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roguefrog

Morrowind Revisited (13 years)

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I finally got all the Daetric armor. I originally played this game in 2002. This game is fascinating in many ways. It pre-dates quest markers, hand-holding, etc. The Journal system is terrible by any standards, and yet I spent so much time in this world  just exploring. I still have quests unresolved, but I am still satisfied. Even Complete. Perhaps there hasn't been an Elder Scrolls that had such an engrossing terra-firma disparity world like this before.

MGE Screenshot 006.png

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I replayed it when the expansion for skyrim that returns you to Solstheim. Aside from the inherent jank of the UI, especially the journal.

 

The biggest thing I miss from Morrowind is the amount of quests and the depth of the world building. The map was also just inherently weird which helped a ton. The flora and fauna looked like nothing from our world.

 

I really loved the game. I with we could get a medium between no quest markers and skyrims pointing your way through the dungeon. Something that told you where to go in the overworld but then left you to explore once you got there would be great.

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Yes the flora and fauna and etc. The thing is, you can describe certain parts of the Island based purely on geography because they were so distinct. You had the bitter coast swamp lands. The Sahara like north-earth. The weird mushroom isles of east.  Mordor in the center. Desolate and terrible. I don't think they ever surmounted this level of world building in later iterations. 

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What do you think of the implementation of fast travel?

 

Silt striders, mage guild teleports (only to members but who wasn't a member for that benefit alone?), boats, ferries within Vivec, that weird fortress Propylon index thing.

And the 2 intervention teleports to either the ALMSIVI or Imperial Cult temples and the mark and recall.

 

You could get around very fast between cities, but anything outside of them seemed to be wilderness. It's a really grounded thing, the two teleport spells would throw you to the nearest temple, regardless if you visited it or not. Sans the Mark/Recall spells, nothing worked the same way in every location in the world.

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Fast travel was more restricted. And is a challenge for sure. Especially for new players now. Looking back and thinking critically, good luck dude. 
For me fast travel became a since of progression. I had to learn Silt strider routers. Then I learned the mage guild teleportation benefits between guild halls. Then I learned the spells to nearest Shrine or Imperial outposts. Then mark and recall spells in the classical Ultima sense. Then mods, AKA pocket home dimension to stash my gear. Oops!

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Progression of the fast travel system over time was really cool. It was mostly down to player knowledge, everything but the mark/recall is available from nearly the very start.

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Fast travel is the bane of all modern open world games. From a player perspective it's just too convenient not to, or you have to be an idiot like me who stubbornly refuses to teleport in Skyrim. The thing is: doing that really forces you to live in the world and get a feel of the surroundings, but it's just too much to ask. Especially since from a developer perspective, having teleportation at your disposal means that you don't have to worry all that much about player progression in a geographical sense: the whole world is instantly available, so that strips a whole layer of world building out of the game.

 

I loved, loved, loved how Morrowind did this. You had in-game means of traversing the world, but they were limited and ingrained in the game world. You had to be smart in employing them. In Morrowind and vanilla World of Warcraft it actually meant something if you progressed through the game and found all these places and quest objects, because you had to work for them. Nowadays you just teleport to the nearest marker and blindly follow it. And the stupid thing is, it's difficult to turn this off (if it even is an option), because the game is no longer designed to do it on your own.

 

Remember the goddamn Dwemer puzzle box? In any modern Elder Scrolls game, it would be a simple quest that you'd forget as soon as you solved it. In Morrowind, it's an epic journey that you'll remember always.

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48 minutes ago, Roderick said:

Remember the goddamn Dwemer puzzle cube? In any modern Elder Scrolls game, it would be a simple quest that you'd forget as soon as you solved it. In Morrowind, it's an epic journey that you'll remember always.

 

I had a quick Google in hopes of reading about this - a) I'm guessing you mean the Dwemer Puzzle Box (a Dwemer Puzzle Cube shows up in Skyrim, apparently); and sunglasses) I couldn't find much about it, what makes it a memorable epic journey?

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Ah, it was indeed a box. What made it memorable is that Morrowind doesn't guide you towards things with easy signposting, compasses or arrows. In Skyrim or any other modern open world game, you just follow the glowing icons that guide you towards doors and objects of note. Not so in Morrowind or earlier RPG's.

 

For the Dwemer puzzle box quest, you are first pointed in roughly the right direction to find a Dwemer citadel in the mountains. Then, upon finding it, it's a dark and unwelcoming affair filled with bandits. The puzzle box is a tiny little gewgaw located in a non-descript piece of furniture on a difficult-to-get-to floor, and there's nothing that tells you it is there. You just have to scour the whole dungeon, and I for one didn't luck into it until way long into the affair.

 

Now, it's not that this is particularly good game design. I'm just pointing out that for these reasons - and people might well become frustrated at this quest - the Dwemer puzzle box is a memorable achievement to find, it's something that many Morrowind players will wistfully look back upon and think: 'Goddamn, that was hard. But I was so happy when I found it.' That would never have happened if the thing had had a glowing quest marker steering you inevitably towards it.

