Does Morrowind hold up?

[Robert Ewing]

Hmm, if Morrowind was released today, the setting would be vastly new and different, it would be revolutionary.

The interface... Dear god, if there is rage at the Skyrim UI, then this will be sacrificed to the god of death.

Graphics, still sort of hold up to a niché market, but it's really not good enough. The only aspects of the graphics that could still be found impressive is the water shaders, they in my opinion are on par with skyrims water.

Story, wasn't much there if i'm honest, most of the story can be broken, or exploited, so the story, and the code that makes the story isn't very tight.

So no, Morrowind doesn't really hold up today, but it'd still be a damn good game.

 

[Jakub324]

In gameplay, not a chance. In setting, I don't know.

 

[mlbslugger06]

I would definitely say it holds up. I would play the game straight, without breaking the law, until anyone called me outlander. After that I would go on a killing spree starting with the fool who called me that.

It happens more than you would think.

 

[Continuity]

I'd just like to point out that a good RPG doesnt stand on its combat so combat alone should never be a reason to disregard an RPG. Too many gamers these days are weaned on bastard (in the literal sense) action-RPG hybrids (thanks Bioware) that they unfairly expect all RPGs to have a solid action core... thats just not what RPG is about.

But then i'm a crusty old-school gamer so just get off my lawn and all that...

Not really (strictly from a gameplay perspective). It's still great, and I prefer it to Oblivion, but the combat is absolutely terrible.

*Sigh. Please, could you possibly read the highlighted sections of my post, instead of giving me a lecture on RPGs "back in your days".

I may have quoted you but I wasnt really directing my comments at you. At any rate the combat in Morrowind is poor, and yeah the gamplay does leave a lot to be desired in many respects. I dont disagree with you at all, I was just making a point about the RPG genre in general that I thought was worth making in the context of this thread.

 

[rayen020]

Morrowind still holds up in the way that good books hold up. There are maybe two places where they use dialogue instead of text boxes so if you're one of those thickos born in the 90s who reading level is still in 3rd grade while you're 17, and never read the harry potter books because you can just watch the movie it probably isn't for you.

As a setting though, i feel it holds up, yes it does have a few graphical problems. it suffers very much from that realism binge back in the mid 2000s where everything wanted to be realistic but the graphics weren't quite there yet so everything just looked dirty. Also during long hikes you will probably spot a couple of terrain stitches. and if you play 3rd person there will be clipping and collision issues like where you stand on a box 6 inches above the box, and your legs get lost in the ground on stairs.
However the world map is vast, huge and big, contains jungles, swamps, plains, tropical island desert landscapes and an absolutely awesome volcano area. storms and rain are real enough to make you forget what the actual weather is outside, and the flora and fauna are so unlike anything else it's a real trip to somewhere else. Although there are way to many cliff racers and you'll tire of fighting them before you're even halfway through the game.

tl;dr. yes yes it does.

 

[Continuity]

The weird thing about that post was that you said "put gameplay before graphics", then when someone said that the gameplay was crap you said that the world compensates for it. Having a good world is good and all, but when everything feels stiff and artificial (like in Morrowind) experiencing the world will always be hindered by the crap gameplay.

Whoa there buddy, you just made the cardinal mistake of conflating gameplay and combat, they are not the same thing, a game with no combat at all still has gameplay.

Then again, given this IS Morrowind, we're looking at a breakdown of gameplay around:

Combat: 55% (By game content), 15% (by time consumed)
Exploration (Also known as: getting lost due to deliberately vague quest directions): 25%, 75%
Building your character: 5%, 5%
Engaging in other interactions (reading books, talking to NPCs, completing quests, picking locks) 15%, 5%

You're not wrong, i'm just saying its possible for an RPG to be great even with poor combat, because regardless of how much time you spend doing it combat is not the focus of the RPG genre. Look at the witcher for example, fantastic RPG and great game, one of the best I've played...

awful combat...

but that just doesn't matter as much as many people make out (in the context of RPG), to hear some people going on about the flaws of RPGs you'd be forgiven for thinking the RPG genre was some sort of action combat game if you didn't know better.

Criticising combat in an RPG is like criticising the story in an FPS, these things complement the game but they are not the focus (there are exceptions of course but then genres aren't really all that clear cut in many cases).

 

[D0WNT0WN]

I am really trying to like Morrowind but the combat is so bad, exploration is fun but not having a decent quest log or a marker system to mark where I need to go is annoying when you want to get on with things. The best thing about Oblivion is exploring and finding something like when you find the town of invisible people.

