I have more than one memory of writing down cheat codes in the note pages. Then.... it bothered me that I ruined the rulebook, and sought another copy by purchase or boon from friends, and stored it with the fouled copy. Today I have diagnosed OCD, and still don't have a good way to solve this problem. It bothers me innately that all the things I learned for TUNIC, are simply stored digitally, by camera picture of written notes, in a discord channel I made called "Sending myself shit."
I never used them on my own, but, I inherited a small collection of NES games from my father and when I was young we would play them together. A handful of them had those blank pages (and extra, ink-fading lined paper besides) filled to brimming with passwords; back in that awkward period when games were getting too long to complete in one sitting but before battery backups became standard.
@@olaf.forkbeard This is one of the most relatable things I've ever read lolol. You might want to look into 'personal wikis' or 'second brains.' I use Obsidian.md myself
Absolutely have at some point or another, be it cheat codes from Nintendo Power (telling my age without really telling my age here), hard to find item locations I stumbled across ingame for later playthroughs, and even liked or loved items in the Harvest Moon games!
You must have played on Xbox! That version tapped into a hardware feature that was a really high quality water shader for the time, and basically free in term of performance cost.
Just the water, really. The view distance was roughly PC minimum and the framerate typically struggled to maintain 20 fps at some incredibly low resolution.
@@Takarias I played on xbox back in the day and remember specifically being impressed by the water. Years later when I played the pc version the water didn't look as impressive as I had remembered. I figured it was nostalgia, and the graphics appearing more dated to me with time. I never knew it was actually something unique to xbox, that's pretty interesting.
@@Astr0C0w The OG Xbox is a really interesting piece of kit. The PS2 was emblematic of the traditional way of doing things, while the Xbox was the future: Programmable graphics shaders, internal storage, online gaming... It's amazing how they set the trends, and now can't keep up at all.
You're onto something with that bit about struggle building camaraderie. I've noticed whenever I talk to someone about a game I love, we mention one or two great "moments" and EVERY difficulty or tiny annoyance we ran into.
It's worth noting that people experience more friction going back to older games not only because game design conventions and expectations have changed, but also because _they don't read the manual._ The convention today is that a game will teach you everything you need to know by in-game means, but in 2002 it was assumed that you'd at least skimmed the manual before playing and had it on hand for reference while getting familiar with the game.
Worst part about this is that in most old game re-releases, most notoriously on Nintendo Online, they don’t even bother including their games manuals, which for some of them is detrimental.
There has always been a big chunk of people who never read the manual, even when they were standard. Old game faq forums were usually half made up of people asking about basic controls and features laid out in the manual.
I mean, we have UESP and similar websites today, we can just google whenever we have a problem. That's not so incredibly different from having a manual.
One reason I feel Morrowind’s friction is so valuable is how it supplements the game experience. Morrowind is, in my opinion, most chiefly about the experience of going from an outlander to someone who feels like a native. The setting is so alien and hostile to interpretation at first, but as you go that friction naturally sands itself away. This is present in the skill system which, for all its faults, provides a much more significant increase in ability over the course if the game than Oblivion or Skyrim did, making early fights feel like desperate, clumsy scrambles and later fights let you feel confident and assured. That also manifests in the exploration aspects; when you first get an instruction to follow a foyada or go to a new location you may find yourself lost or confused, but your ability to navigate the world using its own signposts and language grows over time. I don’t think we’d think of ourselves as ‘oldheads’ in the same way if we hadn’t experienced those struggles and had the feeling of adapting and overcoming them. The game experience of Morrowind mirrors the land of Morrowind; harsh and incomprehensible at first, until you go native and learn the underlying logic underpinning it. That’s what makes it so special.
Someone else mentioned old games having wonky and individual controls as a plus because overcoming them is part of the challenge, and your comment feels kinda similar in some ways. Like this particular player-game interface struggle is diegetic in some way. I'm not sure I agree, but it's definitely interesting to think about.
@@Takarias thanks for responding! I agree that in a lot of cases that argument doesn’t really hold water, but I think specifically for Morrowind it works because the feelings of incomprehension and alienation are so central to its themes and storytelling.
Yeah, Morrowind doesn't just tell you "okay you were a nobody, but now you're one of us/trusted/the saviour", it makes you actually do it. You feel like you learn the land, you travel the roads they do, you learn where things are without popping the map open, you know optimal travel paths from a-to-b using transports. You actually play the experience of a stranger, learning this new weird place; not a person who is instantly trusted with the fate of the world.
@@Bladius_ This has become true to me again while playing Tamriel Rebuilt starting there, doing the quests and doing temple and telvanni quests, wish i chose indoril. With that vast new area with it's differing landscapes and learning all the best places to cast almsvi or divine intervention to get where needed or close to a preferred transport system, how to chain those spells properly with occasional boat, strider or mage tp trip. I strongly recommend going through all the temple pilgrimages in TR, there are over 10 new ones with great lore (some nice buffs too) and beautiful vistas, and you learn a lot about the people while doing the Temple's quests usually involving local community.
Reminds me of a game named Cultist Simulator, at the very least once it came first it just throws you into game and that's it. No tutorial no hints nothing. Maybe you were given instructions to do the first step but nothing more. Since you start pretty basic it is quite easy to get going but the fact that it is named "Cultist Simulator" you wonder about the whole cult thing and little by little you start getting hints of supernatural and eldritch things and eventually you are deep in dark magic things still trying to figure out what you are doing and how the game works. And that's all part of the idea how the game is supposed to work: you as the player are suddenly thrown into this unknown path and you are frantically trying to understand what it is and how it works
Your comments about "co-op in a loose sense" really ring true for me. I first experienced Morrowind with my friend who recommended it to me. He wouldn't give away all the secrets, but he helped point me in the right (and sometimes wrong) direction in the beginning. One of us played while the other watched quite a bit back then. Morrowind was the first RPG I ever played, and nothing has scratched that itch of not having a clue what im doing at first but becoming a literal god later since.
It's an extremely different game but have you played Outer Wilds? It's a game with almost no in-game progression where you advance by learning how to play the game and exploring the world (I recommend not Googling it, I went in not even knowing it was a space flight game and it was phenomenal), which your comment reminded me of.
@@Takarias It's the 2nd best game I've ever played, after King of Dragon Pass, which come to think of it you'd probably also love if you like the Elder Scrolls setting and also like not knowing what to do
For me, what Morrowind provided that I've been chasing (and mostly failing to find) ever since was the genuine, GENUINE sense of discovery. Over, and over you would find stuff while playing Morrowind and genuinely wonder if any of your friends playing the game had ever seen it before. Even those people who had already "finished" the game. Part of the reason these discoveries were thrilling was because they were often HARD. You would have to do weird stuff and wander for HOURS to find little nuggets with little-to-no aid from within the game. And, for those who like such things, that was tremendously rewarding. Ditto for the fact that being clever allowed you to make big leaps of progress via non-leveled loot. A lot of games go for this ethos of "discovery" (including Oblivion and Skyrim), but it usually feels forced or even a little fake, like you can sense The Man Behind the Curtain putting your experience on rails but trying to dupe you into thinking you organically discovered the next thing on the list by chance. I get why Morrowind is not for everyone, but the immersion is unmatched if you define immersion by the experience of playing the game rather than exclusively how pretty the game is. I love it, warts and all.
I think videos like this are part of the solution. I've seen lots of channels looking at old games, going in and doing roleplay runs, or meme builds, and just having fun with a game without needing to optimize the heck out of it.
I have fond memories of playing late at night, looking over the map unfolded on the floor in front of me by the light of a CRT, and finding new caves to explore by following it. A bygone experience, now.
it was great for marking things down for future playthroughs too. i had the mudcrab merchant marked and speedy boots lady, as well as naming some of the unnamed ruins/tombs
Back when i played morrowind i was 5 years old, and i didnt know how to read or understand any english (i'm mexican), so i only go out and wonder in the bast world in front of me, that was... magical and rough. My older brother and i discuss around the game and best builds, we read the manual as many times as we needed and share our knowledge around try, error and teorys. I love the levitate spell and the spears... We were our own community, we didnt have computer and the game wasnt very popular here back then... That was an experience i'll never forget.
Hay una traducción no oficial hecha por clandlan que está un poco bugueada pero funciona, la primera vez que jugué, jugué instalando esa traducción. La recomiendo si no sabes inglés.
A lot depends on the relative perspectives of the gamer. For those of use oldies brought up on early RPG's such as the Ultima series and old DOS RPGS in the 1980s, Morrowind felt approachable and not noticably difficult at all. Quite the opposite. Hard to believe, if you start now and look back. Morrowind looks like the start of modern RPGS. But in context of it's time, it was the culmination of a 20 year progression of graphical realism and ease of use. Games were real *games* back then. Meant to challenge, for you to get stuck, to get frustrated with, then to discuss with friends and so on. It's why Soulsborn grabbed attention - they have the spirit of original games. No hand holding. Not to be beaten by just "run to next cut scene" casual clicking. On it's release, typical gamers did not find Morrowind unapproachable or esoteric. Nor did we find the graphics or combat particularly clunky. Though not cutting edge in general, they were arguably the best seen in an RPG at that time. We expected pages of charts of character builds and stats. Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 from just before that time, and they had that too. What's happened is that in 20 years, the depth and complexity has been stripped away - for example, Oblivion, in the Elder Scrolls series. already has less RPG, more graphics - it was made for consoles first, too. And pretty much all RPG released followed that trend. Developments were only in graphics and presentation, not AI or world interraction. In Oblivion, NPC's have exactly the same pose of leaning back awkwardly and turning their heads stiffly to you , as they do in Starfield! And if you think Morrowind is ancient, crusty ,old and strange, have a try of Ultima 7, early Might & Magic, Wizardry 4, Bards Tale or similar! If you spend 10 minutes watching YT vids of mid 1990's RPG's, then play Morrowind, it looks almost photoreal, feels like you are really there!
Great perspective and comment. I find it laughable how unwilling many people are nowadays to THINK and allow themselves to enjoy the challenges a game like Morrowind presents :)
I think you hit the nail on the head of why 10 year old me really enjoyed Morrowind, and it is the rough edges. It's also why I struggle to watch movies and read books, I have ADHD and the lack of interaction (particularly meaningful interaction involving some friction) means I often check out of other media very quickly. Thanks for the insight! Boom, subbed.
Thanks It was an interesting video. Disagree on "graphics" though. Although it depends what you mean by that. It is well designed and the game has a unique visual identity. Even at the bloody low spec PC where everything was covered in this damn fog beyond 30 feet or so. And despite that Dunmer faces look like ash-baked potatoes not a single mod or a sequel have managed to rival Morrowind in the last 23 years.
Honestly, I love how Morrowind looks, but it's hard to say that it looked "good" for the time. Character models were especially poor: The practice of separate body pieces was outdated years before Morrowind came out. But despite that, it manages to be captivating in a way few other games are.