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It's a favour to get someone to help you out later. You're in Balmora's Fighter's Guild, the man tells you he needs this box from a nearby ruin. He'll describe you how to get to the location of the dwemer ruin with words, ie. go out the south gate of the city, head left, go up past Fort Moonmoth, get across the bridge over the <actual word for lava flows/streams that the game used>, the ruin is on your right. He'll even tell you there's a lever nearby that opens the main entrance.

 

Here's a map of the area

GoogleMaps.jpg

 

On the bridge is some bandit, he also has some fame as far as people remembering goes. He's potentially the 1st actual combat encounter you enter, if you didn't get jumped by any cliff racers on the short walk to there. He'll possibly destroy you a few times.

 

You get into the actual ruin, it has 2 parts. The first one is short, filled with level 1 bandits or whatever, and it has the puzzle box on an unassuming shelf in an alcove in a big room. It is NOT near any dead ends or any big chests. The dungeon itself has 2 or 3 more layers full of dwarven armoured robots and ghosts. The game won't stop or warn you at all that going further in is a bad idea. If you're thinking the puzzle box will be on a big shinning pedestal after some big robot ball boss, you'll never find it.

 

Another map of how far this actually is

arkngthand-map.jpg

 

This is what the puzzle box looks like on a shelf

morrowind035.jpg

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I got the game working with a few resolution patches, stability patches and Tamriel Rebuilt! I'm really excited to see what it looks like in game, even though only the upper right third of the entire mainland is "complete".

 

CCU6IF8.jpg

TR1609ReleaseMap.jpg

FAlHDxP.png

The TR_Preview is incomplete.

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On 5/1/2017 at 7:34 AM, Roderick said:

Ah, it was indeed a box. What made it memorable is that Morrowind doesn't guide you towards things with easy signposting, compasses or arrows. In Skyrim or any other modern open world game, you just follow the glowing icons that guide you towards doors and objects of note. Not so in Morrowind or earlier RPG's.

 

For the Dwemer puzzle box quest, you are first pointed in roughly the right direction to find a Dwemer citadel in the mountains. Then, upon finding it, it's a dark and unwelcoming affair filled with bandits. The puzzle box is a tiny little gewgaw located in a non-descript piece of furniture on a difficult-to-get-to floor, and there's nothing that tells you it is there. You just have to scour the whole dungeon, and I for one didn't luck into it until way long into the affair.

 

Now, it's not that this is particularly good game design. I'm just pointing out that for these reasons - and people might well become frustrated at this quest - the Dwemer puzzle box is a memorable achievement to find, it's something that many Morrowind players will wistfully look back upon and think: 'Goddamn, that was hard. But I was so happy when I found it.' That would never have happened if the thing had had a glowing quest marker steering you inevitably towards it.

 

Oh god, I remember searching for that damn thing for hours and never finding it. 

 

I am so tempted to reinstall it and boot it up for nostalgia's sake. That game really takes me back to a very specific time and place in my life.  

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I did that earlier this year, aided by a few graphical updates, and was not disappointed. It's a wonderful game full of detail and striking music and scenery. I lost quite a few hours there again.

 

(Not with the Dwemer puzzle box though. I know where that fucker hides nowadays.)

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I spent 30 minutes yesterday walking North West out of Caldera in search of the boots of blinding speed. I missed the woman on the first go, found her on the 2nd try, after 5 minutes of walking. I did google where exactly she is.

 

Also I found 2 stupid naked nords.

 

I'm trying to remember what the easiest way to get 100% magic resistance for 1 second is.

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Skywind is doing some good work, I played the last public release they had and aside from all the NPCs being naked it was amazingly far along.
 

 

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You have to wonder that they'll probably be finished by the time ES6 comes out in 2019 or 2020, and then they'll have to start all over again. It's positively Sisyphean!

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10 minutes ago, Roderick said:

Either? I don't know! How many people are rebuilding Morrowind?!

 

Bethesda, Tamriel Unlimited, Skywind, and an uncountable number of mods for the original game. 

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1 hour ago, njoos said:

 

Bethesda, Tamriel Unlimited, Skywind, and an uncountable number of mods for the original game. 

I don't know how complete it is by Skyblivion has a release version. The main reason i dont want to play it is oblivion has almost all the UI flaws of Morrowind and almost all the UI flaws of Skyrim.

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I like the spell menu, it's an ok system. The potion icons all being the same, not so much. What the hell did the UI look on the Xbox? It makes sense for a mouse, you can move/resize and pin any of the 4 menus on PC.

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I loved the fast travel system in this game. I wish I had saved the London Underground-style transit map I drew out for my reference back in the day.

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I restarted this game over and over when I saw mods I liked. Never ended up finishing it. Still sitting on my "one day" pile.

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