I have yet to see something like that in Morrowind.

tried morrowind and stopped playing after missing with my sword 99/100 times

Exact same reason I can not get into it. How can I get into a game if I can not survive at all.

I remember getting killed by a rat in a ladies house because I kept on missing.

 

[VladG]

Depends. Morrowind has NO quest indicators, no fast travel, and is probably just as massive as the newer titles. This basically means that quest directions are something like: Go along the road until you reach the purple tree, go left, cross the bridge and keep heading to area x, and if you reach lake y you've gone too far.

Morrowind is not friendly at all to new players.

Now, if you enjoy spending more time trying to find the quest dungeon, walking around the interesting landscape and exploring than actually doing the quest, then yes, Morrowind does hold up.

It is considerably more complex than the newer titles, you have considerably more skills, each piece of armor is separate (as in left glove, right glove, left boot, right boot, left pauldron, right pauldron, breastplate, greaves, pants, shirt, skirt, robe, 2 rings, amulet, and I'm probably leaving some stuff out) you have much greater freedom in designing your enchantments and spells.

On the other hand the combat is much less dinamic, the non regenerating magicka is slightly annoying and frankly I couldn't care less about the main story (but then again, if you only do the main story, than you're not playing it right)

 

[cthulhumythos]

I'm not talking about graphics as they don't matter too much to me, but is Morrowind so highly praised in a Deus Ex kinda way where it's mostly nostalgia holding it up, or a Painkiller kinda way where it actually is fun compared to modern games?

EDIT: OH GOD I'm not saying Deus Ex isn't fun!

don't play it.

this is how it works- played first after oblivion you will never get past it's minor flaws and say the reason that everyone loves it is simply nostalgia.

played BEFORE oblivion however, you could get past the minor flaws and discover an immense land of wonder and possibility. i can still go on that game and go a new path and discover a new place to explore. also, very little randomly generated loot, which is fantastic. no level scaling at all, which is super fantastic. the world is much larger than oblivion and has many more quests.;
honestly, oblivion pales in comparison in every way except the weapon skills. in morrowind, all weapons had a defined damaged that never changed: instead, your weapon skill defined chance to hit. this leads to much annoyance on account of at the beginning of the game, you only have 40% chance to hit if you played your cards right.

its a shame that a few deterrents scare away people from an amazing game. to this day i look at oblivion with mild disdain, and at morrowind with wonder and enjoyment.

 

[Saviordd1]

I'm not talking about graphics as they don't matter too much to me, but is Morrowind so highly praised in a Deus Ex kinda way where it's mostly nostalgia holding it up, or a Painkiller kinda way where it actually is fun compared to modern games?

EDIT: OH GOD I'm not saying Deus Ex isn't fun!

Ehh, not really, the graphics and dice rolling combat kind of kill it for me. BUT It was better then oblivion for simply being more interesting a fantasy setting and plot. But over all Skyrim topples both of them in scope and gameplay.

 

[Kahunaburger]

highly praised in a Deus Ex kinda way where it's mostly nostalgia

ಠ_ಠ

..but on topic

Morrowind is very good in many ways, and very clunky in other ways. The freedom is pretty absurd - you can walk around wherever you want, join a huge amount of factions, and cast spells that let you fly, leap mountains, and all sorts of fun things. Content is much greater than later Elder Scrolls games - there's a lot more to do in terms of unique and interesting quests. The mods are also great - I would highly recommend Tamriel Rebuilt and various graphical upgrades [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs] to start with. Oh yeah, and going back to the ability to leap mountains, spellmaking isn't A) neutered or B) absent, so that's nice if you're making a mage.

The bad mostly relates to the melee combat and stealth aspects of the gameplay, particularly melee. It gets a little better when you level up, but it's never very good. There's also a general lack of a difficulty curve, which is awesome from a freedom perspective but also means that there are endgame-tier enemies a 30-minute hike away from where you start the game, and nothing overtly indicating you are about to enter a particularly difficult area.

All in all, loved it, would recommend it.

 

[Diplodocus462]

To be honest I tried very hard to like this game. I have restarted it multiple times and always with the intention of getting into it. I just find it too hard.

I don't believe I'm just some idiot, but I was constantly disoriented. Sometimes you would be sent off on a quest to an unexplored section of the map, and all you had to go on was some very ambiguous worded directions from a random guard. I even had real difficulty finding the guy I was supposed to meet in the first town. Also, I could never get to even the second quest of the Mage's Guild because I just couldn't find the bloody ingredients they wanted. It's all made worse by the fact that there isn't general fast travel, so when you inevitably do get lost, it can be a long trek back to town to get those crappy directions again.

