Bringing up Divinity and Witcher 3 at the start of the video?!? Look I get the game gets a lot of praise but that sentence lost me totally different generation of games, I would be comparing it to games like Gothic
People are comparing Morrowind to modern RPGs as if it's a superior game, so my comparison is well justified. People are playing Morrowind today, it's no longer 2002.
@@leftwingbreadtuber649 Even if you compare it to the Witcher 3 in this ridiculous scenario, Morrowind still comes out on top easily, you either like playing as Geralt or you don't like the witcher series, I found Geralt boring and his story is less interesting then whatever my Nerevarine is, the witcher quests are not made in the interest of the player they are basically pre scripted and written scenarios that mirror a tv show approach, Morrowind is a far better game because it is a true RPG also you cant beat Elder Scrolls lore the Witcher lore is decent but not comparable so the world building is always going to go to Morrowind in this scenario
Unfortunately, it's not "over a decade old", it's over TWO decades old. Things like the Witcher 3 & Divinity Original Sin shouldn't even be in the discussion for comparison IMO. You should go back and play Baldur's Gate, not the enhanced edition, the 1998 version of the game and perhaps some other RPGs from the time period and readjust your critical viewpoint, because like so many people today, you shouldn't judge things by today's standards, but by the standards of the time they were created. That would be like criticizing Van Gough for not being more modern like Picasso. Don't get me wrong, I'll freely admit that Morrowind has issues, whether do to developer choice or time, but it's not like we didn't know that at the time. We lamented that we didn't get the rest of Morrowind to explore, we didn't want a refund because it wasn't included. While a 3 year development window seems virtually impossible today, that was not the case 25 years ago. It's viewed so great because we didn't have anything like this available to us before and it had a great story and world that you could get immersed in like nothing ever before. The fact you want to compare it to games developed 15-20 years later is a testament to how much it got right and how much it influenced gaming. So no, I don't think it is overrated. Just because something isn't perfect, or people did things better later doesn't detract from how great it was to play over twenty years ago.
I think it's still fair to compare it to newer games; there is nothing technically preventing the developers in 2002 from adding as much narrative complexity and as flexible quest design as exists in The Witcher 3. Obviously the engine isn't as capable, but I was focusing on the quest design, which definitely could have been better and for which the engine wasn't the biggest problem. There is simply no good reason why it can't at least match the Witcher 3 in terms of presenting to the player interesting choices. On top of that, my goal in this video was kind of "phenomenological." I want to review the experience of playing the game, no matter when the game came out. People are playing the game TODAY, not yesterday. It's pointless to try to rescue its shortcomings by appealing to the fact it wasn't released this decade. Many of the flaws I pointed out are pretty timeless anyway. The issues mainly come down to poor game design, having nothing to do with the age of the game.
Morrowinds scope was not as large as the Witcher 3, I find the Witcher 3 is a good game but it’s replay value is low compared to elder scrolls games which have many different avenues of game play and your character can go a million different ways, The Witcher 3 does not fully scratch the itch of being a good RPG, I found myself not enjoying being Geralt his character is already written and I found myself not interested in his story as much as the stories I created myself in other games, I would recommend in 2023 someone play Morrowind over the Witcher 3 if they are looking for a true fantasy rpg experience
Рік тому+16
@@MewskieThe Witcher isn’t really an RPG to be honest, unless one considers playing pre decided role to be RP:ing.
that reminds me of the difference between unreal when that first came out. and Medal of honor on the PS1 which came out around the same time. looks like they come from a different universe.
@ He threw the witcher 3 into the conversation so it is now here being picked apart since he compared it to Morrowind lol, and yes it is not a real RPG it is more of a cinematic tv show like game
i would say the opposite. morrowind feels like dark souls, in that it rewards knowledge. you can get ALOT of powerfull stuff pretty early if you know where. for example, in calmera you can buy a couple of rings with fire and shock damage, which will give you a garanteed damage. in balmera you can buy weapons with bound spells, that let you summon powerfull daedric tier weapons to use, SPECIALLY for the spear which costs very cheap, but can do ALOT of damage. even at low weapon skill level. the fact you have easy access to both enchanters, and spell crafting. as well as a very powerfull money making scheme using summons and soul gems(that you can buy in bulk if you know where to go). like i said, morrowind is a game that is hard, but rewards knowledge. but above all, it doesnt punish you for not min maxing. you could easily play a spell caster with minimal magicka, by using enchanted equipments for example. but in oblivion and skyrim, those are games that punish you for wasting your time. the fact enemies scale with you become a massive headache the more you play those games. its the opposite in morrowind.
@@marcosdheleno Although, in Dark Souls the enemies get stronger the further you progress in the game, so even if you hack souls and reach max level (bypassing the grinding), the game will gradually become more difficult anyway. In Skyrim and Oblivion enemies get stronger the more you level up, thus making the leveling more smooth, when at low levels you can easily go through the Oblivion plane with just scamps and easy daedra, and at high levels you have to clear out a regular bandit camp from guys in ebony armor. But they also reward you much more, there are bunch of artifacts which stats scale with your level, plus on high levels you should already afford things like soul capture and constant weapon charging which isn't as easy for level 1 character. The difficulty isn't specified on your progress, but rather your character. The stronger you are - the more challenge you'll have. It even makes sense with the infamous "non-combat leveling" - while those wouldn't help you in the battle directly, you can seriously make your game easier with them ( *looking at Stealth 100 and Alchemy 100* ), so it make sense to balance it in a way. In Morrowind... the more you level up, the easier the game becomes, yet the game can easily punish you for going somewhere wrong at a low level. Plus, you can *really mess up your character creation* , even Dark Souls isn't as bad with its Deprived class as some starting builds in Morrowind. The game punishes you if you don't know the mechanics. The good thing in Oblivion/Skyrim system is that you literally can start anywhere with more or less the same experience. You can completely ignore the main quest and start it with a challengeable difficulty at level 50+ when you will be ready for it (remember how it's completely possible to stop progressing in the oblivion mages guild because you don't have the right spells... or scrolls at all?) or you can start with main story and everything else will be much more challengeable after all those story-mandatory oblivion planes you have to go through... or you can mix everything. And, of course, if you think that the enemies are too weak/strong, you can always change game difficulty to your liking... unlike in pre-patched Morrowind or Dark Souls. Yet, people still thinking that "the game shouldn't be that unbalanced when I set it to max difficulty!!!" worldview is normal.
Something i always hold uncertainty about is the demand for things out in an open world. Similar to compariong art and architecture, games make interesting choices in how to place content in a world that must necessarily include space that serves no purpose mechanically. Im pretty curious if there are rpgs out there that make some deliberate, interesting choices about how to place or not place things you can put your hands on or interact with to any extant. I like that you very briefly mention how oblivion is beautiful everywhere, as one can argue that a structure can serve an aesthetique purpose instead of a utility purpose. But i think one of the most interesting questions to engage is whether "purpose" must be served at all, and why. One game i do know that id be delighted to see you talk about is the 2005 pc game parhologic who has a notable npc who deals with the philisophical implications of aesthetic vs utility in buildings, even going so far as to build structures that dont make "sense" that you can traverse yourself in the games small world. Mushroom trees are pretty damn epic though.
(TL;DR not all empty space is needed, not all filled space is needed - it's a mixture) You would notice the change, if you imagined all roads in a Bethesda RPG being removed. Roads have a mechanical purpose. In Morrowind and Oblivion you can find even just signs. They are not mechanically sound (they are only a pathway after all), or serve a greater purpose for that matter, but they boost immersion into the world - they make navigation more sound for the player (who is the only person this matters to). They also (here's the "mechnical, but not-mechanical" part), sport NPCs and travelers - these are not necessarily "important" (to the story), but they do improve the immersion. It's small details, wether interactable or not, that make for a sound decision. If you quarantine off an area, because "a great plague has befallen that place", you better not place a random normal castle there - but instead show the conflict that brewed in such a place. Walls have been shattered, several dead lie outside, or are being actively burnt by the local authority. Storytelling and the imagination of the player can already paint a greater picture, than any actual interaction with a physical object ever could. - If you want real insight into "sound world design", I wanna recommend a game to you. I hope you don't spoil it for yourself by looking up videos about it. Let a little bit of trust into your heart and look up: "Outer Wilds" (not the Bethesda game: Outer Worlds). The decisions, in terms of world design, are mostly a visual choice, but they all serve to sum up what the planet you are on is about. They are all bound to lore and a purpose outside of your understanding at the time of maybe even just seeing them. In short summation: The landmarks of planets dictate the important places. There is no path you "must take", but only what curiosity the cat indulges in from time to time. I would encourage you to buy it along with the DLC - and after having finished the game, to look up what the DLC actually added. The DLC is just as good as the main portion of the game. You are fine playing with or without it.
On one hand, I almost entirely agree, but on the other, some things you said about the removal of skills just didn't make sense to me. Spears were pretty much the only melee weapons with any degree of variation, due to the fact they actually gave you a functional difference other than a damage number, in the form of extra range. I'd love to be able to skewer enemies from a distance and play footsies with enemies for an advantage in skyrim, rather than having to just block or dual wield to augment damage. Also, barely anyone complained about unarmored going away? I beg to differ, I think being able to play a quick foot monk or an extra elusive pure clothed thief, or a crazed nude barbarian would all be amazing additions to any subsequent games, but it's simply not viable. Giving a simple speed boost and or fixing the already existing dodge roll from oblivion could've been a perfect way to do it. Oblivion and Skyrim may have more set pieces and memorable moments, but one side effect, or simply a trend coming along with that, is what I feel is poorer writing. There is no good reason why you need to bring the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre rather than Baurus, there is no good reason for the companions quest line to force you to be a werewolf. That fighter's guild mission where you accidentally kill a town may have been memorable, but even if you recognize that something's wrong, you're not allowed to progress the quest until you kill them all, same with the black hand quests. Dawnguard is especially egregious for forcing you to hand deliver an elder scroll to the vampire lord, even if you talk to Isran about it, then having Isran reprimand you for being stupid, when you only did exactly what he said. Not even mentioning the fact that they don't immediately detain Serana, and that you aren't able to kill her for the entire game... those are the things that make me prefer Morrowind's writing overall, even if it was basic, at least I didn't have to facepalm every few quests.
as someone who can't play morrowind because of how just awful the control scheme is I agree. Sad part is I think theres mods that fix most of the complaints you have, down to expanded armory adding back in spears and mods that expand various guild questlines. Personally I feel its even more of a blunder that in one faction quest the wrighting team forced you to sell your soul to a daedric prince for "luck" and that dosn't give you at least a perk that does something (Valdur's dagger does show you at the very least the vanilla game does have the capacity to give you critical strikes if nothing else)
Even hand to hand has place in morrowind. Mages usually does not have fatigue and you can put then on the flor very easily. If you can summon other basic summons they usually drain strength or fatigue also or damage them. His complaints are childish. He forgot how to play games…
Personally I don't think Unarmored or HtH are implemented very well in unmodded MW, but it kind of begs the question of what people expect from these games. Should all armor styles be equal so the player always feels good about his choices? Should maxed out HtH deal out as much damage as the best longsword in the game? Personally I don't think so. I do think MW could have handled the differences better, make them more spread out. That doesn't prevent all armor and weapon styles from having their function in the game. Heavy armor also hits you with encumbrance that you may not want. All armor and weapon classes have good artifacts. Unarmored is perhaps not so well implemented, but you need points in it anyway if you want to play a beast race.
@@No14210 unarmored is good for mage. Magic shields + unarmored are good combo. Hand to hand is just novelty in mw but it is ok and fun to stun lock your opponents and animals going to stun have funny animations
@@No14210 in competent action RPGs most armor types provide intrinsic benefits. Even in Skyrim, magic robes provide mana regeneration and spell discounts, heavy armor reduces speed at the benefit of protection, and light armor allows faster movement at the cost of the protection value of heavy armor. Many ARPGs go beyond this, including in games like Grim Dawn where spellcaster armors usually give bonus mana regeneration and heavy armors have high physical protection often at the cost of better enchantment effects compared to medium armors. There is a reason to actually pick between these armor types depending on your character and the choice is meaningful even if it's usually not hard to figure out what's best for your character. Bad things in RPGs aren't interesting. Optimization is a natural part of gameplay and there's nothing to suggest that medium armor should be the statistically worst in the game, it's just a fact of life due to developer oversight that it ends up being that way. And in a game where you can spend 50+ hours grinding to reach a maximum level, finding out your choice was a bad one so many hours later is fucking terrible game design. This is why most good ARPGs allow for respec'ing. Why can't hand to hand combat be as effective as using weapons in a fantasy game? Why can't I enchant my fists to turn them into stone or steel to increase their damage? It's lazy and boring how they implemented HtH and the style just doesn't exist, it's a meme. It's a wasted opportunity to have made something interesting. Instead, it sucks, and people who choose it without knowing that will quickly be disappointed as they realize they made a mistake. This is a pitfall of a lot of cRPG game design, but it's nonetheless a pitfall. Not every choice should be as strong as the other at EVERYTHING, but there should be things a given build is strong at comparatively. That just isn't the case in Morrowind. You just pick the option that gives the best dps
Its kinda hard to balance cause on one hand you have to put some sort of wall in front of enchanted gear cause it’s too broken. But at the same time this takes the fun out of creating little gimmick items as prices aren’t properly scaled
This guy doesn’t know anything about this game - he’s clearly never played it or he wouldn’t be so confused by the enchanting or bribe systems. Further, he’s comparing Morrowinds graphics to Cyberpunk. This video is one of the worst.
@@emilymschoener9193 not to mention, saying you can't play a pure mage is insane to me. Make a high elf with Destruction as Major Skill, and you have the easiest level 1 character. Pure mage is not only possible, it is the easiest build if you just know a little about the magic system. Now granted, stealth is difficult if you go pure (thou still possible if you know the game well). But calling magic weak in Morrowind? Are you fucking kidding me???
Respect for having the balls to go after one of gaming's sacred cows. I love Morrowind but I think it's unplayable without mods at this point. So many tedious hours tramping around Vvardenefell playing vanilla Morrowind on Xbox has taken the bloom off the rose a bit for me and the implementation of certain mechanics (like stealing) are very dated and almost laughable, which makes joining the Thieves Guild pretty unsatisfying. But the unique experience of flying through the sky while tripping out on Skooma and being chased by a horde of cliff racers is one that can't be replicated in any other game.
You weren't even alive when this came out. This was well recieved by xplay and other forums. He's comparing it to modern games, when this game was released in a time when open world rpg were just barely becoming a thing. It's like saying gta 3 is overated bc it's not as expansive as rdr2
@@robmartin5448 I was born in 1991 and I played Morrowind on Xbox when it first came out. I know the game is well received and is a classic but there are still aspects of it that have aged poorly. Even some TES fans were salty and saw Morrowind as a step backwards from Daggerfall since the world was smaller and they cut out a lot of features like horses and ships.
Saying the diceroll system is bad because the next two games completely removed the system is a bit strange, especially since every other bethesda game before Morrowind had dicerolls too except for redguard which people hated. And even Bethesda's soon-to-be new paypig fallout used hit chances. Also saying people dont understand the hit system shows you dont really stick to a build too, if your primary weapon is a major skill, you have full fatigue, and you don't have dookie agility, you'll hit like 80% of the time in early game
Actually, I think that Oblivion and Skyrim could have benefited from an optional hit%-system, the way it worked with VATS. Early ES games had this "swing and see if the game lets you hit" mechanic, which is great for turn-based RPGs generally, but feels very awkward and strange in a first person action RPG. So, I understand that they removed it, but it did make the weapon stats feel kinda meaningless.
I didn't say that. I said it was fine because Daggerfall and Arena had it; I was questioning whether it's appropriate for the marksman skill specifically. Also, I said that new players don't understand the system, which is just true. I personally understand it and know how to build my characters, but most people do not. It causes a lot of people to prematurely quit the game.
I am the same age as morrowind and played it after skyrim and oblivion. It is better than most modern rpgs. It just is. You should play it fully to get the full picture it is really fun. It takes getting used to and QOL mods help. Personally I use OpenMW with some mods to make the game smoother.
@@dankmatter3068meh the TES Community is full of liars. They talk about immersion in this game yet every npc feels like talking robots, not real people. They complain about Skyrim’s quest design yet the Fighter’s Guild is literally just fetch quests for 90% of the quest line
Morrowind wasnt "better" graphically. but that isnt the point. its systems were dated and from a time when people understood that 30% chance actually meant you stood a good chance of missing 6 hits in a row. because the engine is rolling a D10 and getting a roll of 8+ is actually not going to happen often. so technically the newer systems are "better" or more user friendly, since a hit is always a hit, and the skill determines damage done. But morrowind was far superior. No one ever complains that you get to be the grand master of the everything guild in 4-6 easy quests. Nobody ever complained that you could make a magical ring with bound sword with constant effect to give your character a never ending weightless daedric sword. that springs out of your ring. Nobody ever complained that you could make your own spells, so you could literally do a Flaming pirate punch that exploded into a fireball when you punch someone. that shit was amazing.
@@dankmatter3068 When we can all observe Bethesda stripping out systems just as often as they add new systems in, we can say confidently that all of the mainline games offer some _subjectively_ "better" things than the others.
the only truly objective metric i can think of to measure which game is "better" would be sales, so skyrim is the best sorry i dont make the rules what else could possibly be objective criteria?
this is why modern games basically play themselves lol, people these days have no attention span and lack the creativity to make their own adventure, they need to be strung along and told what to do and where to go every step of the way. games like morrowind are so beloved to this day for the precise reason they are NOT easy to figure out, the game makes a point of forcing you to use your imagination and creative thinking rather than just reading quest objectives written on your screen.
It sounds more like your describing Dagerfall. Morwind is a watered down Dagerfall that leans more towerds skyrim and Oblivion which makes it worse then all three of those games in my opinion.
Is tomb raider 1(the one that came out in 1996) a bad uncreative game then, by your logic? It's quite clear in terms of what to do and almost every mechanic is described in the tutorial. Did they dumb it down? Sometimes it even shows what certain levers do and camera sometimes points you to where you have to go! Horrible! All I'm saying is a game doesn't have to be hard to figure out in order to be good, creative and requiring skill and attention.
@dontcare3 - You're missing the point. All of these things have been streamlined in more "modern" games because RPGs are not for a niche audience anymore. It was always a market industry, but this industry has grown exponentially over the years. Business is about making profit. And so, this trends into quantity over quality.
spears were amazing in morrowind. my go to weapon for my caster, just enchanted a shoulder piece with constant bound spear and because spear leveled endurance, i just kept using one until that point. didnt even get it that high either.
NPCs... yeah they are just NPCs, a stationary lore-vending machines. Being a member of fighters guild i am delivering alcohol 2 times to some miners. And getting a code book or something. Wanna join guilds? Okay. You are accepted. In Morrowind it is just like that. In Oblivion you have to get recommendations from all mages guilds in order to enter the college. Shurikens and darts? Nobody used it. Especially ebony or even daedric variants. Basically collector's items. Same goes to most artifacts. Leveling is basically random... as only random decides if your skills are advancing. As only successful actions make skills grow. Blocking is all random and with this system could be not included at all. Fighting becomes a lot easier when character is like level 10. And levels up faster as well. Fatigue system is utter BS. Player is most likely moving around by jumping. Meaning that the most dangerous foe at the start of the game is unarmed bum. In Oblivion unarmed attacks damaged both fatigue and health. On chop/slash/thrust yeah... also, slash is the slowest attack and thrust attack is fastest. Balance in Morrowind and item logic are non-existent. Tanto swings slower than dagger. Some items with better material have less enchant capacity. Daedric tower shield can be enchanted with 9 health point regen constant effect which renders player immune to lava or drowning. Acrobatics of 125 renders you immune to fall damage. Artifacts being meh, and some "basic" items like Daedric Battle Axe are just OP. Sujamma is OP. Fryse hags have winterwound daggers with 100 frost damage enchant and cost 1000 septims. Life ring/belt, are items that heal 10 health points per use. A character with enchantment skill of 25 can use them both up to 7 times, which means he can restore 140 health easily. And they cost no more than 15 septims, have charge of 15, which means they recharge over time quite fast.
I played morrowind all the way through for the first time a couple years ago. After researching how to properly buld a character i actually loved it way more than i expected to. After getting introduced to open world rpgs with skyrim. I went back to oblivion and struggled. I went back to morrowind and really struggled. Once i finally figured out how to properly do combat in morrowind i actually like it. Most of my problems with the game is the fact that classic Bethesda glitches mixed with how morrowind quests didn't give waypoints directly to the next person to talk to made it hard to tell if i was in the wrong place or if the game broke. Morrowind today is a game that you would do well to use the wiki or a walk through if you are getting stuck in a specific area. Considering it came out before i was born its pretty fucking good and if i had my way i would have bathesda remaster it today
Boring, dumbed down console RPG. The leveling is stupid. You become a God just by walking around for a couple hours. The quests are terrible. It's a decent dungeon crawler at best if you don't care much about story which I don't when it comes to games.