@@Ichthyodactyl Exactly the wording I've used before! Phantasy Star Online is another great example of that - the fidelity is terrible, but damn does that game have *style*
The thing is you can use even "poor fidelity" graphics in your design well. Occasionaly design overshadows poor graphics or vice versa, but I think in case of Morrowind they work in tandem. In good hands, "graphical fidelity" or little quirks engine has are tools of the visual design. Now, I'd have to admit, that Morrowind looks utterly horrible and barely legible in certain places, tilesets and areas because of poor graphics, too. Good luck finding your way around Vivec half the time or figure out which muschroom entrance you need to jump to.
I played Morrowind for the first time a few years ago on series X, no mods, just played, it’s my favorite game of all time! I had no issues playing the game, was so amazing! The music is just incredible! The sounds of the spells are amazing!
Finally someone mentions the spell noises, Skyrim's are fantastic in feeling punchy and impactful, but Morrowind's feel actually magical, even somewhat silly sometimes, which I think helps fit the game's atmosphere. It's a sort of whimsy I feel Bethesda and the rest of the industry has forgotten.
Just a quick little comment because you mentioned morrowind's minimap. When viewing the menu, each frame has a box in the top right corner that will lock that frame onto the screen when you leave the menu. You can resize the map to however big you want it, move it to where you want it, set it to local/world and lock it on screen.
That seems very difficult! The more a game was designed with waypoints and the like baked in from the start, the harder it is to play without using them because there's no alternative for knowing where locations are. Did you use any mods to do this?
@@Takarias No mods, it was on xbox. Honestly it really doesn't make it too hard - you still have all the information on the map if you pull it up, it just means you gotta stop whatever you're doing to consult it instead of running towards the dot on your screen. The hardest part was absolutely the stealth mechanics - removing the visibility indicator meant that I had to be a _lot_ more cagey about whether or not I thought I'd be spotted if I made a dash for cover.
Reminds me of Witcher 3, where the dialogue was sort of designed as if you didn't have a map. The NPCs describe locations and directions in some form of detail to help "Geralt" find the place/object.
I bought the 400-page Morrowind Prophecies guide book pretty much right after I got the game and it was really the only thing that got me through the early days of the game. Even as a somewhat experienced gamer of 23 I still couldn't figure out a lot of quests. Of course now 2,000 hours later I memorized almost all of the game, but there's still things I haven't found, if you can believe it!
I think I have the same book. I used to read it cover to cover as a kid. I remember there being a line about smacking a ghost and it made me giggle uncontrollably. “Do it, smack that ghost!”
I used the note pages for takign quest notes - how to find Arkngthand is one memorable early example. And then I realised pretty quickly that I'd need more space for that. Enjoyed the video, thank you!
1. Calling Morrowind graphics crap for the time is bullshit, maybe it wasn't the best looking game of its time, but it was up there with the best. 2. There's enough impact and feedback for its time. The animations are fine. Remember, World of Warcraft came out two years later and if you want a game with no impact and feedback, crap animation and graphics, WOW is your game. 3. When I got into Morrowind first, it came with a Russian translation that broke the game - the dialogue was broken and none of the hypertext worked, and when I told the guy who lent me a copy, he laughed me off, claiming I hadn't played the game long enough to claim it was broken. So what I had was an open world sandbox game with no dialogue or quests, no story and no ending, and it was still quite the experience. I spent a couple of weeks totally immersed into my murderhobo fantasy, then I found out the Russian translation was BSP files and so I deleted them. And I got the game working. So even as an early goat simulator, the game looked quite good for its time, and played really well - I don't remember another game that did open world as well as Morrowind. 4. These days I play the GOG version of Morrowind on my Athlon XP-based retro gaming rig, with Creative EAX support and Windows 98, and on a CRT display, and I'd argue this is the best way to play Morrowind - but I should warn you, it is quite heavy on the GPU and you might need a high-end retro GPU to play it properly, something like GeForce 4 4200Ti, but no newer than GeForce FX series.
There's a rather modern school of thought when it comes to game design that considers constraining the player in any way, or ever telling the player "no," to be bad game design, unless the game is specifically marketed as "hardcore." It's a school of thought I dislike. I don't see the appeal of cheap, effortless power-fantasies; games like vanilla Skyrim, for instance. That sort of thing feels condescending, and I don't understand how someone could not get bored of it, or even uncomfortable with the obvious unfairness in favor of the player character, if it's especially egregious. That's actually why I never finished vanilla Skyrim before going all-in on mods.
I've really come around on Skyrim, actually. It's absolute crap as an RPG, but it really shines as a 'vibes engine.' This is something I intend to explore at some point in the future.
My first exposure to Bethesda games was playing Morrowind and its because of my positive experience with Morrowind that I was willing to give Bethesda's later games a try. Something that has puzzled me especially with the release of Starfield which is my personal favorite game Bethesda has made is why the games released after Morrowind get criticized as step-downs in quality. I have tried going back to Morrowind now and then over the years and while I have great fondness for the game each time I am immediately hit with how clunky the game is especially engaging in combat. The old 3D graphics don't bother me and I still enjoy the story. To me it's felt that Bethesda has continually tried to refine the open world sandbox role playing game design from Morrowind with later games by making tweaks to the basic formula. It's why I enjoy their games but I seem be in the minority on this as of late.
Most things you listed are basically things that make the game itself more immersive. Stuff like fasttravel nearly everywhere, instensive map markers. And the nav markers or even trails to objectives. Is all stuff that make most games less immersive in the end. i remember Plotting routes using the mages guild teleports. Siltstriders and ships to where i wanted to go just to skip some walk. Is it a bit cumbersome? Yes it it. But its an interaction with the gameworld that actually creates immersion. Another big change in the later games i dont really like is Essential NPCs you cannot kill. That totally an immersion killer. Even though getting the message: Reload your game since you cannot finish the mainquest. Is totally not a good thing. But thats what you get when killing random npcs. But i think this kind of freedom in an RPG is important. Restricting actions you could normally take with no realy reason is just dumb. You should punish them. Another thing Morrowind did, what your rarely see in games today: Restricting Progression. if you go to cosades without having leveled up a bit. He tells you outright:Bro go and do something else youre to weak. Come back later. you have serveral roadblock that way. Like with the factions needing some Minimal skill levels and stuff. You also couldnt do all the content in one run. Like Restrictng the great houses. or having different skill requirements for different factions. While all of it can be seen as missing quality of life and a nuicance. It also is contribution to the overall immersion by giving your own character weight and slowing you down to actually percive the world instead of running from quest to quest in a questline. In Contrast to that i present my Skyrim Mages guild experience: The winterhold college was one of the first questlines i did when i was new to the game. i was giddy to join. Yeah some mages training. Oh a Quest in a Dungeon. Nice we found some artefact. Oh no its dangerous we need to save the College. We save the College. Now youre archmage. Wait what? I just joined to guild like a few hours ago? Youre incentivised to play that whole questline back to back. Especially if its not just cause its a quest but you want to actually roleplay as a mage. So when the college is in peril the thing to do is saving it. But since it is just that. You never are really given the time to settle in. To be a student of magic at the college. To do some sidequests. and so on. And what also doesnt help is that you dont really need any magic skills to actually finish that questline. And in my opinion thats a thing that creeps though all major questlines in Skyrim. Some more some less.
I just published a video about the benefits of Morrowind's travel systems, and the crux of the argument I present is essentially that it's good for immersion for a wide range of reasons. Morrowind really does immersion incredibly well - the innate depth of the game's systems gives each decision weight in a way few games achieve.
I will confess that maybe the strange mixture of dice-based and action combat isn’t the best, but it’s not bad. Nowhere near objectively bad. Maybe your build is objectively bad, maybe your skills are objectively bad, maybe you as a player is objectively bad. Just do what you have to do to maximize your chances of hitting and it’s pretty much not an issue unless you’re punching far above your weight class.
Oh, this was great man! It takes a very particular kind of game review to keep my interest (Mandolore and Grimbeard really do it for me) but I love hearing thoughts on more nebulous topics like this. All the better when filtered through the perspective of one of my favorite games! That's a sub from me dawg.
Glad you enjoyed it! I might dip my toes into reviews at some point, but I really like looking at specific elements of game design and seeing the different ways designers approach the same/similar things.
One of the first things I did with Morrowind was learn how to make a mod. Just so I could save my custom classes. Because I spent a lot of time thinking about and writing up those class backgrounds, and I didn't want to lose it!
Oh, that's a smart one. Are the descriptions visible once you're past character creation? I feel like they're not, or maybe that was an Xbox limitation
@@Takarias On the PC, I think you needed to hover your cursor over your class name in the menu. But it's been a while since I last played. I have OpenMW installed. I just need to go drag out my discs. The Elder Scrolls Anthology is why I have Skyrim, actually. I wanted the paper maps for Arena and Daggerfall (since I didn't get into those games early enough). And it came with Skyrim Legendary Edition. So I added that to my Steam library, got Special Edition for free when it released (because Bethesda did that), and finally got around to trying Skyrim in 2018. Because I wanted to finally see what this was all about. Though Morrowind spoiled me for having the open cities...
I could never bring myself to write on the notes section as it felt I'd be vandalising it permanently for whatever fleeting notes I could easily jot down on paper.
You are correct! But they're still there, so I assume some people did use them. Though marking up a manual like that seems almost sacreligious to me, personally.
I too wouldn't on any booklet I cared about, I used to design catalogues for a living, and whenever I see notes I just assume the designers were unable or unwilling to shift things around to not need them.
Great video! I was a little scared of spoilers but I watched the entire thing. It is unquestionably a new experience for me. The only games I can think of that I had growing up that were in anyway similar were the old Pokémon games on the DS. It wasn't necessarily an open world so that took some of the challenge off but there's a lot of puzzles and lack of hand-holding for a children's game. Anyway I'm glad I'm not alone as faced the same challenges you did back in the day. Makes me feel a little less incompetent :')
It's definitely a very old-school game in a lot of ways, but it undoubtedly has its charms, and I'm looking forward to seeing your playthrough continue. (No pressure!) You're actually avoiding a lot of new-player pitfalls, like using weapons that you aren't skilled with, so don't feel like you're at all incompetent - the game merely takes a minute to click.
FYI if you look up "Morrowind Mechanics" here on YT, someone made a pretty great series of videos that explain how Morrowind characters work better than it's own manual. There's some pretty clever stuff going on that people don't generally pick up on, mainly how carry weight functioned a bit like how equip load does in the Souls games these days
12:12 Me and my siblings' game booklet note pages were reserved for cheat codes, directions, reminders, secrets, glitch instructions, etc. But yeah, fair, I never bought a game used with anything in the note pages other than maybe the occassional scribble/doodle
I loved the other two Morrowind videos! I might be too young to appreciate this one, the experiences from the time of the game's physical release are utterly alien to me despite years of hearing about them, and the pains of the game's age or clunky design aren't too relatable either to someone who only really started enjoying the game following challenge runners like Mehrunes Mike and JustBackgroundNoise. Though it didn't feel like that was the thesis of this particular video, I feel the difference between streamlined, obvious, intuitive gameplay, and a rough, investigative, experimentative experience is useful for understanding Morrowind's appeal in the modern day.
