Convince me to play Morrowind. I'm not memeing, I'm not shitting on it...

Convince me to play Morrowind. I'm not memeing, I'm not shitting on it, I just want to know if it's genuinely worth my time and what I should do to get the most out of it.

Other urls found in this thread:

nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510/
nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/14891/
mw.modhistory.com/download-35-13960
youtube.com/watch?v=de1M4Q_g2eg
en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:City-Swimmer
youtube.com/watch?v=gON5k2kw3as
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Playing it vanilla is kind of an effort. It's very particular about how you build your character and you need to do some planning to be effective.

But with mods it can be pretty good. I don't have a mod list on hand but there's plenty of combat overhaul mods that make it better.

just research stats and how builds work. It is not like any of the recent TES games, you have to plan your character out and build stats correctly. When you do, the game is amazing. It is one of those games that consumes you.

...

whatever you do dont install any mods
the game is fine without them unlike oblivion or skyrim

See that silt strider?

You can ride it.

Ignore this post, spellcasting is borderline useless compared to enchanting without mods.

alchemy
alchemy
alchemy
with a side of spellmaking.

first playthrough cheat and look everything up on uesp.net

then make morrowind lore threads and read all the dumb shit people post

t. CHIM posting from inside my own realm

Man, I miss the old monthly gaming mags.

Honestly the game is only fun if you know how to break it. The majority of people trying it now for the first time will not like it.

I hope you can hang with a bit of old school gameplay and graphics. Although you can make it look very good through heavy modding.
The main reason I would say play the game is because it has great exploration. You have a lot of freedom and open ended possibilities with exploring unlike some later Bethesda games. There are no unkillable NPCs. There's nothing you can't just go and do right away provided you have the right skills or items. The game doesn't try to sell itself as something it's not. You'll be reading a lot of dialogue and it's genuinely interesting stuff. You'll never have a moment where you think the game is trying to sell itself too hard. It feels to me like the most real and engaging world even though it's immersive properties are outdated. The reason for that is that they simply created a world and put you into it. You're not the focus, and even when you get along in the main quest and become more important, no one will give you credit until you do something to improve their own standing. Basically the world fucking hates you because you're a foreigner. Everyone's pretty racist and that is part of the charm oddly enough. You are coddled. I recommend just going in blind and exploring. Save often. Pay attention to what people tell you and follow their directions. There's a lot of very cool quest lines that you'll be directed to one way or another, but there's also a lot of meaningful quests and even quest lines that are hidden. It's a deep game, and a fun game. I fucking love it and I hope you do too user. It's pretty comfy tbqh.

>the compact todd howard

I've been playing the game on and off for about 10 years now, it has never lost its intrigue and sense of wonder, I still find new shit time to time.

You are NOT coddled.
A very important mistype I made there. The game will make you feel like a god but first it'll shit right in your mouth.

>what's Todd most excited about
>modding tools and potential mods
That's actually kinda nice

I bought this game for like 5 bucks 3 years ago and didn't care for it

Someone spoonfeed me on what mods make this game fun

It's always the same for me:
>solve murder case in seyda neen
>join mages guild in balmora
>get boots of blinding speed
>grind for a few hours until skills are decent
>fighters guild
>legion
>stop playing

Todd is a liar, but he's a pretty bro guy. Kirkbride still likes him despite being fired/quitting.

The good:
>unique setting for fantasy wrpg
>extremely customizable character build system. >Really in depth spell building/enchantment/alchemy system
>can play the entire game with practically any build
>fairly interesting story

The bad:
>melee combat's kinda shit

Not worth your time, its boring by today's standards.

Start simple. If you think the graphics are an utterly disgusting abomination then try installing MGSO. It's a set of mods that has its own installer that lets you pick everything you want from it. Improves the textures and meshes a fuck ton and gives all kinds of great improvements and options. Morrowind rebirth is another overhaul to look into that I haven't tried myself. I went through and took literally about 10 hours to install my own set of mods and my game looks better and plays better than both of these mega mod packs. You can make it whatever you want. There is tons and tons of shit on the nexus.

