V The Elder Scrolls

[Gwardinen]

Sweet, you should record and upload sometime.

[Roderick]

Seconded!

[Wubbles]

I'm not sure that I have any recording equipment that's compatible with a computer, but if I do I'll be sure to put a .wav file or something here.

EDIT: Oh, yeah. If I do manage to upload a recording of myself playing the piece, be warned that my piano is horribly out of tune.

[Wubbles]

New screenshots.

Featured:

Ghosts, murder, an environment, poaching

[Orv]

I decided to strip my excessively modded Morrowind down from almost 7GB to just over 3. As a result, I just spent. . .7 and a half hours compiling, modifying, installing and tweaking Morrowind mods, because five fucking people, together, do not understand how the NIF system works. THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS.

I am angry, exhausted, my neck and fingers are sore from a thousand minor coding projects, and I could eat a fucking cow, or five.

But gods body, if it isn't pretty. I present to you, a short story of Morrowind, in pictures.

Some of you may recognize where I am, and what I have equipped. Yes, I am that stupid.

Yes, that stupid.

Naturally, I missed. (I was aiming for Vivec.)

The next few shots are just various Vivec things (and the very nice waterfall VFX.)

Guess what I have one of left.

Naturally, I miss again, but do have the presence of mind to save mid-air and crank the MGE Distant Land to a fair bit.

Being level one, it didn't end well. If I come across anything else pretty, I'll shove it along to you folks.

Taken from a lower post so I can be a whore:

I just went through the mod readme list and pulled everything and then plugged it in and either messed around with the coding itself, or its changes in TESCS. I'm actually going to trim most of the foliage mods with more barren ones sometime this weekend/week. I'm not doing anymore modding for a couple days.

Yes, you can survive a Scroll of Icarian Flight. . .if you have 2. (This is precisely why it gives you three.) You trigger it, jump. As you approach the ground, you cast another one, thereby raising your Acrobatics so high that you take no falling damage. In my jump from the top of that part of Vivec, I actually went just over the moon and landed partially in the water. There was just enough land under me that I died, however. You can survive a fall into water from any height in Morrowind, because it does not model whatever the physics are for falling into water at a high velocity. (Water resistance/buoyancy? Not sure.)

I actually experimented with various levels of the Icarian Flight model of spell a few years back. I postulated that if you created a spell that did the same thing, but at varying levels of Acrobatics modification (I believe the scrolls you find set it to 500 or 1000), you could control how far you went. I was mildly successful, but often ended up in untenable places, like the side of a mountain where I would have to cast the spell to get back down by falling. The issue with that being that I'd set the duration to 2 seconds, just enough time to cast and jump, and timing that for a fall was. . .tricky.

I'm actually going to make a third install of Morrowind (I downloaded the cd images, since I own the game twice, to see if it was a Steam install issues) and see if the package works on that. I do not have high hopes, but we'll see.

Edited April 17, 2011 by Orvidos

[MrHoatzin]

Everything looks soo dinky in those shots, and I could've sworn the moon was way higher above the temple than it seems the way you've photographed... Also, having had played with a much shorter depth of field (and thus a lot more fog) your shots make the game super dark relative to how I remember it. Funky. Can you ever really survive the jumping scroll?

[elmuerte]

that waves of the water are too high, that's why it all looks dinky

[Roderick]

Haha, the same thing kind of happened to me when I got a new PC and played Morrowind with a much extended draw distance. The world seemed a lot tinier and less impressive, in some ways!

In general though, I hate the way those mods make Morrowind look. Vvardenfell shouldn't have luscious trees 'n foliage 'n shit, it's a place filled with mushrooms and dust storms and weathered husks of bark. It's supposed to be barren and rocky. I don't recognize it as Morrowind at all.

[Orv]

So, I have to be honest, because I like you people. And because I'm a mature adu-hahahahaha, haha, ha, oh. Ahem. Because I'm a wise and ki-hahahahahahahaaaaaahaha. No. Look, I wanted to dump the lot of you in a well and fill it with explosives. But once I stopped being a child, and realized it was the exhaustion talking, I decided to do what any sensible person does in a situation like this. I decided to prove you wrong. I might have succeeded?

So the primary issue with the screenshots I took this morning were;

1. It was all in the Bitter Coast region. A swampy, rather jungle-ish area, with or without mods.

2. I had used all the "large volume"/"pretty" foliage mods and this was a mistake. Since the issue with the package was a Steam install, I was able to mess about with it to have the darker, less leafy-intensive mods for it.

So I decided to go look around in the Ashlands, the West Gash and the Grazelands. Unfortunately, due to a number of circumstances, I didn't reach the Grazelands, so there aren't any shots from there. After I'm done with this post, I'll trek out there properly (most of these were obtained via Icarian Flight abuse) and take some. Morrowind In Pictures, V2. (Fair warning: A lot of them. Click the thumbnail and then click the picture on PB.)

While the faces are more human now, they do play in the Uncanny Valley in a lot of places. Babyface Nelson here, for example.

Being the RPG veteran that I am, I promptly loot everything that isn't nailed down, and proceed to abuse the engine to keep all of it, and steal the key to the warehouse of Imperial goods across the street. Unfortunately, I was standing just a little too far to the left, and was caught by his holiness "that dude you talk to to get out of jail".

Rodi, you primary complaint was that it was too, hmm, verdant, lush, yes? So, from one side of this pass;

We have the Ascadian Isles region,

and on the other side the West Gash region.

Sufficiently desolate, I should think.

