8th May 2007, 2:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 8th May 2007, 5:15 PM by A Black Falcon.)
I actually played Morrowind for the first time in a really long time (my last save file was from late 2005, I believe... 
) last month, trying it out on my new PC... it was a bit more fun than I remembered, I think. I might play it more... haven't yet, but I might. I still dislike a lot of their design decisions, though. If they want a big nonlinear game, they should stick with the big overworld and warping the first two games had... but a game with the scale of TES but with strategic combat, a focused plot with main game encounters of the quality of Baldur's Gate or Fallout as well as those "wander around and do random stuff" elements, and parties could be great... it'd probably take forever to make, but it'd be great.
As it is though, because of the action combat, Morrowind feels more like an FPS than RPGs at times... and given my frequent antipathy for the FPS genre much of the time, that's not such a good thing. The graphics are nice though... Like with most RPGs of its type it's best when you're in a dungeon; that's probably why I was enjoying myself, because I was actually in a dungeon... sure there's other stuff there, but (to oversimplify things) the core of the TES games really is in simple action-combat dungeon crawling. Their other quests and guild quests are often not that thrilling... though it was cool in Arena to see towns that were actually large and not normal RPG towns of "four houses counts as a city". Of course, that latter model is exactly what Morrowind uses, but oh well... You can't make a game for console gamers AND have the scale and depth of a PC RPG. Both Morrowind and KotOR prove that. With the mediocre quality of the main quest, that gets old, and I don't really have fun just randomly wandering around with no point... I want to be doing some kind of quest. It's the same in Guild Wars -- I don't just go to areas again and again just to get good drops. I go somewhere if I've got a quest that sends me there or perhaps if I'm trying to completely explore that area for the map (and thus record a lasting achievement). Arena had some direction, thanks to its simplicity ('get the special items from dungeons' essentially), but the series quickly lost any sense of focus... I like having actual interesting encounters and situations like you find in the Baldur's Gate games or other similar PC RPGs, and TES doesn't really have that. Instead, it has you wandering around some pretty-looking dungeons killing things. Fun too, very different in focus...
Anyway, at least the game runs a lot better on this machine. Morrowind may have come out just a few months after I bought my old computer, but it never ran that well on it... being able to play with the graphic detail settings maxed with no framerate problems does a lot to help a game. :)
... why do I keep buying new games when I have so, so many old ones that I need to play as well? :D I've got unfinished games going back.. well, as long as we've had computers... and many of them are ones I keep meaning to play or finish someday and never quite get around to doing... oh well. Finishing long games is overrated... :) (At least with Morrowind I have the excuse of it being long and having a huge time commitment requirement/entry curve you need to get over before you figure out how to be good at it that I just decided wasn't worth the effort... with games like KotOR I got almost to the end of and then just stopped playing I don't have such excuses. oh well. :))
) last month, trying it out on my new PC... it was a bit more fun than I remembered, I think. I might play it more... haven't yet, but I might. I still dislike a lot of their design decisions, though. If they want a big nonlinear game, they should stick with the big overworld and warping the first two games had... but a game with the scale of TES but with strategic combat, a focused plot with main game encounters of the quality of Baldur's Gate or Fallout as well as those "wander around and do random stuff" elements, and parties could be great... it'd probably take forever to make, but it'd be great.As it is though, because of the action combat, Morrowind feels more like an FPS than RPGs at times... and given my frequent antipathy for the FPS genre much of the time, that's not such a good thing. The graphics are nice though... Like with most RPGs of its type it's best when you're in a dungeon; that's probably why I was enjoying myself, because I was actually in a dungeon... sure there's other stuff there, but (to oversimplify things) the core of the TES games really is in simple action-combat dungeon crawling. Their other quests and guild quests are often not that thrilling... though it was cool in Arena to see towns that were actually large and not normal RPG towns of "four houses counts as a city". Of course, that latter model is exactly what Morrowind uses, but oh well... You can't make a game for console gamers AND have the scale and depth of a PC RPG. Both Morrowind and KotOR prove that. With the mediocre quality of the main quest, that gets old, and I don't really have fun just randomly wandering around with no point... I want to be doing some kind of quest. It's the same in Guild Wars -- I don't just go to areas again and again just to get good drops. I go somewhere if I've got a quest that sends me there or perhaps if I'm trying to completely explore that area for the map (and thus record a lasting achievement). Arena had some direction, thanks to its simplicity ('get the special items from dungeons' essentially), but the series quickly lost any sense of focus... I like having actual interesting encounters and situations like you find in the Baldur's Gate games or other similar PC RPGs, and TES doesn't really have that. Instead, it has you wandering around some pretty-looking dungeons killing things. Fun too, very different in focus...
Anyway, at least the game runs a lot better on this machine. Morrowind may have come out just a few months after I bought my old computer, but it never ran that well on it... being able to play with the graphic detail settings maxed with no framerate problems does a lot to help a game. :)
... why do I keep buying new games when I have so, so many old ones that I need to play as well? :D I've got unfinished games going back.. well, as long as we've had computers... and many of them are ones I keep meaning to play or finish someday and never quite get around to doing... oh well. Finishing long games is overrated... :) (At least with Morrowind I have the excuse of it being long and having a huge time commitment requirement/entry curve you need to get over before you figure out how to be good at it that I just decided wasn't worth the effort... with games like KotOR I got almost to the end of and then just stopped playing I don't have such excuses. oh well. :))
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