[HN Gopher] Morrowind 20-year anniversary book
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Morrowind 20-year anniversary book
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 263 points
       Date   : 2022-05-24 10:48 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mw.thenet.sk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mw.thenet.sk)
        
       | ppaattrriicckk wrote:
       | I remember having one of those free websites together with a mate
       | from school (webbyen.dk, was the thing in Denmark). We'd write
       | our own review of games, half-conscious that nobody would ever
       | read our reviews. But for Morrowind, I was so... crazed out from
       | pure anticipation, that I wrote a review before having the game
       | in my hands.
       | 
       | The game more than delivered on my expectations. The music still
       | soothes me to a large degree, and the world (glass and daedric
       | armour or houses made from giant mushrooms) was so absolutely
       | fantastic to me.
       | 
       | I've always wanted to experience the exact same thing, but with
       | present (or future) graphics. I've tried installing the various
       | mods and rebuilds, but it never was that great an experience.
       | 
       | Recently I bought Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) while it was on
       | sale, and while I think the game itself is quite boring and
       | constantly nudging you to subscribe, I was blown away by
       | exploring Vvardenfell. In my opinion it really captures the same
       | mood and it's... Just. So. Beautiful!
       | 
       | Not quite RDR2 graphics, but it really hit a soft spot for me,
       | seeing Seyda Neen "remastered". I can highly recommend spending
       | the dollars/euros, simply for that dose of nostalgia :-) or
       | simply an image search to see some of the good old scenes with
       | modern day graphics
        
         | Melatonic wrote:
         | There is a fairly legit sounding project remaking morrowind on
         | the newer engine but who knows if it will ever be completed
        
           | asdff wrote:
           | morroblivion is done but skywind is still in progress.
           | 
           | https://morroblivion.com/
           | 
           | https://tesrskywind.com/
        
         | ppaattrriicckk wrote:
         | I know this doesn't add much, but a small addition: The whole
         | concept of the lost Dwemer civilization is an entire layer of
         | depth to the fantastic world. A world which IMO is unparalleled
        
         | littleweep wrote:
         | Have you played Elden Ring? That has brought me the same wonder
         | Morrowind brought me decades prior.
        
           | tfigment wrote:
           | Elden Ring is a marvel but its not same to me. Morrowind is
           | not typical fantasy so the alien world of mushroom houses and
           | silt striders takes it to the next level. Skyrim and Oblivion
           | were less interesting to me as it was standard high fantasy
           | setting.
        
             | ppaattrriicckk wrote:
             | You capture what I failed to articulate. I feel _exactly_
             | that way about Oblivion and Skyrim
        
       | woeh wrote:
       | Fond memories. I remember power gaming Morrowind, by making
       | potions that made you more intelligent and 'have more luck'. If
       | you drank those, you could make better potions, which in turn
       | would made you luckier and more intelligent. After a few cycles I
       | could shoot fireballs to wipe out entire villages!
       | 
       | All well and good until an add-on introduced some guards with a
       | shield that 100% reflected my epic fireball, resulting in not
       | only my character being fried but also my poor PC having a blue
       | screen of death.
        
       | omnibrain wrote:
       | If you don't know it yet, make sure to read this loveletter to
       | the game: https://www.pedestrian.tv/gaming/morrowind-is-broken-
       | buggy-t...
        
       | fullstop wrote:
       | Morrowind, on the xbox, would completely reboot the xbox after
       | presenting a static loading screen, in a last ditch effort to
       | allow the user to keep playing. [1]
       | 
       | 1. https://kotaku.com/morrowind-completely-rebooted-your-
       | xbox-d...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | fastball wrote:
         | I'm confused. If you're running low on memory, why wouldn't you
         | just... deallocate stuff?
        
           | flohofwoe wrote:
           | Mainly because with 64 MBytes of RAM filled to the brim with
           | game assets you'd very quickly run into memory fragmentation
           | issues.
           | 
           | It's easier to just load big chunks of data at pre-defined
           | memory addresses, and once you need to overwrite most of the
           | memory anyway with new data, starting from a clean slate with
           | a reboot is much more straightforward.
        
             | fullstop wrote:
             | A lot of Linux-based DSP solutions do this. You either
             | purposely tell the kernel that you have less memory than
             | you do at startup, reserving the rest for the DSP, or you
             | load a kernel driver which can allocate contiguous memory.
             | This driver never actually uses the memory, it just scoops
             | it up before anyone else can.
        
           | baisq wrote:
        
         | havblue wrote:
         | "There's been great tricks that [Xbox] taught us," Howard said.
         | "My favorite one in Morrowind is, if you're running low on
         | memory, you can reboot the original Xbox and the user can't
         | tell. You can throw, like, a screen up. When Morrowind loads
         | sometimes, you get a very long load. That's us rebooting the
         | Xbox. That was like a hail Mary."
        
           | ridgered4 wrote:
           | I never played on the xbox, but I remember when traveling
           | between cells in Morrowind (like into a dungeon or building,
           | etc) I never could figure out why it sometimes only took a
           | few seconds and other times I was sure the game was locked
           | up. I saw this behavior on several PCs and don't ever
           | remember it going away.
           | 
           | Morrowind had a much more interesting world than Oblivion,
           | but I really appreciated that Oblivion did not do that. And
           | that NPCs could chase me out of buildings.
        
           | mywittyname wrote:
           | Hearing this makes me feel better about some of the asinine
           | things I've done to keep software going.
        
         | giancarlostoro wrote:
         | I'm more surprised the Xbox somehow did this without showing
         | the Xbox loading logo, is this like some normal feature of game
         | consoles I was unaware of? I guess I would call it moreso a
         | silent reboot.
        
           | flohofwoe wrote:
           | Yes, IIRC it was a special "warm start" boot mode. Rebooting
           | into different game modes wasn't that uncommon.
        
             | mikepurvis wrote:
             | Particularly interesting since wasn't the OG Xbox the first
             | major console to actually be running a significant amount
             | of background system software? I feel like that would
             | considerably complicate reboot-to-self vs with old-school
             | setups where everything is bare metal and the user software
             | is in control from the moment of boot.
             | 
             | Anyway, maybe the full weight of the hypervisor-based
             | solution didn't land until the 360, but even a generation
             | later, other players were in catch up mode like, wasn't the
             | Wii still doing goofy stuff like making individual games
             | include the code to show the "system" pause screen when the
             | home button was pressed?
        
               | fullstop wrote:
               | Presumably this was only an option for offline things?
        
               | flohofwoe wrote:
               | I don't remember honestly, but I think the background
               | services thing only came with the Xbox360? (did the OG
               | Xbox actually have any sort of "slide-in" dashboard when
               | the Xbox button was pressed?)
        
         | flohofwoe wrote:
         | I dimly remember that the Xbox SDK manuals recommended to
         | reboot into new game levels, or to boot into a completely
         | different executable for the multiplayer mode to make better
         | use of the limited memory by not keeping stuff around that's
         | not actually needed.
        