I began playing the series with Skyrim. I went to Oblivion, then Morrowind. While I replay Skyrim more for the modding scene, I adore Oblivion but Morrowind is my favorite of the three. It's got flaws, sure, but it's genuinely a fun game with an amazing story. I do wish the guild questlines had a bit more to them though.
If you expend your mana, you have to use a weapon. That is so true, unless you bothered carrying potions which restore mana, which is the reason they exist. Maybe stop trying to cast when you're out of breath at zero fatigue. That could help. A couple of rings or amulets which restore fatigue make fatigue loss a non-issue, even for a warrior. If you were a PC gamer in the 90s & early 2000's, it was assumed you were a nerd and could handle things like reading. That's why the games included manuals. The player was expected to be familiar with the information within before playing. Its why tutorial sections in older games didn't have to hold your hand the entire time. Don't play an old game with Zoomer brain. Intelligence skills like enchanting & alchemy fed into any build, but especially for a mage. Again, you were expected to do some of the heavy lifting for yourself when it came to replenishing your pool of magic juice. If you think magic funneled you into melee combat, maybe you were approaching it from a single-minded perspective. Create a damage speed spell & either use it or enchant a weapon with it. Cast a 1-point levitate on an enemy & laugh as they hover in place trying to reach you. Take a cue from bonewalkers & damage their strength. A simple jump spell is enough to keep you away from most melee encounters. Magic in Skyrim was streamlined to the point of it basically giving your character three flavors of zappy juice to fling at an enemy. Nah, a mage wouldn't possibly make themselves stronger or an opponent weaker. Just paralyze them, bro. A roleplaying game shouldn't include options & choices. Just pick the most efficient path & join the herd. You're right about spears. Bethesda should have just looked 20 years into the future & applied a system like Mordhau. I felt the same way as a kid in the 80s suffering from a distinct lack of streaming services. I would have Tweeted about it, but I had to wait for cell phones to become ubiquitous & for Twitter to be invented. Damn them. What's the point of unarmed? Indeed. I hate it when I'm given the option to addle an opponent & run past them if playing as someone who doesn't want to kill if possible. Again, roleplay. Its almost as if just trying to be the best warrior/archer/fireball flinger is a limited way to experience a game. So, there is no gold sink in Morrowind & enchanters are reasonable? Interesting take. Its also hard to critique Morrowind's speech system when we see where Bethesda went with Skyrim & Fallout 4. Yes, you have to roam the map to find souls for gems. That is of course unless you can summon monsters. Never heard of someone summoning a golden saint to fill a grand soul gem to enchant gear, thankfully. Tell me more about cognitive bias & selective memory. I'll return the favor by telling you a thing or two about projection. All that being said, I appreciate the stones it takes to criticize Morrowind, which is overrated but not necessarily for the reasons you list. Bethesda games from Morrowind & beyond aren't RPGs so much as action-adventure titles in which you're allowed to customize an avatar. You get as much choice in the outcome of the game as you do in SuperCastlevania IV.
Yeah bro is trying to slay a sacred cow and that's fair enough. And MW has some very deep flaws. But magic being bad because you can't just blast fireballs out of the gate (unless you've really geared your build towards that I guess) is not one of them. Magic in MW is not an awesome button, but a way to manipulate the world and its environs. You can magic yourself some weightless gear, you can make yourself invisible, you can move witnesses out of the way, you can walk over bodies of water to avoid the slaughterfish, you can open locks and charm people without having to build stealth skills (which admittedly are very poorly implemented in MW), you can teleport at will, and yes, you can cripple your opponent in several ways before finishing him off with a fireball (unless he's Dunmer). Even seemingly useless effects like "Rally Creature" can be used to shepherd escaping enemies into your killzone while you're levitating. Some spell effects are not that great, but they still offer the player a way of dealing with problems other than bopping them over the head with a big sword.
["Maybe stop trying to cast when you're out of breath at zero fatigue."] That's a ridiculous mechanic, especially if you're claiming it's more "realistic." Casting magic spells is more about brain power or mind energy, and has less in common with physical, bodily fatigue.
@@josephpercy1558 Sorry sweetheart, but oldschool D&D from the 70s and 80s taught us magic has three types of components, verbal, somatic (movement & gestures), and material. Kinda hard to start a chant in a mystic tongue if you're out of breath. Look into the story of Raistlin Majere. You might learn something about a connection between physical fatigue & magic use.
Great criticism for the game but for good open world design is how much resistance the world is giving you like for example zelda breath of wild in rain you are forced to not use iron and you can't use fire About the narrative problem and options yes i think it should be possible and then giving you a canon ending in the books of history in the game but it would be interesting About spears i think it should come back in the elder Scrolls 6 as a main weapon and sword as a side weapon like using it as a dash thrust attack then breaks with durability or goes away from the inventory and you can't take it unless you finish combat About magic system i think simplifying it is a good idea like fire with extra damage frost damge with stamina damage and slowing the opponent and making traps but i miss making broke spells it's always funny if you finished everything in the game like oblivion with obliterating an entire city or doing your stuff but i can understand it I found that yes making morrowind without toutorial is actually very bad the game doesn't really help you understand the mechanics you should actually go out of your way and watch UA-cam videos or read the information in some old website i think my problem with the older games is fast traveling system morrowind did a great job in it and Skyrim did the same you can go around Skyrim doing that expect winterhold i am obsessed with roleplaying as a mage but no easy way out of winterhold makes it harder for me to play as a mage i guess it's a skill issue About the combat again i think that they should do something to improve enemies and their tools to fight you while the same for you like arcano in the college of winterhold questline but about the world design of the other elder Scrolls games i see it so great but i think it hurts the gameplay mechanics anyway great video continue pushing content
I've always found Skyrim really strange. Like, you live in a world with mammoths, giants, trolls and many other large/dangerous creatures, and your longest weapon is a sword. Honestly, that makes NO SENSE. Hell, they didn't even have a ballista, which would be a total no-brain weapon against a giant.
@@Nerobyrne yeah you have a nice Idea like to deal with giants or mammoths you would need a large weapon if they ever became a problem and the only place you find ballista is in dwemer ruins and yes would make sense and spears because you don't want to be close to a troll
ooooof morrowind blows witcher 3 out of the water. Objectively it did more for it's time. It's better by just about every single metric. Witcher 3 isn't even a good RPG it's just an action game. Witcher doesn't even know how to be an rpg, closest it ever got was action rpg with low player agency/choice. Morrowind was revolutionary comparatively. I cant keep watching this.
Funny thing is you sound like your totally sucking up to morrowind but you are absolutely right. I played witcher 3 and it was not nearly as enjoyable as morrowind and no I am not a boomer I am about the same age as the game and played skyrim and oblivion before hand. Morrowind is King 👑.
The reason Morrowind blew our minds in 2002 was that once you left the Census Office, you had complete and utter free reign which was all but unheard of in a game at that time. It seems trite now, but in was novel in 2002.
it wasnt even just that. but the fact you felt like your decisions made a diference. you could kill certain npcs that were vital to the main quest. and "soft lock" your game. except, not really because you could literaly jerryrig the infinity gauntlet you needed for the final boss. but that would require you to really know the game well. also, diseases and attribute damages were SCARY, certain enemies you would always face while carrying a ton of recovery attribute items, because you could genuinely get locked in place and unable to move if you tried facing them unprepared.
Got almost halfway through and couldn't keep going. First of all, why is your fatigue almost always at zero? It's clear you don't understand the system as it clearly states that your fatigue is crucial to dong any skill, from magic and combat to lock picking and speech, even npcs say it if you actually talk to them instead of just ignoring them "because they all just say the same thing". Second, "fake complexity" as you said a lot straight up isn't true as rpgs are supposed to be a bit more complex than "Here's a sword or fireball, go kill this reskinned enemy a thousand time and now you won the game", so maybe all the complains about spears being removed went over your head but I sincerely disagree. You have a couple of good points but at this point it literally sounds like you're complaining that Morrowind is an old game and doesn't hold up to Skyrim, which obviously is true because why would anyone release a game that objectively had more time developing and had better hardware to run on. If Skyrim had worse npcs and a more boring combat system then Betheasda would have to bury that franchise for good. A bit part of Morrowind is reading through most of the walls of text provided to you through npcs and manuals in order to understand what to do and how things work, something the newer games got rid of. Ever tried playing a tabletop rpg without reading any of the rules? Same thing This game seems like it's just not for you and that's normal, not every game is gonna be appreciated by everyone, especially when the newer games are easier to play. Thanks for your effort PS, fix yo damn fatigue, getting stressed out seeing that mess
Getting low on fatigue happens regularly, even not in combat, so situations like that arise, that still doesn't change the fact that this is a bad system in a fprpg, your answer of just improve stamina doesn't change the issue, it only explains how to deal with this poor system, also needing to read the game manuals is terrible game design, I shouldn't be nudged to put down a game, just to go by a strategy guide, or hope it explains it on the inner booklet (if it's even still there), point is, you shouldn't need to leave a game to go learn it's mechanics
@@Originalchili Feel free to play games that hold your hand and show you everything you need to know within 5 minutes of playing the game, this however is not that game. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a bad system, you chose not to learn it. And "needing to read the manual is terrible game design" is simply a matter of taste and by no means a objective truth. I admit some of the systems are not as polished as they could be but such is the way of every ES game, otherwise these games would be objectively hailed as masterpieces. There is a reason they made every game more and more simple in the ES franchise, it's to make the games more accessible to the more casual players and people who in fact don't want to be forced to struggle, such as fast travel and quest pointers, but that does not mean this game is designed poorly. It's designed for people who enjoy a challenge. Your opinion is valid but it does not mean I need to agree. At the same time, I don't need you to agree with me but understand that not everyone see things the same way you do. Morrowind is a good game, as is Skyrim and Oblivion, all for different reasons.
you take on magic is so, so wrong. Also, you can easily make a pure mage. Make a high elf with Destruction as his major skill, and you will have 100% chance to cast spells that one-shots all low level enemies. pure mage is not only possible, it is easier than both pure warrior and pure stealth.
@@JustBuyTheWaywardsRealms and as someone else in another video said. "magic is overpowered in Morrowind. Which is good, because magic is suppose to be overpowered. You are bending the elements to your will, you are invading peoples minds changing their perception of you. The whole point of magic is that it is overpowered! So magic being overpowered in a single player game is not a problem"
Great video! I used to shrug and not contest when people would say that "You don't like Morrowing because you don't like classical/hard RPGs" But since then I have a blast with games like Outward and DOS2, games that typically attract that same crowd. So that original argument doesn't really track with me anymore. Why didn't I have fun with morrowind? But have a blast with all these other more classic styled RPGs? I've been waiting for a video that explores these topics, so thank you!
Well... maybe because Outward and DOS2 are MODERN games inspired by classic RPGs and not ACTUAL old RPGs, they have a LOT of quality of live improvements, and general improvements over all that the gaming space back then just didn't know were possible or needed. Comparing Outward and DOS2 to Morrowind is like comparing King's Field to Elden Ring
@lizzy7999 that makes sense. So it's probably the case that people don't like the classics less because of a lack of intelligence, but more because of a lack of patience... Hm. Hmm but that's the thing though, it takes alot of patience to learn the pace of Outward and the Logic of DOS2. I would argue the same amount of patience it takes to learn morrowinds pace and logic. I think you put it perfectly that it all boils down to quality of life. It's not about brain power or patience, but simply comfort and feedback.
@@jaytalbot8186 Look at it like this, Morrowind is not an easy game and the fanbase is basically your guide, if you're smart then you know about the rest. Not only do they mock you, they have superiority complex of telling themselves Morrowind is the best TES 💀.
You're allowed to make criticisms of this game. Morrowank fanboys would be foolish to act like the game is mechanically 100% perfect. That being said, some of your comparisons to games that are almost 10 years younger than Morrowind seem quite irrelevant and you also seem to not know what you're talking about at times despite speaking with an air of objectivity. Do better
"medium armour is objectively the worst" statistically Her Greaves and the ebony mail which are both medium are the two best armour pieces in the whole game outclassing all heavy armour for protection while being lighter
Man, I like Morrowind a lot more than The Witcher 3, and I think I tried TW3 first. If not first than within a year or two of Morrowind. It's funny that you bring it up while saying people find it easy to overlook faults in games we like, because I've always thought TW3 was a mediocre hack'n'slash that everybody pretended was perfect mostly just because of its writing and pretty world. Not that Morrowind has *great* combat, but it does have build variety. And way better magic.
I agree with you on TW3's gameplay. It's not that great. I personally enjoyed it, but it's pretty repetitive and not very deep, and the criticisms people have of it are accurate. The point of my comparison is mostly to show how choice in RPGs can be done right, and I think TW3 does this about as well as is possible in a 3d open world game.
Agreed. I often just think the cutscenes are the best parts of the Witcher 3. Making it purely text-based dialogue choice game might have made it even better. Sure, the locations are sometimes awesome-looking (especially the Skyrim-esque Skellige Isles and Novigrad city), but mostly it is just boring wasteland. The game mechanics are mostly just hacking your sword and dodge rolling and following a red highlighter trail, while Geralt comments: "Hmm, someone shitted here. A fight was fought here. Blood. He must be nearby"
finally people are calling out witcher 3. when i first played it, it felt like a glorified version of ' two worlds ' (2008), absolute vast expansive world into shallowness.
I'm happy someone is critical with Morrowind who actually likes it. The biggest problem with gaming today is consumers tend to lower the bar every time a "respected" developer makes something worst what they made before. And now we are here with terrible, boring and unintuitive games and the future of AAA gaming is dark. No developer can show this trend clearer than Bethesda. Good luck! You gonna get a lot of hate because of this video. BTW I think the art style of Morrowind is the most creative art style they ever did. I truly feel the Fantasy in the game world of Morrowind. With the Oblivion and Skyrim not so much, in fact I can do the same as they did, which is basically the reskin of the medieval Europe.
I absolutely love this video, it's about time that someone had the fucking balls, to call out the Elder Scrolls community on it's bullshit and knock down the pedestal, that they have put this game on. Look, I love every Elder Scrolls game, even the ones I haven't played, but to say Morrowind is the best in the series is laughable. Morrowind loses to Daggerfall when it comes to depth in mechanics and RPG elements, it arguably loses to Skyrim in terms of atmosphere and immersion. It loses to Arena in terms of size and exploration. I salute you sir, and you have earned a subscriber for this excellent video. And hearing the "REEEEEs" of the Morrowind fanboys in the comment section, will keep me coming back, hungry for more.
especially because "i love this game, it's my favorite elder scroll, but it's not the best rpg of all time" is apparently terribly controversial how dare you say one negative word about morrowind. i could never get into the game because i felt it encouraged save scumming in a way that oblivion and skyrim didn't. maybe if i kept my finger off quick save/load it could have been fun. but i had fun in the other two without even thinking about saving.
Excellent video. Bethesda fans have extremely low standards, and that penchant for accepting such mediocrity started in Morrowind. It's hard to feel bad for them after Starfield. They literally asked for it.
to compare morrowind with starfield feels like a bad joke. morrowind had so much more to offer in both how you aprouched the game, as well as how the story itself worked. you could kill vital npcs to the main story, and lock yourself out, pretty much soft locking yourself... thing is, even if you did that, there was still ways to complete the main story, but that would require more of the player. this is something you wont find even in many modern games. this isnt a "do the game the same exact way every time, and in the end you get a choice of colored rainbow effect". it was literaly playing the game in a completely diferent way to reach the same spot at the end.
@@marcosdheleno Being able to soft lock the game isn't some incredibly important gameplay feature. It's a thing you do and reload a save and say, "cool." If Bethesda was a good developer, they would allow you to kill important characters without soft locking the game. Morrowind has its advantages over the later games in the series, and it's a shame they chose to strip so much out over improving, but I don't get the obsession with being a murder hobo and reloading your previous save. The main reason people dislike Starfield is the setting. If it was interesting and you could walk around a contiguous world map Bethesda fans would eat it up.
why have different kinds of attack? why have different kinds of armor? why have a different combat system with hand-to-hand compared to others? why have different weapons? answer; IT'S CALLED FUCKING ROLEPLAYING. And some of us roleplayers, are really sick of bethesda removing things, that makes us able to roleplay.
spears were amazing in morrowind. and so were bound weapons. which even at the endgame, were still usefull for casters and hybrid classes. you could even make use of bound weapons as your primary weapon for most of the game with minimal issue. and the fact you could do so much with so many diferent weapons, just made the game really feel like you could pick the route you wanted, more than the weapon that was strongest. like in oblivion and skyrim.
@@marcosdheleno exactly. The game did funnel you into minmaxing and becoming a stealth archer. It made multiple builds viable by ironically the bad balancing. Morrowind vs Skyrim is always my go to, for why focusing on balance in a SINGLE player game is really bad. Just make all options fun. Make becoming a god endgame regardless of build fairly easy. And then no one cares if a longsword is technically a better weapon than a battle axes. Just pick the damn weapon you like.
@@And-ur6ol exactly. in morrowind, weapons were more than just the stats on them. you could wield a staff and go full bonker mode by filling it with a number of enchants that would melt anything it touched. or you could never enchant anything more than a few utility spells like levitate or bound weapon, and just go your way. in skyrim, you only have 2 choices, go stealthy bow, or alchemy your stats out of wazoo. you could focus on a nerfer build that just damaged the shit out of the opponent's strength and inteligence to lock them in place. and that was a perfectly viable build. you wouldnt even need to kill most enemies in morrowind.
@@marcosdheleno you can do a pacifist run in Morrowind, fairly succesful. Outside of quests where you have to kill the target (although many of those, you can negotiate with the target and avoid killing them), you can absolutely go pacifist route. One of my favourite things to do, is to enchant a ring (it has to be a ring for obvious reasons) with invisibility, and just put in on whenever i travel around. And how nice is that? You have invisibility for when you wanna travel, and chameleon when you wanna do crime! Getting that invisibility is also just a nice reward to yourself after having done enougth of early game, to avoid dealing with cliff razors :D
One of the game's biggest selling points from the perspective of fans is its immersion. It's insane to me how shallow some peoples' thinking can be and then project that shallowness unto someone else for just flatly not enjoying a game - especially one that they totally promise is fun and not at all a clunky mess. When a game is as both mechanically and visually jarring and, well - clunky - as Morrowind, it inherently damages immersion. I remember watching Sseth's video on Morrowind where he says: "The game mechanics are bullshit; either you adapt to it and bask in its ridiculous glory and enjoy yourself, or you refuse to learn, die horribly and write angry complaints on a Korean basket weavers' forum." In order for you to immerse yourself, you have to be able to actually take the game world seriously - you actually try to become your character and try to make everything about the game as real as you can. What Sseth described is the polar opposite of immersion. When I play Oblivion or Skyrim, I try to BE the actual character that I'm playing. When I play Morrowind, I am constantly, acutely aware that I am myself, sitting on a chair in front of my computer, playing an overly elaborate calculator of a gadget. Credit where credit is due, Morrowind did replicate some enjoyment that's similar to how games were played when I was a kid - I turn my brain off and watch what the weirdness box will spit out next. That's basically Morrowind; and then you add the laughable animations and visual feedback, the walking into someone's house because NPCs basically stand in-place except for guards, walking up to where their valuables are, stealing them because the (stationary) NPCs have no line of sight and just walking out. Brilliant.
I don't quite know how you could use Skyrim or especially Oblivion as examples of immersion, though. Typical interactions with NPCs in Oblivion are even jankier, the voice acting is frequent and it's either bland or bad, and the mechanics don't cultivate immersion particularly well in all three of these games. The difference for Morrowind likers is that the experience is less automated and more player-driven. Some people justifiably don't like the lack of quest markers or the fact that the fast travel is exclusively in-world, but having to engage with those things and learn them as a person in the setting would have to is the kind of thing that connects them to their character. It is indeed a mechanical disaster on many levels. Sseth has a meme-y playstyle and philosophy though, and you don't actually have to break the game in ridiculous ways to make it playable. (People do like the degree of freedom it gives you though, are there are ways to make use of it that don't involve total immersion destruction). Aside from that, the setting and worldbuilding do a great deal of the heavy lifting for people who are into it. It's not that Morrowind is the peak of the medium, it's that no game has presented a refined alternative with a similarly unique and memorable setting. Morrowind is flawed and could easily be surpassed today, but no one is making games that fill the same niche. I can't get into the setting of even the most mechanically and visually polished games if they lack an identity and sense of believability. This is a subjective thing, games like this need the player to accept a high level of abstraction and ridiculous crudity, or else the experience will fall apart. We haven't come that far from the need to do this, when a capital city in Skyrim still only has a population of 40 people and NPCs can't hold a coherent conversation with each other. Every game is trying to get the player to buy into an illusion, players just engage with it in different ways. Alpha Centauri's dated visual presentation and lack of balance doesn't stop players from being invested in its writing quality, for example. Personally I can get more immersed in a crunchy 1997 isometric RPG than Skyrim if the former has an interesting world and gives me enough freedom to tell the story I want to. RPGs like Skyrim, I find them too restrictive and their worlds too bland. No video game has ever made me forget I was playing a video game, and Skyrim having animations and models that are *less* bad than Morrowind's certainly isn't a big enough gulf to change that.