What about Skywind?

...

Planning your character is nice and all but it's not even a big deal. Morrowind is not a hard game by any means, at least not until you get to the expansions. You have you really try hard to screw up a character, and the extent of planning required is "pick a weapon and use it".

The first playthrough should always be vanilla when it comes to gameplay and content. There are only three things I would recommend besides the game itself:
Morrowind Code Patch to fix crashes and engine bugs (like unarmored skill ironically not working at all unless you wear armor)
nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510/
Delayed DB Attacks to fix the Tribunal expansion intro (lazy developers fucked up the early game progression of vanilla)
nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/14891/
Solstheim Rumor Fix to fix the Bloodmoon expansion intro (lazy developers added a dialogue topic to every single NPC in the game and made it possible to miss local rumors that start quests)
mw.modhistory.com/download-35-13960

You may have heard that Alchemy and/or Enchanting is gamebreaking, but to be honest that's only if you're trying to break the game in the first place. If you're not exploiting some obvious infinite loop like Fortify Intelligence stacking or selling potions made from restocking ingredients then they are good supplemental skills for any type of class. Using Alchemy early on is not a bad idea because you will be able to make Restore Fatigue potions using ingredients found in great number just about everywhere.

Except enchanting is stupid expensive as a service and extremely difficult to succeed at as a skill. The power you can get from high level enchantments matches the difficulty in obtaining them unless you're exploiting. Mages are plenty effective in Morrowind after they make some efficient spells, although they may struggle against high level daedra with spell reflection and are generally harder to start off with.

The thing is Todd probably doesn't mean to lie, he just has a lot of ambitions for the games and ends up talking about things he thinks are going to make it into the game somehow but don't make it in due to time or somebody in the management blocking it. He probably is more disappointment in the end than anybody else.

This. Todd has traditionally been very honest and candid in interviews and forum posts. He even admitted to using UI mods in Oblivion and said he regretted how poorly suited to PC it was.

What has he demonstrably lied about?

Only thing I can think of is Skyrim having infinite quests, which is technically correct.

A dude falls from the sky and gives you an item that makes you jump across the map
Is that not a good enough reason?
>morag tong quest line

do you like to read? if you don't - don't bother
it's game you will enjoy if you like to read a lot everything else is secondary to that

>regions with self contained economy, you can destroy that lumber mill and it will have an effect

top of my head, there are whole compendiums about what todd lied about if you bother to search

In the E3 the year before Oblivion released Todd showed off a bunch of demos, including dynamic shadows (cut entirely from the final game) and radiant AI where he even explicitly stated "this is not scripted" before showing off a completely scripted encounter with an shopkeeper and her dog. I'm sure he wanted radiant AI to be capable of all these things but it obviously never was capable of anything close, and what little it was capable of had to be gutted for the final game because it was made NPCs too autonomous to the point where they broke quests and murdered each other (more often than they do now at least).

youtube.com/watch?v=de1M4Q_g2eg

why did they have to cut shadows, damn

Combat is shit. I loved the game dearly but playing it now would be like water torture.

If you're doing anything particularly notable with weapons, kill every mudcrab, scrib and rat you see until you can reliably do damage to a human target. Joining the mages guild or the fighters guild gives you plenty of practice doing magic or fighting melee if you need to stat up.

Stay perceptive.

Meme game, you can't even hit enemies unless you play for hours and level up your character in a very specific way. It fucking sucks, no one actually enjoys having to write down incorrect directions to objectives on a fucking notepad while they play a game. Play Oblivion or Skyrim, the only good games Bethesda has made.

It was a bit to much for console and even some PC's.

Todd doesn't age..

>not even a minute in
>Todd already lying about how they make a new game from the ground up every time

Morrowind is hard to get into at first but feels very rewarding once the game sucks you in.

The lore is great, the world is interesting and refreshing, the main quest is engaging and there are no stupid gimmicks that get old really fast like oblivion gates or dragons.