           | anthk wrote:
           | Italian Job in PC did that. And PS too I think.
        
       | upupandup wrote:
       | Morrowind is a great achievement but there were other great
       | obscure RPGs from this era. Namely JoWooD's Gothic.
       | 
       | In many ways it went beyond Morrowind. Morrowind was huge but it
       | also had moments where it felt mostly text driven to get
       | immersion.
       | 
       | In Gothic for instance, the levels feel incredibly organic and
       | NPCs are doing stuff on their own. For instance, in the wild
       | monsters would engage in combat with each other. Vast underground
       | mining camps require no loading screen to enter and explore.
       | 
       | Have a look at Gothic if you liked Morrowind. The world is
       | nowhere near as huge but the story, dynamic levels/npc, all
       | combined create a fluid and very rewarding almost Skyrim like
       | world in the early 2000s.
        
         | alternatetwo wrote:
         | You might be misremembering things (a bit). Gothic 1 had the
         | world, the oldmine, the freemine, the orcgraveyard and the
         | orctemple (and technically also the abandonedmine and orccity
         | but they are unused and empty) as seperate maps. So these had
         | loading screens. Since you said JoWood's Gothic, I'm assuming
         | you mean the 2nd one, since the first was published by ShoeBox
         | (and I'd call it PiranhaBytes' Gothic anyway, since they were
         | the developers).
         | 
         | Gothic 2 had the newworld, the oldworld, the addonworld and the
         | dragonisland. Only in Gothic 2 are there no "dungeons"
         | (internally indoor vs outdoor maps) so to speak, but there are
         | some underground places which do not require loading screens.
         | 
         | Why I love Gothic so much is because the entire world is
         | handcrafted. Nothing is procedurally generated, they just used
         | their world editor (Spacer, they released it) and placed items,
         | benches, fires, etc etc. This was also done by a much smaller
         | team, basically it started with 2-3 german CS students wanting
         | to make something as cool as Ultima, but of course it got
         | bigger later on.
         | 
         | The monster AI is really great. Various monsters also behave in
         | packs, i.e. you can lure Scavengers away one by one, but
         | Snappers all attack you if one attacks you, even if they didn't
         | see you. They also each have a distinct fighting style (more
         | relevant in Gothic 2 than in Gothic 1), so you can learn
         | patterns and theoretically beat the biggest monsters with
         | terrible gear.
         | 
         | I can only recommend it as well if you like these type of older
         | RPGs.
        
           | upupandup wrote:
           | wow!!! really impressed with your memory recall here. Yes I
           | meant the first one. My memory is quite fuzzy as its been
           | ages since I was gaming actively.
           | 
           | To me some of the best games I played allows me to build
           | these internal dialogues with what has transpired so far. So
           | much of Gothic 1 world seemed organic and quite dangerous
           | with enough diversity and variability that creates unique
           | character for each region.
           | 
           | I can't put in to words just how good that game was. Running
           | through a dark forest with low HP, trying to make it to the
           | new camp, witnessing bunch of Snappers gang up on a Scavenger
           | and attack it etc while I hide. That was super impressive
           | because it made me think there was some food chain ecosystem
           | going on.
           | 
           | The story was quite good too and I could identify with the
           | struggles easily. It was a _believable_ world. Bunch of rebel
           | lawlessness in new camp, the resource centric old camp
           | competing, and buddha like spiritual group who seeks to
           | escape the samsara.
           | 
           | I just have not played a good RPG like this on the PC,
           | Stalker also shared similar qualities, perhaps FF7. But it
           | was far more enjoyable than any new games I played recently.
           | In fact I stopped purchasing new games since 2017.
           | 
           | Really wish the coop multiplayer mode in Gothic would've been
           | released, used to get super excited seeing that.
        
             | SSLy wrote:
             | You will probably like Elden Ring, Dragon's Dogma, maybe
             | the first Fable? Greedfall II.
        
             | alternatetwo wrote:
             | I fiddled around with these two games for years mod and
             | reverse engineering wise, otherwise I wouldn't remember it
             | all either! And of course I played them both many times.
             | 
             | I played this game first as a kid, and it really left an
             | impression on me. And yes, the game world is just so real,
             | it all kinda makes sense. The forest has a really dark
             | atmosphere, they did a funny trick there, they hardcoded it
             | that your character state goes into threat mode, so the
             | music changes to the threat version.
             | 
             | I have to be honest, it kind of ruined RPGs for me long
             | term, since none of them really ever held up to the
             | standards Gothic set that early. Too bad PiranhaBytes also
             | never truly recaptured what they had.
             | 
             | And yeah coop would have been fun. Final game still links
             | to wsocks, because they had it internally at some point,
             | and some Net classes even remain too, but it's all
             | unuseable. There are multiplayer servers though for actual
             | roleplaying, but the multiplayer part is written outside
             | afaik.
        
       | rvbissell wrote:
       | I miss the constant-effect levitation charms I could embed into
       | glass armor, using grand soul gems. I suppose Bethesda had good
       | reasons for removing that in later TES titles.
        
       | alxexperience wrote:
       | This is an awesome book! I remember being blown away as a kid
       | playing Morrowind. I had no idea what was going on, and got
       | killed by a Nix-Hound pretty quickly. But once I started to
       | understand the mechanics and what I could do, I was blown away. I
       | don't think many games that I have played have matched the sheer
       | oppression and alienness of Morrowind. There are giant mushrooms
       | everywhere. Almost no one likes you or cares about you. There are
       | multiple political issues and maneuvering going on between the
       | Great Houses and Guilds. It's truly a fantastic RPG.
        
       | nedsma wrote:
       | I remember catching the Corpus disease and then trying to cure it
       | with the utmost urgency, as if I'm really being sick. While
       | searching for the cure, I got that shocking message "Your case of
       | Corprus has worsened.". I went searching on the Internet for cure
       | and once I had the potion, I was so relieved.
        
         | corrral wrote:
         | The funny thing is, you really _don 't_ want to cure it too
         | fast. It's how your character gets strong enough to achieve the
         | god-like power the plot suggests you ought to attain.
        
           | nedsma wrote:
           | Oh, I didn't know that. Tnx! For me, it meant the end of the
           | game and it would require restarting the game. Next time I
           | catch it, I'll see what it actually does.
        
             | corrral wrote:
             | It does the same thing it does to the others afflicted by
             | it: it makes you strong, dumb, and slow, with the effects
             | growing the longer you have it. This is represented in the
             | game by causing physical base stats (str, end) to go up,
             | and mental & agility stats to drop.
             | 
             | ... but, crucially, when you cure it, the bonuses remain,
             | while the penalties go away. So you can use it to pretty
             | much max out your strength and endurance.
        
       | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
       | The idea of Morrowind always sounded cool, but I could never get
       | into it. I think I grabbed the Xbox version for ten bucks at a
       | Best Buy back in the day. I spent roughly a half hour designing
       | my character, spawned on a boat, and saw a nearby treasure chest.
       | I took stuff out of it (as one does in a freaking RPG), and was
       | then murdered for stealing by nearby guards.
       | 
       | Back onto the shelf it went.
        