@@kahir8642 This isn't to say that Skyrim and Oblivion are benchmarks of immersion themselves, especially not Oblivion. There's a substantial amount of glitches or even unfinished dialogue that can break immersion in the latter two games. My point regarding immersion is simply that Morrowind is so outdated and even cartoonish, so able to break your immersion that a game like Skyrim wins out by default - even based on something like the visual feedback the game gives you. I can simply get more immersion playing in first person in Skyrim, running through the forests with my bow out and then getting a satisfying animation of my character pulling the arrow on the bowstring back and then releasing. That's even before the killcam. The killcams can bug out but they work well most of the time. Who knew that better and more realistic graphics and animations aren't just for muh eye candy, they actually make the game... more real. Almost like that was the point.
@@Dimitrije_Sukovic That's all fine and understandable, I was only explaining why players view graphical disconnects differently. The two games (dis)engage you with their worlds in different ways that resonate with different types of players. A game looking nice isn't a bad thing, but obviously the audience that can stomach the way Morrowind looks and behaves isn't prioritizing the same things as someone who considers it a dealbreaker. Dwarf Fortress is almost as graphically primitive as any game can be but it isn't an inherently less authentic experience for it (and no I'm not saying Morrowind's ugliness lets it be as mechanically complex as Dwarf Fortress.)
@@Dimitrije_SukovicI can appreciate this argument, but I tend to view things differently. For me, I get distracted by realistic graphics and they squeeze out any room for imagination. I don't get immersed when things look so real that I have to accept everything on the screen as reality, I get immersed when there is a level of abstraction that allows me to insert my own interpretation of the things I'm seeing. It's a more active process of engaging with patterns, symbols, and suggestive elements of design. It's the reason why people find Stardew Valley immersive. Ironically I am finding Skyrim to be more immersive the more it shows its age, because the cracks in its graphical fidelity leave room for me to extrapolate a more complex world.
I say, welcome to reality where any kind of 'development' comes at a cost, including increasing game 'immersion.' You can't CHIM your way to transcending all limitations.
Рік тому+19
The only people who has a problem with this critique are players who know the game extremely well and so the games lack of transparency isn’t a problem for them. For someone like me however, the game is absurdley tedious because of the lack of information and I don’t want to spend that much time to git good to learn the story of the game.
they make games for gamers like you lol, usually they have so much stuff on the hud like "quest alerts", map markers, mini maps, a golden trail to follow so you dont get lost, hints that pop up, NPCs that tell you solutions etc.. its unfortunate that games have to be so dumbed down cause people cant take the time to learn a very easy game, I played it as a 12 year old on Xbox with no help and still managed to finish it and get a fulfilling experience. gamers today just cant handle the prospect of creating their own adventure, they need to be guided like a puppy on a leash.
Рік тому+4
@@dontcare3 you're wrong and right. I like games with good stories and Morrowind is really bad at tellings its story (which I know is great because I've seen videos and read about it). In general I prefer indie games like for example Hades, which is reeeeally good in all aspects. I did 32 heat, so its not that I'm bad at gaming, but golly gosh the tedium of Morrowinds systems.
It was different when we were kids and had all the time in the world to pour into games that gave us enough to explore. A game that required dozens of hours to figure out was my dream when I was 14, but is my nightmare now.
Рік тому+8
@@ihateyoutubesomuch371 Exactly, elitists will call us flithy casuals for not being able to play games as we did when we were kids (I played the Kotor games and Tibia). For example the dontcare3 type of people that look back with rose colored glasses and believe that every new invention makes the game worse, condescending because when he was 12 he was a genious and instantly understood all the systems (when we all of course know he understood nothing but could invest crazy amounts of time).
played through the main quest and did some sidequests aswell... it has its moments but overall i find it extremely boring, tedious and broken in a lot of ways. you can abuse the broken mechanics and run around as a demigod only to get stunned to death by a mere bandit in a cave because you forgot about paralysis enchants and now you play the waiting game until their weaponcharges run out... hearing the same three music tracks over and over, killing the same enemy (f** cliffracers and rats especially) over and over, walk super slow through quite empty areas (especially the ashlands can go to oblivion)
I think you got the enchant skill way wrong. Higher skill makes using enchanted items more efficient and recharge naturally more quickly, and you level it by using enchanted items normally. Also, I lament the removal of unarmored.
IN THE CASE OF THE HLLALLU HORTATOR QUEST YOU ACTUALLY CAN CONVINCE ALL OF THEM TO SUPPORT YOU ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS NOT SAY THE WRONG CHOICE IN YOUR DIALOGUE WITH ORVIS DREN BECAUSE SAYING THE WRONG THING MAKES HIM HOSTILE
Imagine you start the game have all these neat stats to begin with... and then you miss, miss , and ... guess.. yes you miss. Im sorry but it feels like where there are right answers theres just more wrong answers to why morrowind was the best. Also if you said you can mod morrowind to make it more adjustable you are giving Skyrim more credit so thats not a winning Argument.
Spears are unique in that you can hit without being hit from a range, at least outdoor, hammers put people on their knees more often. You can pure mage with atronach sign, summon ghost, attack, spell absorb repeat, raising conjuration in the process. Also can just make a cheap bound weapon spell that lasts for few seconds that you use to attack stuff so conjuration levels up more naturally. You say there's no gold sink in Morrowind, well yeah there is, training. Alchemy is not that much of a slog, you get plenty of shipwrecks with a bundle of fatigue stuff that you can use for alch, combine that with mudcrab meat, nixhounds. And you have cool things like reading Ajira's scrolls about shrooms and flowers to find out about ingredients needed to make potions without having a high alchemy. There are several books that give you some info as well. High level alchemy stuff is light and you can just keep the apprentice stuff in your home, which is how it would normally happen. You don't carry around a laboratory with you. No game has so far been able to replicate the feeling of an alien world like Morrowind. That's not a light accomplishment, which i think you take for granted. And as far as the diceroll system, if you can't figure out in 2 hours that you hit more often as weapon skill increases, you're better off playing mobile games. The different attacks dealing different damage is a punishment for people that don't read or like to think. I agree with you on the speechcraft. Morrowind is about discovering the world through books, asking people about lore, rumors and doing quests. Fighting is mostly pretty bad in the majority of games. Highly exploitable and it will always be this way. The AI and balance of the game can either let a player exploit the system, or crush him just for the sake of making something difficult, there's nothing in between.
This is so true and no one want to hear it. I came into the franchise with Skyrim first, and then I tried Morrowind and Oblivion a few months after... I ended up falling in love with Oblivion and not liking Skyrim very much. I wasn't able to get into Morrowind but started a playthrough a year or so ago. Morrowind's greatness is in world design, atmosphere, lore and writing, but IMO it is not a good game in the sense that it is not mechanically fun to play. Combat particularly is not very fun unless you're playing a mage, and why would you play anything else when the magic system in Morrowind allows so much creativity and synergy with itself. (Weakness to frost, frost damage, enchanted frost weapon, etc). I believe Oblivion is the best mix between RPG and action, though it COULD have been a bit more in-depth. Skyrim melee combat feels slow, Morrowind's doesn't feel like real combat at all. Oblivion melee combat may not look as realistic as Skyrim's, but the freedom of movement is important for fun, especially when it comes to something like archery. Oblivion archery is much more fun than Skyrim's simply because of freedom of movement over realism Morrowind is a gem of a game, and was a breakthrough for the time that it was released, but the combat does not hold up today so it's a pretty hard game to get into even for players who enjoy other Bethesda titles. Usually I prefer to just read and watch stuff about it
i would say the same about oblivion and skyrim compared to morrowind. morrowind has some issues with quests, but what it doesnt have is the obnoxious scaling that can really screw you over in both skyrim and oblivion. also, weapons and exploration was done far better in morrowind, even if the dice roll system was obnoxious to get used to. on the other hand, that dice roll is only an issue very early on. as pretty quickly you can either enchant spells on rings and other pieces of clothes that let you cast without casting failure. OR make use of bound weapons that are actually usefull throughout the whole game. leveling was also a much less of an issue compared to oblivion that, while it didnt demand you min max, the scaling punished you for underleveling with enemies becoming absurdly strong(as in inflated hp and wearing full sets of powerful gear) regardless if you were facing a powerful enemy or just a malnourished bandit. i still remember when i tried playing skyrim as a mage, it was all ok, until i got to this 1 random archer, the guy could just oneshot me. no matter what i did. so i was forced to use a bow, and spend more than half an hour shooting him with his health barely moving. until i gave up. none of the other enemies in his group was that buffed up. and i wasnt using any mods. its just that, i got "unlucky" and the game generated a dude using some powerfull bow and armor.
All the beloved, flawed classics from this era are "overrated". MW is no exception to this. Just because of the development cycle, stuff that didn't make it in as a result, systems being broken, training some skills being outright useless, jack-of-all-trades being the default best class (rather than straight warrior, as is claimed in this video), unfinished content, etc. It's more the feeling that they engender, and the amazing things on them that modern games lack. When MW came out, not all classic RPG purists or even Elder Scrolls (Arena and Daggerfall) fans liked it either (see e.g. RPG Codex threads from the early 00s). MW is helped a lot by the myriad of mods and fan patches. Still, playing it unmodded for the first time, without spoilers, wiki, etc. is an experience everyone should have, although it will frustrate zoomers because there's no hand-holding. Some of the critique in this video is just typical zoomer criticism, with starting issues that can mostly be negotiated by reading the manual or the tooltips in-game, or a (non-spoiler) guide. If you make your character so that you start with >30 points in one weapon class, then you're certainly not going to miss all the time. I don't think it's a bad thing that you have to think about your build. That some skills and builds are useless regardless, OK, that is something that MW can and should be criticised for. Missing all the time can be solved by specialising in one weapon class. Slow movement speed can be solved by making Speed higher in character creation (which is a valid choice if you're not metagaming and powergaming). I'm not a big main quest fan in MW, but the critique given here seems dead wrong. First the MQ is too easy, next it's "good luck" if you're not a warrior? Obviously the MQ can be finished very early on if you have metagame knowledge, but I would consider that besides the point. If you just play the game without getting all the spoilers from the UESP Wiki, you simply cannot know that. The game emphatically doesn't say that the player IS the chosen one, it says that you "become" the Nerevarine, you "can" fulfill the conditions of the prophesy. Whether you really are, or just someone's catspaw, is left up to your own interpretation. Some characters, like Huleeya, will question post-MQ if you will now also "drive out the foreigners" as prophesied. For me it's the no-handholding open world that still makes MW great. You have to figure things out yourself, you're thrown out into this big world, and you make your own destiny. Magic is one of the ways you can act upon that world and adapt to it. Which is a bit more involved than just casting fireballs, true. With metagame knowledge, the magic doesn't seem so impressive. But when actually role-playing, being able to levitate or walk on water at will (including when your scrolls/potions/amulets run out) is an asset. There is basically a magical solution to every problem in the game, including obviously the ability to avoid the ubiquitous and obnoxious slaughterfish and cliff racers, which even the best warrior will have to painstakingly kill whenever encountered. Some of the critiques in this video are valid, and insofar as they are, of course MW is "overrated". Still one of the best overrated games out there.
@@josephpercy1558 Therefor they wrote much more than just that, but I guess it outranged your zoomer attentionspan by about 10 miles to actually read the rest of it :(
@@RandlerayThe criticism rests on zoomer as a point of reference. Morrowind doesn't handhold, but is that a good thing? The idea of it being bad, or that its particular style of absent guidance (because there are other ways of not handholding players) is not the besr, is dismissed with the idea that essentially the only people who could ever possibly dislike this aspect of MW are braindead adhd addled zoom-zooms so MW is immune to critique on this front. Etc etc for all arguments. I find a lot of MW defenders have this fallacious belief that because MW is complicated the only people who don't praise it as the greatest game of all time, or god forbid even dislike the game, only do so because they're too stupid to understand or appreciate MW's systems and style and that if those people were smarter they'd see the light. Obvioisly that logic is wrong and it is possible to not favor or eveb dislike morrowind on its own merits. As a zoomer who has planescape torment and a boatload of other boomer games in their top 50 greatest of all time, I cannot stand MW and I'm tired of people pretending everyone who doesn't throat MW just got filtered.
@@JustForGaming_Alt-kf8lz " Morrowind doesn't handhold, but is that a good thing? The idea of it being bad, or that its particular style of absent guidance..." You contradict yourself. Morrowind does not hold your hand, but the guidance is not absent - simple as that. And there are many MANY videos on YT that explain and discuss this very point. Therefore your whole point is void of actual substance... talking about 'fallacious believes... Disliking Morrowind is not the problem. Disliking Morrowind on completely over-elaborated arguments is exactly what some would describe as 'filtered'. Why is it so hard for people, especially zoomers, to just dislike Morrowind?
@@Randleray The point is invalid because the one example I used is only 80% correct? C'mon. MW doesn't guide you on nearly anything past "swing your sword at stuff to kill it", which is why even hardcore players have to rely on UESP heavily. Had I written an essay here I'd be dismissed on grounds thay I'm nit-picking or some other and had I been more sparse you'd have dismissed me like you did the commenter above. Fact is MW rod-polishers like you don't let people "just dislike morrowind". Anyone who dislikes it without being able to write a treatise on the game is written off as being a moron and anyone who gives detail is then quibbled at on small facts as if anything short of didactic memory is an indictment against the player. MW is not the end-all-be-all of rpgs (even for 2001) and disliking it isn't a sin. You can complain about how people present those facts but they are facts.
Morrowind has issues, that's not debatable, and you do touch on some of them - such as the itemization issues. But a large number of these grievances and problems are covered in the manual, that archaic thing that games came with in the old days when it took an hour or more to install the game so you were expected to read the manual during install. Willpower increases much more than just fatigue. It also increases your chance to successfully cast a spell, you know... that thing that mages NEED to do. You know what hitting things with a big dumb sword does? Not increase the attribute dedicated to hitting things, which is Agility.
Doesn't that last bit just demonstrate his point? Why would a melee focused warrior need to improve agility-related skills to get better at fighting with a sword? No matter how you slice it, Morrowind's attribute system is incredibly flawed which was the video author's point. In other RPGs, when you want to get better at something, you either put points into that skill and its related attributes when leveling up and choosing gear, or in games that have similar leveling to TES, leveling one attribute makes you actually better at actions related to that attribute, such as raising Strength in D&D increasing physical damage, hit chance, and ability to perform strength-related activities. In other action RPGs like say Diablo, Dexterity may influence hit chance, but A: It's by a rather miniscule amount and B: you have full control over how much of one stat or another that you want, whereas to do the same in Morrowind you need to jump through hoops to raise your Agility using its bizarre "class" mechanic.
I think a lot of beginner issues with morrowind could be easily remedied by reading the manual and it’s unfortunate that people just don’t do that for games anymore
Apparently you missed the parts where I deliberately waited to restore fatigue before fighting. Obviously I can't do that if I get ambushed by the dark brotherhood (since it deletes your resting) and sometimes you do genuinely just run out of fatigue when fighting, like if you stumble into an enemy while traveling.
I've seen some lamenting unarmored, people who want a monk/ninja type build. Although they got rid of acrobatics by skyrim which was sad, jumping around was fun
i always turn off always use best attack. I like how your movements could increase or decrease your damage. It adds a little more to combat and changes how different weapons feel when attacking If I were making a RPG i would consider including this feature but more complex, like custom for each weapon. Maybe if a player does a particular set of moves they can perform a special attack like a fighting game. Like if you charged up your attack and jumped while sprinting, you attack with a lunge.
An excellent analysis and breakdown and I find it most amusing that so many people are rushing to defend Morrowind's mechanical complexity when compared to even run-of-the-mill ARPGs like Diablo 2, Torchlight 1&2, Grim Dawn, and Path of Exile, Morrowind's mechanics are so incredibly basic as to be uninteresting. Or to compare to another first person game series, take the Borderlands games, where you had to compare weapons of the same type (especially in 2 & 3) and weigh various statistics. All weapons in Morrowind, and all TES games, are a simple question of what generates the most dps, as damage reduction is always a flat % value, enemy counts are almost always small which obviates the need for AoE and crowd control effects, and debuff skills are limited to spells and enchantments while weapon combat skills are just about increasing damage per swing (and functional damage per swing in the case of hit chance). I haven't done the math in Morrowind, but in Oblivion the damage formula for weapon skills calculated to be a 5% increase in damage per 10 attribute points (+50% at 100) and 15% per 10 skill levels (+150% at level 100). I wouldn't be shocked if the math was the same or similar in Morrowind (upon looking, the Strength calculation is IDENTICAL but skill has no bearing on damage, only hit rate), but it's telling that this is the only effect of raising the skill and attribute, and that there are very few ways to increase damage or efficacy of your character outside of this. As there is no cap to attribute level in Morrowind, it only becomes a matter of fortifying the appropriate weapon attribute as much as possible to create a character who not only hits very consistently, but also deals incredible damage when doing so. Intelligence stacking is notorious for completely breaking the game due to Alchemy as well, in a way that is completely uninteresting and almost certainly unintended considering that it was removed in Oblivion and the cap for fortifying skills and attributes was at 100 in that game. Morrowind is a broken, unbalanced mess of a game as an ARPG. You either make a series of uninteresting choices that have middling effects on your overall power level as a character, or you break the game entirely. It was a game with a somewhat unique setting but for some reason fans really latched onto it and I guess never played something with more complexity and better balance afterwards. And since people keep bringing up that you can only compare the game to its contemporaries for some reason, Diablo 2 released 2 years prior to Morrowind and has a far more interesting system of character progression and combat than Morrowind by far. So I really don't know why people think Morrowind is a complex game. It isn't. You aren't having to pull multiple enchantment types to build a character, nor manage CC or AoE effects to clear dungeons effectively. Every weapon skill is identical save for the dps of the weapons and the available item pool, which itself is obviated greatly by the ability to apply enchantments to certain armor and weapon types. Your choices are almost meaningless in this regard, especially since like most RPGs with potions, even with a bad character you can power through almost any dungeon provided you have sufficiently stocked up on healing potions prior to entering. Like what you like about Morrowind, but I think it's disingenuous to excuse the combat system. Morrowind has a cool setting. It's okay to like it for that reason. But it often feels like people are justifying bad design decisions because they like the game rather than viewing the game objectively, even in the lens of games of the early 2000s. Even Warcraft 3's RPG mechanics, a game which released only a year after Morrowind, had decidedly more interesting mechanics via its heroes and their abilities, while even going into Skyrim TES never adopted the idea of having any unique abilities other than spells. The saddest thing about the newer games isn't that they're worse than Morrowind, it's that they're so similar even when other, far better systems were developed after its release.s
Kind of responding as I watch, here. I think it's good to criticize things you love, and I very much appreciate this video, even if I think some of your points need even a little more nuance than you already gave. In regards to the combat, I think it should be noted that the dice-roll system is mostly an issue with people coming to the game years after release, and wouldn't have been a problem contemporaneously. Why? Well, simply put, basically every popular RPG in the 15 years prior to Morrowind's release also used dice rolls. It was just the standard for the RPG genre, and the developers would have assumed that their target audience would have been familiar with those genre trappings. Additionally, Morrowind was developed in a world where video game controls, UIs, and other player-facing elements had not all been standardized yet. It came out in 2002, and just the year prior, Halo: Combat Evolved set the new standard for first-person controls in a console game. In fact, in doing so, Halo set the standard for first-person presentation on the mass market in general, and not just for First-Person Shooters. Before Halo, first-person games had much less mass-market appeal, because consoles were (and still are) the mass market platform of choice, and first-person games were not the norm on those platforms. Our modern expectations of combat feel and responsiveness in first-person games are largely descended from that innovation in shooters, and it is one that Morrowind neither could have realistically incorporated, nor one that their target market would have expected from the game. Interestingly to the point of this video, I think this is a criticism that is much easier to make in hindsight, now that two of the all-time best-selling game franchises are Call of Duty and Halo. Encumbrance affects movement speed. Heavier armors have more encumbrance *_AND_* makes you move slower on top of the encumbrance effect. So, armor type actually does have impact movement in combat. On magic at an early level, there are ways to regenerate magic, and it's one of the reasons it's so important to join guilds early in the game: potions. The mages guild keep stocks of standard restore magica potions that you can refill from once every few in-game days. I don't think this is a problem. Mechanically, it enforces the importance of factions in the world for novice mages, especially ones who don't have natural abilities. An Altmer or Breton, for instance, have better magica/int ratios than the other races. In the early game they might not depend on the guild quite as much to be viable. And the same is true for characters born under the Mage or Atronach signs, which you mentioned. That said, I do think the abilities definitely needed a re-think in their ties to associated skills. I always really enjoyed the longer reach of spears. The itemization isn't great, no, but I don't really like the premise behind that point. Flavor can still be a really valuable world-building tool, even if mechanically or itemization-wise, a particular skill or weapon style might be technically inferior. A large part of RPGs is character expression. And yes, character expression involves cosmetic choices, too. I pretty much just flat-out disagree with your conclusions on medium armor and unarmored. If light armor affects your movement speed very little, unarmored affects it none at all. Now, I agree that that effect should have been more pronounced, but I don't think unarmored necessarily had to be useless. Same with medium armor. It is supposed to be a sliding tradeoff between movement and protection. Being able to mix and match armor pieces was supposed to be another big part of this, since you could really fine-tune that protection/mobility balance. In the end, this is a tuning issue, not a feature bloat issue. If you use mercantile from the very get-go, it is quite easy to level to 100 naturally without training it at all. I have done it at least twice. It levels based on the percentage you raise any particular haggle. But, the percentage you can successfully haggle is based on your skill and luck. So, like all skills in the game, it is much more difficult to increase at skill 5 than it is at levels over 15-20ish (i.e. a major or minor skill, or a racial skill). This is why you so rarely see people use it, because people just never take it as a primary skill. In the late-game, it is a useless skill, I will grant you, since you will have much more gold than you know what to do with (and as you mentioned, there are no gold sinks, one of the actual major problems of the game). But early on, a character with high mercantile can afford much better equipment, and that can have compounding effects when it comes to exploring. Also, there is a bug where bribery chances are based on mercantile, but it trains your speechcraft. I think if bribery had been mercantile/mercantile, it would have been a much cooler and more explored skill by players. I know you keep bringing up the point that this is all based on the premise that if Bethesda isn't going to do a particular skill justice, they should just remove it. I think the problem is that it's a slippery slope. We see this in the mercantile/speechcraft merger in Skyrim you discussed, where you predicted speechcraft would be completely gone in TES6. I agree that is likely the case, but think about it: speech and mercantile weren't *_useless_* in Morrowind, they was just under-cooked. There were good use-cases for them, and the dialogue system could have accommodated better uses for both of these if they'd had the budget to do more with them. (It was never used, but there was code-base to support skill checks through dialogue.) But instead speech and mercantile went from undercooked in Morrowind, to one of them being outright gone in Oblivion, with a speech mechanic that was even stupider and actually useless, to being practically non-existent in Skyrim. See, the thing is, once they dumb it down once, Bethesda always ends up undercooking the *_dumbed-down version._* That gives them more fuel and justification to outright remove the next iteration. The next skills to go will be 2-handed (rolled into general weapons because it was undercooked in Skyrim), alteration (rolled into illusion because now it's just the armor school), and speech (not rolled into anything, just deciding that RPGs don't need dialogue mechanics?!?!?!!?!). It will keeping going like that until there are just 3 skills--fighting, stealth, and magic. And yes, enchantment was absolutely a worthless garbage school in Morrowind lol. That one just needed to be outright re-thought. Alchemy was certainly not useless in Morrowind. I don't know why you keep throwing that word around. Yes, like every skill, it is basically impossible to use at a low level. This is an intentional design choice to encourage you to play your class until you can train outside of it. So, use it when it's a major or minor, or once you've otherwise gotten it up to about 15 or 20. This is actually a great example of a good seed of an idea actually getting refined and iterated upon by Bethesda. I agree, every game did it slightly better than the last. But then, this should have been the case study for every other skill. Including alchemy as an example actually makes every other example even *_MORE_* frustrating. They could have iterated and improved all of them in Oblivion and Skyrim, but they chose not to. So like, I know you already discussed magic attribute / skill alignment, but it was still absolutely a viable playstyle? Just saying that the only viable playstyle is warrior and that's it is just... flat-out wrong. I usually play hybrid characters, honestly, where I'm mixing and matching skills from every school. The Witcher 3 also has a very linear narrative, but people praise that one up the wazoo (and deservedly so--it's a great game, and the story is fantastic). In fact, most RPGs actually have very linear narratives when it boils down to it, with the biggest departure probably being Fallout: New Vegas. (Yes, even more than Baldur's Gate 3 still, even though I love that game to death.) So, I don't really think this is an issue. And I also don't think quests ever necessitate having individual compelling storylines. As you said, most of them are very basic fetch quests, kill-person quests, talk-to-person quests, or escort quests, but what I think is most relevant to Morrowind and an open-world style of game like this is how they're used to build a sense of place in the world. Guild quests are very wrote and bureaucratic. House quests are a lot more political. And Daedric quests are just weird. But all of them get you out and *_adventuring,_* and at its core, that's what Morrowind is about.