@@MarkusManon Thanks for the support! While I'd love to explore your ideas of 'the appeal of Morrowind in the modern day,' I am probably not the right person to do so, since I grew up with the game and can never play it for the first time again. Frostbreak, the other creator that I mentioned, played for the first time only recently, and their video allows a glimpse into this viewpoint
I think it's important to have those rough moments in games, the meta difficulty. The struggle is to make it work for the game and not against the player. Something like Dark Souls 2's weapon durability was very annoying and didn't add much of anything but frustration. Morrowind requiring you the player to notice things and look for a dwemer puzzle box as opposed to having it marked adds to the game.
"You better believe I still have the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages open every time." And this is why we support UESP on Patreon, friends. Well, that and the calendar they send out every year that includes Tamrielic holidays. Yesterday was Malacath's Summoning Day, btw. :)
When I look back to being confused in 2002 I think more of modding, we didn't know how the Construction Set worked and there was little documentation, we learned by sharing information on Bethesda's forum, the old green one many of us have fond memories of. It also shows just how much Bethesda have changed, back in 2002 if you asked for help with something in the Construction Set there was a good chance you would get a very detailed answer from one of the developers, that wouldn't happen now.
Hah, I've always told everyone that the only mod I use for Morrowind is the sighposts mod. Been that way since I finally got a PC that didn't crash in the tutorial and could play the game at last. Honestly, I see where you're coming from with the shared experiences, but that's secondary to me. Talking with my friend (...s?) about something we both liked was a part of my childhood, not a part of gaming. If it hadn't been gaming, we'd talk about something else. But I think friction is hecka important for games even if you never talk about it with anyone, simply for immersion. If the game is not forcing you to focus and actually engage with the world (even in linear games), it's all gonna float past you and never settle in your memory. At least that's how it is for me. I will never support quest markers, detective vision, corner minimaps with GPS routes, and other such elements of game design.
I agree with you only in a very narrow sense, which I plan to make a video about - controls you have to learn add to the experience of adventure. It adds to the feeling of alienation AND makes the player feel more vulnerable before they've mastered it. The standardisation of controls has taken something away from gaming. Oh, I also agree that having to work to play a game makes the experience much better.
This is a very unique take. I don't agree with it, but live your truth, man. Have you played Daggerfall or Arena? They have borderline antagonistic controls - especially if you suffer from RSI lol
You have to try Tamriel Rebuilt! It's amazing how well made it is and how seamless it fits the base game while providing HUNDREDS of hours of content. It's a must for me - it gives you the same feeling as playing Morrowind for the first time ever.
Oh, that's a pretty good use case! I didn't start playing on PC until week after dialup was long since dead and gone, so its always been just a search away for me
Did Bloodmoon and Tribunal's physical releases have maps as well? I've never seen them myself - I only ever played the base game on console before moving to PC, why which time box copies were already a long dead art form.
anyone wanting to get into morrowind should definitely use the development build of openmw, it has animation blending and many more features which make it feel so much better
I'm playing Morrowind for the first time right now with OpenMW and the I Heart Vanilla modlist. Works fine, even on Linux where things like to not work fine sometimes xD
@@Takarias I found super funny also because i just saw this video of jobs talking about the lisa: ua-cam.com/users/shortsvk3vo7xVkJc A game that get me the same feel you have with morro is the original dead rising. A lot of friction, but a ton of fun
Don't really have much to say beyond I enjoyed your video. It's a good summation of what makes the game enjoyable and perhaps distinct from later releases in the series. Scaling the learning curve, and eventually excelling certainly adds a layer to enjoyment of the game. One thing I really appreciate about Morrowind is that you have the freedom to make mistakes, and consequently will be punished. Forget mark and recall? You'll pay for that later. Neglected to grab a few restore potions? Buddy, look forward to the naked trek of shame. I don't really know why but that adds a quality to the game. That and the game seems to encourage you to cheese a bit. I've sat in front of the screen on many occasions debating if bending a certain mechanic is just inventing a clever tactic, or outright cheating. Sure permabuffing is a cheat, no doubt. But buffing skill trainers? I'm not sure. Is damage skill on self training an exploit? Sure. What about using taunt to be a righteous murder hobo? Open ended and perhaps not entirely thought out game mechanics actually lend to player choice, and I like that.
The thing I like about having the freedom to make mistakes in Morrowind is that it also gives you the freedom to find creative solutions to get out of most of those situations.
The “Where do I go?” question is probably one of the biggest enduring good things about Morrowind’s overall layout: It did not railroad the player along the main plot and in the beginning only hinted at what the main plot eventually turned out to be, rather than constantly prodding the player to resolve an urgent threat to the world and/or themself. Morrowind offers a lot of options that were ruthlessly pruned back in the subsequent TES games, leading to more “frictionless” gameplay, but ultimately also “flattening” the core game experience by limiting the scope for “broken solutions” that used the interplay between various mechanics to find alternate ways of accomplishing tasks, rather than the “canonical solution”. Sure, you can min/max your Morrowind character, but it’s really not necessary. On the flip side, while it is certainly possible, it’s hard to create an outright unplayable character - and I don’t think people are likely to do so by accident. Of course there are some outright bad gameplay choices in Morrowind and beyond those mentioned in the video, I’d say that the implementation of Endurance and Health is decidedly one. Because the Health increase doesn’t work retroactively with levelling up, it requires players to prioritise exercising Endurance skills early on, if they want to really benefit from the increased Health. The game doesn’t make this particularly clear and it’s the only mechanic where this sort of sequencing really matters.
I think often these additions are done as "Quality of life" features, but imo if they take away from the immersive quality of a game or make it so you don't actually have to engage with the content there's a lot to lose.
Morrowind is my favorite game of all time. Been playing for 20 years and with azura blessing another 20. Especially with tamriel Rebuilt and those types of mods still coming out. Whether it's PC or xbox though I enjoy it vanilla or with mods.
I have to heavily disagree with you on the gameplay being bad. As you said, Its something that's very difficult to replicate, playing the game back in the day, when you couldn't just look up a guide on how to make a broken character, or how to abuse certain systems. They were things you learn, and the more you learn the quick you can make a character powerful, and learn different ways to make them powerful. Despite this, The low levels where you miss everything, constitute such an insanely small fraction of the game, even in a uninformed playthrough, that its totally insignificant. Ontop of that, missing and failing to cast spells is an important part of a good RPG, most games don't have it anymore, but it was common place in the era. The fact of the matter is, it was an RPG first, action game second, unlike the two entries that came after it. If your a true RPG lover, it has THE BEST gameplay of all the Elder Scrolls, period. Comparing Morrowind to Halo just seems extremely poor, its like apples to oranges. All of Bethesdas games are no longer meaningful RPGs. And as for your comment on the graphics, it looked good for the time, and it still holds up because its well stylized. Honestly it just kinda seems like you only enjoy the game because of Nostalgia, and none of the actual mechanics appeal to you. And your point about Gaming being the only medium to have friction, this is an absolute dip of a take. Imagine attempting to read some 17th-19th century German philosophy without any prior knowledge or grasp of the subject. It is so obtuse and complex, it challenges you to chew on the concepts these people are expressing, it provides more friction than any game you will play.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I very much value this kind of respectful discussion and am happy to have it happen in the comment section. You bring up a lot of good points, and I agree with most of them. However, first impressions are important, and Morrowind's combat makes for a very rough first impression for the unwary. I think it's ultimately better for it, but it is a hurdle for new players to overcome and I unfortunately don't think enough people give it that chance.
@@Takariasfor players that never played an rpg I used to play d&d and morrowind combat system just made sense, after I started missing I realized that I just needed to stack one weapon skill in character creation and once you do taht you don't really miss that much even in the early game
I feel the same way. The combat system of Daggerfall and Morrowind makes sense to me, but then, I was a veteran of turn-based CRPGs by the time I played Daggerfall. These games have an RNG, or dice roll, combat system like any turn-based RPG, but the system is masquerading as action combat. If people understand this going in, maybe they will have a better time of it. People who played Morrowind back in the day were more likely to be accustomed to this type of system. I have never liked action combat in its standard form. I want combat success to be based entirely on my character's stats, skills, and equipment, and not on whether I can click the mouse button rapidly or get my timing on a move just right. In Daggerfall and Morrowind, you begin as an underequipped, incompetent novice who can't hit the broad side of a barn, so you have to be careful where you go and have to be willing to run from a fight. In time, you learn the systems, level up your character, and acquire better equipment. Then, just as in any turn-based game, you get a lot better. And how good your reflexes are has little bearing on your success. Morrowind looks like an action game on the surface, but it doesn't really play like one. If Bethesda went back to this style of combat, I would be overjoyed, but I know I am in the minority.
@@Takarias You are absolutely correct. I actually tried showing morrowind to one of my ex's who was big into games like Baldurs Gate 2, a D&D ruleset game, and he could not get over the fact that he was missing attacks that appear as though they should connect, and he stopped playing and never gave it another shot. I lost a bit of respect for them that day, being so unwilling to even attempt to overcome the obstacles or learn more about the game.
@@heatherharrison264 yes! This encapsulates the way I feel about it as well. Especially as I get older, I find it difficult to play reaction time based games like I was able to in my youth. I love the first 3 Dark souls games and Demon souls, but I struggle to even make it past the starter bosses in Elden Ring with a melee build. Its very unfortunate that my only option for true RPG gameplay is basically top down turn based games.
The clunkiness of the combat is absolutely acceptable, it’s fine, because it is a magicka oriented game and there are so many redeeming qualities about the game.
I always play blind and I'll always do. Feels kind of "weak" playing with a guide at hand and not even being able to cope with the little frustration and anxiety of not knowing where to go. Okay, if you can't figure it out in, let's say, 3-4 hours of gameplay, it's okay. But trying to advance on your own and finding the key to the solution is one of those sensation I don't understand gaming without
I always have the UESP open for the charts and other reference materials like how the various mechanics work. Rarely do I *need* to use the quest guides.
In a straight shootout with nearly anything else from the time, it's gonna lose. In a time when shaders and long draw distances were becoming the norm, Morrowind's stuttering performance and PS1-like draw distances looked dated from day one. I think it does a lot with its art direction, though.
@@Takarias Check out what games released in 2002 then. With the amount of detail and polygons Morrowind has in it's open world there's no way anything even came close. And if Morrowind was supposedly so behing then name the games, preferrably open world games, that looked better.
@@patrykzukowski7471 GTA3, Vice City, and Mafia are easy picks for open world, which was an uncommon style at the time. If we open up to other styles, Halo CE, Jak and Daxter, THPS4, JSRF, Kingdom Hearts, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, Splinter Cell, and any number of racing games were all pushing more polygons with better lighting and fancier animations at higher framerates. Morrowind looked dated. But that wasn't the point of it. The point of Morrowind was the detailed worldbuilding and roleplaying potential. It was - and is - incredible for entirely different reasons.
@@Takarias Mafia had less polygons and smaller world, it only had better textures, cause it could. Vice City was extremely dated when it came out, super low textures and low amount of polygons and of course GTA3 has less plygons and worse textures as well. I don't understand how these less graphically demanding games compare. The rest are not open world and obviously they will look better.
Yooo just wanted to pop in and say I'm impressed! only thing I noticed was mic quality, but that's just a money problem. Otherwise, love the production style and quality!
Hey, thanks for the feedback! I actually have a pretty good mic and audio setup, so I'm willing to bet the problem is user error rather than hardware. What specific issues are you noticing?