         | technothrasher wrote:
         | > I took stuff out of it (as one does in a freaking RPG), and
         | was then murdered for stealing by nearby guards.
         | 
         | And this was a surprise to you in an RPG? Even in Ultima I back
         | in 1981, you'd get attacked by the guards for stealing stuff in
         | town.
        
           | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
           | It was surprising to me, yes. I wouldn't say I grew up
           | exclusively with JRPGs (I did play the Eye of Beholder games
           | on DOS), but those were the majority. And as you're probably
           | aware, it is perfectly acceptable in JRPGs to break into
           | people's houses to loot everything that is not nailed to the
           | ground, and shatter their outdoor pots in search of currency.
           | 
           | I think my frustration was not that stealing is a crime in
           | the game so much as the game's UI didn't really do anything
           | to warn me that I was stealing. If the UI had maybe coded the
           | action in red font with "Steal plate" instead of grey text
           | "Take plate", I probably would have reconsidered.
        
             | technothrasher wrote:
             | Yeah, there's an icon that lets you know whether you're
             | visible while sneaking, but nothing like Skyrim's red/white
             | indicator as to whether an item you're looking at is owned
             | or not. Although there are nowadays mods to indicate owned
             | items.
        
             | smcl wrote:
             | Not sure if you're aware, but this is exactly what Skyrim
             | does. The on-screen prompt shows red text and "Steal plate"
             | instead of white "Take plate". I wasn't 100% sure what
             | triggered people to come after you though, sometimes I'd
             | steal something and nobody would bat an eyelid. Other times
             | I'd be on my own in a room with a closed door, steal a book
             | or something and someone would come from the other side of
             | the building and give me a talking to.
        
         | godshatter wrote:
         | I understand this, but I would look upon it as a failure of all
         | the other RPGs up to that point. You really shouldn't be able
         | to steal from chests with little to no skill in direct sight of
         | guards. You can come back later and loot them when you're much
         | stronger or your sneak is up far enough or other more specific
         | skills are high enough but you won't really need to since
         | you'll be amazingly rich by that point anyway.
        
         | aparticulate wrote:
         | Like real life, you can't steal while people are watching :)
         | You probably needed to level that stat, a bit also. It is
         | deeply advantageous to play a klepto character
        
       | havblue wrote:
       | An unfortunate thing about Morrowind for me is the "you can never
       | go home" effect. Fans can always remaster it with better
       | graphics, but the strangeness and beauty of playing it for the
       | first time is something that we won't get to experience again.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | sleepdreamy wrote:
         | Agreed. Mind boggling experience that I've never been able to
         | replicate after the first genuine play-through. Granted I was
         | young and Fable more or less had a great impact on me as well.
         | 
         | Games feel...not as great as before. Ghost of Tsushima was
         | excellent but it's been a while since a game has truly made me
         | go, "Whoa!"
        
           | aparticulate wrote:
           | Souls series is probably exemplary of an "okay, I'm a kid
           | again" game for me. It's just so left field in many ways yet
           | familiar. Souls makes me nostalgic about my gaming past that
           | is not even historically accurate, they are so weird.
        
         | aparticulate wrote:
         | These games are weird and have a bizarrely long shelf life that
         | is often (unfairly in my view) thrashed in the gaming
         | consciousness.
         | 
         | All of the games have this half life where you love it for the
         | first 60 hours, enjoy for another 100 hours of modding and then
         | you are sort of disgusted by the realization that NO game can
         | really sustain this level of scrutiny and you see all the
         | seams, copy-paste that such a diverse world needs.
         | 
         | The Outer Worlds was undoubtably an attempt to mimic the style
         | of Bethesda but I honestly couldn't play more than 30-40 hours
         | of it. Even New Vegas, my favourite in that engine, doesn't
         | have enough of the repetitive grind that really makes these
         | games so unbelievably popular.
        
         | giancarlostoro wrote:
         | I would love to play a Morrowind successor with a modern
         | engine, maybe not a total remake, but further along in the
         | storyline of Tamriel. I just want to revisit a lot of those
         | places I used to go to with the same type of rich detail of
         | Skyrim and Oblivion (for its time).
         | 
         | Aside: I would love to see the other regions in Nirn someday as
         | well. We've yet to see anything beyond Tamriel in the modern
         | games, and there are even other races / species we have yet
         | seen which could make for a really interesting game if done
         | correctly.
         | 
         | https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Nirn
         | 
         | Edit:
         | 
         | If they do a Morrowind Sequel or Prequel they need to be
         | careful not to overlook even minor details, unless they go far
         | enough forward / backward to where most things are ignored, but
         | I would say even check the books and the quests of the game to
         | make sure nothing is amiss.
        
           | havblue wrote:
           | I suppose the problem is that it seems like Bethesda is more
           | interested in creating a sandbox then having a story that
           | fits that sandbox. Going back to Morrowind doesn't accomplish
           | that necessarily.
           | 
           | On the story front I think what it did well was have the lore
           | tie into weird things about the game world. The sand storm,
           | the blight, the floating rock are things that dagoth did on
           | purpose. Likewise, vivec and company are "Gods", that you can
           | meet, but they're also Dunmer who used artifacts to become
           | immortal who knew you in a past life. The visuals are more
           | tangible because the story is integrated into what you see.
        
             | aparticulate wrote:
             | Morrowind has a some interesting lore but is the textbook
             | definition of a 'fetch quest' game. I'm not sure I can even
             | remember the plot of any of the missions. Their modern
             | games, while often hackneyed in the writing dept are at
             | least diverting to your attention. "Wouldn't it be cool if
             | a mage dropped from the sky" is probably the high bar of
             | Morrowind narrative chops.
             | 
             | Bethesda is culturally a "level design developer" imo. Kind
             | of like Valve in that regard. They have a technical idea of
             | what they want the player to experience, not a strong
             | narrative one. New Vegas is so interesting because Obsidian
             | clearly do not have the same culture, it was ALL
             | traditional RPG storytelling (and some okayish levels) in
             | the same Bethesda framework.
        
           | mountainb wrote:
           | They did in Elder Scrolls Online. I didn't play that much of
           | it but it's from an earlier time period than in the normal
           | TES Morrowind. It was fun for the sightseeing at least.
        
         | pradn wrote:
         | There's a recurring joke in the Morrowind community that the
         | best way to play it is by hurting yourself enough to get
         | amnesia and then playing it.
         | 
         | I know by now my favorite play style (Dark Elf, long sword,
         | heavy armor, destruction magic). But I need to branch out to
         | try something else, but then I won't be playing my favorite
         | way! Magic in particular is pretty difficult to work with in
         | this game.
         | 
         | I still remember discovering the mushroom buildings of Seyda
         | Neen.
        