You only have to kill 2, not 3, counselors. I also... don't think this is an issue? It's another instance of world building and sense of place taking precedence over everything being player-centric. And while I mentioned earlier that your own character expression is important in an RPG, sometimes it's also important that the world doesn't always bend your way, and that the world itself has a chance to express itself. In the 2 cases we're talking about, Bolvyn Venim and Archmagister Gothren, these are both trying to demonstrate something about the world you're in. Venim is the head of House Redoran, a House that is very traditional, hostile to Imperials, and values *_honor in combat._* You literally duel him to the death in the Vivec arena after you've rallied the rest of the House behind you. Gothren shows two things: the arbitrary nature of Telvanni mages, and their philosophy of might makes right. Killing in Telvanni lands is not a criminal act--if he didn't want to be killed, then he shouldn't have let you kill him. That's the way their rules work. I think it's actually a really cool and effective way of worldbuilding their culture. The last example you were thinking of is Orvas Dren, whom you do not need to kill. You can just get his disposition high enough and he will agree to step out of your way. He's made deals with Dagoth Ur, but all he really cares about are his own goals of kicking out the Imperials and maintaining his own power, and he will go back on them if he approves of you enough. It's very Hlaalu of him. People praise the Hortator and Nerevarine quests because these are all chances for the cultures in Morrowind to express themselves. I have widely been getting the impression over the course of this video that you are much more interested in a world-revolves-around-the-character style of experience. That is not what Morrowind is trying to offer. It is trying show you an alien world with set terms, and let you express yourself within those terms. And the reason it is far more successful at this than Oblivion is that Morrowind factions actually had attributes that differentiated them from each other, whereas every city and "culture" in Oblivion was completely identical except for some generic theme-park aesthetics on the buildings. I, for one, have certainly not forgotten about these "boring" quests, and, in fact, they are my favorite part of the main questline. I have played Morrowind through many times, with many different characters, including quite recently. You're really making some large assumptions here. Mixing and matching skill combos that you're not certain will work is half the fun of the mechanics system. And I don't really see what playing with all the "worst" skills on purpose is supposed to prove? Like, yes, the *_stealth skill_* itself is very undercooked, but the rest of the class is completely viable, and can be quite fun, even if suboptimal. And I still don't get your deal with magic. Again, the attribute/skill mismatch is definitely an issue, but mages can be incredibly op. So what is your point about set pieces then? Is not having very clearly defined set pieces a knock against Morrowind or is it? That Fighters Guild quest in Oblivion is memorable, and it also sucks. It's immersion-breaking. You are rail-roaded into slaughtering everybody. This isn't a case of Bolvyn Venim being unwilling to compromise and challenging you to a duel, or Archmagister Gothren being endlessly contrarian. They are laying a challenge before you. Not everyone can be reasoned with, and *_their characters_* are not giving you a choice. No, in this case your character is required to be tricked into slaughtering a whole village without you being able to say anything or do anything about it. *_The writers_* are not giving you a choice. It's very cheap. Your point about the Telvanni quest writing very much stands. It's unfortunate, but Hlaalu definitely got the most love here, with Redoran second and Telvanni much further behind. It makes sense, though, given the limited budget. Hlaalu and Redoran are much more visible to the player early on. That said, I don't really understand your point about the Arena. Like, sure, it would be cool to have a faction quest there, but there isn't one and, as far as I know, there never was a plan for one. So what are we criticizing? Your vision? I would have like to have seen all 7 Houses. Is it fair for me to criticize the game for not having all of them? I don't think so. Again, I don't really think every RPG needs to revolve around so many branching storylines, especially in an open-world game, though as I said, it would have been nice for them to capitalize more on their dialogue system. But, this is another instance where I think you're coloring the game with a very particular interpretation of what an RPG *_can_* be, and not what this game was *_trying_* to be. There's nothing wrong, or even "shallow," with an RPG that focuses on adventure, character expression through mechanics, and worldbuilding with a linear epic narrative to tell. Even when some of the mechanics are a bit undercooked, there are plenty of choices there.
Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game that I played. I never beat it though. I loved the world, characters, enemies, music and freedom that it offered. I did not like the roll-of-the-dice chances to successfully hit an enemy or block an attack. I also didn't like that guards were practically demi-gods. It did get me excited for Oblivion, which I have beaten many times. Skyrim VR with mods is my favorite game.
When the game came out, it was amazing for what it was able to do with what was available. Playing it again, I can see how you came to the conclusion you got. This is coming from a player with almost 5k hours on morrowind, 6k hours on oblivion, god knows how much on Skyrim and who knows how much with the fallout games. Some games are great for being remade, where others just need to stay in the vaults and our happy memories.
Once I learn to set up the character....I have a save file w/ only a few hours in where it's lvl 72 100 to all attributes and the speed he moves is insane...he runs in walk mode and actuall sprint is turbo..then u can run diagonally and jump everywhere so...lotta ppl turn off to how slow u start..lol
It depends on what you're looking for in video games. Morrowind has qualities that are perfect for its fans and people who didn't like it, didn't like it for its flaws, which are there for everyone to see. This game is over 20 years old, nobody is going to convince anybody to change their assessment. I love the lore and certain concepts of Morrowind, like leveling system, exploration of the game world, but some other aspects I consider as flawed, like movement speed or dice roll combat. And perhaps the fact that you can grab some of the best gear by simply knowing where to take it from is also bad if we intend to replay a game.
That is, in my opinion, a mature perspective. My tastes change all the time, so I cycle through all of the mainline games, except perhaps Arena and the other few TES spin-offs prior to Daggerfall. Each has something to offer for immersion in their own ways based on the in-game character I have in mind.
I think you are probably still being too charitable, lol. Bethesda make bad games with the only saving grace being that they are moddable and thus salvageable by immense community effort. I've spent many thousands of hours on their games, but never finished a single one of them, lol. Even with mechanics overhauls, visual improvements and extra content from mods, I always end up getting bored of the games and drop my runs part way through.
I’ve always heard is that essential NPCs were introduced in Oblivion. But if you soft lock the game for killing someone, and need to reload, doesn’t that make them essential?
"ESSESNTIAL" as in the engine vocabulary word which means the character cannot be killed, not "essential" as in required to finish the plot. It's true that Morrowind is less impressive than an RPG like FNV where anyone can actually be killed and the main plot will adjust--but it's still affording you a very real degree of freedom over Oblivion and Skyrim, don't be pedantic.
@swordquest2602 being able to kill them, but softlocking yourself is essentially the same as being able to fight them but not kill them in my mind. Besides, those games are unstable enough as is, taking away dev time to write and implement what happens if you kill plot important characters would break the games even more. And I will absolutely be pedantic, petty, and procrastinating. Preston Garvey from Fallout 4 and Yes Man from New Vegas serve the same narrative role, it's just that Yes Man had an in universe explanation to him respawning and being essential. It's just pedantic to like/tolerate one and hate the other.
The dialogue system in Morrowind is fucking atrocious. It is beyond me how the TES Community has hyped this game up to be immersive when every npc has the personality of a brick wall and nothing of interest to say. What’s even worse is that your character does not interact or even engage outside of bribing, admiring, and taunting. Only occasionally you will get dialogue options to choose from and they are just generic responses like “goodbye” It’s even more embarrassing when Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic came out around this time and both had a way more engaging dialogue system. Hell I rather take Skyrim’s generic dialogue system over whatever the fuck Morrowind is doing
Dude, I was curious but in 1st 30 sec u comparing it to witcher 3 in fact "W3 blows it outta the water"?? Lol wow ok. Yea I played other games from N64 recently and recognized how they aged but I play Morrowind as late as last year and this year. I'm so good now as an adult I recognize it for the sandbox it is...witcher 3 you just kinda go around and do what it has templeted for you to do ......................................................................................................................................................................................................
I agree. I tried getting into it and I just can't anymore. The quests are incredibly boring, the world feels dead due to the lack of audio design, all NPCs have the same lines, interiors are boring and all look the same. The art direction and atmosphere is good, but I think the game just isn't satisfying. IMO, Oblivion with a mod to remove level scaling, is a much superior experience, for the quests alone.
@@54032Zepol Please try to be original I know independent thought is frowned upon in your generation, but for you sake at least try before you ingest something poisonous or chop something off.
I remember playing morrowind and withness how horrible it is, i mean its just very bad i remember the whole video game crash when doing that bridge mission i dont even remember which one it was, i dont know how anyone can get hands on this video game, its just utterly awful i think even developer of this video game stop wanted to care about this thing i think even elder scrolls arena can beat morrowind at some point and arena is the earliest series in elder scrolls
@@dankmatter3068 Yes, that's a certain epistemological framework among many others. But I won't expand on that because 1) this is neither the time or place for such, and 2) you're likely not philosophically sophisticated enough to comprehend such a position.
Very reasonable critique, and morrowind fanboys in the comments literally cannot handle it. If you’re gonna call a game the greatest rpg of all time, then it’s not dumb to compare it to newer rpgs.
Hello there. I understand that this is your first game analysis/review, at least according to your YT profile history. With that in mind, I would recommend doing a bit more research on the source material and considering your script in a broader context. What I mean is that many of your points sound like you didn't fully explore the game and its mechanics, dont have too much experience with the games of that era, or have little experience in discussing games in detail with others. A few examples would be: -Players not reading attribute descriptions - that's the players problem, not the game's. The game has been released with a manual that explained a lot of things. One cannot blame a product for not working properly if they didn't read the attached instructions. -Low stats at the start (being too slow to move away from attacks) - isn't that how all games work? -Lack of mana regeneration, intelligence issue, mage play style problems - this is missing a lot of information from the game. It feels as if this lart has been influenced by games like Skyrim, where a lot of systems are dumbed down and planned to work in void. Morrowind's mechanics work together. No mana regen? Brew potions, enchant gear, build up intelligence. Low stamina for casting? Brew potions, enchant gear, build up endurance. And while you enchant items or play with alchemy... your intelligence rises as well. It's a system where you can mix up things to have various solutions to a problem. These are just a few from the top of my head, but I hope tou can see a pattern. Learn, grow, and talk to various people.
Morrowind doesn't have dlc but expansions. they're default part of the game for 90% of players it's hard to level up enchanting, right? not a single word of trainers pure mage impossible xD
Ok dude. I watched your entire hour long video to give this a chance. And it pains me to say this because I know you put a lot of hard work in this video. But dude, your opinions on the game are just plain dumb. For instance, the different attacks are there to devote yourself to an advantage in certain situations. Chop: stand still and do not move with high health and armor but lose mobility and hack away. Slash: circle strafe the enemy (in an open environment) offers good mobility to dominate the foe. Stab: used best in narrow environments like dungeon hallways to quickly move in, strike, backpedal. Rinse and repeat. These are not hard rules to follow but showcase the roles that the weapons and their player fulfill. Weapons are tools for a job and if you aren’t fit for that job you will suffer for it. Play to your strengths. Hand to hand is deliberately weak because in real life why would you fight someone with your fists when you have a spear? lol it’s immersion breaking and only something you see in jrpgs. And You really lost me when you said the mage and their magics are useless. So magic is just stupid broken in ES3. So say I’m in an ancestral tomb and there’s a strong enemy. I aggro foe, step back through a door (which are abundant) use a lock spell on door, the foe chills at the door, I shoot AOE spells at the door. Foe is dead. All low level. And the thief’s trump card over the others is that they are the only ones able to disarm traps. There is no spell to do that. I also want to point out that with magic, my favorite effect is damage attribute (strength) it will permanently pin your foe to one spot. I think the biggest thing you’re missing about ES3 is You. You aren’t putting your creativity and mind to use to enjoy Morrowind. It probably felt like a chore for you to complete this game again. And forgive me for being presumptuous but I think modern games have ruined your outlook on what makes games such a great medium. Part of the joy is what “you” bring to the table. the multiple endings were taken out because they trapped themselves with Daggerfall and it’s multi endings which is why we have the book “The Warp in the West” Like I said, I really hate to be blunt about it. Because the video is well put together. But I really disagree with about 80% of what you said because it was founded in ignorance of the game’s systems. With all that being said, at the very least, thank you for at least putting in work on the video itself, as it’s good quality is a far cry from the opinions therein.
["Chop: stand still and do not move with high health and armor but lose mobility..."] How exactly is this "realistic?" Sounds like an example of a stupid mechanic that has little relation to real world combat strategy.
@@dankmatter3068 Right, then to be consistent, people shouldn't be complaining about Skyrim having "less realistic combat" than Morrowind. Believe me, I've heard this complaint many times from Morrowind fanboys.
This video is made by Maiq the Liar.
This one does not lie.
@@leftwingbreadtuber649Dull clawed fool!
or some sqooma eater
@@leftwingbreadtuber649 Every watched Wolf's Rain? This one has
A decade later? skyrim was a decade ago!
too much skooma
Bringing up Divinity and Witcher 3 at the start of the video?!? Look I get the game gets a lot of praise but that sentence lost me totally different generation of games, I would be comparing it to games like Gothic
Absolutely, gotta consider when the game was released, the next largest game was TES2 Daggerfall lol
You should watch the video if you're going to have any critique of the content at all, because to me (who is watching it) you look kinda dumb now.
People are comparing Morrowind to modern RPGs as if it's a superior game, so my comparison is well justified. People are playing Morrowind today, it's no longer 2002.
@@leftwingbreadtuber649 Even if you compare it to the Witcher 3 in this ridiculous scenario, Morrowind still comes out on top easily, you either like playing as Geralt or you don't like the witcher series, I found Geralt boring and his story is less interesting then whatever my Nerevarine is, the witcher quests are not made in the interest of the player they are basically pre scripted and written scenarios that mirror a tv show approach, Morrowind is a far better game because it is a true RPG also you cant beat Elder Scrolls lore the Witcher lore is decent but not comparable so the world building is always going to go to Morrowind in this scenario
@@Mewskie I couldn't have said it better myself. Spoken like a true, seasoned gamer!
Unfortunately, it's not "over a decade old", it's over TWO decades old. Things like the Witcher 3 & Divinity Original Sin shouldn't even be in the discussion for comparison IMO.
You should go back and play Baldur's Gate, not the enhanced edition, the 1998 version of the game and perhaps some other RPGs from the time period and readjust your critical viewpoint, because like so many people today, you shouldn't judge things by today's standards, but by the standards of the time they were created. That would be like criticizing Van Gough for not being more modern like Picasso.
Don't get me wrong, I'll freely admit that Morrowind has issues, whether do to developer choice or time, but it's not like we didn't know that at the time. We lamented that we didn't get the rest of Morrowind to explore, we didn't want a refund because it wasn't included. While a 3 year development window seems virtually impossible today, that was not the case 25 years ago. It's viewed so great because we didn't have anything like this available to us before and it had a great story and world that you could get immersed in like nothing ever before. The fact you want to compare it to games developed 15-20 years later is a testament to how much it got right and how much it influenced gaming. So no, I don't think it is overrated. Just because something isn't perfect, or people did things better later doesn't detract from how great it was to play over twenty years ago.
I think it's still fair to compare it to newer games; there is nothing technically preventing the developers in 2002 from adding as much narrative complexity and as flexible quest design as exists in The Witcher 3. Obviously the engine isn't as capable, but I was focusing on the quest design, which definitely could have been better and for which the engine wasn't the biggest problem. There is simply no good reason why it can't at least match the Witcher 3 in terms of presenting to the player interesting choices.
On top of that, my goal in this video was kind of "phenomenological." I want to review the experience of playing the game, no matter when the game came out. People are playing the game TODAY, not yesterday. It's pointless to try to rescue its shortcomings by appealing to the fact it wasn't released this decade. Many of the flaws I pointed out are pretty timeless anyway. The issues mainly come down to poor game design, having nothing to do with the age of the game.
Morrowinds scope was not as large as the Witcher 3, I find the Witcher 3 is a good game but it’s replay value is low compared to elder scrolls games which have many different avenues of game play and your character can go a million different ways, The Witcher 3 does not fully scratch the itch of being a good RPG, I found myself not enjoying being Geralt his character is already written and I found myself not interested in his story as much as the stories I created myself in other games, I would recommend in 2023 someone play Morrowind over the Witcher 3 if they are looking for a true fantasy rpg experience
@@MewskieThe Witcher isn’t really an RPG to be honest, unless one considers playing pre decided role to be RP:ing.
that reminds me of the difference between unreal when that first came out. and Medal of honor on the PS1 which came out around the same time.
looks like they come from a different universe.
@ He threw the witcher 3 into the conversation so it is now here being picked apart since he compared it to Morrowind lol, and yes it is not a real RPG it is more of a cinematic tv show like game
My biggest problem with morrowind is how much time i have to invest in it compared to other great games out there.
i would say the opposite. morrowind feels like dark souls, in that it rewards knowledge. you can get ALOT of powerfull stuff pretty early if you know where. for example, in calmera you can buy a couple of rings with fire and shock damage, which will give you a garanteed damage. in balmera you can buy weapons with bound spells, that let you summon powerfull daedric tier weapons to use, SPECIALLY for the spear which costs very cheap, but can do ALOT of damage. even at low weapon skill level.
the fact you have easy access to both enchanters, and spell crafting. as well as a very powerfull money making scheme using summons and soul gems(that you can buy in bulk if you know where to go).
like i said, morrowind is a game that is hard, but rewards knowledge. but above all, it doesnt punish you for not min maxing. you could easily play a spell caster with minimal magicka, by using enchanted equipments for example. but in oblivion and skyrim, those are games that punish you for wasting your time. the fact enemies scale with you become a massive headache the more you play those games.
its the opposite in morrowind.
