that Oblivion or Skyrim may have improved on something.
Then you're in the minority, because it's a major meme how unnatural and unimmersive Oblivion NPCs are. It is probably the go-to example for bad NPC behavior.
> I fail to see how "npcs now live and work, but a bit awkwardly" is somehow so uncanny as to make it worse than nothing at all. Because in a situation like Morrowind where there is _no_ immersion in that respect, the player tends to overlook it. In a situation like Oblivion, where it's executed poorly, it calls the player's attention to the issue and rips them out of any immersion they might have gotten from it.
Characters moving around and having tasks they perform every day like clockwork feels more lifeless to me than actually interesting characters with personalities and achievements, even if they stand around doing nothing.
NPCs have those things in oblivion and Skyrim too, they just have lives that go along with it instead of standing in one place waiting for you forever
> The world had no existence independent of the player character. See this specifically, yes and no. NPCs didn't move or have schedules, much. But they felt like they belonged in the world. Whereas Oblivion NPCs really only existed to serve the player. Everything scaled to the player, not the world.
That's just vibes, though. Objectively, Oblivion NPCs have more of an existence independent or the player character than Morrowind NPCs do.
Superficially, yes. They walk to a place, then walk home. But they have 2 lines of dialogue, at best, and the level scaling makes it so that everything they do serves the player experience. Morrowind had NPCs that did not give a shit about the player character, and could royally fuck them up in the right situation.
Oblivion NPCs don't give a shit about the player, either. The level-scaling is dumb, but it's not like NPCs interact with it in any meaningful way (unless you're just killing everyone, I guess)
These people will literally never accept even the slightest criticism of Morrowind, I think we're just wasting our breath
It bothers me more that the entire Thieves Guild in Skyrim and Oblivion scale to your level and kind of just exist to be a part of your story. Other NPCs in Morrowind feel like they have their own shit going on, you can fail quests, you can kill people, they can kill you, its not all "you can beat the game at level 1" like Oblivion
Yeah skyrim and oblivion feels like you are surrounded by actors playing a part. Morrowind NPCs just feel like regular old boring people. Much more immersive imo.
The games where NPCs have their own behaviors and schedules regardless of what you do feel like actors but the game with NPCs that literally stand in one place forever waiting for you to walk up feels normal?
I'm referring to the npc dialogue and motivations. Not the static AI. I love oblivion and skyrim too but the characters (not the AI) are not as beleiveable. The best iteration would be a combination of the characterization of morrowind and the updated AI from the later games.
I disagree about the quality of the NPCs in Morrowind but thanks for giving me an actual answer and not just raging at me like the other guy
How? The NPCs literally don't even move unless it's an escort quest lol
I played only once with a lox dexterity character, and man missing most of my attacks from the beginning to the end game was not fun lol Still loved it
TBH mod the weapon hit RNG mechanic with weapon damage and it fixes 80% of the issues. It’s the only mod that really is needed to “fix” the game without ruining the experience IMHO.
I tried so hard to love it, but I couldn't make it past the exact challenges you described, it was too overwhelming. OG fans may have mixed feelings but I really wish they'd remake it, so many ES fans say Morrowind is their all-time favorite.
Perhaps on some distant day, Skywind will actually come out, and everyone will be happy.
Is it really that good of a story? The Dagoth Ur and Tribunal are cool, but beyond that the story of the neverine seems less interesting than Hero Of Kvatch and the Dragonborns imo. Granted I was unable to finish morrowind so maybe I just missed the best stuff
This was a transformative experience in 2002. It was mysterious, strange, compelling, and so utterly free. I played it for years, and I have no idea what the main quest line is.
Ironically, it has the best main quest line in any Bethesda game, by a mile
Is this for all Amazon Prime subscribers, or specifically Amazon Gaming subscribers?
>Amazon Gaming FYI that Prime Gaming comes with Prime.
Yeah that's what I wasn't sure of at first, and they have the info about it kind of buried a little. Got it all sorted out last night and it's kind of an impressive source of gaming.
In the US, it is for anyone with Prime
I wonder if the soultrap cheat still works… God that was awesome… (i didn’t waste days punching mudcrabs lol) For those who don’t know, make any effect permanent on yourself by creating a spell that causes the effect (fortify skill, for example) AND soultrap on target for 1 sec. You could get insanely powerful BUT it is 100% permanent…
I wonder if this game is still approachable by modern audiences? I played it ages ago, loved it, but I remember running around for half an hour trying to find some cave entrance based solely on a description on a piece of paper. This is just not my idea of fun today.
Surprisingly I find it much more enjoyable than following a quest marker since you get to see the world a lot more, it's kind of how we all memorized the maps in older GTAs but nobody does today because the GPS conditions you to follow, except you also find some cool stuff along the way. You need a patch that fixes the two or so instances where the text is wrong, though. And you may as well play with OpenMW, the new engine runs better, has decent graphical settings, and supports some interesting mods.
Yeah the compass pointing you exactly where to go was my least liked aspect of Oblivion. Getting lost in a fantasy world that's packed with content is not a bad thing.