           | wincy wrote:
           | Huh, I only played like an hour of Morrowind. Giant fleas and
           | I found some boots that made me jump into the air and die.
           | Maybe I should try it. I beat Skyrim and Oblivion, it's just
           | hard with the graphics and I feel like I've been waiting on
           | Skywind or whatever that mod is called.
        
             | pradn wrote:
             | FWIW, the modern graphics mods improve every texture, the
             | draw distance, and atmospheric effects. Some of the game
             | play like how a sword can look like it hit, but did not,
             | are more of an obstacle I think.
        
           | galangalalgol wrote:
           | For me it was always about the meta game. The alchemy loop
           | was fun to find once, but then so broken as to be boring. The
           | enchanting system was so rediculously powerful that it made
           | everything trivial, but somehow in a fun way. Always on
           | levitation, spell reflection, and spells that could literally
           | annihilate anyone outdoors as I flew into a city apocalypse-
           | style and cast once and everyone fell down.
        
             | havblue wrote:
             | The jump spell for travel was fun as well as long as you
             | don't jump as high as the yellow fur hat guy at the start.
        
             | pradn wrote:
             | These sorta broken systems were a bit part of the charm of
             | the game :)
        
           | rjknight wrote:
           | I remember a mission where I had to visit Tel Branora, a
           | Telvanni tower (I think it was the beginning of the quest
           | line to become head of House Telvanni).
           | 
           | As it happened, the weather was foggy, so I got quite close
           | to the tower before it suddenly loomed up out of the fog in
           | front of me. I've never been quite so stunned by anything in
           | a game before or since.
        
           | xdavidliu wrote:
           | there are no mushroom buildings in seyda neen. youre thinking
           | of Aldruhn
        
             | intrepidhero wrote:
             | I thought Aldruhn was made of giant bug shells? Sadrith
             | Mora has the Telvanni Council which is in a living building
             | same as any of the Telvanni towers in the east: Tel Mora,
             | Tel Aruhn, etc.
             | 
             | https://en.uesp.net/maps/mwmap/mwmap.shtml
        
             | pradn wrote:
             | Oops I'm thinking of Sadrith Mora! Aldruhn has the giant
             | crab shell building.
        
               | xdavidliu wrote:
               | ah, my correction stands corrected. It is definitely
               | Sadrith Mora (along with pretty much every other Telvanni
               | town).
        
         | vkou wrote:
         | A large part of that is the draw distance.
         | 
         | Play the game with the original view distance, and the island
         | feels enormous, mysterious, full of possibility.
         | 
         | Turn up the draw distance, and you realize that Pelagiad is
         | closer to Balmora than my house is to the corner store.
        
       | thom wrote:
       | I loved Morrowind, but I do still lament the loss of the 'Elite
       | as fantasy' feel for the first two Elder Scrolls games. As much
       | as they were sparsely populated and low on story, those felt more
       | like truly Open World games to me (I was happy running errands
       | and clothes shopping for the most part). Morrowind was a bit of a
       | shock to the system when I first played it. It was very well
       | done, but many orders of magnitude smaller than Arena and
       | Daggerfall. I can't really make a strong case that it wasn't a
       | better game (and I enjoyed Skyrim too), but I hope we're not far
       | off returning to procedural worlds with a new eye, especially now
       | AI is on the verge of being a core part of asset workflows.
        
         | Klaster_1 wrote:
         | Reading comments like yours nudged me to try the Daggerfall
         | recently. Thirteen hours in, I asked myself if I should
         | continue and the answer was a definite "no". The most fun open
         | world game parts for me are exploration and engaging
         | activities. TES3 and newer Bethesda games exceed at this, but
         | TES2 couldn't offer any of the sorts. If you saw a couple of
         | dungeons and cities, you saw them all. Automatically generated
         | quests feel like chores instead of simple adventures. The main
         | quest did not evoke a sense of curiosity, no desire to know
         | what happens next. I thought TES4 was bland and the worst in
         | the series, but now the honors go to TES2. Not my kind of video
         | game.
        
           | tadfisher wrote:
           | It's interesting how radiant/generated quests are pretty
           | widely criticized as the worst aspect of TES5, but everything
           | outside the main questline in TES2 is exactly this.
        
             | Klaster_1 wrote:
             | This surprised me too. F4 generated quest were fun only for
             | so long, but after playing the TES2, I at least gained a
             | valuable perspective on Bethesda games, you can really see
             | the original DNA across the titles. I'd take dense, fun
             | settlements over procedurally generated blandness.
        
           | thom wrote:
           | Ah that's a shame, but glad you're enjoying other parts of
           | the genre. I'll admit, I played Arena and Daggerfall after
           | Elite II: Frontier became one of my favourite ever games and
           | I never bored of that either. I just enjoy having a sandbox
           | to be in, the bigger the better. All games are pointless in
           | the end and I find that a game that makes stronger promises
           | to the player (dialogue, quests, items etc) feels even
           | emptier to me once you've exhausted those options. Whereas a
           | game that asks you to suspend disbelief at a lower level
           | keeps on working for me.
        
         | schnable wrote:
         | I enjoyed the procedural towns and quests but I really hated
         | the procedurally generated dungeons.
        
           | robonerd wrote:
           | FWIW, DaggerfallUnity has a (poorly documented) feature to
           | swap in much smaller dungeons.
           | 
           | https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?t=1689 (I really
           | can't stand forum-as-documentation...)
        
         | peanut_worm wrote:
         | The concept behind Arena and Daggerfall are cool but the actual
         | gameplay is pretty horrendous. I guess people today say the
         | same thing about Morrowind though.
        
           | thom wrote:
           | Yeah, gameplay's a subjective thing I guess. For me, these
           | were some of the most immersive, atmospheric and thrilling
           | games I ever played.
        
         | kovvy wrote:
         | I have high hopes for Daggerfall once they finish fixing the
         | main bugs and it goes into beta.
        
         | sbergot wrote:
         | Original daggerfall creators are working on a new game in the
         | style of daggerfall:
         | https://store.steampowered.com/app/1685310/The_Wayward_Realm...
        
           | galangalalgol wrote:
           | I'm glad someone is working on an open world rpg at all, but
           | that looks very promising. Its been 11 years since skyrim and
           | there have not been many first person sandbox rpgs since. I
           | actually can't think of any at all unless you count things
           | like grimrock.
        
             | pr0zac wrote:
             | Theres a lot more if you don't mind stepping outside of
             | fantasy themed games. Stuff like the Far Cry series,
             | Cyberpunk 2077, The Outer Worlds, the Dying Light series,
             | and the Metro series.
             | 
             | But in the fantasy realm you're right I can't think of
             | anything since Skyrim off the top of my head thats open
             | world AND first person.
        
               | vosper wrote:
               | > Far Cry series, Cyberpunk 2077, The Outer Worlds, the
               | Dying Light series, and the Metro series.
               | 
               | Metro is about as on-rails as you can get? It's all "go
               | down this one tunnel and shoot everything" or "follow
               | this actually quite narrow and linear path across the
               | rubble and shoot everything". Some of the missions are
               | literally on rails (you're in a subway, after all)
               | 
               | Far Cry is much more open than Metro, and often has some
               | quite fun things to do if you stray off the mission path
               | and talk to the right person. Depends how much you like
               | to hunt and fish amidst blowing up the bad guys!
        
