you’d be mostly right about TES4: Oblivion, but Morrowind is a completely different clunk from it’s sequels.
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starik@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I just played through Elder Scrolls V for the first time recently. That game is so damned clunky, I can’t imagine trying to wade through the same thing but 2 versions earlier.
kewwwi@lemmy.world 2 months ago
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I’m biased having played Morrowind first, but I’d argue it’s way better than its sequels in a lot of ways, so people are definitely missing out to skip it. The whole game world is hand crafted rather than being procedurally generated, the writing and worldbuilding are better, there was obviously a huge amount of work that went into building the RPG side of Morrowind that felt missing in later games.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 2 months ago
I’m so glad I was able to play it first. No game has ever been as immersive to me as Morrowind was. I don’t know if I could say the same thing if I’d have played Oblivion or Skyrim first and tried to go backwards because of how bad the combat system was. I’m also not sure why I didn’t find those two games as immersive as I did Morrowind, most of the pieces are there but something always felt off with them by comparison.
morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
The later games can be immersive if you don’t use map fast travel imo. There’s a few mods like better carriages and boats that give you a lot more travel options, I like sign fast travel too. Find it makes me explore a lot more instead of just rushing to the next objective. It’s not quite the same but I find that + survival helps a lot (and combat gameplay overhaul, but depends how much you’re ok modding core gameplay elements. I totally run combat mods on morrowind when i replay it, I’m not a purist when it comes to how people want to play a game)
My first experience with morrowind was on the xbox and I played the hell out of it, wasn’t until years later I finally bought a pc copy. I found Dread Delusion captured some of that immersive alien world feeling that morrowind did for me as a kid.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
My mom got me an OG Xbox around the time that the 360 came out, and a couple of games. The copy of Splinter Cell was undoubtedly my dad’s contribution to the conversation, but I remember my mom telling me later that she had never really heard of this “Morrowind” game but she asked the Gamestop employee for a game that was like Zelda, since we both previously loved playing Zelda on our SNES and N64. The guy recommended Morrowind and I figure it was probably a 50/50 shot that he did either that, or Fable.
I played Fable later on as an adult and it’s a fine game, but I owe a great debt of gratitude to a man I will never meet who allowed me to experience Morrowind in its entirety in my early teens. I went into that game completely blind and knowing nothing about anything other than what was in the game manual. I then went on to play it almost obsessively for the next eight years and continue to play it to this day about once a year or two. It is one of my very favorite games to exist and one of my favorite expressions of video games as art. Michael Kirkbride is a mad genius and I hang on his every word. Vivec is one of my favorite characters in fiction. I remember the layout of Balmora better than I remember the layout of some of my childhood homes. I love this game.
starik@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Is Skyrim not all hand crafted?
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I guess I’m not totally sure, I know Oblivion used a bunch of procedural generation and I assumed Skyrim did the same.
Benign@fedia.io 2 months ago
I think proc-gen with manual adjustments has been the norm for a long time now.
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s a mix. Most of the dungeons related to quests were made by hand, but every everything else was procedurally generated and touched up by hand later, and some of the minor quest dungeons got the latter treatment.
Almost all of Oblivion’s dungeons were procedurally generated with only a handful made by hand, and only some of the procedural dungeons were touched up at all.
Every single dungeon in Morrowind was made by hand since they didn’t have the proc gen tool for that engine built yet.
Daggerfall generated most of the world via fixed seed procedural generation, which allowed them to make the world massive while fitting within 450MB; the world is generated at runtime, but it’s always the same world. A handful of plot locations were hand-made.
Arena used a method similar to the one used for Daggerfall.
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
A daggerfall randomizer would be pretty sweet
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’m cross that oblivion got a remake but not morrowind. If they made morrowind but made actual combat animations instead of “lol u miss” “lol u sure suck at destruction spells” i think it would be a lot more popular with the youngins.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I agree that it deserves it more, but I don’t agree that I think they’d improve it. We’d get higher quality models and textures, and maybe an improved lighting solution, but I think they’d mess up the game. They’d simplify it. Also, they’d probably make a unified UI with consoles, like the later games have, and not have the very good UI we have for PC Morrowind.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I really like the spell failure chance. It was a lot of fun making wild ass spells that had like a 50-75% chance of working. Getting one of those to pop off in a fight just felt so satisfying compared to the instant gratification you get for casting spells now.
I’d really like to see more spellmaking options, like the option to set the mana used for the spell, where setting less increases the failure chance, but using more makes the spell more reliable. Or maybe let the player add failure effects (like burden, paralysis, summon hostile creatures, bounce back…etc) for a reduction in spell failure chance.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Oh yeah im 100% with you, I was just thinking instead or saying “lol no” your fingers got burned or a little fizzle and pop or something. With the attacking instead of popping up “your attack missed” have the enemy dodge, or your sword clearly fumbles.
Still have the same chance in the background just have it play out properly visually.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Roll to hit is so early 90’s
Gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
That’s hardly a fair judge of Morrowind, it’s very different from Skyrim. Oh it’s definitely clunky, but what we got with Skyrim was very streamlined in ways that hurt the role-playing elements. Morrowind is a little bit tougher to get into, but really rewards you for your time.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You obviously didn’t encounter any of the randomized unplanned interactive experience enhancing physics anomalies (Bugs) that is the best part.
starik@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Is it even possible to do an escort quest without running into one?
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Quests? You’re clearly playing the game wrong.
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Gotta play it on mushrooms. Ahem, I mean Caius Crops
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 months ago
Morrowind’s combat system is indeed complete ass even compared to Skyrim, but it makes up for it with awesome world building, extremely visually interesting set pieces (everything looks so alien and I love it for that) and a crafting system that lets you bypass most of the combat tedium within an hour or two (mostly alchemy).