'Go Back and Play Morrowind and Tell Me That's the Game You Want to Play Again' — Former Bethesda Veteran Delivers His Verdict on Potential The Elder Scrolls Remasters - IGN
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I sure would. And I didn't even want to play Skyrim all the way through the first time.
Yeah, I never finished the main quest or all the factions in Skyrim. I did everything in Morrowind. That game is the most immersive game I've ever played. Nothing has gotten close since. Even with the shitty combat system.
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Everything they make new is complete shit, so they just remake the good stuff from back in the days. I mean, I get it. Bit lazy though, and what are they going to do after all the remastered editions? Re-remastering the remastered editions?
Nah, that's Spiderweb Software.
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I don't think it's just because it's weird. It's because it's weird and immersive. Part of what makes it so immersive is that there's no modern fast travel. There are in game fast travel options but they can only get you to major settlements, or fortresses that you've found and cleared, or whatever point you've marked that you can use the recall spell to. Beyond that your on your own two feet. You want to get to the Urshilaku camp? Better start walking because you can't fast travel there. And at the start of the game you're slow as fuck. I still remember it being quite an adventure to get from Seyda Neen to Balmora on foot.
And that's to not even mention the quests. I don't wish the for the Morrowind style journal, but the quests didn't have a huge waypoint telling you exactly where to go. If you wanted to know where you had to go you had to listen to the directions you were given and then actually try to follow them. One of my more memorable side quests from Morrowind was where I misunderstood the directions, took the wrong left turn and kept searching for a farm almost all the way to Caldera. The actual farm was pretty much just around the corner had I taken the right turn. I don't even remember what the quest itself was about. I only remember getting lost.
I remember getting a high enough acrobatics and enough skooma to "fast travel" by finding a high place to jump across the map from. Good times
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I played through Morrowind. I did fuck all in Oblivion and Skyrim. So yeah, it is.
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The gameplay sucked but what makes Morrowind a far superior game to Skyrim and Oblivion is Morrowind is weird.
Bethesda is only capable of making boring big budget fantasy epic setpieces these days, gone is the feeling of going into a random shop and reading a random book, gone is the feeling of "what the hell is over the next hill!?".
You always know what you are going to get with Bethesda, they won't take ANY risks. Bethesda will never again present a vision of fantasy that doesn't simply meet the expectations of well worn fantasy tropes, as far as they are concerned that would be bad for business to do otherwise.
If you showed me of a picture of dragon from Skyrim, a dragon from Harry Potter and a dragon from Lord Of The Rings I don't think I could tell them apart, the same cannot be said for almost any aspect of Morrowind down to basic things like the architecture of its buildings.
Only a couple things need fixing.
No dice roll combat
Enemies don't aggro/prevent resting and saving from miles away
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Ok, that's the game that I want to play again
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I last played it to completion in 2021 I think? Via OpenMW, too, so with a lot less bugs and glitches. Yes, I want to play it again
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Meanwhile I just got into retrogaming (as a PS1 kid) and I'm amazed by how.. just all around better old games are, unless you want realistic graphics. You don't need battle passes and daily quests to have an entertaining experience, just a d-pad and a couple of actions (one can be jump)
You can even have full 3D movement without dual analogs! Not ideal, but it works
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Only a couple things need fixing.
No dice roll combat
Enemies don't aggro/prevent resting and saving from miles away
But how will Jiub become Saint Jiub the Eradicator if nobody is hassled by Cliff Racers with infrared vision locking onto them from the other side of the island?
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I don't think it's just because it's weird. It's because it's weird and immersive. Part of what makes it so immersive is that there's no modern fast travel. There are in game fast travel options but they can only get you to major settlements, or fortresses that you've found and cleared, or whatever point you've marked that you can use the recall spell to. Beyond that your on your own two feet. You want to get to the Urshilaku camp? Better start walking because you can't fast travel there. And at the start of the game you're slow as fuck. I still remember it being quite an adventure to get from Seyda Neen to Balmora on foot.
And that's to not even mention the quests. I don't wish the for the Morrowind style journal, but the quests didn't have a huge waypoint telling you exactly where to go. If you wanted to know where you had to go you had to listen to the directions you were given and then actually try to follow them. One of my more memorable side quests from Morrowind was where I misunderstood the directions, took the wrong left turn and kept searching for a farm almost all the way to Caldera. The actual farm was pretty much just around the corner had I taken the right turn. I don't even remember what the quest itself was about. I only remember getting lost.
A time honored tradition of getting lost because of misreading the journal. I don't remember which quest it was, but it was one that asked me to find something heading south. The first time I went south I got pretty much to the end of Vvanderfell. Next time I tried doing the walk, I kept to the road. It didn't take more than 1 minute from the city (Balmora? Can't remember) to where I was supposed to go.
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I regret not to have played these Elder Scrolls games when they were new. These are really special games. At the time, I wasn't a fan of western RPGs and leaned heavily into JRPGs. But man, I regret it.