               | throwaway675309 wrote:
               | cyberpunk 2077 is about as far away from an open world
               | RPG as you can get, it's a relatively linear story driven
               | game. Besides the massive number of launch day bugs, that
               | was one of them many points of contention across the
               | reviews of the game, since the game was marketed as an
               | open world sandbox style environment.
        
             | hrydgard wrote:
             | The Witcher 3 scratches that itch fairly well to tide you
             | over, if you haven't played it, although it is a bit
             | different.
        
         | bluefirebrand wrote:
         | Something like No Man's Sky, except a huge procedural world
         | instead of universe, set in a fantasy setting, might be what
         | you're thinking?
        
         | aparticulate wrote:
         | daggerfall unity is pretty fun if you want a modernized version
         | of that game
         | 
         | https://github.com/Interkarma/daggerfall-unity/
        
         | rhn_mk1 wrote:
         | How do you even play those games? Roaming the wilderness is
         | _clearly_ not a fun option.
        
           | louissan wrote:
           | it all depends ... once upon a time, WoW was a bit like that.
           | XRoads wild PVP, free-for-all ambushes in the wilderness, a
           | reasonably sized world (not too big but not too small). Back
           | in 2004 it did convey a sense of relative immensity. Which
           | was part of the magic imho. Every subsequent iteration
           | ("evolution") felt like its main goal was to minimise the
           | "downtime" between the farming/"phat loot" sequences (raids,
           | instances, etc).
           | 
           | At the time, you could get a demo run a stone so at least
           | some of the party could join quickly. But that took human
           | interaction, some synchronisation ... it was nice and
           | involved.
           | 
           | Disclaimer: I havent touched WoW in more than 10 years, but
           | from what I know of it today -- it's teleport all the way,
           | straight into the instance, with pre-made aor automatically
           | composed groups. You pop in, you loot, you get out. Rinse and
           | repeat.
           | 
           | Some people will enjoy the "instant gratification" part of
           | this. I'm probably amongst those who did not, who don't and
           | who probably never will. It is my opinion (widely shared? no
           | idea) that immersion has been killed by all those "QoL"
           | improvements.
           | 
           | My 2p.
        
             | louissan wrote:
             | all valid point guys, thx for replying. Again, this was
             | just my 2p, back from 2004 and the beta with the Stormwind
             | invasion by skull-level Demons/big-evil-things. :)
        
             | aparticulate wrote:
             | I'm actually fairly new to WoW and I can't stand modern
             | version. Classic is a way better experience for beginners
             | in my view. The modern WoW is too manic and there's no
             | mystery, sense of achievement for leveling. Leveling in
             | classic MMOs IS the game, it's a shame to see so much of
             | the "endgame > game" trend lately.
             | 
             | I don't buy that modern players don't have time either. WoW
             | was only seen as an addictive timesink by the contemporary
             | media but if they looked at the average hour counts of most
             | modern multiplayer games, it would surprise many. Most
             | modern service games demand fairly eye-popping time
             | dedication to the casual observer.
        
             | ziml77 wrote:
             | > not too big but not too small
             | 
             | Debatable. I wasn't around for Vanilla but I played Classic
             | up through AQ. The game felt like a walking simulator.
             | 
             | Current WoW is certainly more streamlined, but you still
             | have to earn the ability to travel around faster in current
             | content. One of the Shadowlands zones didn't even let you
             | mount (except for a rare drop for a special mount) until
             | one of the content patches. And that and another zone still
             | don't let you fly.
             | 
             | When you use the matchmade dungeon/raid finder, you do get
             | teleported right into the instance. But for Mythic+
             | dungeons and Normal or higher raids you still need to
             | manually gather a party and 2 people need to get to the
             | summoning stone.
             | 
             | All of the city portals and the 15 minute hearthstone
             | cooldown do make me a little sad though. My mage portals
             | aren't appreciated nearly as much! :)
        
               | louissan wrote:
               | > But for Mythic+ dungeons and Normal or higher raids you
               | still need to manually gather a party and 2 people need
               | to get to the summoning stone.
               | 
               | Fair enough, didn't know that :)
        
               | aparticulate wrote:
               | > My mage portals aren't appreciated nearly as much! :)
               | 
               | non combat abilities is something I feel like modern MMO
               | needlessly eschew. Some people just want to fish and read
               | lore and don't care about combat segments at all.
        
               | ziml77 wrote:
               | It would certainly be great if games better supported
               | that non-combat stuff. As someone who plays WoW on WRA I
               | know that plenty of people love to just RP. Total
               | Roleplay is a good addon, but it would be nice if even
               | just a plain text profile and the ability to display if
               | you're IC or OOC were native features of the game.
        
               | SSLy wrote:
               | And dear God, mythic+ is so much fun, it's crazy. You and
               | four randoms just blasting through easier keys, or
               | struggling through harder ones.
        
             | dwringer wrote:
             | The dungeon-group finding tools with instant teleport
             | detract from immersion but they are a life-saver if you
             | don't have a lot of time to dedicate per session, or don't
             | have many friends who play at the same times you want to,
             | yet still want to go dungeon-crawling with a party.
             | 
             | There's really nothing stopping people from going the extra
             | mile for role-playing and immersion, it's more the local
             | server communities that have been harmed by these tools but
             | WoW classic brought back a lot of that "old-school" feel
             | for those who seek it.
             | 
             | I'm not really up on the current state of either but I
             | think there's merit in both approaches, I personally found
             | both enjoyable.
        
           | thom wrote:
           | I like exploring! Wizardry, Ultima, Elder Scrolls, whatever,
           | I like to go straight off the path and into the weeds. I
           | think great RPGs let you tell as much of the story in your
           | head as possible, and this is hard in very story/dialogue
           | heavy games (especially since the advent of voice acting in
           | games).
        
             | pwillia7 wrote:
             | This is exclusively the type of games I play now except for
             | 'sport' related titles.
             | 
             | Rim World, Dwarf Fortress, Kenshi, Caves of Qud are all
             | fantastic narrative generators and give you a crazy amount
             | of freedom.
             | 
             | Another type of game I've fallen in love with that I don't
             | remember being around when I was a kid is automation games
             | like Factorio or Satisfactory. Gives you that open world
             | feeling + exploring but you're not just running errands or
             | slaying dragons.
        
             | BugWatch wrote:
             | More advanced TTS engines with possibility of generating
             | emotive results might present a "mostly have your cake, and
             | eat it too" solution.
        
             | boplicity wrote:
             | At some point in the near future, I think we might have
             | "good enough" AI voice acting. That could open some
             | interesting possibilities, eh?
        
               | mikepurvis wrote:
               | Quite apart from the voice acting, what about the writing
               | itself? As a starting point, how far are we from having
               | bots that can DM a plausible tabletop session?
        
