8th December 2004, 9:41 PM
http://pc.ign.com/articles/359/359554p3.html
Here's IGN's review of Morrowind. Page three because it has the part I want to quote. IGN has a very nice (and five page) review of Morrowind. It both illustrates the strong points and weaker points of Morrowind. Why couldn't you just have filled in blanks like they do but with more detail when I asked... this could have been so simple... but no. Anyway.
Sounds good. Arena's best writing was probably in the quests, and this is also true in MMORPGs that try (like WoW, great quest writing there that helps disguise their tediousness and repetitive nature).
Indeed, generic graphics that only were superficially different between areas (if at all, if you stay within each region) was a major issue for Arena and Daggerfall and it's nice to see it banished. I assume that they achieved the task by having each game shrink (Arena let you go to every major city on the continent, Daggerfall to one region made up of small parts of two nations, and Morrowind to one island of another), but given that the scale is still incredibly huge that really doesn't matter. The effect is the important thing and that would definitely help the games, though you get used to the similarity between towns in the older games... but originiality would make it more intresting.
This was exactly what I stated as one of the major flaws in an open-ended RPG. As I've said many times, it is unavoidable and that is one reason why focused ones will always have some advantages over open-ended ones.
This is also exactly the same system that was used in Arena and Daggerfall. The main difference between games seems to be that in each one you get a few more choices other than the standard 'asking for directions' stuff you'll find in any game this open-ended, or any MMORPG (and is absolutely necessary to navigate the cities in any such game)... but clearly it is not as good as it could be even considering the restrictions of being open-ended. Again something you get used to and that in some regards they could not improve on (you can't give individual dialogue trees for thousands of people.) but shows one problem with making a game as open-ended as these are.
You mentioned this too as a problem with the game. It does sound annoying... I know that it really gets frusterating in Baldur's Gate I because there is no indicator of how hurt an enemy is until they die. Yes, you can see if you hit or not and how much damage you're doing, but not how much total damage you've done or how healthy they are... BGII greatly improved that with the general words describing enemy status ("badly wounded", etc).
Not a major problem by any means, but I've heard a lot about how the unmoving and nonanimating NPCs aren't very good... I doubt I'd have a big problem with that, as it's something you'd probably more notice when it's there than when it's not... It's also something you notice more when the graphics get better and you expect more from them for sure. Morrowind looks amazing so you expect a lot from it detail-wise that you'd never expect from an Arena...
Stranger is not closing at night. I didn't know (or at least, didn't remember, I don't know which this long after I would have read reviews of it) about that in this one and it's very odd because shops closed at night in Arena, and they closed at night in Daggerfall, so why in the world wouldn't they in Morrowind? Most RPGs (or even action-RPGs) that have day/night cycles have stuff like this... Quest for Glory, for instance, or even Zelda... :)
Here's IGN's review of Morrowind. Page three because it has the part I want to quote. IGN has a very nice (and five page) review of Morrowind. It both illustrates the strong points and weaker points of Morrowind. Why couldn't you just have filled in blanks like they do but with more detail when I asked... this could have been so simple... but no. Anyway.
Quote:Once you select a faction or two and get familiar with the cultural landscape, Morrowind becomes Quest Heaven. According to the developers, there are more than four hundred quests in the game. I've tapped into only eighty or so, but I'm sure they're not inflating that figure. Unlike Daggerfall, you won't find generic cookie-cutter tasks, here. Each faction usually has quest givers at several faction headquarters. Most offer in total anywhere from twenty to thirty quests. These are by no means your standard FedX style, kill-this-and-get-that tasks, but embrace an variety of possibilities. I've been asked to rescue people, buy things, build things, learn spells, convince people, locate anything from herbs to books to wine, steal items (a lot, as you might expect, by the Thieves' Guild), and lead a fellow guild member from one location to another. There are many twists en route; sometimes you have several optional methods for achieving a quest goal, several possible competing recipients who will reward you for requested information, or a goal that is other than you've been led to believe. I think I break no faction secrets by revealing that at least one quest giver in Vvardenfell is corrupt, while at least a few are obsessed, and one lets ancient grudges affect their sense of balance. Much of the fun involved comes from creatively researching a more complex quest, and seeing where your choices lie. I wouldn't have it any other way.
The main quest path awaits your attention patiently, but ultimately lobs more difficult and unforeseen challenges than anything else the game can throw at you. It's larger and more complex than the various faction paths, with unexpected curves that heighten the tension and one-of-a-kind threats. Best of all, even when it's finished, you don't have to stop playing. You'll find that most population centers, from tiny hamlets to large cities, have one or two quests to offer. So do some shrines, some of them hidden, that invoke the gods, and you'll also discover isolated quests in the forms of travelers seeking assistance in the countryside. For the roleplayer who lives to quest, Morrowind is an embarrassment of riches.
Sounds good. Arena's best writing was probably in the quests, and this is also true in MMORPGs that try (like WoW, great quest writing there that helps disguise their tediousness and repetitive nature).
Quote:The generic feeling that hovered over Daggerfall has certainly been banished in Morrowind. While a lot of work clearly went into the extraordinary graphics, it's only one aspect of the overall game design that has made each faction, quest, race, city, environment and dungeon distinguishable from all others. There really is a complex, interactive cultural model at work, here, and I find it more impressive every chance I play and discover something new.