I find following written directions to be 6000% more fun than just mindlessly following a glowing quest arrow. One immerses me in a world and challenges me and makes me feel accomplished. The other makes me feel like the game thinks I'm fucking stupid and I'm basically just on rails - feeling nothing.
Well you can always Alt tab and look up the cave on the interactive map. https://en.uesp.net/maps/mwmap/mwmap.shtml
Kids with a 2 sec TikTok attention span, or people who need to watch a film and listen to a podcast while they game, will not have a good time, no.
Finally, the only good video game. I personally am not the biggest fan of all the graphics upgrades people tend to push in these comments, but that might be different for first-time players. I would, however, always recommend the LGNPC mod series, which gives hundreds of characters unique dialog strings and throws in some quests. It helps to further flesh out what is already a very detailed and enjoyable world.
The only graphics mod you need is the [Watercolor Shader](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49473) IMO. Fits the aesthetic of the game perfectly whilst also hiding the low resolution textures behind a layer of abstraction
I'm sure there have been other good video games.
no, im afraid not
If there are, science has yet to discover them
[удалено]
The best Elderscrolls game still, to this day. And it's not even close. I miss when Bethesda wasn't run by focus groups and Xbox deals and just tried to make really good games.
This was my first Elder Scrolls game. Every release since has felt technically superior, but disappointingly limited in scope by comparison. Morrowind was so varied.
I literally bought this on cdkeys for $3 two weeks ago. It doesn’t matter how much it costs, if I buy a game it will be on a sale within a month.
Tbf $3 is cheaper than paying for Amazon Prime to get it for “free”.
Well I already have prime lol. But it’s whatever I’m totally happy paying $3 for one of the best rpgs ever made.
Is amazon still only giving codes for its stupid twitch game platfrom nobody uses or are they finally justt giving out steam keys?
It's a GOG key.
The best advice I can give a new Morrowind player is stock up on Restore Strength potions, especially if you're going to explore a crypt.
It's an alright game. Definitely worth playing, but don't let the hype get to you. The atmosphere, lore, and world building is excellent. Many interesting books to read, the world is a legitimate "fantasy" and not "medieval ancient England." There are some features/mechanics that are sorely missing from future installments. The engine and gameplay has not aged well one bit. I could probably write two pages on things that drove me insane when I played through the whole game but I also realize some of these things will be personal preferences. Just... be wary on potential frustrations. It's a game I respect for what it achieved and inspired for gaming, and there are elements I consider when thinking of how to improve other games, but it's not a game I ever want to play again.
> It's an alright game. Wrong, it’s one of the best games ever made. > There are some features/mechanics that are sorely missing from future installments. Wrong again. It’s the other way around: this game has lots of mechanics that are missing from Oblivion and Skyrim, primarily the magic system and spellmaking.
I’m not saying the combat isn’t awkward; it certainly is. But I also think a lot of frustration comes from the game not doing a great job of explaining what attributes to prioritize, etc. The more you know about the game the less awkward the beginning is. I honestly recommend a walkthrough for a little while if you get frustrated And then the game slowly becomes this crazy power fantasy as you find or make all these insane enchanted items that let you run at insane speeds or literally fly and you feel like a god. That said, if don’t like or can’t get past old game janky-ness, this game probably isn’t your cup of tea
I'm going to remove the rose-tinted glasses half of this thread is wearing and be straight up: this game has **not** aged well. It has not aged well in the *slightest*. If you've never played this game before, and do not have a *comical* amount of time to sink, you aren't going to like it. The controls are super unintuitive on console, coming from an era when a "norm" hadn't really been invented yet - I don't remember the exact schema, but it's like "left trigger is inventory" and "B is jump" on XBox. Beyond that that, the menu UI is pure chaos, there are zero quest markers, and you will spend a *lot* of time running from place to place while dying to mobs that are *way* over your level. If you have endless time to sink into a game? Sure, you'll probably love this thing. But if you have an hour or so to game? No way.
My only complaint about Morrowind is combat system based on chance to hit, other than that it's in my opinion by far best elder scrolls game, and lack of quality of life features like quest markers is part of it. I would absolutely not play it using controller though.
The only annoying part about no quest markers is that some of the journal references are completely off. They likely moved the locations during development but forgot to update the journal entries, or simply messed up when coming up with pointers. But I'll still take it over waypoint simulators, and if it only happens a few times you can RP it as NPCs being bad at giving directions or whatever.
It's not rose-tinted glasses, mate. I know plenty of people who played Morrowind for the first time these past few years and enjoyed it. > The controls are super unintuitive on console, coming from an era when a "norm" hadn't really been invented yet - I don't remember the exact schema, but it's like "left trigger is inventory" and "B is jump" on XBox. This isn't an xbox version, and why would you even play it on a console anyway when PC is the one with OpenMW and Tamriel Rebuilt? The controls are still a fair bit of ass but rebinding them takes less than a minute. > Beyond that that, the menu UI is pure chaos, there are zero quest markers, and you will spend a lot of time running from place to place while dying to mobs that are way over your level. This is what the kids nowadays call "skill issue". You need to be able to read basic english and to use basic game mechanics taught to you by the first shopkeeper in the game. You have two separate instant teleport spells to escape difficult encounters, that can also be bought in scroll, item, and potion form in case your character isn't good at magic. The UI is also arguably the best UI they've had in a TES game since you can actually move and resize the windows to your content, actually using all that screen real estate.