Also the game doesn't treat you like a dimwit like the later games do.

I would recommend to try it first without any mods and to stick close to the mainquest.

The visuals haven't aged particularly well, but the game is pretty fun. If you enjoy exploring huge chunks of land, stumbling upon things, and immersing yourself in an atmosphere, you'll like it.

The combat is less "combat" than diceroll checks against skills. Take advantage of that and spam the shit out of one particular skill, use it.

Oh, you can also increase your Agility by leaping up stairs. Not even kidding, it's cheap but a good way to level.

Man I remember playing it on the original Xbox because I had no PC. Shit saved my sanity.

He feeds on our pre-orders for eternal youth.

im dying. i literally don't believe it says that

>The compact Todd Howard

To add to this, Morrowind's magic system is insanely good if you invest into it properly (that is, learn the ins an outs, make custom spells/enchants etc.), and unlike melee hit rolls, spells hit every time (assuming no spell resistances/immunities, which you won't have to deal with early on) if you don't have shit aim. Being a pure caster in MW is one of the most satisfying experiences you can have because the power ceiling is that much greater - eventually you'll have enough powah to buff yourself with invisibility, levitation and massive speed buff and you'll feel like a god, whereas the melee and ranged plebs will still have to toil in the dirt and get chased by blighted cliffracer rape gangs. You, though? If you feel like it, you can just AoE nuke those shits in a single spellcast.

Fortify spells also mean that if you want to, you can become a better melee/ranged duder than those pleb losers.

What? He's just like every other spokesperson, pretending to actively play scripted demos, throwing around taglines to create hype and lying about features that he knows are not going to be in the final game. He said Skyrim will use a new engine even though it's still gamebryo, or that they don't downgrade their games for consoles even though the UIs from Oblivion on are clearly designed with consoles in mind.

You can climb that mountain.
This scene is unscripted.
Oblivion will have realistic and dynamic npc behaviour.
Skyrim will have a dynamic enconomy that you can actively influence with your actions.
Fallour 3 will have 200 endings.
In Fallout 4 npcs will say your name.
We recorded 1000 of the most popular names (like mr boobies or fuckface).
We won't monetize mods.
It just works.

He looks so innocent here
Just a young man with an earnest love for fantasy roleplaying games

>spokesperson
You know he's not just some PR guy, right? Even if he's not as involved in the nuts and bolts today he has still been heavily involved in programming, writing, quest design, basically everything except art for several previous Bethesda games. He's a developer first and a talker second. And I'm damn glad he's the one doing the talking instead of their actual PR guy Pete Hines, who always says the dumbest shit.

As for your list:
>You can climb that mountain.
You could. It had fucking stairs.
>This scene is unscripted.
Lie.
>Oblivion will have realistic and dynamic npc behaviour.
It was more dynamic than any RPG before it, but it was also toned way down from what he showed.
>Skyrim will have a dynamic enconomy that you can actively influence with your actions.
Lie.
>Fallour 3 will have 200 endings.
Out of context. He said in interviews BEFORE the game released that he was talking about over 200 permutations of the ending due to all the little details they added to it that change based on your decisions. He never claimed there were 200 completely different endings.
>In Fallout 4 npcs will say your name.
He never said that. He only ever said that Codsworth would say it. It's funny because I was watching the presentation live on twitch and as soon as he said it I instantly knew this would become another fake "Todd howard lie" because of people hearing what they want to hear instead of what he actually fucking said.
>We recorded 1000 of the most popular names (like mr boobies or fuckface).
Truth. I'm sorry if your name wasn't included and having a few joke names triggered you, but there were indeed about a thousand of them.
>It just works.
Meme.

That makes two actual lies, and the second one about the economy was obviously something he was fully intending to get into the game but didn't or couldn't for whatever reason. There's no excuse for the first one; he knew he was lying there, but I'm sure he still was hoping to get the AI to that level.

>Kirkbride still likes him despite being fired/quitting.
Really? Think Todd consults him for story stuff?

>It was more dynamic than any RPG before it
Gothic did it better in 2001.