Indeed, generic graphics that only were superficially different between areas (if at all, if you stay within each region) was a major issue for Arena and Daggerfall and it's nice to see it banished. I assume that they achieved the task by having each game shrink (Arena let you go to every major city on the continent, Daggerfall to one region made up of small parts of two nations, and Morrowind to one island of another), but given that the scale is still incredibly huge that really doesn't matter. The effect is the important thing and that would definitely help the games, though you get used to the similarity between towns in the older games... but originiality would make it more intresting.
Quote:One generic element remains in place, entirely out of sync with the rest of Morrowind, and that's the repetitive dialog that you hear from most of the more-than-one-thousand NPCs in the game. Conversation is based on a series of highlighted subjects in a (quite literally) dialog box; click on a subject while speaking to an NPC, and it responds with written text. But the same subject, like little advice, appears for nearly every NPC. Writing that many unique responses was clearly out of the question.
The solution was to provide a very small number of responses -- or for some subjects, a single response which all NPCs would use. Since they repeat throughout the large population, these cloned responses tend to leech any given NPC of the individuality they may otherwise possess. This is especially noticeable when the NPC in question begins conversation a spoken comment indicating a lack of linguistic ease, or a culturally distinctive use of the language -- like some members of the Khajit race, who may quote a poetic and metaphorical phrase of welcome. Then before the written dialog box launches, and they rever to Fluent Vanilla Speech, meaning standard replies in standard language. Specific speech patterns should have been used as templates for new race-, profession- or area-related replies that contained the same basic information. An easier method of resolving this would have been to hide hotlighted subjects leading to cloned replies, and show them only when the NPC in question had something new to add.
I don't want to give the impression that every person you meet in Morrowind is a mere placemarker. None actually are, and some, like sarcastic Larrius Varo, quaint Sugar-Lips Habasi, and bumbling Trebonius Artiorius, convey well-defined personalities. But there's no real dialog tree, just statements of information or offerings of quests. I'm not suggesting this aspect of the dialog issue has any easy remedy -- not when you consider the number of dialogs needed to make an impression in such a heavily populated game. But the lack of conversation or even predetermined conversations between NPCs (as Baldur's Gate II manages so very well) has some deadening effect on character differentiation.
This was exactly what I stated as one of the major flaws in an open-ended RPG. As I've said many times, it is unavoidable and that is one reason why focused ones will always have some advantages over open-ended ones.
This is also exactly the same system that was used in Arena and Daggerfall. The main difference between games seems to be that in each one you get a few more choices other than the standard 'asking for directions' stuff you'll find in any game this open-ended, or any MMORPG (and is absolutely necessary to navigate the cities in any such game)... but clearly it is not as good as it could be even considering the restrictions of being open-ended. Again something you get used to and that in some regards they could not improve on (you can't give individual dialogue trees for thousands of people.) but shows one problem with making a game as open-ended as these are.
Quote:I wish that Morrowind had targeted combat shots, at least at higher skill levels. But my only real displeasure with the combat system is the puzzling absence of any way to measure damage on an opponent. You get a red mist of blood with a hit, but no indicator about what you've hurt, or how badly. If the developers couldn't show us progressive damage, they should at least have placed a symbolic health bar over each enemy to give a sense of how the battle was going. Still, this is the kind of thing that can be changed by a patch, and I hope Bethesda Softworks pursues that course.
You mentioned this too as a problem with the game. It does sound annoying... I know that it really gets frusterating in Baldur's Gate I because there is no indicator of how hurt an enemy is until they die. Yes, you can see if you hit or not and how much damage you're doing, but not how much total damage you've done or how healthy they are... BGII greatly improved that with the general words describing enemy status ("badly wounded", etc).
Quote:Morrowind's larger cities like Balmora and Vitec feel very empty, but it's not for lack of inhabitants. People live in all of Vvardenfell's residences and occupy all the businesses -- but they never leave. Most of them never even move, and that's 24/7, long enough for most sitting denizens to put out rudimentary feelers. Since many two-level workspaces also act as homes (a reallife tradition that was actually common in the heyday of both Imperial Rome and the early European Renaissance), why couldn't these shopkeepers open/unlock and close/lock their shops, retire to bed, and even move visible inventory around a bit while awake? Daggerfall supported shop hours, and it was probably the only RPG element in which it surpassed its successor, adding to the feeling of a unique rhythm of life within each community. I'd hoped Morrowind would give us nocturnal Thieves Guild shops, and maybe taverns that closed down during the day. For that matter, it's annoying to find the same tavern habitués rooted to the floor all the time. Where is the ebb and flow of traffic, the occasional new visitor with news from afar, the dancing girls and musicians?
Not a major problem by any means, but I've heard a lot about how the unmoving and nonanimating NPCs aren't very good... I doubt I'd have a big problem with that, as it's something you'd probably more notice when it's there than when it's not... It's also something you notice more when the graphics get better and you expect more from them for sure. Morrowind looks amazing so you expect a lot from it detail-wise that you'd never expect from an Arena...
Stranger is not closing at night. I didn't know (or at least, didn't remember, I don't know which this long after I would have read reviews of it) about that in this one and it's very odd because shops closed at night in Arena, and they closed at night in Daggerfall, so why in the world wouldn't they in Morrowind? Most RPGs (or even action-RPGs) that have day/night cycles have stuff like this... Quest for Glory, for instance, or even Zelda... :)