               | ryanbrunner wrote:
               | Yeah, I think this is the secret. For me, I sort of
               | bounce off things if they're too procedurally generated,
               | since the tech isn't there to not make things seem too
               | samey after a while.
               | 
               | I like discovering my own stories, but I want those
               | stories to be how I fought off a dragon to save a town,
               | not how I went into a dungeon for no reason whatsoever
               | and came out with some more treasure and otherwise made
               | no impact on the world.
        
               | thom wrote:
               | Yup, it's already being used as a placeholder during the
               | process in some AAA games but I assume we're not far off
               | the quality needed for final assets, even dynamically
               | generated locally. Same goes for art, even narrative
               | elements at some point.
        
             | thfuran wrote:
             | >I think great RPGs let you tell as much of the story in
             | your head as possible
             | 
             | I'd say that having to tell the story in your head is a
             | sign of failure on the part of the game. But, for an open
             | world sandbox RPG, so is restricting you from enacting
             | whatever story you want and we don't have the technology to
             | avoid both.
        
               | thom wrote:
               | One of the most successful games of all time is Football
               | Manager, which mostly involves staring at spreadsheets of
               | numbers about football players. But it's also one of the
               | most immersive games ever! Give me space, freedom, and
               | simple tools to build my own narrative and I'll be more
               | engaged than listening to the most soaring dialogue you
               | might be able to write.
        
               | anthk wrote:
               | We have the tecnology. From Prolog, to Inform7.
        
           | nix23 wrote:
           | What Daggerfall Could Teach Future Elder Scrolls Games:
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7qyxSfUceE
        
             | aparticulate wrote:
             | It's quite a tired engine at this stage but Bethesda have
             | actually been rather tech forward in the past. Especially
             | with MS acquisition, some kind of procedural cloud-assisted
             | world would make a ton of sense.
             | 
             | However, towns with 300 houses with different variations of
             | the same vendors and assets would not be immersive to most
             | modern players. You definitely need a little on the
             | authored side. Heck, I think Bethesda copy/pastes too much
             | now compared to something like New Vegas which has barely
             | has any repetition.
        
               | robonerd wrote:
               | > _However, towns with 300 houses with different
               | variations of the same vendors and assets would not be
               | immersive to most modern players._
               | 
               | Less immersive than an ostensibly grand city that only
               | has a handful of named NPCs and a few guards? The best
               | and worst city Bethesda have made thus far is still
               | Vivec. Best because it has enough NPCs and redundant
               | economy to feel like a plausible city. Worst, simply
               | because the structure of the cantons is poorly conceived,
               | and because the exterior is barren.
        
               | aparticulate wrote:
               | Vivec was probably magical at the time but I literally
               | cannot navigate from memory. Every canton blurs together
               | and traversal is time consuming. I think Whiterun or
               | Megaton are quite well designed.
               | 
               | Deprecating authored settlements in Fallout 4 was quite
               | disappointing but Boston is probably the most impressive
               | technically, diamond city etc nestled amongst the
               | sprawling and surprisingly explorable ruins of the city.
        
               | robonerd wrote:
               | Boston itself was great, but Diamond City seemed
               | undeserving of the name to me. It's just a handful of
               | people. Also the setting of known size, the baseball
               | diamond, throws off my suspension of disbelief that maybe
               | distances and population sizes in Bethesda games are
               | simply compressed. Cities like Whiterun and Balmora are
               | the size of a small villages but are presented as a
               | cities; I can accept that as some sort of distance
               | compression. I can't do that with Diamond City because I
               | _know_ how big a baseball field is. That  'city' must
               | really be 1:1 scale, or at least close to it.
               | 
               | Basically if I can't get lost, it doesn't feel like a
               | city. I can get lost in Boston or Vivec, those feel like
               | cities. The others require a lot of suspension of
               | disbelief, but Diamond City particularly makes that hard.
               | 
               | I concede that Vivec is dated (although I first played
               | Morrowind about 2 or 3 years ago and still enjoyed it.) I
               | consider Witcher 3's Novigrad as an example of a modern
               | game getting it right. There's not exactly a ton of named
               | NPCs in Novigrad, but there are enough buildings,
               | alleyways, etc to get lost when wandering around. Also
               | there is redundancy in the town's economy; numerous
               | smiths, taverns, etc.
        
               | aparticulate wrote:
               | I think all of those games are absolutely tiny when you
               | take into account human scale. You can't traverse any
               | real world city in the few minutes or so it would take
               | for Geralt to circumnavigate the entirety of Novigrad.
               | Agree that you should get lost in a big, redundant world.
               | Bethesda have their work cut out for their next games.
               | 
               | DayZ (and it's ilk) is probably the only game that comes
               | close to 1:1 but is not to most players tastes to take a
               | human amount of time to walk across rows of empty fields.
               | That game is absolutely enormous. It's a pretty niche
               | game though.
        