Npcs had daily schedules, went to sleep, traveled across the map without the need of godmode, had conversations with each other, reacted to different situations like you drawing a weapon or would flee in fear if you used magic.
They didn't even kill you if you attacked them but instead knocked you out, insulted you and took all your possessions which you could get back from them too. They would play the lute, roast meat over a fire, wash themselves at a pond, repair their huts, smoke joints, eat, drink, hold conversations ...

Much of this stuff didn't even happen in TES until Skyrim.

He still works as a freelance writer for TES but I don't think he has much influence.

Gothic had great NPCs especially compared to its peer (Morrowind) but in terms of technology it wasn't anything like Oblivion. Oblivion's NPCs didn't just have scripted schedules like in Gothic and some Ultima games; they had actual AI, in other words a process by which they make their own decisions independent of player action. They would seek out food every day, and if they didn't have it in their inventory they would try to obtain it. Depending on their personality stats, they are not averse to stealing or pickpocketing something they want. They also search for the best weapon available in the environment around them when in combat and will pick it up and use it, sometimes ones that were disarmed from the player.

This actually lead to a lot of crazy situations where an NPC tries to pickpocket another, pissing them off and getting the guards on their ass. And since NPCs don't pay fines it usually ends in their death. There was one particular NPC in Oblivion who gave a quest, but was also poor and a thief. She would go to an inn and steal bread from a basket and almost always end up dead as a result by the time the player found her or was ready for her quest. Clever players figured out that they could avoid this situation by leaving food for her periodically or reverse pickpocketing it into her inventory. And less kind players can leave poison apples around for hungry NPCs to kill themselves with.

None of that is part of some scripted schedule or reaction to the player. It was because the NPCs decided they wanted to do something and did it. Their conversations are also unscripted, even if hilariously fucking awful. Oblivion's NPC AI is in my opinion the only really interesting feature in an otherwise disappointing game, and it's a shame they largely dumbed it down in Skyrim. As you say, Skyrim's NPCs do stuff around the world like playing music or working the forge, but like Gothic they are all scripted and scheduled, rather than a part of the NPC AI.

I don't remember any of this.
Are you sure it wasn't just some mod?

It wasn't. That's all pure vanilla Oblivion Radiant AI™.

I was wrong about her offering a quest however. She's a trainer in the Sneak skill. I'm 90% sure this is the NPC I was thinking of in that one example:
en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:City-Swimmer

Oblivion radiant AI can hardly be called radiant.
It's 90% scripted with a few stats like hunger that trigger certain actions which lead to stupid situations.

Like a guard getting hungry and shooting a deer which triggers another guard to kill the first guard for attacking a friendly npc.

Jurrassic Park Trespasser had a similar system which was equally awkward and ultimately led them to remove all stats except for aggressiveness and hunger.

I think it was fun to stumble upon two guards fighting each other on the road in the middle of a forest.

I agree with you there. Oblivion's AI was a laughing stock and the definitive "Todd Lie" everyone talked about before Skyrim at least. But it was still more dynamic NPC behavior than any RPG had ever had. If anything, Oblivion is proof of why it's not a good idea: it's way too fucking hard to make not stupid. The more autonomy you give NPCs, the more stupid they behave compared to scripted ones. We've a long way to go before an NPC in an RPG will do something that actually impresses us that wasn't hardcoded into them by some designer.

This is the first screenshot of Morrowind I ever saw and it looked cool as hell to teenage me so I bought it on release. If it doesn't convince you I can't help

Don't waste your time, it's the shortest Elder Scrolls Title there is...

youtube.com/watch?v=gON5k2kw3as

>what's Todd most excited about
>basement dwellers doing his job for free

UBISOFT PUBLISHED IT??

In Europe. Bethesda has always been their own publisher in the US.