I think I was using the EQ wrong - adding rather than subtracting to get the sound I want, which was causing distortion in the low end and certain plosives. I've tweaked it for the next one! Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
11:19 Hey mate, watching this right now. Love the video so far, but I wanted to comment now on case I forgot to later. Since you came from Xbox originally, you might not know, but you can pin the mini map (or full map) to your game UI from the menu screen. That’s what the little square in the top right of the map menu is for. In fact you can pin any of the menus to the game UI with the corresponding button. Have fun with that.
Yep! I've known this for a while, I just... Don't do it. I like to have my menu screen arranged the way I've got it, and it's with the map covering most of the screen, so I'll just stick with the 'compass' minimap lol
Some questions shouldn't be answered and most things should let you discover them, that is part of the whole magic. Ubisoft went too far the other direction for their Open World Games and littered them with artificial feeling POI's displayed all over the map. However, the chance to cast and weapon accuracy in Morrowind were old concepts from previous Dungeon Crawlers(Who took it from D&D's dice rolls) that didn't carry over well for real time FPS combat. Thankfully it was removed in Oblivion.
Never played this much got more into oblivion and skyrim. But i remember loading a friends xbox save on a laptop. After clicking through a thousand loading errors it loaded the save and it worked.
I subjectively agree for a litany of reasons, but I find it hard to agree as a blanket statement. The combat systems of both games simply have design goals that are too different from each other for me to make that statement. The animations are still letting it down, though. Swords always feel like they're made of floppy silicone rather than stiff metal.
@@Takarias my big issue with Oblivion is that with magic relegated to a bumper, weapon to a trigger, shield to another trigger and scaled enemies all fights feel the same. Yes Morrowind could have benefited from animations that help feedback. But I'd take that loss with the variety that comes between Morrowinds variations in; enemy level, fighting style and attribute difference. You're trying to chase down a fast backward running, spear wielding Argonian. Then you're trying not to get knocked down by a strength based Nord with a big hammer and heavy armour. Then you're trying to just land a hit on a high agility Bosmer with throwing stars. It is rough around the edges but it's very deep and satisfying to see the character progression when your imagination allows it which I feel is lost in Oblivion
@@Takarias exactly what you spoke of... I have no idea where I'm going... I clearly hit him but I "missed"... I walk so slow for a game that's mostly walking... It's a beautiful game in terms of atmosphere but yeah
Just gotta talk to people to figure out where to go and what to do. NPCs will always give directions. As for combat and movement speed, these are both things that your character will improve at as you level up. For combat, I typically find that around 40 skill in that weapon is when it starts to feel 'reliable,' so you just have to focus on the things your character can do
The combat is amazing. Its a real time tactical game, adapting ttrpg mechanics into a 3d game. Learning how to play is the filter that weeds out the lesser players.
I am yet again commenting under a morrowind video shilling the VR mod. Borrowed my lil bro’s vr gear and tried it out and it was probably the peak of any experience I’ve had playing games. Played a mage + hand-to-hand character and it just felt so cool getting into fisticuffs and then just blasting a guy with spells when he goes down. Wandering the daedric ruins was so sick too.
Tak, I feel like your video ended where it really should have began. Sure, players today like to take the path of least resistance (or as you said dominate) while playing a game, but why is that? Could it be that something has changed in the digital environment as you alluded in the video, or is this perhaps just representative of a small but noticable fraction of the gaming community that is active in the online sphere? Perhaps it also has something to do with the overwhelming amount of games that players can choose from, leading to a phenomenon where players feel the urge to finish a game as quickly as possible to move onto the next. I think there's still room for thought in this topic and I encourage you to pursue this in future videos should it interest you. I will subscribe regardless.
Thanks for the support! I'm willing to bet the cultural shift I've noticed is due to a multitude of factors, certainly including the ones you mention. I'm definitely planning to make more videos, and I'm sure this topic is something I'll be returning to in the future, and from different angles.
I think you struck gold with mentioning the rush in finishing games, I remember rushing Devil may cry 5 (I played it in 2023, way after it released) and I had seen much of it online, I would rush missions just to get to the "good" parts of the game, so my first playthrough felt rushed and unsatisfying honestly.
The gameplay in early game isn’t that bad, I went in mostly blind and just built a character following a rough guide for how to allocate skills and on a lower difficulty I had no issues. As I levelled up I increased the difficulty a bit and this has been a very enjoyable first playthrough.
I always did read a games manual all the way back to the sinclair ZX spectrum in the early 80s, I would read them while on the bus on the way home from town after buying it. I kind of miss that as I get all my games digital these days.. Great video man.
The ZX was before my time and an ocean away, but I miss cracking open a game case in the car and taking a whiff of that new game smell before digging into the manual and inevitably getting carsick from it lol
@@Takarias blame nintendo actually, they were mad games were being rented, but couldn't stop it. They instead went after distribution of printed materials bearing the nintendo trademark. Nintendo vs Blockbuster. The few writing cheats resolved to doing so on the inside sleave
Played Morrowind back in 2003 (I think?). I remember how mesmerised I was by it, its world and story. The graphics felt overwhelmingly good at the time and everything was so vast that I felt constantly lost in the game. Maybe I was just less spoiled by games than I am now, but Morrowind, perhaps out of pure nostalgia, still feels to me like one of the best games that ever were. On a side note, nowadays I couldn't play it without the Fair Magicka Regen mod. It doesn't feel overpowered, while without it the mage builds feel utterly useless. You probably know about it, but I just wanted to let you know that I would totally consider it part of the vanilla experience.
I am not familiar with it, actually. I typically don't use any mods that modify mechanics, and even Skyrim I don't think I ever have more than 20 or so mods installed. I run my games fairly vanilla.
5:12 Halo has a single melee attack and is trying to sell the illusion of this modern badass elite shooty soldier who was woken up from cryo because of how badass he is and how much people need him. The combat in Morrowind is objectively great for what the game is trying to do, which is translate tabletop gaming mechanics to a 3D world. Why would your emaciated, recent ex-con character deposited in a foreign land be a master fighter? You're a nobody who maybe can handle a weapon better than random citizens or some basic magic. If you make a logically sensible build for an RPG you won't struggle much if at all unless you wander into high lvl zones, which you should immediately know to avoid if you get bootyblasted by a Dremora Lord 45 minutes into your first playthrough. If you wanted to use big 2 handed axes and dumped all your stats in Willpower you're playing the game wrong, it's not the game's fault. You have to earn the power fantasy in tabletops generally and as such you have to earn the power fantasy in Morrowind. With Master Chief the power fantasy is there from the beginning and will always be the same level of power fantasy even when he gets to use the big explody guns because ultimately that's ALL he can do is shoot and punch and throw the occasional grenade. In Morrowind you can rise to the level of fist-fighting gods, leaping across entire towns, teleporting back and forth to places, casting magic powerful enough to obliterate anything in the vicinity, forcing NPCs to move into your house with a high level command spell, forcing NPCs to kill each other with Frenzy spells, gaining permanent flight, gaining permanent spell reflection/absorption, summoning permanent minions and so on and so on.
This video makes me realize I hate the "improved" graphics overhaul I installed. It looks so unnatural and not the Morrowind I remember playing 20+years ago as a teenager. I'm currently on a biannual Morrowind binge and I'm going to wipe and reinstall without the graphics mods. Graphics that fit the game > "pretty graphics"
I find that a lot of the replacement texture mods crank the contrast entirely too high, and everything looks very uncanny and fake. Not that vanilla Morrowind looks 'real,' but it looks more cohesive and believable within its art style.
Haha. Yes, Morrowind looked terrible when it first came out. I remember my brother watching me play the game on my OG Xbox and we got into a fight because he kept making fun of the way that the game looked. He was destroying my immersion.
Did you use those blank pages for 'notes?' Tell me about it!
I have more than one memory of writing down cheat codes in the note pages. Then.... it bothered me that I ruined the rulebook, and sought another copy by purchase or boon from friends, and stored it with the fouled copy. Today I have diagnosed OCD, and still don't have a good way to solve this problem. It bothers me innately that all the things I learned for TUNIC, are simply stored digitally, by camera picture of written notes, in a discord channel I made called "Sending myself shit."
I never used them on my own, but, I inherited a small collection of NES games from my father and when I was young we would play them together. A handful of them had those blank pages (and extra, ink-fading lined paper besides) filled to brimming with passwords; back in that awkward period when games were getting too long to complete in one sitting but before battery backups became standard.
@@olaf.forkbeard This is one of the most relatable things I've ever read lolol. You might want to look into 'personal wikis' or 'second brains.' I use Obsidian.md myself
Absolutely have at some point or another, be it cheat codes from Nintendo Power (telling my age without really telling my age here), hard to find item locations I stumbled across ingame for later playthroughs, and even liked or loved items in the Harvest Moon games!
I usually wrote down cheat codes for games like Crash Bandicoot or Twisted Metal.
I don't remember thinking that Morrowind's graphics were crap on release. I do remember thinking how fantastic the water looked!
You must have played on Xbox! That version tapped into a hardware feature that was a really high quality water shader for the time, and basically free in term of performance cost.
@@Takarias Nope, PC actually. If the xbox version looked better than I'm even more impressed!
Just the water, really. The view distance was roughly PC minimum and the framerate typically struggled to maintain 20 fps at some incredibly low resolution.
@@Takarias I played on xbox back in the day and remember specifically being impressed by the water. Years later when I played the pc version the water didn't look as impressive as I had remembered. I figured it was nostalgia, and the graphics appearing more dated to me with time. I never knew it was actually something unique to xbox, that's pretty interesting.
@@Astr0C0w The OG Xbox is a really interesting piece of kit. The PS2 was emblematic of the traditional way of doing things, while the Xbox was the future: Programmable graphics shaders, internal storage, online gaming... It's amazing how they set the trends, and now can't keep up at all.
You're onto something with that bit about struggle building camaraderie. I've noticed whenever I talk to someone about a game I love, we mention one or two great "moments" and EVERY difficulty or tiny annoyance we ran into.
There's something cathartic about complaining to someone that gets it
It's worth noting that people experience more friction going back to older games not only because game design conventions and expectations have changed, but also because _they don't read the manual._ The convention today is that a game will teach you everything you need to know by in-game means, but in 2002 it was assumed that you'd at least skimmed the manual before playing and had it on hand for reference while getting familiar with the game.
The convention today is that games don't even HAVE manuals, let alone one as comprehensive a resource as Morrowind's.
Worst part about this is that in most old game re-releases, most notoriously on Nintendo Online, they don’t even bother including their games manuals, which for some of them is detrimental.
There has always been a big chunk of people who never read the manual, even when they were standard. Old game faq forums were usually half made up of people asking about basic controls and features laid out in the manual.
Also always going through the game options and control mapping before starting
I mean, we have UESP and similar websites today, we can just google whenever we have a problem. That's not so incredibly different from having a manual.