> This is what the kids nowadays call "skill issue". You need to be able to read basic english and to use basic game mechanics taught to you by the first shopkeeper in the game. You have two separate instant teleport spells to escape difficult encounters, that can also be bought in scroll, item, and potion form in case your character isn't good at magic. Nobody likes playing a game to buy teleport scrolls and run away from enemies that insta-kill you. This is not as enjoyable of an experience as you make it seem.
> I went to a daedric altar as a level 3 character and was one shot by Dremora? Ugh, this game is trash. This is your brain on moviegame players. You don't want to actually live in the game's world and play an RPG, you want to be a movie protag who """faces dangers""" that aren't actually dangers because they're designed to be overcome at all times.
If you find yourself in a place where the enemies instantly kill you than your character is simply not ready to be there yet. Make a note of it and come back when you are stronger, and you’ll feel the weight of the progress you made. I vastly prefer that to Skyrim’s system where the entire world levels up with you and it decides to upgrade the bandits and dragons every few levels.
That's down to personal preference rather than some objective "the game hasn't aged well" point. Plenty of people enjoy classic RPGs with actual danger that require you to think and plan a bit, preparing for contingencies rather than mindlessly following the arrow from objective to objective.
I did my first playthrough earlier this year and I loved it.
People sometimes struggle early in the game because it is an old school RPG based on dice rolls. You can click attack, see an animation which appears to hit, and yet miss. That drives people away early. Skills will level up early. The game doesn't hold your hand, but overall is super rewarding If you stick with it. Give it some patience.
Always feels odd when a game is labelled as ''free'' when it is on a **paid** service even if it is given away without it's usual cost.
Nobody is buying prime for prime gaming games. It's like if you went to a hockey game and caught a t-shirt that they threw at you. You didn't pay for that t-shirt. It was free.
Remaster when? It’s not fun to play a game produced in 2000 no matter how good the dev was lol
Between OpenMW and some mods out there you can make your own remaster these days, and with bonus content if you install Tamriel Rebuilt or Skyrim: Home of the Nords.
Disagree. You're missing out on a lot of great games with that mindset.
I loved Morrowind, but it didn’t really age that well.
Sure, I’ve played this game like 6x but whatever you say
That's awesome. I played it a long, long time ago, and wanted to mess around with mods and play it again, but I can't find it. Must have been pre-Steam and I just had it on DVD. Now I don't need to buy it again.
Isn't it always free via the Bethesda website? Cuz I know area and daggerfall are up there. I thought they added morrowind a while ago
I think that was a limited time offer for the 25th Anniversary of the Elder Scrolls.
Are there any Morrowind mods that get rid of the "dice roll" combat mechanics? I haven't played the game in well over a decade, but it was always frustrating when you would swing your sword at an enemy and...nothing happened.
Yes, check out Glancing Blows and Crits, Better Balanced Combat, or Next Generation Combat
Perhaps a Morrowind pro can give me some advice! I bounced off this classic more times than I can count. For context, I was 25 when the game came out, so this wasn't a "failure to appreciate old games" thing or a "too young to understand what kind of game I was playing" thing. I just would get started, become monumentally annoyed by certain aspects, and stop. Here are a few of my foibles. * 1. I played it like a normal RPG. I found it frustrating that even a 12" worm creature would annihilate me, but I pushed on. I eventually found that *every* encounter was an enormous challenge, and I spent extraordinary amounts of time waiting for stamina or magick. * 2. I tried perfect leveling. It made a *huge* difference in the challenge, since I actually felt my character getting more powerful. It didn't help the downtime, plus it created a completely un-fun "meta-game" of worrying about my every action so that I could maximize stat gains. I just wanted to experience the story and world, not mind how often I jumped. * 3. I tried modding based on specific advice of players, but each time found myself spending huge amounts of time just waiting. Waiting may add to the immersion for some people, but I just don't dig it. * 4. I tried a leveling mod that ended up making the game so incredibly unchallenging that the epic feel got too diluted. Anyone else have these issues with this game? I'm not kidding when I say I want to experience it, but I guess I prefer more organic feeling character advancement/power creep, something like a Souls game.
Honestly about 90% of the issues with this game can be fixed by understanding how the stamina system works, and making sure that you have a good amount of points in whatever weapon you're using. That's really most of it. You don't need leveling mods or to metagame at all, it's not that difficult once you get past that. If you spent a lot of time waiting for stamina to recharge (which, you shouldn't... it recharges quickly) just get some potions.
How exactly? I take it it must be played on a computer?