>want to replay this game
>can even get past the awful combat because the game is THAT good
>remember vivec
>the urge to play fades away

>, you have to plan your character out and build stats correctly.
Bull shit
You just shit out a character and play until you find a bug/exploit that will let you make god weapons and armor and by then you know for sure you are the true reincarnation of Nerevar

I think it could be gotten to work someday if you can somehow combine the GTA ability to spawn random pedestrians but interspersed with more important characters that could be story related and have their own schedules and routines.

In oblivion the NPC count is so small and the "cities" so tiny the strange AI behavior adds to the uncanny valley stuff. If you had larger areas and more NPCs doing stuff it would blend better.

You mean "persuade me."

Persuade me that your post has any value whatsoever to my thread.

Let me put it this way, back when I played video games I crush nearly every game I played in under 24 hours of game play at which point I lost interest. Even the most demanding games never topped 79 hours of game play. But Morrowind, Morrowind got me to play 1003 hours before I ran out of things to do having beaten everything, including sadistic challenges I made up after all the quest were done. And that was on the Xbox without mods, if I had the PC version I might never have bought another game again.

Just be warned the first part involves a lot of dying and the games does drag you around like an invalid. But there was something very satisfying about not paying for the fast travel as one wanders the roads as a level 1 with just a rusty dagger, at least that how I did it.

sorry should say

doesn't drag you around like an invalid

autism

What's wrong with Vivec?

Just play Fallout 4 instead OP, it's a much more immersive experience.

Okay, OP, I'll give it a shot by telling you how I feel about Morrowind. I remember reading a preview of the game in PC Gamer (it actually had one of the early screenshots one user posted earlier in the thread, so thanks for that) and thinking man, this looks amazing. I'd been engrossed in stuff like Baldur's Gate for years and the idea of a fully 3D RPG on that scale blew my mind (I had found NWN kind of disappointing, and at that time still had dial-up internet in my parents' house so playing NWN online and actually experiencing the highs of it was out of the question). I bought the game on release and holy shit, I was hooked. I didn't even finish the game until ages after I started because I kept making new characters and coming up with new roles I wanted to act out - this time I was a proud House Redoran Dunmer, this time I was an Imperial pilgrim healing the sick, this time I was a thief with a few hundred points in acrobatics who only travelled through towns at night and took the rooftops rather than the paths. Teenage me devoured all the books in the game world, engrossed in the history and the stories and trying to decipher the meaning behind the 36 Sermons of Vivec (I still don't get it). It was such an incredible experience and I'm so glad I got to experience it. It remains a game that I can still lose myself in today, even without mods.
I won't pretend it doesn't have some major flaws. The combat, the movement speed, the bugs and exploits, it's not perfect. But if you're a young, dumb autist like I was, you can look past all of that and find something very special. Please do give it a try

I'm unironically looking forward Skywind.

If you like Gothic there's a big chance you wont like elder scrolls, can't really explain it it's just how i feel about it

Binary retards are only vocal minority, most adequate people like both games for what they did right and hate both of them for what they did wrong.

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post characters

Download the overhaul mod and nothing else

Use the interbutt to help locate quest locations

Don't cheat

You'll have a blast with this game, just don't give into the temptation to cheat, because once you start you can't stop. IMO there's NOTHING wrong with looking up quest locations on google, its IMPOSSIBLE sometimes to find the dumbest crap without some help. Look up advanced grinding techniques and other leveling tips.

Morrowind has fantastic lore and great gameplay if you understand that it isn't meant to be anything like Oblivion or Skyrim. The combat is crap and boring as a result of the game making every tool available to you to break it. Breaking it could be creating a weapon that does insane damage, creating your own fast travel by jumping 500000 feet into the sky and using levitate to slow your descent, or to create a ring that makes you immune to blind while you run 500 miles an hour with a pair of boots you found that make you go blind but make you run extremely fast (literally Boots of Blinding Speed)

When you understand that all of the game's tools are available to you to do with as you wish, you get a high from conquering the game on a whole new level that just isn't possible in the newer games. You can literally become a God in Morrowind, not just super-ultra-strong like in the newer TES games.

>the compact Todd Howard

Man, 2001 screenshots of morrowind were all such bullshots.

>cliff racers in the background