One reason I feel Morrowind’s friction is so valuable is how it supplements the game experience. Morrowind is, in my opinion, most chiefly about the experience of going from an outlander to someone who feels like a native. The setting is so alien and hostile to interpretation at first, but as you go that friction naturally sands itself away. This is present in the skill system which, for all its faults, provides a much more significant increase in ability over the course if the game than Oblivion or Skyrim did, making early fights feel like desperate, clumsy scrambles and later fights let you feel confident and assured. That also manifests in the exploration aspects; when you first get an instruction to follow a foyada or go to a new location you may find yourself lost or confused, but your ability to navigate the world using its own signposts and language grows over time.
I don’t think we’d think of ourselves as ‘oldheads’ in the same way if we hadn’t experienced those struggles and had the feeling of adapting and overcoming them. The game experience of Morrowind mirrors the land of Morrowind; harsh and incomprehensible at first, until you go native and learn the underlying logic underpinning it. That’s what makes it so special.
Someone else mentioned old games having wonky and individual controls as a plus because overcoming them is part of the challenge, and your comment feels kinda similar in some ways. Like this particular player-game interface struggle is diegetic in some way. I'm not sure I agree, but it's definitely interesting to think about.
@@Takarias thanks for responding! I agree that in a lot of cases that argument doesn’t really hold water, but I think specifically for Morrowind it works because the feelings of incomprehension and alienation are so central to its themes and storytelling.
Yeah, Morrowind doesn't just tell you "okay you were a nobody, but now you're one of us/trusted/the saviour", it makes you actually do it.
You feel like you learn the land, you travel the roads they do, you learn where things are without popping the map open, you know optimal travel paths from a-to-b using transports.
You actually play the experience of a stranger, learning this new weird place; not a person who is instantly trusted with the fate of the world.
@@Bladius_ This has become true to me again while playing Tamriel Rebuilt starting there, doing the quests and doing temple and telvanni quests, wish i chose indoril. With that vast new area with it's differing landscapes and learning all the best places to cast almsvi or divine intervention to get where needed or close to a preferred transport system, how to chain those spells properly with occasional boat, strider or mage tp trip.
I strongly recommend going through all the temple pilgrimages in TR, there are over 10 new ones with great lore (some nice buffs too) and beautiful vistas, and you learn a lot about the people while doing the Temple's quests usually involving local community.
Reminds me of a game named Cultist Simulator, at the very least once it came first it just throws you into game and that's it. No tutorial no hints nothing. Maybe you were given instructions to do the first step but nothing more. Since you start pretty basic it is quite easy to get going but the fact that it is named "Cultist Simulator" you wonder about the whole cult thing and little by little you start getting hints of supernatural and eldritch things and eventually you are deep in dark magic things still trying to figure out what you are doing and how the game works.
And that's all part of the idea how the game is supposed to work: you as the player are suddenly thrown into this unknown path and you are frantically trying to understand what it is and how it works
Your comments about "co-op in a loose sense" really ring true for me. I first experienced Morrowind with my friend who recommended it to me. He wouldn't give away all the secrets, but he helped point me in the right (and sometimes wrong) direction in the beginning. One of us played while the other watched quite a bit back then. Morrowind was the first RPG I ever played, and nothing has scratched that itch of not having a clue what im doing at first but becoming a literal god later since.
Parallel play, my beloved
Same here, the only other game that scratched that itch was the original Dark Souls.
It's an extremely different game but have you played Outer Wilds? It's a game with almost no in-game progression where you advance by learning how to play the game and exploring the world (I recommend not Googling it, I went in not even knowing it was a space flight game and it was phenomenal), which your comment reminded me of.
@@AlexanderRM1000 It's been in my backlog since forever. Maybe someday :')
@@Takarias It's the 2nd best game I've ever played, after King of Dragon Pass, which come to think of it you'd probably also love if you like the Elder Scrolls setting and also like not knowing what to do
For me, what Morrowind provided that I've been chasing (and mostly failing to find) ever since was the genuine, GENUINE sense of discovery. Over, and over you would find stuff while playing Morrowind and genuinely wonder if any of your friends playing the game had ever seen it before. Even those people who had already "finished" the game. Part of the reason these discoveries were thrilling was because they were often HARD. You would have to do weird stuff and wander for HOURS to find little nuggets with little-to-no aid from within the game. And, for those who like such things, that was tremendously rewarding. Ditto for the fact that being clever allowed you to make big leaps of progress via non-leveled loot.
A lot of games go for this ethos of "discovery" (including Oblivion and Skyrim), but it usually feels forced or even a little fake, like you can sense The Man Behind the Curtain putting your experience on rails but trying to dupe you into thinking you organically discovered the next thing on the list by chance. I get why Morrowind is not for everyone, but the immersion is unmatched if you define immersion by the experience of playing the game rather than exclusively how pretty the game is. I love it, warts and all.
I think videos like this are part of the solution.
I've seen lots of channels looking at old games, going in and doing roleplay runs, or meme builds, and just having fun with a game without needing to optimize the heck out of it.
That map was insanely useful for finding ruins and stuff, good memories right there.
I have fond memories of playing late at night, looking over the map unfolded on the floor in front of me by the light of a CRT, and finding new caves to explore by following it. A bygone experience, now.
it was great for marking things down for future playthroughs too. i had the mudcrab merchant marked and speedy boots lady, as well as naming some of the unnamed ruins/tombs
@@SubieNinja Oh jeeze, I could never write on it. I always treated it like it was a fragile artifact just spreading it out!
I'd argue that it should be used as a last resort. Finding ruins on your own provides these sweet sweet neuromediators.
Back when i played morrowind i was 5 years old, and i didnt know how to read or understand any english (i'm mexican), so i only go out and wonder in the bast world in front of me, that was... magical and rough. My older brother and i discuss around the game and best builds, we read the manual as many times as we needed and share our knowledge around try, error and teorys. I love the levitate spell and the spears... We were our own community, we didnt have computer and the game wasnt very popular here back then... That was an experience i'll never forget.
That honestly sounds pretty magical. There's something about the humble early years of gaming that really strokes my fancy.
Hay una traducción no oficial hecha por clandlan que está un poco bugueada pero funciona, la primera vez que jugué, jugué instalando esa traducción. La recomiendo si no sabes inglés.
Wealth beyond measure, outlander.
You like to dance close to the fire, don't you?
Google "Filthy rich by young scrolls".
Thank me later ;-)
@@Takarias *Whistles suggestively*
These boots are Argonian leather
@@XDivi your luck is at zero she wont let you hit
A lot depends on the relative perspectives of the gamer. For those of use oldies brought up on early RPG's such as the Ultima series and old DOS RPGS in the 1980s, Morrowind felt approachable and not noticably difficult at all. Quite the opposite. Hard to believe, if you start now and look back. Morrowind looks like the start of modern RPGS. But in context of it's time, it was the culmination of a 20 year progression of graphical realism and ease of use. Games were real *games* back then. Meant to challenge, for you to get stuck, to get frustrated with, then to discuss with friends and so on. It's why Soulsborn grabbed attention - they have the spirit of original games. No hand holding. Not to be beaten by just "run to next cut scene" casual clicking.
On it's release, typical gamers did not find Morrowind unapproachable or esoteric. Nor did we find the graphics or combat particularly clunky. Though not cutting edge in general, they were arguably the best seen in an RPG at that time. We expected pages of charts of character builds and stats. Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 from just before that time, and they had that too. What's happened is that in 20 years, the depth and complexity has been stripped away - for example, Oblivion, in the Elder Scrolls series. already has less RPG, more graphics - it was made for consoles first, too. And pretty much all RPG released followed that trend. Developments were only in graphics and presentation, not AI or world interraction. In Oblivion, NPC's have exactly the same pose of leaning back awkwardly and turning their heads stiffly to you , as they do in Starfield!
And if you think Morrowind is ancient, crusty ,old and strange, have a try of Ultima 7, early Might & Magic, Wizardry 4, Bards Tale or similar! If you spend 10 minutes watching YT vids of mid 1990's RPG's, then play Morrowind, it looks almost photoreal, feels like you are really there!
Great perspective and comment.
I find it laughable how unwilling many people are nowadays to THINK and allow themselves to enjoy the challenges a game like Morrowind presents :)
I think you hit the nail on the head of why 10 year old me really enjoyed Morrowind, and it is the rough edges. It's also why I struggle to watch movies and read books, I have ADHD and the lack of interaction (particularly meaningful interaction involving some friction) means I often check out of other media very quickly. Thanks for the insight! Boom, subbed.
It's also the reward and feedback loops that get us hooked! Hard to ignore a form of media that's designed to be so captivating.
i Will consume any and all morrowind retrospective content like a rabid beast.
((Also your right the notes pages are an absolute joke))
It's such an incredible game, and there's so much that can still be learned from it!
I dont know who you are, but this video legitimately made you seem likable, funny, and easy to listen to.
Good vibes.
I'm just some weirdo on the internet :)
@@Takarias aren't we all (:
Thanks
It was an interesting video.
Disagree on "graphics" though. Although it depends what you mean by that. It is well designed and the game has a unique visual identity. Even at the bloody low spec PC where everything was covered in this damn fog beyond 30 feet or so.
And despite that Dunmer faces look like ash-baked potatoes not a single mod or a sequel have managed to rival Morrowind in the last 23 years.
Honestly, I love how Morrowind looks, but it's hard to say that it looked "good" for the time. Character models were especially poor: The practice of separate body pieces was outdated years before Morrowind came out. But despite that, it manages to be captivating in a way few other games are.
@@Takarias Art design vs. graphical fidelity. Morrowind had excellent art design, more than made up for it's arguably poor graphics.
@@Ichthyodactyl Exactly the wording I've used before! Phantasy Star Online is another great example of that - the fidelity is terrible, but damn does that game have *style*
The thing is you can use even "poor fidelity" graphics in your design well. Occasionaly design overshadows poor graphics or vice versa, but I think in case of Morrowind they work in tandem. In good hands, "graphical fidelity" or little quirks engine has are tools of the visual design.
Now, I'd have to admit, that Morrowind looks utterly horrible and barely legible in certain places, tilesets and areas because of poor graphics, too. Good luck finding your way around Vivec half the time or figure out which muschroom entrance you need to jump to.
I played Morrowind for the first time a few years ago on series X, no mods, just played, it’s my favorite game of all time! I had no issues playing the game, was so amazing! The music is just incredible! The sounds of the spells are amazing!
The music is truly timeless. I listen to it frequently
I played an assassin stealth archer with sign of the steed! I could backstab dudes or launch arrows crouching down for massive damage
Finally someone mentions the spell noises, Skyrim's are fantastic in feeling punchy and impactful, but Morrowind's feel actually magical, even somewhat silly sometimes, which I think helps fit the game's atmosphere. It's a sort of whimsy I feel Bethesda and the rest of the industry has forgotten.
Just a quick little comment because you mentioned morrowind's minimap. When viewing the menu, each frame has a box in the top right corner that will lock that frame onto the screen when you leave the menu. You can resize the map to however big you want it, move it to where you want it, set it to local/world and lock it on screen.
This reminds me of how I played Far Cry 4. No HUD, no minimap, no flashing interactables, nothing. Just you and the world, and it's _so much better_
That seems very difficult! The more a game was designed with waypoints and the like baked in from the start, the harder it is to play without using them because there's no alternative for knowing where locations are. Did you use any mods to do this?