JRPGs have their charm and, depending on your age, will feel a lot more relatable and "easy to get started" than most western RPGs. I don't remember when I started caring more about WRPG over JRPG, but I think it happened when I was 17, I suspect Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft played a significant role in that.
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did you read the article
No need. Either the headline is accurate and they disagree with the premise of the article or the headline is rage bait in which case they don't deserve clicks.
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I regret not to have played these Elder Scrolls games when they were new. These are really special games. At the time, I wasn't a fan of western RPGs and leaned heavily into JRPGs. But man, I regret it.
Then there was me bouncing between Morrowind and Chrono Cross depending on who's turn it was with the PC.
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No need. Either the headline is accurate and they disagree with the premise of the article or the headline is rage bait in which case they don't deserve clicks.
yeah the title is ragebait. the guy says a remake could be great but a remaster as it is would be way too archaic
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I still play Daggerfall at least once a year. It was all downhill after Daggerfall.
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Morrowind would be a GOTY release if it came out today and made it so 1. running stamina loss only happened in combat, 2. low combat skills caused lower damage instead of lots of misses, and 3. draw distance was further than 10 feet away then fog.
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Morrowind would be a GOTY release if it came out today and made it so 1. running stamina loss only happened in combat, 2. low combat skills caused lower damage instead of lots of misses, and 3. draw distance was further than 10 feet away then fog.
Yeah, make the combat not suck ass as a newbie trying the game out for the first time and it'd be awesome.
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The gameplay sucked but what makes Morrowind a far superior game to Skyrim and Oblivion is Morrowind is weird.
Bethesda is only capable of making boring big budget fantasy epic setpieces these days, gone is the feeling of going into a random shop and reading a random book, gone is the feeling of "what the hell is over the next hill!?".
You always know what you are going to get with Bethesda, they won't take ANY risks. Bethesda will never again present a vision of fantasy that doesn't simply meet the expectations of well worn fantasy tropes, as far as they are concerned that would be bad for business to do otherwise.
If you showed me of a picture of dragon from Skyrim, a dragon from Harry Potter and a dragon from Lord Of The Rings I don't think I could tell them apart, the same cannot be said for almost any aspect of Morrowind down to basic things like the architecture of its buildings.
I disagree on it being weird the thing that makes it great. No, it's because they cared. They wrote a deep intriguing story, and they trusted the player to treat the world as meaningful and to learn on their own. They expected you to read and to be interested.
Now, everything is dumbed down and simple, and it's baby fed to the player. There's little to discover that isn't shoved down your throat. Sure, there's (precedurally generated) loot to gather, but nothing more.
Morrowind was built as a world, and then they set a game there. The people, locations, and events make sense in that world. Starting especially with Skyrim, but even with Oblivion, it's built as a theme park. The world is just there to entertain you, but there's nothing behind the fecade.
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A time honored tradition of getting lost because of misreading the journal. I don't remember which quest it was, but it was one that asked me to find something heading south. The first time I went south I got pretty much to the end of Vvanderfell. Next time I tried doing the walk, I kept to the road. It didn't take more than 1 minute from the city (Balmora? Can't remember) to where I was supposed to go.
I know there's one quest that gives the wrong directions. I assume that's part of the reason they don't do it anymore. If they modify the game and the position of something changes they need to go back and modify any text that referred to it. With a quest marker they just mark the location and it works automatically. It shouldn't be that hard to make a procedural text directions generator though, but that wouldn't work with 100% voices lines.
Thats part of the reason I think that is flawed. They can't have characters give you detailed lore about the world because it needs to be voiced, so they have to shove it in a book, which means you can't have a conversation about it. I think a hybrid approach would be better, but there's no way Bethesda is going to do that now.
I guess there is an argument for AI generated voices for this task. It'd be doing something that is impossible to do otherwise, so it's not replacing anyone.
Sorry, that was a huge tangent/rant.
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Yeah, make the combat not suck ass as a newbie trying the game out for the first time and it'd be awesome.
The combat doesn't suck. Morrowinds combat is good, you just don't understand how it works when you are new to the game.
The weapon swing animation tells the game to roll Attack dice, just like in a Table Talk RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. Then, if your Attack Roll (with modifiers like current fatigue, weapon skill, etc) beats the enemy's Armor Class (with modifiers like their current fatigue and enchantments, etc), its a hit. Otherwise, its a miss.
The one thing Morrowind could have done better with combat is communicating the feedback to the player better. Because the game can get the result of the roll immediately, it can then change what animation plays back to the player, so rather than always playing back the same weapon swing animation regardless of result, it should instead choose different animations based on the result. Missed? Play an animatiom that looks like the player missed. Hit? Play an animation that looks like a hit. Hit but damage was blocked? You get the idea.
Perhaps it would be helpful if the game displayed a UI dice result to better communicate this, who knows. I like the game better without floating damage numbers, but they could be helpful to reduce frustration of new players that don't understand how the game works.