I also found combat too difficult. I play games with the difficulty set on easy because I like combat to be easy. It was not easy: I died about once every five minutes. In particular I didn't like how there were randomness in situations where they shouldn't be. For instance, if I swing a sword and watch it hit the enemy, the game should not turn around and tell me I missed, no matter what my blade skill is.

On the other hand, I do find the world of Morrowind strangely compelling. It has the most varied scenery and monsters of the Elder Scrolls games I have played, and it is a joy to explore.

Incidentally, my favourite game is Deus Ex and I played it for the first time only a couple of years ago, so it can't be nostalgia.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

In a word? No. I had fun with it when it came out don't get me wrong. But the melee combat is DREADFUL. You can swing at a mud crab while you're crouched so low to it you can practically taste it and still miss every swing. I can understand that it's based off your skill with the weapon you're using, but that completely takes the players ability out of the occasion when you have to pray to a random number generator to dictate your fate in every fight.

 

[Enverex]

Morrowind was better than the later two, mainly, because it was less streamlined. The quests required a lot more gameplay input, time wise, and the world took a lot longer to navigate, etc. It generally meant the game felt like you put a lot more soul and imagination in to it. It felt like it didn't hand everything to you on a plate - in fact, I can't remember a less accessible mainstream game.

I agree, it's almost like everything is handed to you on a plate on the newer games. The map pinpoints exactly where you should go, you always have an arrow pointing to your objective, you have fast-travel, etc.

I'm currently playing through Morrowind again now (because I'd never completed it before for various reasons, but had gotten close) and as an example, one of the first quests tells you to get something from somewhere. In Oblivion is would basically say "It's at X, go fetch it" and mark X on your map.

On Morrowind I have a journal entry for the quest which is a massive several paragraphs explaining the route I should take, what to look for (landmarks and signposts) and then a description of the place so I should know what it looks like when I get there. That's the immersion I miss on the newer games, that it's not just fighting that takes effort, it's the actual adventure side of it!

 

[HerrBobo]

I personally have just restarted playing Morrowind and although I haven't played skyrim I can tell you Morrowind is better than oblivion in almost every way. every where felt unique. every dungeon, every room felt it had a perpuos. you didn't feel like you where the only thing happening in the world but rather you felt you where exploring a world much bigger than yourself. i'll give you that the combats clunky but any first person combat game is going to be, even in modern games(and if you talking about the "stay still to chop" you can just set it to automaticly use the best move).

+1

Morrowind is awesome! I'm playing at the moment.

Sure, like people have said, the UI and the combat is a little clunky. For the first couple of hours you'll be swinging madly at rats, just trying to stay alive. After a while though the combat gets better and you'll have a much easier time killing things. Having said that though, I would always avoid a class that uses ranged combat. It just does not work well. A magic based class will offer less frustration, as generally, you can either use a spell or you can not.

The combat will never be great, it comes from a different time and can not stand up to the likes of Oblivion or Skyrim. However, if you can look past the combat you'll find a world that is richer in almost every other way than Oblivion.

The setting is fantastic, huge mushroom along side trees, massive houses made out of the shells of long dead crabs, floating castles, 100's of islands that are litters with caves, dungeons, monsters and more, darweven ruins that look like the devils head gear, all kinds of fantastic animals and at the center the tower of doom that is Red Mountain.

Oblivion may be better in terms of combat and graphics, but it lacks the atmosphere, immersion and down right fun that Morrowind is drenched in.

The GOTY edition can be gotten for less than ?10 now. Do your self a favor and get it.

Then go here: http://morrowindoverhaul.net/blog/

and here: http://www.mwmythicmods.com/telesphoros.htm

 

[Signa]

Morrowind was the sort of game where you could forget what the hell you were supposed to be doing and then wander round for 30 hours trying to find out again, an RPG really ought to be more engaging than that IMO.

I know it's not what you meant, but that sounds pretty damn engaging. I mean, that's exactly the reason why I loved it. If you can get distracted for 30 hours from the thing you were supposed to be doing, then the game is doing something right!

Also +1 for the random dice-roll combat system. Sure, it sucks at first, but when you actually feel your skill rising, it beats Oblivion's combat into dust.

 

[Vkmies]

My favorite game of all time. That and Deus Ex. They both hold up incredibly well IMO. I don't give a shit about the graphics, and the gameplay still works well today, so yes. Yes it does.