@@Takarias No mods, it was on xbox. Honestly it really doesn't make it too hard - you still have all the information on the map if you pull it up, it just means you gotta stop whatever you're doing to consult it instead of running towards the dot on your screen.
The hardest part was absolutely the stealth mechanics - removing the visibility indicator meant that I had to be a _lot_ more cagey about whether or not I thought I'd be spotted if I made a dash for cover.
Reminds me of Witcher 3, where the dialogue was sort of designed as if you didn't have a map. The NPCs describe locations and directions in some form of detail to help "Geralt" find the place/object.
I bought the 400-page Morrowind Prophecies guide book pretty much right after I got the game and it was really the only thing that got me through the early days of the game. Even as a somewhat experienced gamer of 23 I still couldn't figure out a lot of quests. Of course now 2,000 hours later I memorized almost all of the game, but there's still things I haven't found, if you can believe it!
I sure can believe it. I'm in that ballpark of hours and I learn something new every time I play or open the UESP.
I think I have the same book. I used to read it cover to cover as a kid. I remember there being a line about smacking a ghost and it made me giggle uncontrollably. “Do it, smack that ghost!”
I used the note pages for takign quest notes - how to find Arkngthand is one memorable early example. And then I realised pretty quickly that I'd need more space for that. Enjoyed the video, thank you!
6:40 Yes, that is the correct way to say it! Like a badass ancient Roman!
"This is a wiki in book form" oh god, don't make me feel old...
No, no, I'm the old one. I'm just trying to speak to the younguns in words they grok. Skibidi, or something...
@@Takarias Sure, sure :D
1. Calling Morrowind graphics crap for the time is bullshit, maybe it wasn't the best looking game of its time, but it was up there with the best.
2. There's enough impact and feedback for its time. The animations are fine. Remember, World of Warcraft came out two years later and if you want a game with no impact and feedback, crap animation and graphics, WOW is your game.
3. When I got into Morrowind first, it came with a Russian translation that broke the game - the dialogue was broken and none of the hypertext worked, and when I told the guy who lent me a copy, he laughed me off, claiming I hadn't played the game long enough to claim it was broken. So what I had was an open world sandbox game with no dialogue or quests, no story and no ending, and it was still quite the experience. I spent a couple of weeks totally immersed into my murderhobo fantasy, then I found out the Russian translation was BSP files and so I deleted them. And I got the game working. So even as an early goat simulator, the game looked quite good for its time, and played really well - I don't remember another game that did open world as well as Morrowind.
4. These days I play the GOG version of Morrowind on my Athlon XP-based retro gaming rig, with Creative EAX support and Windows 98, and on a CRT display, and I'd argue this is the best way to play Morrowind - but I should warn you, it is quite heavy on the GPU and you might need a high-end retro GPU to play it properly, something like GeForce 4 4200Ti, but no newer than GeForce FX series.
"The edges have been sanded down" is the probably the best comparison I've heard for new games vs old
There's a rather modern school of thought when it comes to game design that considers constraining the player in any way, or ever telling the player "no," to be bad game design, unless the game is specifically marketed as "hardcore." It's a school of thought I dislike. I don't see the appeal of cheap, effortless power-fantasies; games like vanilla Skyrim, for instance. That sort of thing feels condescending, and I don't understand how someone could not get bored of it, or even uncomfortable with the obvious unfairness in favor of the player character, if it's especially egregious.
That's actually why I never finished vanilla Skyrim before going all-in on mods.
I've really come around on Skyrim, actually. It's absolute crap as an RPG, but it really shines as a 'vibes engine.' This is something I intend to explore at some point in the future.
My first exposure to Bethesda games was playing Morrowind and its because of my positive experience with Morrowind that I was willing to give Bethesda's later games a try. Something that has puzzled me especially with the release of Starfield which is my personal favorite game Bethesda has made is why the games released after Morrowind get criticized as step-downs in quality. I have tried going back to Morrowind now and then over the years and while I have great fondness for the game each time I am immediately hit with how clunky the game is especially engaging in combat. The old 3D graphics don't bother me and I still enjoy the story. To me it's felt that Bethesda has continually tried to refine the open world sandbox role playing game design from Morrowind with later games by making tweaks to the basic formula. It's why I enjoy their games but I seem be in the minority on this as of late.
Most things you listed are basically things that make the game itself more immersive. Stuff like fasttravel nearly everywhere, instensive map markers. And the nav markers or even trails to objectives. Is all stuff that make most games less immersive in the end.
i remember Plotting routes using the mages guild teleports. Siltstriders and ships to where i wanted to go just to skip some walk. Is it a bit cumbersome? Yes it it. But its an interaction with the gameworld that actually creates immersion.
Another big change in the later games i dont really like is Essential NPCs you cannot kill. That totally an immersion killer. Even though getting the message: Reload your game since you cannot finish the mainquest. Is totally not a good thing. But thats what you get when killing random npcs. But i think this kind of freedom in an RPG is important. Restricting actions you could normally take with no realy reason is just dumb. You should punish them.
Another thing Morrowind did, what your rarely see in games today: Restricting Progression. if you go to cosades without having leveled up a bit. He tells you outright:Bro go and do something else youre to weak. Come back later.
you have serveral roadblock that way. Like with the factions needing some Minimal skill levels and stuff. You also couldnt do all the content in one run. Like Restrictng the great houses. or having different skill requirements for different factions.
While all of it can be seen as missing quality of life and a nuicance. It also is contribution to the overall immersion by giving your own character weight and slowing you down to actually percive the world instead of running from quest to quest in a questline.
In Contrast to that i present my Skyrim Mages guild experience: The winterhold college was one of the first questlines i did when i was new to the game. i was giddy to join. Yeah some mages training. Oh a Quest in a Dungeon. Nice we found some artefact. Oh no its dangerous we need to save the College. We save the College. Now youre archmage. Wait what? I just joined to guild like a few hours ago?
Youre incentivised to play that whole questline back to back. Especially if its not just cause its a quest but you want to actually roleplay as a mage. So when the college is in peril the thing to do is saving it. But since it is just that. You never are really given the time to settle in. To be a student of magic at the college. To do some sidequests. and so on. And what also doesnt help is that you dont really need any magic skills to actually finish that questline.
And in my opinion thats a thing that creeps though all major questlines in Skyrim. Some more some less.
I just published a video about the benefits of Morrowind's travel systems, and the crux of the argument I present is essentially that it's good for immersion for a wide range of reasons. Morrowind really does immersion incredibly well - the innate depth of the game's systems gives each decision weight in a way few games achieve.
I replayed the game after years, and I still get new feelings every time I immerse myself in that world. It´s really feels deep.
I will confess that maybe the strange mixture of dice-based and action combat isn’t the best, but it’s not bad. Nowhere near objectively bad. Maybe your build is objectively bad, maybe your skills are objectively bad, maybe you as a player is objectively bad. Just do what you have to do to maximize your chances of hitting and it’s pretty much not an issue unless you’re punching far above your weight class.
Oh, this was great man! It takes a very particular kind of game review to keep my interest (Mandolore and Grimbeard really do it for me) but I love hearing thoughts on more nebulous topics like this. All the better when filtered through the perspective of one of my favorite games!
That's a sub from me dawg.
Glad you enjoyed it! I might dip my toes into reviews at some point, but I really like looking at specific elements of game design and seeing the different ways designers approach the same/similar things.
One of the first things I did with Morrowind was learn how to make a mod. Just so I could save my custom classes. Because I spent a lot of time thinking about and writing up those class backgrounds, and I didn't want to lose it!
Oh, that's a smart one. Are the descriptions visible once you're past character creation? I feel like they're not, or maybe that was an Xbox limitation
@@Takarias On the PC, I think you needed to hover your cursor over your class name in the menu. But it's been a while since I last played. I have OpenMW installed. I just need to go drag out my discs.
The Elder Scrolls Anthology is why I have Skyrim, actually. I wanted the paper maps for Arena and Daggerfall (since I didn't get into those games early enough). And it came with Skyrim Legendary Edition. So I added that to my Steam library, got Special Edition for free when it released (because Bethesda did that), and finally got around to trying Skyrim in 2018. Because I wanted to finally see what this was all about. Though Morrowind spoiled me for having the open cities...
I could never bring myself to write on the notes section as it felt I'd be vandalising it permanently for whatever fleeting notes I could easily jot down on paper.
Notes pages aren't included to be used, they are included to get the page count to a multiple of 4 or a power of 2 for book-binding purposes.
You are correct! But they're still there, so I assume some people did use them. Though marking up a manual like that seems almost sacreligious to me, personally.
I too wouldn't on any booklet I cared about, I used to design catalogues for a living, and whenever I see notes I just assume the designers were unable or unwilling to shift things around to not need them.
Great video! I was a little scared of spoilers but I watched the entire thing. It is unquestionably a new experience for me. The only games I can think of that I had growing up that were in anyway similar were the old Pokémon games on the DS. It wasn't necessarily an open world so that took some of the challenge off but there's a lot of puzzles and lack of hand-holding for a children's game. Anyway I'm glad I'm not alone as faced the same challenges you did back in the day. Makes me feel a little less incompetent :')
It's definitely a very old-school game in a lot of ways, but it undoubtedly has its charms, and I'm looking forward to seeing your playthrough continue. (No pressure!) You're actually avoiding a lot of new-player pitfalls, like using weapons that you aren't skilled with, so don't feel like you're at all incompetent - the game merely takes a minute to click.
FYI if you look up "Morrowind Mechanics" here on YT, someone made a pretty great series of videos that explain how Morrowind characters work better than it's own manual. There's some pretty clever stuff going on that people don't generally pick up on, mainly how carry weight functioned a bit like how equip load does in the Souls games these days
only 727 subsrcibers ? wft! your videos are so fing great. can't wait to see more of your videos!
Only just started with this style! Glad to see it resonates for people :)
12:12 Me and my siblings' game booklet note pages were reserved for cheat codes, directions, reminders, secrets, glitch instructions, etc. But yeah, fair, I never bought a game used with anything in the note pages other than maybe the occassional scribble/doodle
Enjoyed your style quite a lot, would love to see more.
There is more on the way! No, really, I'm literally working on the next one right now.
@@Takarias I guess I have no other choice but to sub then!
@@mungojerrie86Thank you! By the way, they video is now live!
I am your 41th subscriber and I think you will get a lot more in the upcoming year . Great video! 😁
I’m your 42th I wonder who’s to be 43th and 44nd
Thank you both for the encouragement! This video is blowing up by my standards, and I'm definitely excited to make more like it!
@@Takarias I was actually making fun of his grammar but this was a really good video.
I'm the 58rd
Easy tasks are easy to forget. We have reson to remeber the pain.
I loved the other two Morrowind videos! I might be too young to appreciate this one, the experiences from the time of the game's physical release are utterly alien to me despite years of hearing about them, and the pains of the game's age or clunky design aren't too relatable either to someone who only really started enjoying the game following challenge runners like Mehrunes Mike and JustBackgroundNoise. Though it didn't feel like that was the thesis of this particular video, I feel the difference between streamlined, obvious, intuitive gameplay, and a rough, investigative, experimentative experience is useful for understanding Morrowind's appeal in the modern day.
@@MarkusManon Thanks for the support!