           | klibertp wrote:
           | You're evidently don't belong to the CRPGs' target player
           | base :)
           | 
           | The basic idea of CRPGs is to give you an avatar that is as
           | different or as similar to you personally as you want and let
           | you experience the avatar's interactions with the world they
           | live in. It might seem that it's currently the case for 90%
           | of the games, but please remember that early CRPGs competed
           | with Pong, Pacman, and Asteroids, not Quake. You'd have a
           | hard time identifying yourself with a paddle or imagining
           | spending your entire life in a maze being chased by ghosts.
           | You would have a much easier time with an Elven archer
           | roaming Middle-Earth, especially if you've read and memorized
           | the Trilogy by heart.
           | 
           | From that basic premise, I'd roughly distinguish two main
           | ways of realizing it: via numbers or words.
           | 
           | By numbers, I mean a situation where your avatar can be
           | described as a bunch of numbers, as is the world, and you're
           | supposed to find your own meaning in those numbers. Which
           | ones matter to you, which you don't care about, or which
           | represent an ability to do things you care about. You are
           | then given an array of activities that both require the
           | numbers to be aligned in a particular way and allow you to
           | improve the numbers for you.
           | 
           | By words, I mean a situation where your avatar is presented
           | to you via description. The numerical values that underpin
           | the avatar identity and the shape of the world are still
           | there, but you experience them only indirectly, through the
           | description of the environment, your avatar actions, and
           | their consequences.
           | 
           | There are not many "pure" realizations of either way because,
           | taken to the extreme, the number case turns into an Excel
           | sheet with all column and row names garbled, while words
           | simply become a book or novel.
           | 
           | Of additional note is the issue of effort on the game
           | creator's part. You generally can't procedurally generate
           | descriptions above a certain length, especially not if you
           | want the descriptions to be meaningful, not only readable.
           | You'd need AGI for that. Procedurally generated content is
           | crucial because it allows you to lengthen the time the game
           | is played. You can read a good fantasy novel in a few days,
           | while you can easily lose 200 hours to a single CRPG.
           | 
           | Back to exploring the wilderness. Morrowind leaned towards
           | the numbers-based gameplay if my memory serves me right. You
           | were required to perform an action repeatedly to improve your
           | skill in that action. Take jumping, for example. I remember
           | locking the spacebar in a depressed position on long treks
           | between cities because jumping raised your strength. On the
           | other hand, it did have a lot of hand-crafted, meaningful
           | locations that you would visit multiple times. It had a few
           | different plotlines you could follow and some memorable NPCs
           | and you were given quite a lot of freedom in how you wanted
           | to interact with the world. These are all features closer to
           | the words-based gameplay. Still, most of the game consisted
           | of repetitive, although more tactical than dexterity-based
           | combat in the wilderness or dungeons.
           | 
           | Some people have a stronger preference for one gameplay
           | style, and for them, Morrowind found a perfect balance.
           | Relatively high freedom in what you could do, the plot, and
           | the NPCs who sometimes even spoke more than a few words, were
           | enough to give them a plausible reason to go and have real
           | fun... By killing skeletons for 5 hours, nearly dying for 4h
           | 50m, then getting a level-up, a corresponding dopamine rush,
           | and going on a skeleton-killing spree in the last 9 minutes.
           | You'd probably die to the boss lich in the last minute,
           | allowing you to rage-quit the game and go back to beating
           | skeletons again the next day.
           | 
           | Is it fun? Yes. It's one of the kinds of fun CRPGs are
           | designed to give you. Since the early days - and I mean the
           | times of ADVENT[ure] and Zork - the CRPGs evolved tens of
           | subgenres, took advantage of the progress in hardware and in
           | the general inflation of game makers' budgets, enlarging the
           | scope, but the basic idea is still the same. To give players
           | either: enough of the descriptions to make grinding
           | meaningful or enough grinding not to frustrate them into not
           | finishing the story.
           | 
           | One note: obviously, at some point nearly all CRPGs became
           | graphical and later multi-media, one way or the other. That
           | didn't, and still doesn't, change much. You can present the
           | description of the world with words alone, with words and
           | images, words and animation, images alone, images and music
           | alone, and so on. What's important is that you are describing
           | a world, an avatar and its actions within that world.
           | 
           | Another note: multi-player changes things drastically in the
           | case of CRPGs, especially if it is not co-operative or is
           | "massive". The metaphor is still the same, but the cost-
           | benefit ratio of various game features is completely unlike
           | the single-player version. MUDs were early multi-player CRPGs
           | evolved as a cross between BBS and IRC, and their rise and
           | eventual brutal demise under the weight of op-wars and spam a
           | warning widely heard by CRPG makers. The MUDs persisted,
           | barely clinging to existence in some niches, and later gave
           | us MMORPGs, which are also completely different from single-
           | player (or 1-4 people coop, later on) games. So I don't think
           | talking about WoW is very relevant to the topic, ie.
           | Morrowind.
        
             | djur wrote:
             | This is one attempt to break down those different
             | preferences for RPGs:
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory
        
               | klibertp wrote:
               | Interesting, but I don't think (even without taking into
               | account the "Criticism" section) it can be applied to
               | CRPGs. I was very careful to put the "C" every single
               | time because, while related, CRPGs are quite different
               | from table-top RPGs. By simply excluding both the Game
               | Master (no way to improvise, add meaning above and beyond
               | what could be predicted and accounted for) and other
               | Player Characters (again, no way to improvise and adapt
               | the in-party interactions) makes for an environment so
               | different from TRPGs that they are bound to be perceived
               | very differently by players. While it's possible to grind
               | in TRPG, it's utterly impossible to grind for 60 hours.
               | CRPGs also have a clear ending - either as an end of a
               | story, end of content, or end of leveling up. The MMORPGs
               | may come closer to TRPGs, but the "massive" scale also
               | makes for a drastically different environment compared to
               | 3-6 party members + GM. The closest to the TRPG would be
               | co-op multiplayer in the vein of Baldur's Gate, but then
               | again - no GM and technical limitation also make it
               | pretty different. If I recall correctly, Neverwinter
               | Nights tried to introduce a multiplayer with a GM, but
               | then the problem became the amount of work needed to get
               | to the expected amount of detail; it was simply too much
               | effort for a single GM. MMORPGs side-step this issue by
               | employing hordes of developers and admins, on top of
               | encouraging player-made content.
               | 
               | TL;DR: I think the distinction of CRPG vs. TRPG is
               | useful, and directly comparing the two doesn't work that
               | well.
        
         | slothtrop wrote:
         | > sparsely populated and low on story
         | 
         | Elden Ring is like that (or rather, not in-your-face about it).
         | You can tell it's filling a void because re-releasing the DS
         | formula keeps selling like hot cakes.
        
           | vlunkr wrote:
           | So "filling a void" here means "giving fans the game they
           | were hoping for"? We definitely weren't expecting or wanting
           | a Bethesda game.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | voldacar wrote:
       | Morrowind lore is deeper and more interesting than most real
       | religions. It's incredible what they managed to achieve, there
       | are very few games that have come close since
        
       | antiverse wrote:
       | Wealth beyond measure, outlander.
        
       | peanut_worm wrote:
       | Elder Scrolls has spawned what is probably the best community
       | wiki that I have ever seen:
       | https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Morrowind
        
         | boriskourt wrote:
         | Yes! It is such a cool community effort.
        
       | drspock11 wrote:
       | I've tried more than once to play Morrowind since playing it to
       | death back in the day but as an adult with tendonitis in my wrist
       | the horrible GUI that has zero keyboard support is just too big
       | an obstacle to overcome. Inventory management, dialog, everything
       | in the game requires endless mouse clicking.
       | 
       | What's perhaps more surprising is that Microsoft-owned-Bethesda
       | hasn't yet started working on an official remaster of it. Given
       | that Bethesda still uses the same engine, it would be relatively
       | cheap for them to do as opposed to building a new game and it
       | would sell like hotcakes.
        
         | aparticulate wrote:
         | Skywind is I think what people want but it's basically a remake
         | from scratch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_K7Kpt7X84
         | 
         | 'same engine' is something that gets thrown around a lot by
         | salty players but it's not really reflective of the massive
         | changes that have happened since then.
        
           | Loughla wrote:
           | Also, Skywind has been 'to be released this year' for like 10
           | years.
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | Get a vertical mouse.
        
       | Lapsa wrote:
       | managed to take a break around page 120. dagothwave still
       | blasting
        
         | corrral wrote:
         | I truly put on various "standing around in [Morrowind town]
         | during a rainstorm" Youtube videos for relaxation, sometimes.
         | The music, the ambient sounds. It's just the thing.
        
       | NiagaraThistle wrote:
       | Damn I'd hoped to keep this game locked in the box I hide it in
       | so I don't lose hours of my life to it any more...guess I'm
       | digging it out just in time for summer :/ Goodbye sweet sweet
       | free time. Hello Tamriel.
        