My trip to the nearest Caldera takes me by Fort Whats-its-name (I honestly don't remember). You can see the Dwemer ruin that's the place of your first major Main Quest. . .quest, in the background.

A duststorm coming up.

And now in full swing. (Naturally, it looks better in motion. I'm not sure my computer is sufficient to record that, but I'll look into it.)

Out of the mists, Ghostgate! And a few of its inhabitants to show off the updated armors.

The updated skull mesh and texture. (Actual skulls. Shocking.)

Of course, being the fool I am, I decide to step inside the Ghostfence at level one and expend my last two Icarian Flight scrolls to jump straight to the volcano at the middle. I promptly get stuck in a tree and wander about for a bit. The sound has been almost fully updated as well, and the raspy, crackling breath of Corprus victims is rather disconcerting.

Gnisis. Imperial Temple or Guard players will remember this place. . .fondly.

The bay of that one place whose name I don't remember. It's the single Vivec canton out in the middle of the Ashlands for no reason.

That's what I've got for now. I suspect this won't calm anyones fears, but a few Parthian shots on the matter for now.

Kingz, the darkness is actually sort of intentional. There are a few .ini tweaks that make it more atmospheric, including night actually being night (a pretty common mod for Bethesda engine games the last few years.)

El Muerte, you were correct, and I used MGE to tone down the wave height. It looks considerably better.

Rodi, I don't know what to tell you. I use a couple specific mod settings that add more trees in several areas (Ascadian Isles, Bitter Coast, one other) so that's a personal preference. I have, however, endeavored to show that, if it's meant to be barren and hideous, it is.

I apologize for the screenshot size, I think that's an MGE setting and I'll look into it.

[Roderick]

I think the problem is, the way those screenshots look, that's how I remember Morrowind looking in the first place. Which is obviously balony, but explains why I'm not too impressed

It does look nice though!

[elmuerte]

Those screenshots look actually quite awesome. (except for nelson)

And it actually makes me sad/depressed when playing Dragon Age 2.

[Wubbles]

Man, now I want to play Morrowind.

[Orv]

Well I can stumble about in the old graphics for a few more years (have been since it released until just last year or so) or update it. And now that, as you said, it looks like Morrowind again, why not? Mmmm, resolution.

Excuse me, I have cliff racers to run from. (Your Athletics has increased to 14!)

[Wubbles]

Fuuuck

Don't click that if you want to play Skyrim free of preconceptions.

[Orv]

That was a "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, why is this in November?!" fuuuuuuuuuck, right?

[Wubbles]

Correct.

[Gwardinen]

I'm really curious to see the menus, now, as the UI design of a game definitely does matter to me and hearing that they're so good definitely has me intrigued.

I've been avoiding this sort of stuff fairly heavily, and having read that, I now think I had good reason to. I can already feel the stirrings of the hype monster in my belly and we're still seven months off.

Ah well, hopefully when I get back in-country tomorrow Portal 2 will be waiting for me to take my mind off it.

[Erkki]

Looks good and incredibly detailed, but unless they skipped some footage (didn't notice), the dragons seemed kind of easy to kill: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/06/also-skybiff-that-skyrim-playthrough/

[Sno]

Anybody else actually really happy that they're getting rid of the attributes and major/minor skills division in Skyrim?

I got really sick of trying to game the character stats systems in Morrowind and Oblivion to get the most out of my character building, focusing on building up minor skills to get the most out of attribute bonuses on level-up, all that weirdness.

I'm glad they're making that all a little more sensible.

Anyways.

Yay Elder Scrolls.

[Orv]

Looks good and incredibly detailed, but unless they skipped some footage (didn't notice), the dragons seemed kind of easy to kill: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/06/also-skybiff-that-skyrim-playthrough/

It looked pretty heavily edited to me on the stream.

[Murdoc]

edit: used the internet to answer my own question.

I guess that explains why the character looks good in this one, you get a choice between male and female with no options on class or race.

Edited June 7, 2011 by Murdoc

[Squid Division]

Ouch, really? That sucks.

[Orv]

Uh, incorrect. They've already said 11 races.

Excuse me, 10.

On character creation: “The only option you are given is what you look like” and your race. Each race has certain powers, so this decision is not purely cosmetic. There are 10 races in all. “After that it’s all what you play. we want to minimise the initial decision point when you start the game.”

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/18/skyrim-skills/

[Roderick]

It would be incredibly bizarre for an Elder Scrolls game (in the main series) to not feature extensive character customization. That would go directly against the very core of what they're trying to bring: the freedom to choose your own adventure.

Anyway, the footage was a mix of the good and the bad. The environments looked pretty and the dungeons more diverse and interesting. The combat still didn't seem very interesting, but who knows? I'm not keeping my hopes up, but since I rarely play melee characters it's not a huge deal to me. What was more annoying was that they showed a stealth section that played exactly as Morrowind and Oblivion: going into stealth and shooting an enemy talking to someone else, who then doesn't respond when his conversation partner is suddenly killed by arrow. I got that sinking feeling when I saw that bit. Bethesda speak of stealth being really important this time around, but will the systems support this? I really hope this won't turn out the way I fear it will, looking at that footage.

[DanJW]

What I didn't like about stealth in Oblivion was that - unless you had a crazy superhuman stealth score - everyone in the area spotted you as soon as your first attack hit. If you did have super stealth then no-one could see you ever. there was almost no middle ground.

Still this looks pretty great, although the combat is difficult to judge just by watching.