While I'd love to explore your ideas of 'the appeal of Morrowind in the modern day,' I am probably not the right person to do so, since I grew up with the game and can never play it for the first time again. Frostbreak, the other creator that I mentioned, played for the first time only recently, and their video allows a glimpse into this viewpoint
13:25 it may have been stupid, but it worked. i'm looking forward to your future videos about game design
I think it's important to have those rough moments in games, the meta difficulty. The struggle is to make it work for the game and not against the player. Something like Dark Souls 2's weapon durability was very annoying and didn't add much of anything but frustration. Morrowind requiring you the player to notice things and look for a dwemer puzzle box as opposed to having it marked adds to the game.
Absolutely. It is a tool in the designer's toolbox, and not every use of a tool is good
On the other hand, the Shrine of Amana, also in DS2, is an example of the sort of assholery that I enjoy
"You better believe I still have the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages open every time." And this is why we support UESP on Patreon, friends. Well, that and the calendar they send out every year that includes Tamrielic holidays. Yesterday was Malacath's Summoning Day, btw. :)
When I look back to being confused in 2002 I think more of modding, we didn't know how the Construction Set worked and there was little documentation, we learned by sharing information on Bethesda's forum, the old green one many of us have fond memories of. It also shows just how much Bethesda have changed, back in 2002 if you asked for help with something in the Construction Set there was a good chance you would get a very detailed answer from one of the developers, that wouldn't happen now.
I am all buckled in for the special interest.
Then I've got a channel for you to sub to. (It's mine.)
Hah, I've always told everyone that the only mod I use for Morrowind is the sighposts mod. Been that way since I finally got a PC that didn't crash in the tutorial and could play the game at last.
Honestly, I see where you're coming from with the shared experiences, but that's secondary to me. Talking with my friend (...s?) about something we both liked was a part of my childhood, not a part of gaming. If it hadn't been gaming, we'd talk about something else. But I think friction is hecka important for games even if you never talk about it with anyone, simply for immersion. If the game is not forcing you to focus and actually engage with the world (even in linear games), it's all gonna float past you and never settle in your memory. At least that's how it is for me. I will never support quest markers, detective vision, corner minimaps with GPS routes, and other such elements of game design.
I agree with you only in a very narrow sense, which I plan to make a video about - controls you have to learn add to the experience of adventure. It adds to the feeling of alienation AND makes the player feel more vulnerable before they've mastered it.
The standardisation of controls has taken something away from gaming.
Oh, I also agree that having to work to play a game makes the experience much better.
This is a very unique take. I don't agree with it, but live your truth, man. Have you played Daggerfall or Arena? They have borderline antagonistic controls - especially if you suffer from RSI lol
morrowind is such an amazing game
It can be hard to pick out what parts I love because of nostalgia, but it really is an incredible piece of media
You have to try Tamriel Rebuilt! It's amazing how well made it is and how seamless it fits the base game while providing HUNDREDS of hours of content. It's a must for me - it gives you the same feeling as playing Morrowind for the first time ever.
We never used empty pages in manuals, but we had a notepad with pages dedicated to specific games.
Under Sun and Sky, we greet you warmly.
Nice, good video.. Makes my leany legs sprinkle stardust of appreciation, Good Job
I don't know what this means, but I think I'm safe in assuming it's a good thing, so thank you!
i enjoyed this alot
I recently noticed I had used the notes pages of my Oblivion manual to write down console commands I wanted to remember.🤣🤣
Oh, that's a pretty good use case! I didn't start playing on PC until week after dialup was long since dead and gone, so its always been just a search away for me
Someone who loves Morrowind and is from the Great Lakes? Subbed!
Played morrowind when it came out. Have separate cases for bloodmoon and tribunal. I poured over that map.
Did Bloodmoon and Tribunal's physical releases have maps as well? I've never seen them myself - I only ever played the base game on console before moving to PC, why which time box copies were already a long dead art form.
@@Takarias yes they do.
@@kaanozkuscu5079 Oh, cool! I might look into snagging a copy of those - would be super neat to have
anyone wanting to get into morrowind should definitely use the development build of openmw, it has animation blending and many more features which make it feel so much better
I totally forgot about the animation blending! Probably because I almost never go into third person
@@Takarias it applies to NPCs aswell!
I'm playing Morrowind for the first time right now with OpenMW and the I Heart Vanilla modlist. Works fine, even on Linux where things like to not work fine sometimes xD
Morrowind does not hold your hand.
9:40, LMAO
good video sir, please make more.
hah, yeah, I miss old Apple...
@@Takarias I found super funny also because i just saw this video of jobs talking about the lisa:
ua-cam.com/users/shortsvk3vo7xVkJc
A game that get me the same feel you have with morro is the original dead rising. A lot of friction, but a ton of fun
I see MW I hit like. No exceptions
Don't really have much to say beyond I enjoyed your video. It's a good summation of what makes the game enjoyable and perhaps distinct from later releases in the series. Scaling the learning curve, and eventually excelling certainly adds a layer to enjoyment of the game. One thing I really appreciate about Morrowind is that you have the freedom to make mistakes, and consequently will be punished. Forget mark and recall? You'll pay for that later. Neglected to grab a few restore potions? Buddy, look forward to the naked trek of shame. I don't really know why but that adds a quality to the game. That and the game seems to encourage you to cheese a bit. I've sat in front of the screen on many occasions debating if bending a certain mechanic is just inventing a clever tactic, or outright cheating. Sure permabuffing is a cheat, no doubt. But buffing skill trainers? I'm not sure. Is damage skill on self training an exploit? Sure. What about using taunt to be a righteous murder hobo? Open ended and perhaps not entirely thought out game mechanics actually lend to player choice, and I like that.
The thing I like about having the freedom to make mistakes in Morrowind is that it also gives you the freedom to find creative solutions to get out of most of those situations.
The “Where do I go?” question is probably one of the biggest enduring good things about Morrowind’s overall layout:
It did not railroad the player along the main plot and in the beginning only hinted at what the main plot eventually turned out to be, rather than constantly prodding the player to resolve an urgent threat to the world and/or themself.
Morrowind offers a lot of options that were ruthlessly pruned back in the subsequent TES games, leading to more “frictionless” gameplay, but ultimately also “flattening” the core game experience by limiting the scope for “broken solutions” that used the interplay between various mechanics to find alternate ways of accomplishing tasks, rather than the “canonical solution”.
Sure, you can min/max your Morrowind character, but it’s really not necessary. On the flip side, while it is certainly possible, it’s hard to create an outright unplayable character - and I don’t think people are likely to do so by accident.
Of course there are some outright bad gameplay choices in Morrowind and beyond those mentioned in the video, I’d say that the implementation of Endurance and Health is decidedly one.
Because the Health increase doesn’t work retroactively with levelling up, it requires players to prioritise exercising Endurance skills early on, if they want to really benefit from the increased Health. The game doesn’t make this particularly clear and it’s the only mechanic where this sort of sequencing really matters.
souls player: well at least u have JOURNAL
I totally used the note pages, scribbled character builds and leveling plans
I think often these additions are done as "Quality of life" features, but imo if they take away from the immersive quality of a game or make it so you don't actually have to engage with the content there's a lot to lose.
Great video
Morrowind is my favorite game of all time. Been playing for 20 years and with azura blessing another 20. Especially with tamriel Rebuilt and those types of mods still coming out. Whether it's PC or xbox though I enjoy it vanilla or with mods.
I have to heavily disagree with you on the gameplay being bad. As you said, Its something that's very difficult to replicate, playing the game back in the day, when you couldn't just look up a guide on how to make a broken character, or how to abuse certain systems. They were things you learn, and the more you learn the quick you can make a character powerful, and learn different ways to make them powerful. Despite this, The low levels where you miss everything, constitute such an insanely small fraction of the game, even in a uninformed playthrough, that its totally insignificant. Ontop of that, missing and failing to cast spells is an important part of a good RPG, most games don't have it anymore, but it was common place in the era. The fact of the matter is, it was an RPG first, action game second, unlike the two entries that came after it. If your a true RPG lover, it has THE BEST gameplay of all the Elder Scrolls, period. Comparing Morrowind to Halo just seems extremely poor, its like apples to oranges. All of Bethesdas games are no longer meaningful RPGs. And as for your comment on the graphics, it looked good for the time, and it still holds up because its well stylized.
Honestly it just kinda seems like you only enjoy the game because of Nostalgia, and none of the actual mechanics appeal to you. And your point about Gaming being the only medium to have friction, this is an absolute dip of a take. Imagine attempting to read some 17th-19th century German philosophy without any prior knowledge or grasp of the subject. It is so obtuse and complex, it challenges you to chew on the concepts these people are expressing, it provides more friction than any game you will play.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I very much value this kind of respectful discussion and am happy to have it happen in the comment section.
You bring up a lot of good points, and I agree with most of them. However, first impressions are important, and Morrowind's combat makes for a very rough first impression for the unwary. I think it's ultimately better for it, but it is a hurdle for new players to overcome and I unfortunately don't think enough people give it that chance.
@@Takariasfor players that never played an rpg
I used to play d&d and morrowind combat system just made sense, after I started missing I realized that I just needed to stack one weapon skill in character creation and once you do taht you don't really miss that much even in the early game
I feel the same way. The combat system of Daggerfall and Morrowind makes sense to me, but then, I was a veteran of turn-based CRPGs by the time I played Daggerfall. These games have an RNG, or dice roll, combat system like any turn-based RPG, but the system is masquerading as action combat. If people understand this going in, maybe they will have a better time of it. People who played Morrowind back in the day were more likely to be accustomed to this type of system.
I have never liked action combat in its standard form. I want combat success to be based entirely on my character's stats, skills, and equipment, and not on whether I can click the mouse button rapidly or get my timing on a move just right. In Daggerfall and Morrowind, you begin as an underequipped, incompetent novice who can't hit the broad side of a barn, so you have to be careful where you go and have to be willing to run from a fight. In time, you learn the systems, level up your character, and acquire better equipment. Then, just as in any turn-based game, you get a lot better. And how good your reflexes are has little bearing on your success. Morrowind looks like an action game on the surface, but it doesn't really play like one. If Bethesda went back to this style of combat, I would be overjoyed, but I know I am in the minority.
@@Takarias You are absolutely correct. I actually tried showing morrowind to one of my ex's who was big into games like Baldurs Gate 2, a D&D ruleset game, and he could not get over the fact that he was missing attacks that appear as though they should connect, and he stopped playing and never gave it another shot. I lost a bit of respect for them that day, being so unwilling to even attempt to overcome the obstacles or learn more about the game.
@@heatherharrison264 yes! This encapsulates the way I feel about it as well. Especially as I get older, I find it difficult to play reaction time based games like I was able to in my youth. I love the first 3 Dark souls games and Demon souls, but I struggle to even make it past the starter bosses in Elden Ring with a melee build. Its very unfortunate that my only option for true RPG gameplay is basically top down turn based games.
The notes page was purely for cheat code notation!
A valid use case! I just had a binder of printed pages from Cheat Code Central lol
The clunkiness of the combat is absolutely acceptable, it’s fine, because it is a magicka oriented game and there are so many redeeming qualities about the game.