@@marcosdheleno Although, in Dark Souls the enemies get stronger the further you progress in the game, so even if you hack souls and reach max level (bypassing the grinding), the game will gradually become more difficult anyway.
In Skyrim and Oblivion enemies get stronger the more you level up, thus making the leveling more smooth, when at low levels you can easily go through the Oblivion plane with just scamps and easy daedra, and at high levels you have to clear out a regular bandit camp from guys in ebony armor. But they also reward you much more, there are bunch of artifacts which stats scale with your level, plus on high levels you should already afford things like soul capture and constant weapon charging which isn't as easy for level 1 character. The difficulty isn't specified on your progress, but rather your character. The stronger you are - the more challenge you'll have. It even makes sense with the infamous "non-combat leveling" - while those wouldn't help you in the battle directly, you can seriously make your game easier with them ( *looking at Stealth 100 and Alchemy 100* ), so it make sense to balance it in a way.
In Morrowind... the more you level up, the easier the game becomes, yet the game can easily punish you for going somewhere wrong at a low level. Plus, you can *really mess up your character creation* , even Dark Souls isn't as bad with its Deprived class as some starting builds in Morrowind. The game punishes you if you don't know the mechanics.
The good thing in Oblivion/Skyrim system is that you literally can start anywhere with more or less the same experience. You can completely ignore the main quest and start it with a challengeable difficulty at level 50+ when you will be ready for it (remember how it's completely possible to stop progressing in the oblivion mages guild because you don't have the right spells... or scrolls at all?) or you can start with main story and everything else will be much more challengeable after all those story-mandatory oblivion planes you have to go through... or you can mix everything. And, of course, if you think that the enemies are too weak/strong, you can always change game difficulty to your liking... unlike in pre-patched Morrowind or Dark Souls. Yet, people still thinking that "the game shouldn't be that unbalanced when I set it to max difficulty!!!" worldview is normal.
Morrowind is my favorite Elder Scrolls game, but I get a good chuckle when I see Morrowind fanboys crying over someone not liking the game.
Something i always hold uncertainty about is the demand for things out in an open world. Similar to compariong art and architecture, games make interesting choices in how to place content in a world that must necessarily include space that serves no purpose mechanically. Im pretty curious if there are rpgs out there that make some deliberate, interesting choices about how to place or not place things you can put your hands on or interact with to any extant. I like that you very briefly mention how oblivion is beautiful everywhere, as one can argue that a structure can serve an aesthetique purpose instead of a utility purpose. But i think one of the most interesting questions to engage is whether "purpose" must be served at all, and why. One game i do know that id be delighted to see you talk about is the 2005 pc game parhologic who has a notable npc who deals with the philisophical implications of aesthetic vs utility in buildings, even going so far as to build structures that dont make "sense" that you can traverse yourself in the games small world. Mushroom trees are pretty damn epic though.
(TL;DR not all empty space is needed, not all filled space is needed - it's a mixture)
You would notice the change, if you imagined all roads in a Bethesda RPG being removed.
Roads have a mechanical purpose. In Morrowind and Oblivion you can find even just signs.
They are not mechanically sound (they are only a pathway after all), or serve a greater purpose for that matter, but they boost immersion into the world - they make navigation more sound for the player (who is the only person this matters to).
They also (here's the "mechnical, but not-mechanical" part), sport NPCs and travelers - these are not necessarily "important" (to the story), but they do improve the immersion.
It's small details, wether interactable or not, that make for a sound decision.
If you quarantine off an area, because "a great plague has befallen that place", you better not place a random normal castle there - but instead show the conflict that brewed in such a place. Walls have been shattered, several dead lie outside, or are being actively burnt by the local authority.
Storytelling and the imagination of the player can already paint a greater picture, than any actual interaction with a physical object ever could.
-
If you want real insight into "sound world design", I wanna recommend a game to you.
I hope you don't spoil it for yourself by looking up videos about it. Let a little bit of trust into your heart and look up:
"Outer Wilds" (not the Bethesda game: Outer Worlds).
The decisions, in terms of world design, are mostly a visual choice, but they all serve to sum up what the planet you are on is about. They are all bound to lore and a purpose outside of your understanding at the time of maybe even just seeing them.
In short summation: The landmarks of planets dictate the important places. There is no path you "must take", but only what curiosity the cat indulges in from time to time.
I would encourage you to buy it along with the DLC - and after having finished the game, to look up what the DLC actually added. The DLC is just as good as the main portion of the game. You are fine playing with or without it.
Still the best in the TES series
Daggerfall.
The best behind Daggerfall, Oblivion, Skyrim and Arenas
Shadowkey is the actual GOAT, filthy secondaries will NEVER understand
@@Cynidecia2d game 😂 Daggerfall is alright but morrowind is king
Wrong oblivion is the best morrowind is garbage
On one hand, I almost entirely agree, but on the other, some things you said about the removal of skills just didn't make sense to me.
Spears were pretty much the only melee weapons with any degree of variation, due to the fact they actually gave you a functional difference other than a damage number, in the form of extra range. I'd love to be able to skewer enemies from a distance and play footsies with enemies for an advantage in skyrim, rather than having to just block or dual wield to augment damage.
Also, barely anyone complained about unarmored going away? I beg to differ, I think being able to play a quick foot monk or an extra elusive pure clothed thief, or a crazed nude barbarian would all be amazing additions to any subsequent games, but it's simply not viable. Giving a simple speed boost and or fixing the already existing dodge roll from oblivion could've been a perfect way to do it.
Oblivion and Skyrim may have more set pieces and memorable moments, but one side effect, or simply a trend coming along with that, is what I feel is poorer writing. There is no good reason why you need to bring the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre rather than Baurus, there is no good reason for the companions quest line to force you to be a werewolf.
That fighter's guild mission where you accidentally kill a town may have been memorable, but even if you recognize that something's wrong, you're not allowed to progress the quest until you kill them all, same with the black hand quests.
Dawnguard is especially egregious for forcing you to hand deliver an elder scroll to the vampire lord, even if you talk to Isran about it, then having Isran reprimand you for being stupid, when you only did exactly what he said. Not even mentioning the fact that they don't immediately detain Serana, and that you aren't able to kill her for the entire game... those are the things that make me prefer Morrowind's writing overall, even if it was basic, at least I didn't have to facepalm every few quests.
as someone who can't play morrowind because of how just awful the control scheme is I agree. Sad part is I think theres mods that fix most of the complaints you have, down to expanded armory adding back in spears and mods that expand various guild questlines. Personally I feel its even more of a blunder that in one faction quest the wrighting team forced you to sell your soul to a daedric prince for "luck" and that dosn't give you at least a perk that does something (Valdur's dagger does show you at the very least the vanilla game does have the capacity to give you critical strikes if nothing else)
Even hand to hand has place in morrowind. Mages usually does not have fatigue and you can put then on the flor very easily. If you can summon other basic summons they usually drain strength or fatigue also or damage them. His complaints are childish. He forgot how to play games…
Personally I don't think Unarmored or HtH are implemented very well in unmodded MW, but it kind of begs the question of what people expect from these games. Should all armor styles be equal so the player always feels good about his choices? Should maxed out HtH deal out as much damage as the best longsword in the game? Personally I don't think so. I do think MW could have handled the differences better, make them more spread out.
That doesn't prevent all armor and weapon styles from having their function in the game. Heavy armor also hits you with encumbrance that you may not want. All armor and weapon classes have good artifacts. Unarmored is perhaps not so well implemented, but you need points in it anyway if you want to play a beast race.
@@No14210 unarmored is good for mage. Magic shields + unarmored are good combo. Hand to hand is just novelty in mw but it is ok and fun to stun lock your opponents and animals going to stun have funny animations
@@No14210 in competent action RPGs most armor types provide intrinsic benefits. Even in Skyrim, magic robes provide mana regeneration and spell discounts, heavy armor reduces speed at the benefit of protection, and light armor allows faster movement at the cost of the protection value of heavy armor. Many ARPGs go beyond this, including in games like Grim Dawn where spellcaster armors usually give bonus mana regeneration and heavy armors have high physical protection often at the cost of better enchantment effects compared to medium armors. There is a reason to actually pick between these armor types depending on your character and the choice is meaningful even if it's usually not hard to figure out what's best for your character.
Bad things in RPGs aren't interesting. Optimization is a natural part of gameplay and there's nothing to suggest that medium armor should be the statistically worst in the game, it's just a fact of life due to developer oversight that it ends up being that way. And in a game where you can spend 50+ hours grinding to reach a maximum level, finding out your choice was a bad one so many hours later is fucking terrible game design. This is why most good ARPGs allow for respec'ing.
Why can't hand to hand combat be as effective as using weapons in a fantasy game? Why can't I enchant my fists to turn them into stone or steel to increase their damage? It's lazy and boring how they implemented HtH and the style just doesn't exist, it's a meme. It's a wasted opportunity to have made something interesting. Instead, it sucks, and people who choose it without knowing that will quickly be disappointed as they realize they made a mistake. This is a pitfall of a lot of cRPG game design, but it's nonetheless a pitfall. Not every choice should be as strong as the other at EVERYTHING, but there should be things a given build is strong at comparatively. That just isn't the case in Morrowind. You just pick the option that gives the best dps
I was agreeing to most takes until he said enchanters charge "reasonable prices".
Its kinda hard to balance cause on one hand you have to put some sort of wall in front of enchanted gear cause it’s too broken. But at the same time this takes the fun out of creating little gimmick items as prices aren’t properly scaled
This guy doesn’t know anything about this game - he’s clearly never played it or he wouldn’t be so confused by the enchanting or bribe systems. Further, he’s comparing Morrowinds graphics to Cyberpunk. This video is one of the worst.
@@emilymschoener9193 not to mention, saying you can't play a pure mage is insane to me.
Make a high elf with Destruction as Major Skill, and you have the easiest level 1 character. Pure mage is not only possible, it is the easiest build if you just know a little about the magic system.
Now granted, stealth is difficult if you go pure (thou still possible if you know the game well).
But calling magic weak in Morrowind? Are you fucking kidding me???
Respect for having the balls to go after one of gaming's sacred cows. I love Morrowind but I think it's unplayable without mods at this point. So many tedious hours tramping around Vvardenefell playing vanilla Morrowind on Xbox has taken the bloom off the rose a bit for me and the implementation of certain mechanics (like stealing) are very dated and almost laughable, which makes joining the Thieves Guild pretty unsatisfying. But the unique experience of flying through the sky while tripping out on Skooma and being chased by a horde of cliff racers is one that can't be replicated in any other game.
He would have had more respect if he critiqued sony games which never get critiqued much like last of us or spiderman both averagely mediocre titles.
You weren't even alive when this came out. This was well recieved by xplay and other forums.
He's comparing it to modern games, when this game was released in a time when open world rpg were just barely becoming a thing.
It's like saying gta 3 is overated bc it's not as expansive as rdr2
@@robmartin5448 I was born in 1991 and I played Morrowind on Xbox when it first came out. I know the game is well received and is a classic but there are still aspects of it that have aged poorly. Even some TES fans were salty and saw Morrowind as a step backwards from Daggerfall since the world was smaller and they cut out a lot of features like horses and ships.
mans doing the downvoted to hell speedrun
By Morrowank community of course.
@@Komotau4691keep copping
@@m3gAnac0nda Keep Morrowanking.
@@Komotau4691 🧠 rot alert
Ofc because ppl with sht opinions have to make a cult to reinforce their sht opinions.
Saying the diceroll system is bad because the next two games completely removed the system is a bit strange, especially since every other bethesda game before Morrowind had dicerolls too except for redguard which people hated. And even Bethesda's soon-to-be new paypig fallout used hit chances.
Also saying people dont understand the hit system shows you dont really stick to a build too, if your primary weapon is a major skill, you have full fatigue, and you don't have dookie agility, you'll hit like 80% of the time in early game
Actually, I think that Oblivion and Skyrim could have benefited from an optional hit%-system, the way it worked with VATS.
Early ES games had this "swing and see if the game lets you hit" mechanic, which is great for turn-based RPGs generally, but feels very awkward and strange in a first person action RPG.
So, I understand that they removed it, but it did make the weapon stats feel kinda meaningless.
I didn't say that. I said it was fine because Daggerfall and Arena had it; I was questioning whether it's appropriate for the marksman skill specifically. Also, I said that new players don't understand the system, which is just true. I personally understand it and know how to build my characters, but most people do not. It causes a lot of people to prematurely quit the game.
Yeah dice roll was just expected at the time dude. They weren’t making it for skybabies 10 years later who need to be told how to do everything.
@@Bardock7132 actually, you were always told how to do everything, that's what the manual was for 🤫
@@Nerobyrne i didn't read ABCs for barbarians, me no read so good
old heads are PISSED from this video lol
I am the same age as morrowind and played it after skyrim and oblivion. It is better than most modern rpgs. It just is. You should play it fully to get the full picture it is really fun. It takes getting used to and QOL mods help. Personally I use OpenMW with some mods to make the game smoother.
@@dankmatter3068meh the TES Community is full of liars. They talk about immersion in this game yet every npc feels like talking robots, not real people. They complain about Skyrim’s quest design yet the Fighter’s Guild is literally just fetch quests for 90% of the quest line
@@peterparker1683 Try mods bro? Imagine playing a TES game without mods
@@dankmatter3068 Same bro I'm also from 2002 and a morrowind fan.
Some "old heads" dislike Bethesda's games.
Morrowind wasnt "better" graphically. but that isnt the point. its systems were dated and from a time when people understood that 30% chance actually meant you stood a good chance of missing 6 hits in a row. because the engine is rolling a D10 and getting a roll of 8+ is actually not going to happen often. so technically the newer systems are "better" or more user friendly, since a hit is always a hit, and the skill determines damage done.
But morrowind was far superior. No one ever complains that you get to be the grand master of the everything guild in 4-6 easy quests.
Nobody ever complained that you could make a magical ring with bound sword with constant effect to give your character a never ending weightless daedric sword. that springs out of your ring.
Nobody ever complained that you could make your own spells, so you could literally do a Flaming pirate punch that exploded into a fireball when you punch someone.
that shit was amazing.
The morrowind critique for people who never played Morrowind and will just believe anything some guy with a ten dollar mic says about it
@Bluey_Productions being too stupid to understand a games systems does not make it bad
I've played Morrowind extensively, and "this guy with the ten dollar mic" is spot on.
You haven't even watched the video
Morrowind and new vegas are overrated by fanbase by some absurd reason.
Yeah man new vegas is lame compared to goat Assassins Creed valhalla
WILLPOWER ALSO AFFECTS SPELL CHANCE
and spell resist.
I played Skyrim, then Oblivion and lastly Morrowind. And I can say with full confidence that Morrowind is objectively better.
I played Skyrim, then Oblivion and lastly Morrowind. And I can say with full confidence that Morrowind is _subjectively_ better.
@@josephpercy1558 No it's not subjective it took me months to get used to but it is objectively better.
@@dankmatter3068 When we can all observe Bethesda stripping out systems just as often as they add new systems in, we can say confidently that all of the mainline games offer some _subjectively_ "better" things than the others.
@@josephpercy1558 sure qol features etc
the only truly objective metric i can think of to measure which game is "better" would be sales, so skyrim is the best sorry i dont make the rules
what else could possibly be objective criteria?
this is why modern games basically play themselves lol, people these days have no attention span and lack the creativity to make their own adventure, they need to be strung along and told what to do and where to go every step of the way. games like morrowind are so beloved to this day for the precise reason they are NOT easy to figure out, the game makes a point of forcing you to use your imagination and creative thinking rather than just reading quest objectives written on your screen.
The game is still as linear as Skyrim and Oblivion. I think you're using your imagination to rescue a game with underwhelming levels of RPG choice.
@dontcare3 Ok boomer.
It sounds more like your describing Dagerfall. Morwind is a watered down Dagerfall that leans more towerds skyrim and Oblivion which makes it worse then all three of those games in my opinion.
Is tomb raider 1(the one that came out in 1996) a bad uncreative game then, by your logic? It's quite clear in terms of what to do and almost every mechanic is described in the tutorial. Did they dumb it down? Sometimes it even shows what certain levers do and camera sometimes points you to where you have to go! Horrible!
All I'm saying is a game doesn't have to be hard to figure out in order to be good, creative and requiring skill and attention.
@dontcare3 - You're missing the point. All of these things have been streamlined in more "modern" games because RPGs are not for a niche audience anymore. It was always a market industry, but this industry has grown exponentially over the years. Business is about making profit. And so, this trends into quantity over quality.
Spears are great in Morrowind, you can take absurd fights and not die due to the range diff.
Using one now
acrobatics+spear+rock gang wya
spears were amazing in morrowind. my go to weapon for my caster, just enchanted a shoulder piece with constant bound spear and because spear leveled endurance, i just kept using one until that point. didnt even get it that high either.
noooooooo you cant say that - crying soyjak
NPCs... yeah they are just NPCs, a stationary lore-vending machines.
Being a member of fighters guild i am delivering alcohol 2 times to some miners. And getting a code book or something.
Wanna join guilds? Okay. You are accepted. In Morrowind it is just like that. In Oblivion you have to get recommendations from all mages guilds in order to enter the college.
Shurikens and darts? Nobody used it. Especially ebony or even daedric variants. Basically collector's items. Same goes to most artifacts.
Leveling is basically random... as only random decides if your skills are advancing. As only successful actions make skills grow. Blocking is all random and with this system could be not included at all. Fighting becomes a lot easier when character is like level 10. And levels up faster as well.
Fatigue system is utter BS. Player is most likely moving around by jumping. Meaning that the most dangerous foe at the start of the game is unarmed bum. In Oblivion unarmed attacks damaged both fatigue and health.
On chop/slash/thrust yeah... also, slash is the slowest attack and thrust attack is fastest.
Balance in Morrowind and item logic are non-existent. Tanto swings slower than dagger. Some items with better material have less enchant capacity. Daedric tower shield can be enchanted with 9 health point regen constant effect which renders player immune to lava or drowning. Acrobatics of 125 renders you immune to fall damage. Artifacts being meh, and some "basic" items like Daedric Battle Axe are just OP. Sujamma is OP. Fryse hags have winterwound daggers with 100 frost damage enchant and cost 1000 septims. Life ring/belt, are items that heal 10 health points per use. A character with enchantment skill of 25 can use them both up to 7 times, which means he can restore 140 health easily. And they cost no more than 15 septims, have charge of 15, which means they recharge over time quite fast.
"Gradually, I began to not appreciate it" lmao
He based.
Glad I'm not the only one who picked up on that.
combat was awful and that made it hard for me to get into it, but the world is so fascinating that like Gothic - I keep coming back.
Btw fatigue affects almost everything early game. Including spell casting chance and merchantile skill
and there are multiple loading screens which say just that
0:30 was _painful._
9:00 "Why am I missing? Why are my spells failing?!"
I'll give you three guesses. Bottom left of the screen.
I played morrowind all the way through for the first time a couple years ago. After researching how to properly buld a character i actually loved it way more than i expected to. After getting introduced to open world rpgs with skyrim. I went back to oblivion and struggled. I went back to morrowind and really struggled. Once i finally figured out how to properly do combat in morrowind i actually like it. Most of my problems with the game is the fact that classic Bethesda glitches mixed with how morrowind quests didn't give waypoints directly to the next person to talk to made it hard to tell if i was in the wrong place or if the game broke. Morrowind today is a game that you would do well to use the wiki or a walk through if you are getting stuck in a specific area. Considering it came out before i was born its pretty fucking good and if i had my way i would have bathesda remaster it today
U brave asf niqqa
When I pressed translate to english underneath your comment it removed “niqqa” 🤔
Boring, dumbed down console RPG. The leveling is stupid. You become a God just by walking around for a couple hours. The quests are terrible. It's a decent dungeon crawler at best if you don't care much about story which I don't when it comes to games.
“This is the worst first person shooter ever”
No
^
I began playing the series with Skyrim. I went to Oblivion, then Morrowind. While I replay Skyrim more for the modding scene, I adore Oblivion but Morrowind is my favorite of the three. It's got flaws, sure, but it's genuinely a fun game with an amazing story. I do wish the guild questlines had a bit more to them though.
If you expend your mana, you have to use a weapon. That is so true, unless you bothered carrying potions which restore mana, which is the reason they exist. Maybe stop trying to cast when you're out of breath at zero fatigue. That could help.
A couple of rings or amulets which restore fatigue make fatigue loss a non-issue, even for a warrior.
If you were a PC gamer in the 90s & early 2000's, it was assumed you were a nerd and could handle things like reading. That's why the games included manuals. The player was expected to be familiar with the information within before playing. Its why tutorial sections in older games didn't have to hold your hand the entire time. Don't play an old game with Zoomer brain.