       | NoboruWataya wrote:
       | I'm not much of a gamer but to this day Morrowind is my all time
       | favourite video game.
       | 
       | For anyone not aware of it, I strongly recommend Tamriel Rebuilt:
       | https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/
       | 
       | It's a community-made mod that adds a huge amount of new content.
       | TR itself focuses on adding mainland Morrowind to the game while
       | there are sister projects aimed at adding other regions such as
       | Skyrim.
        
       | LAC-Tech wrote:
       | If you're into Morrowind, I highly recommend the youtuber
       | Sorcerer Dave[0]
       | 
       | He recently completed an epic, multi-chapter, role-played
       | morrowind series[1]. Hundreds of hours of content, and all with
       | an overall story arch. Was a constant of my life for almost a
       | decade and it's still weird to me it's done.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/SorcererDave
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w08TwfG3KDA&list=PL0VJ_-
       | KbXC...
        
         | aftergibson wrote:
         | What a cool idea! I'd never heard of this, I guess you've now
         | cost me 100s of hours of my life.
         | 
         | So thanks!
        
         | mastersummoner wrote:
         | It's always such a strange, bittersweet feeling when some long-
         | running presence in your life like this comes to a conclusion.
         | Though, I'll admit I've never had one running for a decade. Few
         | years at the most.
        
         | boriskourt wrote:
         | If anyone is looking for more content to watch. The main author
         | of the above book also has a great set of interviews with
         | Morrowind modders and community from the last twenty years:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXMC2wI9IOw&list=PL_JwI1LLI9...
         | (Full Playlist)
         | 
         | Its so nice to hear so many different stories connected by one
         | shared experience.
        
           | LAC-Tech wrote:
           | Wow I thought youtube recommended me all the morrowind videos
           | there were. Thanks for this!
        
       | boriskourt wrote:
       | Moon & Star :)
       | 
       | The community around this game never ceases to amaze me. OpenMW
       | [0] is one of my favorite open source projects. Planning to make
       | a little something standalone with their new Lua scripting
       | support.
       | 
       | Also there is a Modathon this month, with a huge number of
       | contributions! [1]
       | 
       | [0]: https://openmw.org/en/
       | 
       | [1]:
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/ua4daw/morrowind...
        
         | corrral wrote:
         | Anyone wondering if OpenMW is good enough to play: the answer
         | is very much a yes.
         | 
         | A year or two ago (it was shortly after they fixed shadows in
         | the engine, which is what I'd been waiting for) I played the
         | entire main quest and a good chunk of the side quests in it,
         | plus the whole main quest of Tribunal, and started Bloodmoon
         | (got distracted and stopped there). I cranked draw distance up
         | quite a ways (nothing crazy, but way longer than the default),
         | played at 4K resolution, and ran it through Mod Manager 2 with
         | maybe 8-12 mods--don't remember exactly how many, but I've
         | gotta have my herbalism mod, at the very least, or I'm not
         | playing :-) I think I even had Twin Lamps (anti-slavers
         | "guild", think Underground Railroad) in there, and it worked
         | fine.
         | 
         | Zero crashes the whole time, which makes it far better than the
         | original engine. No quest glitches or difficulties. It was
         | perfect.
         | 
         | The only downside is that you can't use mods that directly
         | modify the engine itself because they're all written for
         | Bethesda's executables, specifically. This includes most of the
         | more extreme "pretty" mods that make the graphics look better.
         | 
         | However, OpenMW is already a little better-looking than the
         | original, and you can still install better textures, which
         | helps a lot. I even got a replacement pack for the loading
         | screens, to make them widescreen and HD.
        
         | dtech wrote:
         | Be aware, the first entry on the linked site is an April fool's
         | joke
        
           | boriskourt wrote:
           | Thanks! I was thinking if I should point that out or not.
           | Their GitLab [0] is a good place to see just how far the
           | project has come as well.
           | 
           | [0]: https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw
        
         | RektBoy wrote:
         | Todd Howard must be spinning in his cryo-chamber RN.
        
         | ameminator wrote:
         | What a grand and intoxicating innocence!
        
       | lordleft wrote:
       | Morrowind is my favorite game that I've never completed. I've
       | started it a dozen times, devoured the lore, savored its truly
       | unique setting, but I cannot get past some of the more outdated
       | mechanics. Still, I love Morrowind nonetheless, which is saying
       | something.
        
         | corrral wrote:
         | The first few levels are brutal, but after that your weapons
         | actually start to hit things most of the time :-)
         | 
         | The main mechanical difference from modern games, other than
         | that, is the lack of fast travel--but it _kinda does_ have it,
         | it 's just in-world. The three (? IIRC? Though admittedly one
         | is a ton of work to get) fast travel networks, the mark and
         | recall spells, and almsivi/divine intervention, between all
         | those there pretty much is fast travel, it's just in-world
         | rather than a meta thing you do on the world map.
         | 
         | Oh, and the lack of quest markers, I suppose. You do actually
         | have to follow the directions people give you, to find things.
         | But that's _excellent_ and it 's a shame they took that out of
         | the later entries.
        
           | robonerd wrote:
           | > _Though admittedly one is a ton of work to get) fast travel
           | networks,_
           | 
           | Four; silt striders, boats, and mages guild are straight
           | forward, but propylon chamber are a pain in the ass.
        
             | corrral wrote:
             | Ah, yep, forgot about the boats somehow.
        
         | ericcholis wrote:
         | I think it might have been my first experience being fully
         | immersed in a world. Other games felt like they were just
         | letting you into their playground.
        
       | brenainn wrote:
       | I was a little kid when Morrowind came out and I remember the
       | first time I saw it. My family got takeout and we had rented Kung
       | Pow: Enter The Fist. My older brother wanted the couch to himself
       | so he could lie down while we watched the movie and he told me if
       | I got off the couch he'd show me something cool later. Turns out
       | that something cool was Morrowind. I remember he was playing an
       | Argonian because he switched to third-person and for some reason
       | that blew my mind. I tried installing it on the crappy PC we had
       | out in the living room for us kids but I never got it running, I
       | think it didn't support the required DirectX version. Many fond
       | memories associated with that game.
        
         | FredPret wrote:
         | DirectX - bane of my childhood
        
       | mrits wrote:
       | Morrowind was mostly a cliff racer simulation game for me. I'm
       | surprised I still don't have nightmares from those things.
        
       | gigaflop wrote:
       | This game is probably one of the reasons I still play games
       | today. Until it, I'd only been able to play some RTS games and
       | Zoo Tycoon, and nothing else offered me as much flexibility and
       | immersion, especially without an internet connection on that PC.
       | It was the first game I got in trouble for playing too much of,
       | but hardly the last.
        
       | dczx wrote:
       | Morrowind book very thank you Japanese
        
       | reportgunner wrote:
       | Why is the TLD from Slovakia ? (.sk)
       | 
       | Is thenetsk some reference that I don't get ?
        
         | smcl wrote:
         | Looks like it's where one of the authors (Aurel) is from:
         | https://www.thenet.sk/about
        
       | dczx wrote:
       | Very Thank You for this book
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-24 23:01 UTC)