I always play blind and I'll always do. Feels kind of "weak" playing with a guide at hand and not even being able to cope with the little frustration and anxiety of not knowing where to go. Okay, if you can't figure it out in, let's say, 3-4 hours of gameplay, it's okay. But trying to advance on your own and finding the key to the solution is one of those sensation I don't understand gaming without
I always have the UESP open for the charts and other reference materials like how the various mechanics work. Rarely do I *need* to use the quest guides.
Morrowind was one of the most beautiful games that released in those days, the graphics were most certainly not crap
In a straight shootout with nearly anything else from the time, it's gonna lose. In a time when shaders and long draw distances were becoming the norm, Morrowind's stuttering performance and PS1-like draw distances looked dated from day one. I think it does a lot with its art direction, though.
@@Takarias Check out what games released in 2002 then. With the amount of detail and polygons Morrowind has in it's open world there's no way anything even came close. And if Morrowind was supposedly so behing then name the games, preferrably open world games, that looked better.
@@patrykzukowski7471 GTA3, Vice City, and Mafia are easy picks for open world, which was an uncommon style at the time. If we open up to other styles, Halo CE, Jak and Daxter, THPS4, JSRF, Kingdom Hearts, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, Splinter Cell, and any number of racing games were all pushing more polygons with better lighting and fancier animations at higher framerates.
Morrowind looked dated. But that wasn't the point of it. The point of Morrowind was the detailed worldbuilding and roleplaying potential. It was - and is - incredible for entirely different reasons.
@@Takarias Mafia had less polygons and smaller world, it only had better textures, cause it could. Vice City was extremely dated when it came out, super low textures and low amount of polygons and of course GTA3 has less plygons and worse textures as well. I don't understand how these less graphically demanding games compare.
The rest are not open world and obviously they will look better.
Yooo just wanted to pop in and say I'm impressed! only thing I noticed was mic quality, but that's just a money problem. Otherwise, love the production style and quality!
Hey, thanks for the feedback! I actually have a pretty good mic and audio setup, so I'm willing to bet the problem is user error rather than hardware. What specific issues are you noticing?
He's just too close to the mic, or the gain is too high, or both.
@@Junk_Cat_0this but it also brings some charm to it
Yeah it's fine @@Takarias
I think I was using the EQ wrong - adding rather than subtracting to get the sound I want, which was causing distortion in the low end and certain plosives. I've tweaked it for the next one! Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
11:19
Hey mate, watching this right now. Love the video so far, but I wanted to comment now on case I forgot to later. Since you came from Xbox originally, you might not know, but you can pin the mini map (or full map) to your game UI from the menu screen. That’s what the little square in the top right of the map menu is for.
In fact you can pin any of the menus to the game UI with the corresponding button. Have fun with that.
Yep! I've known this for a while, I just... Don't do it. I like to have my menu screen arranged the way I've got it, and it's with the map covering most of the screen, so I'll just stick with the 'compass' minimap lol
Some questions shouldn't be answered and most things should let you discover them, that is part of the whole magic. Ubisoft went too far the other direction for their Open World Games and littered them with artificial feeling POI's displayed all over the map. However, the chance to cast and weapon accuracy in Morrowind were old concepts from previous Dungeon Crawlers(Who took it from D&D's dice rolls) that didn't carry over well for real time FPS combat. Thankfully it was removed in Oblivion.
Never played this much got more into oblivion and skyrim. But i remember loading a friends xbox save on a laptop. After clicking through a thousand loading errors it loaded the save and it worked.
Morrowind combat is objectively better than Oblivion
I subjectively agree for a litany of reasons, but I find it hard to agree as a blanket statement. The combat systems of both games simply have design goals that are too different from each other for me to make that statement.
The animations are still letting it down, though. Swords always feel like they're made of floppy silicone rather than stiff metal.
@@Takarias my big issue with Oblivion is that with magic relegated to a bumper, weapon to a trigger, shield to another trigger and scaled enemies all fights feel the same. Yes Morrowind could have benefited from animations that help feedback. But I'd take that loss with the variety that comes between Morrowinds variations in; enemy level, fighting style and attribute difference. You're trying to chase down a fast backward running, spear wielding Argonian. Then you're trying not to get knocked down by a strength based Nord with a big hammer and heavy armour. Then you're trying to just land a hit on a high agility Bosmer with throwing stars. It is rough around the edges but it's very deep and satisfying to see the character progression when your imagination allows it which I feel is lost in Oblivion
Quest givers giving incorrect directions was ON PURPOSE. People give wrong directions, say right instead of left. That's the point.
I clicked this video because I want to love Morrowind, it's really hard to get into by my modern standards
What's the thing that you bounce off of?
@@Takarias exactly what you spoke of... I have no idea where I'm going... I clearly hit him but I "missed"... I walk so slow for a game that's mostly walking... It's a beautiful game in terms of atmosphere but yeah
Just gotta talk to people to figure out where to go and what to do. NPCs will always give directions. As for combat and movement speed, these are both things that your character will improve at as you level up. For combat, I typically find that around 40 skill in that weapon is when it starts to feel 'reliable,' so you just have to focus on the things your character can do
The combat is amazing. Its a real time tactical game, adapting ttrpg mechanics into a 3d game. Learning how to play is the filter that weeds out the lesser players.
I am yet again commenting under a morrowind video shilling the VR mod.
Borrowed my lil bro’s vr gear and tried it out and it was probably the peak of any experience I’ve had playing games. Played a mage + hand-to-hand character and it just felt so cool getting into fisticuffs and then just blasting a guy with spells when he goes down. Wandering the daedric ruins was so sick too.
oblivion had the scroll item duplication glitch that you would use to fill the houses of assholes with lettuce or cheese
I never used the manual. The game is pretty straightforward imo especially compared to crpgs.
Tak, I feel like your video ended where it really should have began. Sure, players today like to take the path of least resistance (or as you said dominate) while playing a game, but why is that? Could it be that something has changed in the digital environment as you alluded in the video, or is this perhaps just representative of a small but noticable fraction of the gaming community that is active in the online sphere? Perhaps it also has something to do with the overwhelming amount of games that players can choose from, leading to a phenomenon where players feel the urge to finish a game as quickly as possible to move onto the next. I think there's still room for thought in this topic and I encourage you to pursue this in future videos should it interest you. I will subscribe regardless.
Thanks for the support! I'm willing to bet the cultural shift I've noticed is due to a multitude of factors, certainly including the ones you mention. I'm definitely planning to make more videos, and I'm sure this topic is something I'll be returning to in the future, and from different angles.
I think you struck gold with mentioning the rush in finishing games, I remember rushing Devil may cry 5 (I played it in 2023, way after it released) and I had seen much of it online, I would rush missions just to get to the "good" parts of the game, so my first playthrough felt rushed and unsatisfying honestly.
The gameplay in early game isn’t that bad, I went in mostly blind and just built a character following a rough guide for how to allocate skills and on a lower difficulty I had no issues. As I levelled up I increased the difficulty a bit and this has been a very enjoyable first playthrough.
Morrowind is the good kind of struggle.
😊👍
I always did read a games manual all the way back to the sinclair ZX spectrum in the early 80s, I would read them while on the bus on the way home from town after buying it. I kind of miss that as I get all my games digital these days.. Great video man.
The ZX was before my time and an ocean away, but I miss cracking open a game case in the car and taking a whiff of that new game smell before digging into the manual and inevitably getting carsick from it lol
I remember the graphics being really good when it came out (I played it on PC).
rent a game, leave cheats in notes section, soon others did the same
I can't remember renting a game and the manual still being in the case. Seemed like people always yoinked them.
@@Takarias blame nintendo actually, they were mad games were being rented, but couldn't stop it. They instead went after distribution of printed materials bearing the nintendo trademark. Nintendo vs Blockbuster. The few writing cheats resolved to doing so on the inside sleave
You say you love Morrowind, but Morrowind doesn't love you, N'wah
This is the end of you, s'wit!
Played Morrowind back in 2003 (I think?). I remember how mesmerised I was by it, its world and story. The graphics felt overwhelmingly good at the time and everything was so vast that I felt constantly lost in the game. Maybe I was just less spoiled by games than I am now, but Morrowind, perhaps out of pure nostalgia, still feels to me like one of the best games that ever were.
On a side note, nowadays I couldn't play it without the Fair Magicka Regen mod. It doesn't feel overpowered, while without it the mage builds feel utterly useless. You probably know about it, but I just wanted to let you know that I would totally consider it part of the vanilla experience.
I am not familiar with it, actually. I typically don't use any mods that modify mechanics, and even Skyrim I don't think I ever have more than 20 or so mods installed. I run my games fairly vanilla.
So Morrowind is desktop Linux minus the paper manual?
now tha's some good nitpickin :D
Are they called "Drakes" at this point in ES history?
In vanilla Morrowind, gold, septims, and drakes are all used interchangeably. A habit I've subconsciously picked up.
Wake up, you were dreaming
I heard them say we've reached Morrowind.
5:12 Halo has a single melee attack and is trying to sell the illusion of this modern badass elite shooty soldier who was woken up from cryo because of how badass he is and how much people need him. The combat in Morrowind is objectively great for what the game is trying to do, which is translate tabletop gaming mechanics to a 3D world. Why would your emaciated, recent ex-con character deposited in a foreign land be a master fighter? You're a nobody who maybe can handle a weapon better than random citizens or some basic magic. If you make a logically sensible build for an RPG you won't struggle much if at all unless you wander into high lvl zones, which you should immediately know to avoid if you get bootyblasted by a Dremora Lord 45 minutes into your first playthrough. If you wanted to use big 2 handed axes and dumped all your stats in Willpower you're playing the game wrong, it's not the game's fault. You have to earn the power fantasy in tabletops generally and as such you have to earn the power fantasy in Morrowind. With Master Chief the power fantasy is there from the beginning and will always be the same level of power fantasy even when he gets to use the big explody guns because ultimately that's ALL he can do is shoot and punch and throw the occasional grenade. In Morrowind you can rise to the level of fist-fighting gods, leaping across entire towns, teleporting back and forth to places, casting magic powerful enough to obliterate anything in the vicinity, forcing NPCs to move into your house with a high level command spell, forcing NPCs to kill each other with Frenzy spells, gaining permanent flight, gaining permanent spell reflection/absorption, summoning permanent minions and so on and so on.
I know u play mostly vanilla but if you haven't played Tamriel Rebuilt plz do yourself that favour.
This video makes me realize I hate the "improved" graphics overhaul I installed. It looks so unnatural and not the Morrowind I remember playing 20+years ago as a teenager. I'm currently on a biannual Morrowind binge and I'm going to wipe and reinstall without the graphics mods. Graphics that fit the game > "pretty graphics"
Based
I find that a lot of the replacement texture mods crank the contrast entirely too high, and everything looks very uncanny and fake. Not that vanilla Morrowind looks 'real,' but it looks more cohesive and believable within its art style.
That is more coherent than how I said it. I just had a baby so I'm 90% dumberer than 3 months ago.
Haha. Yes, Morrowind looked terrible when it first came out. I remember my brother watching me play the game on my OG Xbox and we got into a fight because he kept making fun of the way that the game looked. He was destroying my immersion.