Intelligence skills like enchanting & alchemy fed into any build, but especially for a mage. Again, you were expected to do some of the heavy lifting for yourself when it came to replenishing your pool of magic juice. If you think magic funneled you into melee combat, maybe you were approaching it from a single-minded perspective. Create a damage speed spell & either use it or enchant a weapon with it. Cast a 1-point levitate on an enemy & laugh as they hover in place trying to reach you. Take a cue from bonewalkers & damage their strength. A simple jump spell is enough to keep you away from most melee encounters.
Magic in Skyrim was streamlined to the point of it basically giving your character three flavors of zappy juice to fling at an enemy. Nah, a mage wouldn't possibly make themselves stronger or an opponent weaker. Just paralyze them, bro. A roleplaying game shouldn't include options & choices. Just pick the most efficient path & join the herd.
You're right about spears. Bethesda should have just looked 20 years into the future & applied a system like Mordhau. I felt the same way as a kid in the 80s suffering from a distinct lack of streaming services. I would have Tweeted about it, but I had to wait for cell phones to become ubiquitous & for Twitter to be invented. Damn them.
What's the point of unarmed? Indeed. I hate it when I'm given the option to addle an opponent & run past them if playing as someone who doesn't want to kill if possible. Again, roleplay. Its almost as if just trying to be the best warrior/archer/fireball flinger is a limited way to experience a game.
So, there is no gold sink in Morrowind & enchanters are reasonable? Interesting take. Its also hard to critique Morrowind's speech system when we see where Bethesda went with Skyrim & Fallout 4.
Yes, you have to roam the map to find souls for gems. That is of course unless you can summon monsters. Never heard of someone summoning a golden saint to fill a grand soul gem to enchant gear, thankfully. Tell me more about cognitive bias & selective memory. I'll return the favor by telling you a thing or two about projection.
All that being said, I appreciate the stones it takes to criticize Morrowind, which is overrated but not necessarily for the reasons you list. Bethesda games from Morrowind & beyond aren't RPGs so much as action-adventure titles in which you're allowed to customize an avatar. You get as much choice in the outcome of the game as you do in SuperCastlevania IV.
Yeah bro is trying to slay a sacred cow and that's fair enough. And MW has some very deep flaws. But magic being bad because you can't just blast fireballs out of the gate (unless you've really geared your build towards that I guess) is not one of them. Magic in MW is not an awesome button, but a way to manipulate the world and its environs. You can magic yourself some weightless gear, you can make yourself invisible, you can move witnesses out of the way, you can walk over bodies of water to avoid the slaughterfish, you can open locks and charm people without having to build stealth skills (which admittedly are very poorly implemented in MW), you can teleport at will, and yes, you can cripple your opponent in several ways before finishing him off with a fireball (unless he's Dunmer). Even seemingly useless effects like "Rally Creature" can be used to shepherd escaping enemies into your killzone while you're levitating. Some spell effects are not that great, but they still offer the player a way of dealing with problems other than bopping them over the head with a big sword.
Imagine comparing PONG to WiiTennis. That’s basically what this guy did 😆🪓
["Maybe stop trying to cast when you're out of breath at zero fatigue."]
That's a ridiculous mechanic, especially if you're claiming it's more "realistic." Casting magic spells is more about brain power or mind energy, and has less in common with physical, bodily fatigue.
@@josephpercy1558 Sorry sweetheart, but oldschool D&D from the 70s and 80s taught us magic has three types of components, verbal, somatic (movement & gestures), and material. Kinda hard to start a chant in a mystic tongue if you're out of breath.
Look into the story of Raistlin Majere. You might learn something about a connection between physical fatigue & magic use.
Great criticism for the game but for good open world design is how much resistance the world is giving you like for example zelda breath of wild in rain you are forced to not use iron and you can't use fire
About the narrative problem and options yes i think it should be possible and then giving you a canon ending in the books of history in the game but it would be interesting
About spears i think it should come back in the elder Scrolls 6 as a main weapon and sword as a side weapon like using it as a dash thrust attack then breaks with durability or goes away from the inventory and you can't take it unless you finish combat
About magic system i think simplifying it is a good idea like fire with extra damage frost damge with stamina damage and slowing the opponent and making traps but i miss making broke spells it's always funny if you finished everything in the game like oblivion with obliterating an entire city or doing your stuff but i can understand it
I found that yes making morrowind without toutorial is actually very bad the game doesn't really help you understand the mechanics you should actually go out of your way and watch UA-cam videos or read the information in some old website i think my problem with the older games is fast traveling system morrowind did a great job in it and Skyrim did the same you can go around Skyrim doing that expect winterhold i am obsessed with roleplaying as a mage but no easy way out of winterhold makes it harder for me to play as a mage i guess it's a skill issue
About the combat again i think that they should do something to improve enemies and their tools to fight you while the same for you like arcano in the college of winterhold questline but about the world design of the other elder Scrolls games i see it so great but i think it hurts the gameplay mechanics anyway great video continue pushing content
I've always found Skyrim really strange.
Like, you live in a world with mammoths, giants, trolls and many other large/dangerous creatures, and your longest weapon is a sword.
Honestly, that makes NO SENSE.
Hell, they didn't even have a ballista, which would be a total no-brain weapon against a giant.
@@Nerobyrne yeah you have a nice Idea like to deal with giants or mammoths you would need a large weapon if they ever became a problem and the only place you find ballista is in dwemer ruins and yes would make sense and spears because you don't want to be close to a troll
ooooof morrowind blows witcher 3 out of the water. Objectively it did more for it's time. It's better by just about every single metric. Witcher 3 isn't even a good RPG it's just an action game. Witcher doesn't even know how to be an rpg, closest it ever got was action rpg with low player agency/choice. Morrowind was revolutionary comparatively. I cant keep watching this.
Funny thing is you sound like your totally sucking up to morrowind but you are absolutely right. I played witcher 3 and it was not nearly as enjoyable as morrowind and no I am not a boomer I am about the same age as the game and played skyrim and oblivion before hand. Morrowind is King 👑.
@@dankmatter3068I am a little older than Morrowind, and I agree, it is pretty good.
this guy doesn't understand the concept of "for it's time"
@@youngjayvin we do
That's a nice opinion. Thankfully Witcher 3 is the bigger success.
I don't even think morrowind has any character development
The reason Morrowind blew our minds in 2002 was that once you left the Census Office, you had complete and utter free reign which was all but unheard of in a game at that time. It seems trite now, but in was novel in 2002.
it wasnt even just that. but the fact you felt like your decisions made a diference. you could kill certain npcs that were vital to the main quest. and "soft lock" your game. except, not really because you could literaly jerryrig the infinity gauntlet you needed for the final boss. but that would require you to really know the game well.
also, diseases and attribute damages were SCARY, certain enemies you would always face while carrying a ton of recovery attribute items, because you could genuinely get locked in place and unable to move if you tried facing them unprepared.
Got almost halfway through and couldn't keep going.
First of all, why is your fatigue almost always at zero? It's clear you don't understand the system as it clearly states that your fatigue is crucial to dong any skill, from magic and combat to lock picking and speech, even npcs say it if you actually talk to them instead of just ignoring them "because they all just say the same thing".
Second, "fake complexity" as you said a lot straight up isn't true as rpgs are supposed to be a bit more complex than "Here's a sword or fireball, go kill this reskinned enemy a thousand time and now you won the game", so maybe all the complains about spears being removed went over your head but I sincerely disagree.
You have a couple of good points but at this point it literally sounds like you're complaining that Morrowind is an old game and doesn't hold up to Skyrim, which obviously is true because why would anyone release a game that objectively had more time developing and had better hardware to run on. If Skyrim had worse npcs and a more boring combat system then Betheasda would have to bury that franchise for good. A bit part of Morrowind is reading through most of the walls of text provided to you through npcs and manuals in order to understand what to do and how things work, something the newer games got rid of. Ever tried playing a tabletop rpg without reading any of the rules? Same thing
This game seems like it's just not for you and that's normal, not every game is gonna be appreciated by everyone, especially when the newer games are easier to play. Thanks for your effort
PS, fix yo damn fatigue, getting stressed out seeing that mess
Getting low on fatigue happens regularly, even not in combat, so situations like that arise, that still doesn't change the fact that this is a bad system in a fprpg, your answer of just improve stamina doesn't change the issue, it only explains how to deal with this poor system, also needing to read the game manuals is terrible game design, I shouldn't be nudged to put down a game, just to go by a strategy guide, or hope it explains it on the inner booklet (if it's even still there), point is, you shouldn't need to leave a game to go learn it's mechanics
@@Originalchili Feel free to play games that hold your hand and show you everything you need to know within 5 minutes of playing the game, this however is not that game. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a bad system, you chose not to learn it. And "needing to read the manual is terrible game design" is simply a matter of taste and by no means a objective truth. I admit some of the systems are not as polished as they could be but such is the way of every ES game, otherwise these games would be objectively hailed as masterpieces.
There is a reason they made every game more and more simple in the ES franchise, it's to make the games more accessible to the more casual players and people who in fact don't want to be forced to struggle, such as fast travel and quest pointers, but that does not mean this game is designed poorly. It's designed for people who enjoy a challenge.
Your opinion is valid but it does not mean I need to agree. At the same time, I don't need you to agree with me but understand that not everyone see things the same way you do.
Morrowind is a good game, as is Skyrim and Oblivion, all for different reasons.
you take on magic is so, so wrong.
Also, you can easily make a pure mage.
Make a high elf with Destruction as his major skill, and you will have 100% chance to cast spells that one-shots all low level enemies.
pure mage is not only possible, it is easier than both pure warrior and pure stealth.
yeah a wizard breton with the race spell is op and i will not talk about the atronach
@@JustBuyTheWaywardsRealms and as someone else in another video said.
"magic is overpowered in Morrowind. Which is good, because magic is suppose to be overpowered. You are bending the elements to your will, you are invading peoples minds changing their perception of you. The whole point of magic is that it is overpowered! So magic being overpowered in a single player game is not a problem"
Great video! I used to shrug and not contest when people would say that "You don't like Morrowing because you don't like classical/hard RPGs" But since then I have a blast with games like Outward and DOS2, games that typically attract that same crowd. So that original argument doesn't really track with me anymore. Why didn't I have fun with morrowind? But have a blast with all these other more classic styled RPGs? I've been waiting for a video that explores these topics, so thank you!
Well... maybe because Outward and DOS2 are MODERN games inspired by classic RPGs and not ACTUAL old RPGs, they have a LOT of quality of live improvements, and general improvements over all that the gaming space back then just didn't know were possible or needed. Comparing Outward and DOS2 to Morrowind is like comparing King's Field to Elden Ring
@lizzy7999 that makes sense. So it's probably the case that people don't like the classics less because of a lack of intelligence, but more because of a lack of patience...
Hm.
Hmm but that's the thing though, it takes alot of patience to learn the pace of Outward and the Logic of DOS2. I would argue the same amount of patience it takes to learn morrowinds pace and logic. I think you put it perfectly that it all boils down to quality of life. It's not about brain power or patience, but simply comfort and feedback.
The fans made me despise the game, they're toxic.
If u let a bunch of people weird people on the internet ruin your experience of a single player game that came out in 2002 I’m blown away.
@@jaytalbot8186 Look at it like this, Morrowind is not an easy game and the fanbase is basically your guide, if you're smart then you know about the rest.
Not only do they mock you, they have superiority complex of telling themselves Morrowind is the best TES 💀.
@@PutraRhm dude get off the internet
@@jaytalbot8186 How is that relevant to the topic?
@@PutraRhm you let people who are chronically online change the way you view a game that isn’t bad when u stop listening to the people online
You're allowed to make criticisms of this game. Morrowank fanboys would be foolish to act like the game is mechanically 100% perfect. That being said, some of your comparisons to games that are almost 10 years younger than Morrowind seem quite irrelevant and you also seem to not know what you're talking about at times despite speaking with an air of objectivity. Do better
the only thing overrated in this game is the colovian fur helm
"medium armour is objectively the worst" statistically Her Greaves and the ebony mail which are both medium are the two best armour pieces in the whole game outclassing all heavy armour for protection while being lighter
This guy has never been in a Dwemer ruin and it shows.
Man, I like Morrowind a lot more than The Witcher 3, and I think I tried TW3 first. If not first than within a year or two of Morrowind. It's funny that you bring it up while saying people find it easy to overlook faults in games we like, because I've always thought TW3 was a mediocre hack'n'slash that everybody pretended was perfect mostly just because of its writing and pretty world. Not that Morrowind has *great* combat, but it does have build variety. And way better magic.
I agree with you on TW3's gameplay. It's not that great. I personally enjoyed it, but it's pretty repetitive and not very deep, and the criticisms people have of it are accurate. The point of my comparison is mostly to show how choice in RPGs can be done right, and I think TW3 does this about as well as is possible in a 3d open world game.
Agreed. I often just think the cutscenes are the best parts of the Witcher 3. Making it purely text-based dialogue choice game might have made it even better. Sure, the locations are sometimes awesome-looking (especially the Skyrim-esque Skellige Isles and Novigrad city), but mostly it is just boring wasteland. The game mechanics are mostly just hacking your sword and dodge rolling and following a red highlighter trail, while Geralt comments: "Hmm, someone shitted here. A fight was fought here. Blood. He must be nearby"
Witcher 3 is barley a rpg
finally people are calling out witcher 3. when i first played it, it felt like a glorified version of ' two worlds ' (2008), absolute vast expansive world into shallowness.
I'm happy someone is critical with Morrowind who actually likes it. The biggest problem with gaming today is consumers tend to lower the bar every time a "respected" developer makes something worst what they made before. And now we are here with terrible, boring and unintuitive games and the future of AAA gaming is dark.
No developer can show this trend clearer than Bethesda.
Good luck! You gonna get a lot of hate because of this video.
BTW I think the art style of Morrowind is the most creative art style they ever did. I truly feel the Fantasy in the game world of Morrowind. With the Oblivion and Skyrim not so much, in fact I can do the same as they did, which is basically the reskin of the medieval Europe.
I absolutely love this video, it's about time that someone had the fucking balls, to call out the Elder Scrolls community on it's bullshit and knock down the pedestal, that they have put this game on.
Look, I love every Elder Scrolls game, even the ones I haven't played, but to say Morrowind is the best in the series is laughable. Morrowind loses to Daggerfall when it comes to depth in mechanics and RPG elements, it arguably loses to Skyrim in terms of atmosphere and immersion. It loses to Arena in terms of size and exploration.
I salute you sir, and you have earned a subscriber for this excellent video. And hearing the "REEEEEs" of the Morrowind fanboys in the comment section, will keep me coming back, hungry for more.
especially because "i love this game, it's my favorite elder scroll, but it's not the best rpg of all time" is apparently terribly controversial how dare you say one negative word about morrowind.
i could never get into the game because i felt it encouraged save scumming in a way that oblivion and skyrim didn't. maybe if i kept my finger off quick save/load it could have been fun. but i had fun in the other two without even thinking about saving.
Smells like nwah issues
Excellent video.
Bethesda fans have extremely low standards, and that penchant for accepting such mediocrity started in Morrowind.
It's hard to feel bad for them after Starfield. They literally asked for it.
to compare morrowind with starfield feels like a bad joke. morrowind had so much more to offer in both how you aprouched the game, as well as how the story itself worked.
you could kill vital npcs to the main story, and lock yourself out, pretty much soft locking yourself... thing is, even if you did that, there was still ways to complete the main story, but that would require more of the player.
this is something you wont find even in many modern games. this isnt a "do the game the same exact way every time, and in the end you get a choice of colored rainbow effect". it was literaly playing the game in a completely diferent way to reach the same spot at the end.
@@marcosdheleno
Being able to soft lock the game isn't some incredibly important gameplay feature. It's a thing you do and reload a save and say, "cool." If Bethesda was a good developer, they would allow you to kill important characters without soft locking the game. Morrowind has its advantages over the later games in the series, and it's a shame they chose to strip so much out over improving, but I don't get the obsession with being a murder hobo and reloading your previous save.
The main reason people dislike Starfield is the setting. If it was interesting and you could walk around a contiguous world map Bethesda fans would eat it up.
why have different kinds of attack?
why have different kinds of armor?
why have a different combat system with hand-to-hand compared to others?
why have different weapons?
answer; IT'S CALLED FUCKING ROLEPLAYING.
And some of us roleplayers, are really sick of bethesda removing things, that makes us able to roleplay.
Yeah that's why I'm waiting Wayward Realms so much it's done by Ted Peterson and Julian Lefay the creator of Daggerfall.
spears were amazing in morrowind. and so were bound weapons. which even at the endgame, were still usefull for casters and hybrid classes. you could even make use of bound weapons as your primary weapon for most of the game with minimal issue.
and the fact you could do so much with so many diferent weapons, just made the game really feel like you could pick the route you wanted, more than the weapon that was strongest. like in oblivion and skyrim.
@@marcosdheleno exactly. The game did funnel you into minmaxing and becoming a stealth archer. It made multiple builds viable by ironically the bad balancing.
Morrowind vs Skyrim is always my go to, for why focusing on balance in a SINGLE player game is really bad.
Just make all options fun. Make becoming a god endgame regardless of build fairly easy. And then no one cares if a longsword is technically a better weapon than a battle axes. Just pick the damn weapon you like.
@@And-ur6ol exactly. in morrowind, weapons were more than just the stats on them. you could wield a staff and go full bonker mode by filling it with a number of enchants that would melt anything it touched.
or you could never enchant anything more than a few utility spells like levitate or bound weapon, and just go your way.
in skyrim, you only have 2 choices, go stealthy bow, or alchemy your stats out of wazoo.
you could focus on a nerfer build that just damaged the shit out of the opponent's strength and inteligence to lock them in place. and that was a perfectly viable build.
you wouldnt even need to kill most enemies in morrowind.
@@marcosdheleno you can do a pacifist run in Morrowind, fairly succesful.
Outside of quests where you have to kill the target (although many of those, you can negotiate with the target and avoid killing them), you can absolutely go pacifist route.
One of my favourite things to do, is to enchant a ring (it has to be a ring for obvious reasons) with invisibility, and just put in on whenever i travel around.
And how nice is that? You have invisibility for when you wanna travel, and chameleon when you wanna do crime!
Getting that invisibility is also just a nice reward to yourself after having done enougth of early game, to avoid dealing with cliff razors :D
Skill issue.
One of the game's biggest selling points from the perspective of fans is its immersion. It's insane to me how shallow some peoples' thinking can be and then project that shallowness unto someone else for just flatly not enjoying a game - especially one that they totally promise is fun and not at all a clunky mess.
When a game is as both mechanically and visually jarring and, well - clunky - as Morrowind, it inherently damages immersion. I remember watching Sseth's video on Morrowind where he says: "The game mechanics are bullshit; either you adapt to it and bask in its ridiculous glory and enjoy yourself, or you refuse to learn, die horribly and write angry complaints on a Korean basket weavers' forum." In order for you to immerse yourself, you have to be able to actually take the game world seriously - you actually try to become your character and try to make everything about the game as real as you can. What Sseth described is the polar opposite of immersion. When I play Oblivion or Skyrim, I try to BE the actual character that I'm playing. When I play Morrowind, I am constantly, acutely aware that I am myself, sitting on a chair in front of my computer, playing an overly elaborate calculator of a gadget. Credit where credit is due, Morrowind did replicate some enjoyment that's similar to how games were played when I was a kid - I turn my brain off and watch what the weirdness box will spit out next.
That's basically Morrowind; and then you add the laughable animations and visual feedback, the walking into someone's house because NPCs basically stand in-place except for guards, walking up to where their valuables are, stealing them because the (stationary) NPCs have no line of sight and just walking out. Brilliant.
I don't quite know how you could use Skyrim or especially Oblivion as examples of immersion, though. Typical interactions with NPCs in Oblivion are even jankier, the voice acting is frequent and it's either bland or bad, and the mechanics don't cultivate immersion particularly well in all three of these games.
The difference for Morrowind likers is that the experience is less automated and more player-driven. Some people justifiably don't like the lack of quest markers or the fact that the fast travel is exclusively in-world, but having to engage with those things and learn them as a person in the setting would have to is the kind of thing that connects them to their character. It is indeed a mechanical disaster on many levels. Sseth has a meme-y playstyle and philosophy though, and you don't actually have to break the game in ridiculous ways to make it playable. (People do like the degree of freedom it gives you though, are there are ways to make use of it that don't involve total immersion destruction).
Aside from that, the setting and worldbuilding do a great deal of the heavy lifting for people who are into it. It's not that Morrowind is the peak of the medium, it's that no game has presented a refined alternative with a similarly unique and memorable setting. Morrowind is flawed and could easily be surpassed today, but no one is making games that fill the same niche. I can't get into the setting of even the most mechanically and visually polished games if they lack an identity and sense of believability. This is a subjective thing, games like this need the player to accept a high level of abstraction and ridiculous crudity, or else the experience will fall apart. We haven't come that far from the need to do this, when a capital city in Skyrim still only has a population of 40 people and NPCs can't hold a coherent conversation with each other. Every game is trying to get the player to buy into an illusion, players just engage with it in different ways. Alpha Centauri's dated visual presentation and lack of balance doesn't stop players from being invested in its writing quality, for example.
