'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 think Morrowind is one of the best games that Bethesda has made in terms of being the following: Weird, has a fairly strong story that makes you think about what it means, characters misremembering directions, hand placed loot. It's a game that I keep revisiting and love it to bits, I still need to explore some storylines; combat might be the weakest part of the game, but, I adjust after starting yet another replay. It's also one of the amusing games to pull off serious cheese in, as there is no upper limit. It also makes combat trivial if you cheese just right, but I consider that part of the fun.
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Yeah combat aged very poorly but it does a host of other things someone should take and expand on.
Morrowind was a terrible action game, and a fantastic hand-crafted world to explore.
Oblivion felt like a huge step back to me. Sure it looked a lot better, it was technically bigger, it was entirely voiced over, and its physics... err... existed.
But it was so bland. Completely generic environments, copy-pasted dungeons and buildings everywhere, almost any encounter a leveled rando with no personality.
And then everything they did to make the game more modern only made it more boring. Voiced over? Sure, enjoy everyone having one sentence of dialogue. Looking for stuff? Nobody's got time for that, just follow the magic compass.
I understand why they did those. But despite how janky Morrowind could be in some aspects, nobody can convince me Oblivion was the better game.
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I wouldn't say that Oblivion or Skyrim has much better gameplay, honestly. Yeah the weird dice-roll mechanic is gone, not that dice rolls necessarily make for a bad game (see the entire Baldur's Gate franchise, including the latest installment) but the combat in Oblivion and Skyrim isn't exactly good. It's floaty and feels really weird.
Oblivion retains more of Morrowinds roleplay mechanics, too. Skyrim is just a flat, empty game. They leant really far into this garbage faux viking aesthetic, complete with rubbish accents (as a Swede, we don't sound like that here in the Nordics) and there's nothing really memorable about it. It plays and feels about as drab as it looks.
Like to-date, there are still aspects of Oblivion and Morrowind I recall fondly. One of my favourite wow-moments in Oblivion was the quest with the woman who tasked you with finding her painter husband. That's a fun quest. Skyrim has nothing like that.
(...) complete with rubbish accents (as a Swede, we don't sound like that here in the Nordics)
If you want a better viking game with much better Nordic sounding accents, Banner Saga is out there. Though there is only like 10 minutes of voice acting per game - but what is there is good! They used an Icelandic VA studio to make sure it's authentic.
The best swedish accent I ever heard was that one blonde knight in Witcher 3 - Blood & Wine. Which is funny as I don't think it makes sense for the setting at all, but accent voice direction in that whole expansion is a complete clusterfuck with zero consistency.
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I have played Morrowind many many many, many times. hell I've played multiplayer Morrowind a few times
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(...) complete with rubbish accents (as a Swede, we don't sound like that here in the Nordics)
If you want a better viking game with much better Nordic sounding accents, Banner Saga is out there. Though there is only like 10 minutes of voice acting per game - but what is there is good! They used an Icelandic VA studio to make sure it's authentic.
The best swedish accent I ever heard was that one blonde knight in Witcher 3 - Blood & Wine. Which is funny as I don't think it makes sense for the setting at all, but accent voice direction in that whole expansion is a complete clusterfuck with zero consistency.
The best Swedish accent I've heard was the Russian gangster father of Alfie Allen in the first John Wick film. Makes sense given that the actor, Michael Nyqvist was Swedish.
Skyrim's NPCs sound and act like they've been lobotomised.
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If they don’t have the code anymore they could just fund OpenMW with 100k $ and take that.
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Yes, please stop asking for remakes or reboots or rereleases. There hasn't been a AAA game I've cared about in years. It's all derivative shit.
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The best Swedish accent I've heard was the Russian gangster father of Alfie Allen in the first John Wick film. Makes sense given that the actor, Michael Nyqvist was Swedish.
Skyrim's NPCs sound and act like they've been lobotomised.
I meant in video games, of course. In films there are a ton of examples. I usually go for Ingrid Bergman's accent in the Murder on the Orient Express movie, although that one - while accurate - is slightly exaggerated for effect, I think.
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I have played Morrowind many many many, many times. hell I've played multiplayer Morrowind a few times
Morrowind Online is one I still have to try. I fucking love Tamriel Rebuilt, and I've only explored a small fraction of the mainland.
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Lol that's not the gotcha he thinks it is.
So many, and I mean thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of players/Elder Scrolls fans would give up their left testicle just for a true Morrowind remaster. Like honestly, so many people have a love and fondness for that game, even if it wasn't their first ES title, that I truly believe almost everyone would tell him he's wrong.
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Yeah combat aged very poorly but it does a host of other things someone should take and expand on.
Yeah combat aged very poorly
I disagree, it's a matter of what you are looking for and your taste in gaming.
I prefer combat like say in Morrowind or even the original Deus Ex. When I am playing an RPG, I want the combat to be challenging from a gameplay experience perspective (it's difficult to shoot when you start out in the OG Deus EX) and reflect the fact that you're a low level character and that you need to learn the game and understand how combat works.
Many modern RPGs almost play like an FPS with RPG elements tacked on. If I want to play an FPS, I will play a real FPS.
General UI/UX improvements are a must, but it's not wrong for combat to be on some level unintuitive when you start out.
It's sort of like saying Jazz has aged poorly just because it's not mainstream in the way it may have been 70+ years ago.
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Ragebait headline. The guy does say that a proper remake or a new game set in the Morrowind region could be good. Just a remaster like the Oblivion remaster, with modern graphics slapped onto the original gameplay wouldn't work too well.
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The combat is great. It just doesn't sit right with people that it's not as action RPG as it looks (swing and miss) and it never tells you how important stamina (fatigue) is.
Idk, there's the loading screen tips, one in particular says "if you're entering a new or strange area, be sure to walk to conserve fatigue" or something along those lines.
Maybe an NPC tells you in Seyda Neen?
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I meant in video games, of course. In films there are a ton of examples. I usually go for Ingrid Bergman's accent in the Murder on the Orient Express movie, although that one - while accurate - is slightly exaggerated for effect, I think.
It’s not like Bethesda couldn’t afford to hire Nordic voice actors. They just chose not to do so.
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I have played Morrowind many many many, many times. hell I've played multiplayer Morrowind a few times
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.
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Is this the same
guyperineum who told WoW players they didn't want to play the original? -
Lol that's not the gotcha he thinks it is.
So many, and I mean thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of players/Elder Scrolls fans would give up their left testicle just for a true Morrowind remaster. Like honestly, so many people have a love and fondness for that game, even if it wasn't their first ES title, that I truly believe almost everyone would tell him he's wrong.
Morrowind only sold ~4 million units. I think you're overestimating how big the fan base is. The fan base is loyal, opinionated, and vocal, but small.
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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 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.
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Elder Scrolls 1 or 2? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
Elder Scrolls 3+? Hell yes.
Elder Scrolls 6 would be the release that I much prefer.
I think if they did a ground-up remake/reimagining of Arena or Daggerfall, it could still be compelling. Not a simple remaster, though.
That being said, there is apparently a Unity port of Daggerfall that appears quite decent, and goes a long way towards modernizing an otherwise ancient game.
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Ok I did. And I'll play it again, too. It was the best Elder Scrolls game to date.
The only thing that could make it better is updated visuals, better combat, and NPCs that actually move around and have schedules.
Oblivion and Skyrim have slightly better combat, better visuals, and NPCs that walk around. And nothing else that made Morrowind so fucking good. Let Kirkbride write more than 1 or 2 quest lines, god damn it.