Personally I can get more immersed in a crunchy 1997 isometric RPG than Skyrim if the former has an interesting world and gives me enough freedom to tell the story I want to. RPGs like Skyrim, I find them too restrictive and their worlds too bland. No video game has ever made me forget I was playing a video game, and Skyrim having animations and models that are *less* bad than Morrowind's certainly isn't a big enough gulf to change that.
@@kahir8642 This isn't to say that Skyrim and Oblivion are benchmarks of immersion themselves, especially not Oblivion. There's a substantial amount of glitches or even unfinished dialogue that can break immersion in the latter two games.
My point regarding immersion is simply that Morrowind is so outdated and even cartoonish, so able to break your immersion that a game like Skyrim wins out by default - even based on something like the visual feedback the game gives you.
I can simply get more immersion playing in first person in Skyrim, running through the forests with my bow out and then getting a satisfying animation of my character pulling the arrow on the bowstring back and then releasing. That's even before the killcam. The killcams can bug out but they work well most of the time. Who knew that better and more realistic graphics and animations aren't just for muh eye candy, they actually make the game... more real. Almost like that was the point.
@@Dimitrije_Sukovic That's all fine and understandable, I was only explaining why players view graphical disconnects differently. The two games (dis)engage you with their worlds in different ways that resonate with different types of players. A game looking nice isn't a bad thing, but obviously the audience that can stomach the way Morrowind looks and behaves isn't prioritizing the same things as someone who considers it a dealbreaker. Dwarf Fortress is almost as graphically primitive as any game can be but it isn't an inherently less authentic experience for it (and no I'm not saying Morrowind's ugliness lets it be as mechanically complex as Dwarf Fortress.)
@@Dimitrije_SukovicI can appreciate this argument, but I tend to view things differently. For me, I get distracted by realistic graphics and they squeeze out any room for imagination. I don't get immersed when things look so real that I have to accept everything on the screen as reality, I get immersed when there is a level of abstraction that allows me to insert my own interpretation of the things I'm seeing. It's a more active process of engaging with patterns, symbols, and suggestive elements of design. It's the reason why people find Stardew Valley immersive. Ironically I am finding Skyrim to be more immersive the more it shows its age, because the cracks in its graphical fidelity leave room for me to extrapolate a more complex world.
I say, welcome to reality where any kind of 'development' comes at a cost, including increasing game 'immersion.' You can't CHIM your way to transcending all limitations.
The only people who has a problem with this critique are players who know the game extremely well and so the games lack of transparency isn’t a problem for them. For someone like me however, the game is absurdley tedious because of the lack of information and I don’t want to spend that much time to git good to learn the story of the game.
This is definitely my issue. I wanna like it but it's so opaque and tedious.
they make games for gamers like you lol, usually they have so much stuff on the hud like "quest alerts", map markers, mini maps, a golden trail to follow so you dont get lost, hints that pop up, NPCs that tell you solutions etc.. its unfortunate that games have to be so dumbed down cause people cant take the time to learn a very easy game, I played it as a 12 year old on Xbox with no help and still managed to finish it and get a fulfilling experience. gamers today just cant handle the prospect of creating their own adventure, they need to be guided like a puppy on a leash.
@@dontcare3 you're wrong and right. I like games with good stories and Morrowind is really bad at tellings its story (which I know is great because I've seen videos and read about it). In general I prefer indie games like for example Hades, which is reeeeally good in all aspects. I did 32 heat, so its not that I'm bad at gaming, but golly gosh the tedium of Morrowinds systems.
It was different when we were kids and had all the time in the world to pour into games that gave us enough to explore. A game that required dozens of hours to figure out was my dream when I was 14, but is my nightmare now.
@@ihateyoutubesomuch371 Exactly, elitists will call us flithy casuals for not being able to play games as we did when we were kids (I played the Kotor games and Tibia). For example the dontcare3 type of people that look back with rose colored glasses and believe that every new invention makes the game worse, condescending because when he was 12 he was a genious and instantly understood all the systems (when we all of course know he understood nothing but could invest crazy amounts of time).
played through the main quest and did some sidequests aswell... it has its moments but overall i find it extremely boring, tedious and broken in a lot of ways.
you can abuse the broken mechanics and run around as a demigod only to get stunned to death by a mere bandit in a cave because you forgot about paralysis enchants and now you play the waiting game until their weaponcharges run out...
hearing the same three music tracks over and over, killing the same enemy (f** cliffracers and rats especially) over and over, walk super slow through quite empty areas (especially the ashlands can go to oblivion)
No.
That's it. That's the comment.
That's not an argument, n'wah.
@@josephpercy1558 Well it was an argument when Numidium went "NO" all over those Altmer, and quite a strong one at that.
14:39 this is not true. heavy armor is heavier and so it makes you more encumbered. the higher your encumberance the slower you character moves
I think you got the enchant skill way wrong. Higher skill makes using enchanted items more efficient and recharge naturally more quickly, and you level it by using enchanted items normally.
Also, I lament the removal of unarmored.
IN THE CASE OF THE HLLALLU HORTATOR QUEST YOU ACTUALLY CAN CONVINCE ALL OF THEM TO SUPPORT YOU ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS NOT SAY THE WRONG CHOICE IN YOUR DIALOGUE WITH ORVIS DREN BECAUSE SAYING THE WRONG THING MAKES HIM HOSTILE
Imagine you start the game have all these neat stats to begin with... and then you miss, miss , and ... guess.. yes you miss. Im sorry but it feels like where there are right answers theres just more wrong answers to why morrowind was the best. Also if you said you can mod morrowind to make it more adjustable you are giving Skyrim more credit so thats not a winning Argument.
Spears are unique in that you can hit without being hit from a range, at least outdoor, hammers put people on their knees more often.
You can pure mage with atronach sign, summon ghost, attack, spell absorb repeat, raising conjuration in the process. Also can just make a cheap bound weapon spell that lasts for few seconds that you use to attack stuff so conjuration levels up more naturally. You say there's no gold sink in Morrowind, well yeah there is, training.
Alchemy is not that much of a slog, you get plenty of shipwrecks with a bundle of fatigue stuff that you can use for alch, combine that with mudcrab meat, nixhounds. And you have cool things like reading Ajira's scrolls about shrooms and flowers to find out about ingredients needed to make potions without having a high alchemy. There are several books that give you some info as well. High level alchemy stuff is light and you can just keep the apprentice stuff in your home, which is how it would normally happen. You don't carry around a laboratory with you.
No game has so far been able to replicate the feeling of an alien world like Morrowind. That's not a light accomplishment, which i think you take for granted.
And as far as the diceroll system, if you can't figure out in 2 hours that you hit more often as weapon skill increases, you're better off playing mobile games. The different attacks dealing different damage is a punishment for people that don't read or like to think.
I agree with you on the speechcraft.
Morrowind is about discovering the world through books, asking people about lore, rumors and doing quests. Fighting is mostly pretty bad in the majority of games. Highly exploitable and it will always be this way. The AI and balance of the game can either let a player exploit the system, or crush him just for the sake of making something difficult, there's nothing in between.
I’m happy I’m not the only one. Downloaded Morrowind, modded it & played for the first time. So far, unimpressed. Tbh prefer Daggerfall to Morrowind
This is so true and no one want to hear it. I came into the franchise with Skyrim first, and then I tried Morrowind and Oblivion a few months after... I ended up falling in love with Oblivion and not liking Skyrim very much. I wasn't able to get into Morrowind but started a playthrough a year or so ago. Morrowind's greatness is in world design, atmosphere, lore and writing, but IMO it is not a good game in the sense that it is not mechanically fun to play. Combat particularly is not very fun unless you're playing a mage, and why would you play anything else when the magic system in Morrowind allows so much creativity and synergy with itself. (Weakness to frost, frost damage, enchanted frost weapon, etc).
I believe Oblivion is the best mix between RPG and action, though it COULD have been a bit more in-depth. Skyrim melee combat feels slow, Morrowind's doesn't feel like real combat at all. Oblivion melee combat may not look as realistic as Skyrim's, but the freedom of movement is important for fun, especially when it comes to something like archery. Oblivion archery is much more fun than Skyrim's simply because of freedom of movement over realism
Morrowind is a gem of a game, and was a breakthrough for the time that it was released, but the combat does not hold up today so it's a pretty hard game to get into even for players who enjoy other Bethesda titles. Usually I prefer to just read and watch stuff about it
Reall bethesda game started fading after morrowind the vision of the game was more a sandbox rpg with arena and daggerfall.
Good video its nice to see people having honest critiques rather than mindless praising or hating on it
😂
xd good joke now i'm gonna take a piss
I played it for the 1st time for around 10 hours and it gets boring pretty quickly compared to Oblivion, Skyrim, Baldurs Gate 1,2 & 3
i would say the same about oblivion and skyrim compared to morrowind.
morrowind has some issues with quests, but what it doesnt have is the obnoxious scaling that can really screw you over in both skyrim and oblivion.
also, weapons and exploration was done far better in morrowind, even if the dice roll system was obnoxious to get used to.
on the other hand, that dice roll is only an issue very early on. as pretty quickly you can either enchant spells on rings and other pieces of clothes that let you cast without casting failure. OR make use of bound weapons that are actually usefull throughout the whole game.
leveling was also a much less of an issue compared to oblivion that, while it didnt demand you min max, the scaling punished you for underleveling with enemies becoming absurdly strong(as in inflated hp and wearing full sets of powerful gear) regardless if you were facing a powerful enemy or just a malnourished bandit.
i still remember when i tried playing skyrim as a mage, it was all ok, until i got to this 1 random archer, the guy could just oneshot me. no matter what i did. so i was forced to use a bow, and spend more than half an hour shooting him with his health barely moving. until i gave up. none of the other enemies in his group was that buffed up. and i wasnt using any mods. its just that, i got "unlucky" and the game generated a dude using some powerfull bow and armor.
????????
You n'wah!
All the beloved, flawed classics from this era are "overrated". MW is no exception to this. Just because of the development cycle, stuff that didn't make it in as a result, systems being broken, training some skills being outright useless, jack-of-all-trades being the default best class (rather than straight warrior, as is claimed in this video), unfinished content, etc. It's more the feeling that they engender, and the amazing things on them that modern games lack. When MW came out, not all classic RPG purists or even Elder Scrolls (Arena and Daggerfall) fans liked it either (see e.g. RPG Codex threads from the early 00s). MW is helped a lot by the myriad of mods and fan patches. Still, playing it unmodded for the first time, without spoilers, wiki, etc. is an experience everyone should have, although it will frustrate zoomers because there's no hand-holding.
Some of the critique in this video is just typical zoomer criticism, with starting issues that can mostly be negotiated by reading the manual or the tooltips in-game, or a (non-spoiler) guide. If you make your character so that you start with >30 points in one weapon class, then you're certainly not going to miss all the time. I don't think it's a bad thing that you have to think about your build. That some skills and builds are useless regardless, OK, that is something that MW can and should be criticised for. Missing all the time can be solved by specialising in one weapon class. Slow movement speed can be solved by making Speed higher in character creation (which is a valid choice if you're not metagaming and powergaming).
I'm not a big main quest fan in MW, but the critique given here seems dead wrong. First the MQ is too easy, next it's "good luck" if you're not a warrior? Obviously the MQ can be finished very early on if you have metagame knowledge, but I would consider that besides the point. If you just play the game without getting all the spoilers from the UESP Wiki, you simply cannot know that.
The game emphatically doesn't say that the player IS the chosen one, it says that you "become" the Nerevarine, you "can" fulfill the conditions of the prophesy. Whether you really are, or just someone's catspaw, is left up to your own interpretation. Some characters, like Huleeya, will question post-MQ if you will now also "drive out the foreigners" as prophesied.
For me it's the no-handholding open world that still makes MW great. You have to figure things out yourself, you're thrown out into this big world, and you make your own destiny. Magic is one of the ways you can act upon that world and adapt to it. Which is a bit more involved than just casting fireballs, true. With metagame knowledge, the magic doesn't seem so impressive. But when actually role-playing, being able to levitate or walk on water at will (including when your scrolls/potions/amulets run out) is an asset. There is basically a magical solution to every problem in the game, including obviously the ability to avoid the ubiquitous and obnoxious slaughterfish and cliff racers, which even the best warrior will have to painstakingly kill whenever encountered.
Some of the critiques in this video are valid, and insofar as they are, of course MW is "overrated". Still one of the best overrated games out there.
To posit that this is just "typical zoomer criticism" is not a valid argument.
@@josephpercy1558 Therefor they wrote much more than just that, but I guess it outranged your zoomer attentionspan by about 10 miles to actually read the rest of it :(
@@RandlerayThe criticism rests on zoomer as a point of reference. Morrowind doesn't handhold, but is that a good thing? The idea of it being bad, or that its particular style of absent guidance (because there are other ways of not handholding players) is not the besr, is dismissed with the idea that essentially the only people who could ever possibly dislike this aspect of MW are braindead adhd addled zoom-zooms so MW is immune to critique on this front. Etc etc for all arguments.
I find a lot of MW defenders have this fallacious belief that because MW is complicated the only people who don't praise it as the greatest game of all time, or god forbid even dislike the game, only do so because they're too stupid to understand or appreciate MW's systems and style and that if those people were smarter they'd see the light. Obvioisly that logic is wrong and it is possible to not favor or eveb dislike morrowind on its own merits.
As a zoomer who has planescape torment and a boatload of other boomer games in their top 50 greatest of all time, I cannot stand MW and I'm tired of people pretending everyone who doesn't throat MW just got filtered.
@@JustForGaming_Alt-kf8lz " Morrowind doesn't handhold, but is that a good thing? The idea of it being bad, or that its particular style of absent guidance..."
You contradict yourself. Morrowind does not hold your hand, but the guidance is not absent - simple as that. And there are many MANY videos on YT that explain and discuss this very point.
Therefore your whole point is void of actual substance... talking about 'fallacious believes...
Disliking Morrowind is not the problem. Disliking Morrowind on completely over-elaborated arguments is exactly what some would describe as 'filtered'.
Why is it so hard for people, especially zoomers, to just dislike Morrowind?
@@Randleray The point is invalid because the one example I used is only 80% correct? C'mon. MW doesn't guide you on nearly anything past "swing your sword at stuff to kill it", which is why even hardcore players have to rely on UESP heavily.
Had I written an essay here I'd be dismissed on grounds thay I'm nit-picking or some other and had I been more sparse you'd have dismissed me like you did the commenter above.
Fact is MW rod-polishers like you don't let people "just dislike morrowind". Anyone who dislikes it without being able to write a treatise on the game is written off as being a moron and anyone who gives detail is then quibbled at on small facts as if anything short of didactic memory is an indictment against the player.
MW is not the end-all-be-all of rpgs (even for 2001) and disliking it isn't a sin. You can complain about how people present those facts but they are facts.
Over a decade later it's been two decades
Over is a keyword
@@histhoryk2648 World War 2 was over two weeks ago
Morrowind has issues, that's not debatable, and you do touch on some of them - such as the itemization issues. But a large number of these grievances and problems are covered in the manual, that archaic thing that games came with in the old days when it took an hour or more to install the game so you were expected to read the manual during install. Willpower increases much more than just fatigue. It also increases your chance to successfully cast a spell, you know... that thing that mages NEED to do. You know what hitting things with a big dumb sword does? Not increase the attribute dedicated to hitting things, which is Agility.
Doesn't that last bit just demonstrate his point? Why would a melee focused warrior need to improve agility-related skills to get better at fighting with a sword? No matter how you slice it, Morrowind's attribute system is incredibly flawed which was the video author's point. In other RPGs, when you want to get better at something, you either put points into that skill and its related attributes when leveling up and choosing gear, or in games that have similar leveling to TES, leveling one attribute makes you actually better at actions related to that attribute, such as raising Strength in D&D increasing physical damage, hit chance, and ability to perform strength-related activities.
In other action RPGs like say Diablo, Dexterity may influence hit chance, but A: It's by a rather miniscule amount and B: you have full control over how much of one stat or another that you want, whereas to do the same in Morrowind you need to jump through hoops to raise your Agility using its bizarre "class" mechanic.
best breakdown of morrowind
extremely rare and very important
100% based argumentation
I think a lot of beginner issues with morrowind could be easily remedied by reading the manual and it’s unfortunate that people just don’t do that for games anymore
*fights by spamming attack with zero stamina*
Yeaaah your opinion on the subject is irrelevant
Most of the critique in the video is very relevant, so your nitpick is kinda meh.
Apparently you missed the parts where I deliberately waited to restore fatigue before fighting. Obviously I can't do that if I get ambushed by the dark brotherhood (since it deletes your resting) and sometimes you do genuinely just run out of fatigue when fighting, like if you stumble into an enemy while traveling.
he calls it "stamina" lmoa
@@metalsludge8205stamina is the correct term, even if the game itself erroneously calls energy its antonym.
@@leftwingbreadtuber649 dude...fatigue potions exist. drinking them might fix your fatigue issue lmao
I've seen some lamenting unarmored, people who want a monk/ninja type build. Although they got rid of acrobatics by skyrim which was sad, jumping around was fun
i always turn off always use best attack. I like how your movements could increase or decrease your damage. It adds a little more to combat and changes how different weapons feel when attacking
If I were making a RPG i would consider including this feature but more complex, like custom for each weapon. Maybe if a player does a particular set of moves they can perform a special attack like a fighting game. Like if you charged up your attack and jumped while sprinting, you attack with a lunge.
Good idea
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Blade of Darkness
Playing the game without the Boots of Blinding Speed, I see.
😂
An excellent analysis and breakdown and I find it most amusing that so many people are rushing to defend Morrowind's mechanical complexity when compared to even run-of-the-mill ARPGs like Diablo 2, Torchlight 1&2, Grim Dawn, and Path of Exile, Morrowind's mechanics are so incredibly basic as to be uninteresting. Or to compare to another first person game series, take the Borderlands games, where you had to compare weapons of the same type (especially in 2 & 3) and weigh various statistics. All weapons in Morrowind, and all TES games, are a simple question of what generates the most dps, as damage reduction is always a flat % value, enemy counts are almost always small which obviates the need for AoE and crowd control effects, and debuff skills are limited to spells and enchantments while weapon combat skills are just about increasing damage per swing (and functional damage per swing in the case of hit chance).
I haven't done the math in Morrowind, but in Oblivion the damage formula for weapon skills calculated to be a 5% increase in damage per 10 attribute points (+50% at 100) and 15% per 10 skill levels (+150% at level 100). I wouldn't be shocked if the math was the same or similar in Morrowind (upon looking, the Strength calculation is IDENTICAL but skill has no bearing on damage, only hit rate), but it's telling that this is the only effect of raising the skill and attribute, and that there are very few ways to increase damage or efficacy of your character outside of this. As there is no cap to attribute level in Morrowind, it only becomes a matter of fortifying the appropriate weapon attribute as much as possible to create a character who not only hits very consistently, but also deals incredible damage when doing so. Intelligence stacking is notorious for completely breaking the game due to Alchemy as well, in a way that is completely uninteresting and almost certainly unintended considering that it was removed in Oblivion and the cap for fortifying skills and attributes was at 100 in that game.
Morrowind is a broken, unbalanced mess of a game as an ARPG. You either make a series of uninteresting choices that have middling effects on your overall power level as a character, or you break the game entirely. It was a game with a somewhat unique setting but for some reason fans really latched onto it and I guess never played something with more complexity and better balance afterwards. And since people keep bringing up that you can only compare the game to its contemporaries for some reason, Diablo 2 released 2 years prior to Morrowind and has a far more interesting system of character progression and combat than Morrowind by far.
So I really don't know why people think Morrowind is a complex game. It isn't. You aren't having to pull multiple enchantment types to build a character, nor manage CC or AoE effects to clear dungeons effectively. Every weapon skill is identical save for the dps of the weapons and the available item pool, which itself is obviated greatly by the ability to apply enchantments to certain armor and weapon types. Your choices are almost meaningless in this regard, especially since like most RPGs with potions, even with a bad character you can power through almost any dungeon provided you have sufficiently stocked up on healing potions prior to entering.
Like what you like about Morrowind, but I think it's disingenuous to excuse the combat system. Morrowind has a cool setting. It's okay to like it for that reason. But it often feels like people are justifying bad design decisions because they like the game rather than viewing the game objectively, even in the lens of games of the early 2000s. Even Warcraft 3's RPG mechanics, a game which released only a year after Morrowind, had decidedly more interesting mechanics via its heroes and their abilities, while even going into Skyrim TES never adopted the idea of having any unique abilities other than spells. The saddest thing about the newer games isn't that they're worse than Morrowind, it's that they're so similar even when other, far better systems were developed after its release.s
Kind of responding as I watch, here. I think it's good to criticize things you love, and I very much appreciate this video, even if I think some of your points need even a little more nuance than you already gave.
In regards to the combat, I think it should be noted that the dice-roll system is mostly an issue with people coming to the game years after release, and wouldn't have been a problem contemporaneously. Why? Well, simply put, basically every popular RPG in the 15 years prior to Morrowind's release also used dice rolls. It was just the standard for the RPG genre, and the developers would have assumed that their target audience would have been familiar with those genre trappings. Additionally, Morrowind was developed in a world where video game controls, UIs, and other player-facing elements had not all been standardized yet. It came out in 2002, and just the year prior, Halo: Combat Evolved set the new standard for first-person controls in a console game. In fact, in doing so, Halo set the standard for first-person presentation on the mass market in general, and not just for First-Person Shooters. Before Halo, first-person games had much less mass-market appeal, because consoles were (and still are) the mass market platform of choice, and first-person games were not the norm on those platforms. Our modern expectations of combat feel and responsiveness in first-person games are largely descended from that innovation in shooters, and it is one that Morrowind neither could have realistically incorporated, nor one that their target market would have expected from the game. Interestingly to the point of this video, I think this is a criticism that is much easier to make in hindsight, now that two of the all-time best-selling game franchises are Call of Duty and Halo.
Encumbrance affects movement speed. Heavier armors have more encumbrance *_AND_* makes you move slower on top of the encumbrance effect. So, armor type actually does have impact movement in combat.
On magic at an early level, there are ways to regenerate magic, and it's one of the reasons it's so important to join guilds early in the game: potions. The mages guild keep stocks of standard restore magica potions that you can refill from once every few in-game days. I don't think this is a problem. Mechanically, it enforces the importance of factions in the world for novice mages, especially ones who don't have natural abilities. An Altmer or Breton, for instance, have better magica/int ratios than the other races. In the early game they might not depend on the guild quite as much to be viable. And the same is true for characters born under the Mage or Atronach signs, which you mentioned. That said, I do think the abilities definitely needed a re-think in their ties to associated skills.
I always really enjoyed the longer reach of spears. The itemization isn't great, no, but I don't really like the premise behind that point. Flavor can still be a really valuable world-building tool, even if mechanically or itemization-wise, a particular skill or weapon style might be technically inferior. A large part of RPGs is character expression. And yes, character expression involves cosmetic choices, too.
I pretty much just flat-out disagree with your conclusions on medium armor and unarmored. If light armor affects your movement speed very little, unarmored affects it none at all. Now, I agree that that effect should have been more pronounced, but I don't think unarmored necessarily had to be useless. Same with medium armor. It is supposed to be a sliding tradeoff between movement and protection. Being able to mix and match armor pieces was supposed to be another big part of this, since you could really fine-tune that protection/mobility balance. In the end, this is a tuning issue, not a feature bloat issue.
If you use mercantile from the very get-go, it is quite easy to level to 100 naturally without training it at all. I have done it at least twice. It levels based on the percentage you raise any particular haggle. But, the percentage you can successfully haggle is based on your skill and luck. So, like all skills in the game, it is much more difficult to increase at skill 5 than it is at levels over 15-20ish (i.e. a major or minor skill, or a racial skill). This is why you so rarely see people use it, because people just never take it as a primary skill. In the late-game, it is a useless skill, I will grant you, since you will have much more gold than you know what to do with (and as you mentioned, there are no gold sinks, one of the actual major problems of the game). But early on, a character with high mercantile can afford much better equipment, and that can have compounding effects when it comes to exploring. Also, there is a bug where bribery chances are based on mercantile, but it trains your speechcraft. I think if bribery had been mercantile/mercantile, it would have been a much cooler and more explored skill by players.
I know you keep bringing up the point that this is all based on the premise that if Bethesda isn't going to do a particular skill justice, they should just remove it. I think the problem is that it's a slippery slope. We see this in the mercantile/speechcraft merger in Skyrim you discussed, where you predicted speechcraft would be completely gone in TES6. I agree that is likely the case, but think about it: speech and mercantile weren't *_useless_* in Morrowind, they was just under-cooked. There were good use-cases for them, and the dialogue system could have accommodated better uses for both of these if they'd had the budget to do more with them. (It was never used, but there was code-base to support skill checks through dialogue.) But instead speech and mercantile went from undercooked in Morrowind, to one of them being outright gone in Oblivion, with a speech mechanic that was even stupider and actually useless, to being practically non-existent in Skyrim. See, the thing is, once they dumb it down once, Bethesda always ends up undercooking the *_dumbed-down version._* That gives them more fuel and justification to outright remove the next iteration. The next skills to go will be 2-handed (rolled into general weapons because it was undercooked in Skyrim), alteration (rolled into illusion because now it's just the armor school), and speech (not rolled into anything, just deciding that RPGs don't need dialogue mechanics?!?!?!!?!). It will keeping going like that until there are just 3 skills--fighting, stealth, and magic.
And yes, enchantment was absolutely a worthless garbage school in Morrowind lol. That one just needed to be outright re-thought.
Alchemy was certainly not useless in Morrowind. I don't know why you keep throwing that word around. Yes, like every skill, it is basically impossible to use at a low level. This is an intentional design choice to encourage you to play your class until you can train outside of it. So, use it when it's a major or minor, or once you've otherwise gotten it up to about 15 or 20. This is actually a great example of a good seed of an idea actually getting refined and iterated upon by Bethesda. I agree, every game did it slightly better than the last. But then, this should have been the case study for every other skill. Including alchemy as an example actually makes every other example even *_MORE_* frustrating. They could have iterated and improved all of them in Oblivion and Skyrim, but they chose not to.
So like, I know you already discussed magic attribute / skill alignment, but it was still absolutely a viable playstyle? Just saying that the only viable playstyle is warrior and that's it is just... flat-out wrong. I usually play hybrid characters, honestly, where I'm mixing and matching skills from every school.
The Witcher 3 also has a very linear narrative, but people praise that one up the wazoo (and deservedly so--it's a great game, and the story is fantastic). In fact, most RPGs actually have very linear narratives when it boils down to it, with the biggest departure probably being Fallout: New Vegas. (Yes, even more than Baldur's Gate 3 still, even though I love that game to death.) So, I don't really think this is an issue. And I also don't think quests ever necessitate having individual compelling storylines. As you said, most of them are very basic fetch quests, kill-person quests, talk-to-person quests, or escort quests, but what I think is most relevant to Morrowind and an open-world style of game like this is how they're used to build a sense of place in the world. Guild quests are very wrote and bureaucratic. House quests are a lot more political. And Daedric quests are just weird. But all of them get you out and *_adventuring,_* and at its core, that's what Morrowind is about.
You only have to kill 2, not 3, counselors. I also... don't think this is an issue? It's another instance of world building and sense of place taking precedence over everything being player-centric. And while I mentioned earlier that your own character expression is important in an RPG, sometimes it's also important that the world doesn't always bend your way, and that the world itself has a chance to express itself. In the 2 cases we're talking about, Bolvyn Venim and Archmagister Gothren, these are both trying to demonstrate something about the world you're in. Venim is the head of House Redoran, a House that is very traditional, hostile to Imperials, and values *_honor in combat._* You literally duel him to the death in the Vivec arena after you've rallied the rest of the House behind you. Gothren shows two things: the arbitrary nature of Telvanni mages, and their philosophy of might makes right. Killing in Telvanni lands is not a criminal act--if he didn't want to be killed, then he shouldn't have let you kill him. That's the way their rules work. I think it's actually a really cool and effective way of worldbuilding their culture. The last example you were thinking of is Orvas Dren, whom you do not need to kill. You can just get his disposition high enough and he will agree to step out of your way. He's made deals with Dagoth Ur, but all he really cares about are his own goals of kicking out the Imperials and maintaining his own power, and he will go back on them if he approves of you enough. It's very Hlaalu of him.
People praise the Hortator and Nerevarine quests because these are all chances for the cultures in Morrowind to express themselves. I have widely been getting the impression over the course of this video that you are much more interested in a world-revolves-around-the-character style of experience. That is not what Morrowind is trying to offer. It is trying show you an alien world with set terms, and let you express yourself within those terms. And the reason it is far more successful at this than Oblivion is that Morrowind factions actually had attributes that differentiated them from each other, whereas every city and "culture" in Oblivion was completely identical except for some generic theme-park aesthetics on the buildings. I, for one, have certainly not forgotten about these "boring" quests, and, in fact, they are my favorite part of the main questline.
I have played Morrowind through many times, with many different characters, including quite recently. You're really making some large assumptions here.
Mixing and matching skill combos that you're not certain will work is half the fun of the mechanics system. And I don't really see what playing with all the "worst" skills on purpose is supposed to prove? Like, yes, the *_stealth skill_* itself is very undercooked, but the rest of the class is completely viable, and can be quite fun, even if suboptimal. And I still don't get your deal with magic. Again, the attribute/skill mismatch is definitely an issue, but mages can be incredibly op.
So what is your point about set pieces then? Is not having very clearly defined set pieces a knock against Morrowind or is it? That Fighters Guild quest in Oblivion is memorable, and it also sucks. It's immersion-breaking. You are rail-roaded into slaughtering everybody. This isn't a case of Bolvyn Venim being unwilling to compromise and challenging you to a duel, or Archmagister Gothren being endlessly contrarian. They are laying a challenge before you. Not everyone can be reasoned with, and *_their characters_* are not giving you a choice. No, in this case your character is required to be tricked into slaughtering a whole village without you being able to say anything or do anything about it. *_The writers_* are not giving you a choice. It's very cheap.
Your point about the Telvanni quest writing very much stands. It's unfortunate, but Hlaalu definitely got the most love here, with Redoran second and Telvanni much further behind. It makes sense, though, given the limited budget. Hlaalu and Redoran are much more visible to the player early on. That said, I don't really understand your point about the Arena. Like, sure, it would be cool to have a faction quest there, but there isn't one and, as far as I know, there never was a plan for one. So what are we criticizing? Your vision? I would have like to have seen all 7 Houses. Is it fair for me to criticize the game for not having all of them? I don't think so.
Again, I don't really think every RPG needs to revolve around so many branching storylines, especially in an open-world game, though as I said, it would have been nice for them to capitalize more on their dialogue system. But, this is another instance where I think you're coloring the game with a very particular interpretation of what an RPG *_can_* be, and not what this game was *_trying_* to be. There's nothing wrong, or even "shallow," with an RPG that focuses on adventure, character expression through mechanics, and worldbuilding with a linear epic narrative to tell. Even when some of the mechanics are a bit undercooked, there are plenty of choices there.
You fookin wot m8?
Do you wanna die? Because this title is fighting words boyo 🦾
There is in YT comparison Gothic vs Morrowind. Gothic vipes the floor with MO in terms of worldbuilding.
Vipes?
Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game that I played. I never beat it though. I loved the world, characters, enemies, music and freedom that it offered.
I did not like the roll-of-the-dice chances to successfully hit an enemy or block an attack. I also didn't like that guards were practically demi-gods.
It did get me excited for Oblivion, which I have beaten many times.
Skyrim VR with mods is my favorite game.
When the game came out, it was amazing for what it was able to do with what was available. Playing it again, I can see how you came to the conclusion you got. This is coming from a player with almost 5k hours on morrowind, 6k hours on oblivion, god knows how much on Skyrim and who knows how much with the fallout games. Some games are great for being remade, where others just need to stay in the vaults and our happy memories.
Thank you! Finally someone said it, i could have sworn i was the only one who thought it was overrated 😞. Sure it was a good game during its time.
Underrated honestly. With some mods it can be way more enjoyable aswell.
MW was never a good game. Compare it to Gothic 1 - it is pure rubbish.
Once I learn to set up the character....I have a save file w/ only a few hours in where it's lvl 72 100 to all attributes and the speed he moves is insane...he runs in walk mode and actuall sprint is turbo..then u can run diagonally and jump everywhere so...lotta ppl turn off to how slow u start..lol
It depends on what you're looking for in video games. Morrowind has qualities that are perfect for its fans and people who didn't like it, didn't like it for its flaws, which are there for everyone to see. This game is over 20 years old, nobody is going to convince anybody to change their assessment. I love the lore and certain concepts of Morrowind, like leveling system, exploration of the game world, but some other aspects I consider as flawed, like movement speed or dice roll combat. And perhaps the fact that you can grab some of the best gear by simply knowing where to take it from is also bad if we intend to replay a game.
That is, in my opinion, a mature perspective. My tastes change all the time, so I cycle through all of the mainline games, except perhaps Arena and the other few TES spin-offs prior to Daggerfall. Each has something to offer for immersion in their own ways based on the in-game character I have in mind.
I think you are probably still being too charitable, lol. Bethesda make bad games with the only saving grace being that they are moddable and thus salvageable by immense community effort. I've spent many thousands of hours on their games, but never finished a single one of them, lol. Even with mechanics overhauls, visual improvements and extra content from mods, I always end up getting bored of the games and drop my runs part way through.
I’ve always heard is that essential NPCs were introduced in Oblivion.
But if you soft lock the game for killing someone, and need to reload, doesn’t that make them essential?
"ESSESNTIAL" as in the engine vocabulary word which means the character cannot be killed, not "essential" as in required to finish the plot. It's true that Morrowind is less impressive than an RPG like FNV where anyone can actually be killed and the main plot will adjust--but it's still affording you a very real degree of freedom over Oblivion and Skyrim, don't be pedantic.
@swordquest2602 being able to kill them, but softlocking yourself is essentially the same as being able to fight them but not kill them in my mind.
Besides, those games are unstable enough as is, taking away dev time to write and implement what happens if you kill plot important characters would break the games even more.
And I will absolutely be pedantic, petty, and procrastinating. Preston Garvey from Fallout 4 and Yes Man from New Vegas serve the same narrative role, it's just that Yes Man had an in universe explanation to him respawning and being essential. It's just pedantic to like/tolerate one and hate the other.
the hand to hand power attacks in oblivion were literally just the same as weapon power attacks so they didnt do anything for hand to hand
The dialogue system in Morrowind is fucking atrocious. It is beyond me how the TES Community has hyped this game up to be immersive when every npc has the personality of a brick wall and nothing of interest to say. What’s even worse is that your character does not interact or even engage outside of bribing, admiring, and taunting. Only occasionally you will get dialogue options to choose from and they are just generic responses like “goodbye” It’s even more embarrassing when Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic came out around this time and both had a way more engaging dialogue system. Hell I rather take Skyrim’s generic dialogue system over whatever the fuck Morrowind is doing
Dude, I was curious but in 1st 30 sec u comparing it to witcher 3 in fact "W3 blows it outta the water"?? Lol wow ok. Yea I played other games from N64 recently and recognized how they aged but I play Morrowind as late as last year and this year. I'm so good now as an adult I recognize it for the sandbox it is...witcher 3 you just kinda go around and do what it has templeted for you to do ......................................................................................................................................................................................................
how could you say something so controversial yet so based?
I agree. I tried getting into it and I just can't anymore. The quests are incredibly boring, the world feels dead due to the lack of audio design, all NPCs have the same lines, interiors are boring and all look the same. The art direction and atmosphere is good, but I think the game just isn't satisfying. IMO, Oblivion with a mod to remove level scaling, is a much superior experience, for the quests alone.
The lore, worldbuilding and setting is awesome. But yeah, it isn't great.
??? You have bad taste or have not played it enough.
Zoomies being zoomies and people wonder why games suck now.
Ok Boomer
@@54032Zepol Please try to be original I know independent thought is frowned upon in your generation, but for you sake at least try before you ingest something poisonous or chop something off.
@@ihaveacookie4226 Ok boomer. [2]
@@ihaveacookie4226that was the biggest example of your point being proven I have ever seen. You should feel honored.
@@Bardock7132 More disappointed than anything as they are our future.
I remember playing morrowind and withness how horrible it is, i mean its just very bad i remember the whole video game crash when doing that bridge mission i dont even remember which one it was, i dont know how anyone can get hands on this video game, its just utterly awful i think even developer of this video game stop wanted to care about this thing
i think even elder scrolls arena can beat morrowind at some point and arena is the earliest series in elder scrolls
I have had 0 crashes on over 100 hours of game play what a weird opinion on such a good game.
@@jaytalbot8186 MAN what are you talking about it immediately crash as soon as you hold torch
Wrong.
There seems to be a correlation between based opinions on video games and based opinions on politics. Curious.
Gamers are the ultimate underclass, after all.
Worldbuilding and lore carries Morrowind, its design elements leave a lot to be desired. Tbf tho what a World it built.
FUCKING FINALLY, i been saying this for years but never seen anyone else think the same
Yeah because it’s your opinion and not fact
@@dankmatter3068 "Facts" are typically opinions with consensus, dude...
@@josephpercy1558 ??? Where did you get that definition lmao? Facts are objective: a thing that is known or proved to be true.
@@dankmatter3068 Yes, that's a certain epistemological framework among many others. But I won't expand on that because 1) this is neither the time or place for such, and 2) you're likely not philosophically sophisticated enough to comprehend such a position.
Very reasonable critique, and morrowind fanboys in the comments literally cannot handle it. If you’re gonna call a game the greatest rpg of all time, then it’s not dumb to compare it to newer rpgs.
Bro died to the rats in Balmora and posted this comment.
Except that it's relativistic thinking rather than intrinsic which is a easy form of thinking for stupid people.
Hello there.
I understand that this is your first game analysis/review, at least according to your YT profile history.
With that in mind, I would recommend doing a bit more research on the source material and considering your script in a broader context.
What I mean is that many of your points sound like you didn't fully explore the game and its mechanics, dont have too much experience with the games of that era, or have little experience in discussing games in detail with others.
A few examples would be:
-Players not reading attribute descriptions - that's the players problem, not the game's. The game has been released with a manual that explained a lot of things. One cannot blame a product for not working properly if they didn't read the attached instructions.
-Low stats at the start (being too slow to move away from attacks) - isn't that how all games work?
-Lack of mana regeneration, intelligence issue, mage play style problems - this is missing a lot of information from the game. It feels as if this lart has been influenced by games like Skyrim, where a lot of systems are dumbed down and planned to work in void. Morrowind's mechanics work together. No mana regen? Brew potions, enchant gear, build up intelligence. Low stamina for casting? Brew potions, enchant gear, build up endurance. And while you enchant items or play with alchemy... your intelligence rises as well. It's a system where you can mix up things to have various solutions to a problem.
These are just a few from the top of my head, but I hope tou can see a pattern.
Learn, grow, and talk to various people.
Graphics in games isn't my issue. It's near unplayable next to Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim.
Morrowind doesn't have dlc but expansions. they're default part of the game for 90% of players
it's hard to level up enchanting, right? not a single word of trainers
pure mage impossible xD
That's dlc
@@everythingpony what else's, plugins? yeah Warcraft 3 drożej throne is a dlc?
That's some braindead take pure mage is fking strong just dont use fire spell on dunmer with 50 resist to fire.
Ok dude. I watched your entire hour long video to give this a chance. And it pains me to say this because I know you put a lot of hard work in this video. But dude, your opinions on the game are just plain dumb. For instance, the different attacks are there to devote yourself to an advantage in certain situations. Chop: stand still and do not move with high health and armor but lose mobility and hack away. Slash: circle strafe the enemy (in an open environment) offers good mobility to dominate the foe. Stab: used best in narrow environments like dungeon hallways to quickly move in, strike, backpedal. Rinse and repeat. These are not hard rules to follow but showcase the roles that the weapons and their player fulfill. Weapons are tools for a job and if you aren’t fit for that job you will suffer for it. Play to your strengths. Hand to hand is deliberately weak because in real life why would you fight someone with your fists when you have a spear? lol it’s immersion breaking and only something you see in jrpgs. And You really lost me when you said the mage and their magics are useless. So magic is just stupid broken in ES3. So say I’m in an ancestral tomb and there’s a strong enemy. I aggro foe, step back through a door (which are abundant) use a lock spell on door, the foe chills at the door, I shoot AOE spells at the door. Foe is dead. All low level. And the thief’s trump card over the others is that they are the only ones able to disarm traps. There is no spell to do that. I also want to point out that with magic, my favorite effect is damage attribute (strength) it will permanently pin your foe to one spot. I think the biggest thing you’re missing about ES3 is You. You aren’t putting your creativity and mind to use to enjoy Morrowind. It probably felt like a chore for you to complete this game again. And forgive me for being presumptuous but I think modern games have ruined your outlook on what makes games such a great medium. Part of the joy is what “you” bring to the table. the multiple endings were taken out because they trapped themselves with Daggerfall and it’s multi endings which is why we have the book “The Warp in the West” Like I said, I really hate to be blunt about it. Because the video is well put together. But I really disagree with about 80% of what you said because it was founded in ignorance of the game’s systems. With all that being said, at the very least, thank you for at least putting in work on the video itself, as it’s good quality is a far cry from the opinions therein.
Yeah damage strength is the best except when you are on the receiving end. I hate bonewalkers.
["Chop: stand still and do not move with high health and armor but lose mobility..."]
How exactly is this "realistic?" Sounds like an example of a stupid mechanic that has little relation to real world combat strategy.
@@josephpercy1558 It's a fantasy game genius
@@dankmatter3068 Right, then to be consistent, people shouldn't be complaining about Skyrim having "less realistic combat" than Morrowind. Believe me, I've heard this complaint many times from Morrowind fanboys.