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Man why do people like Morrowind so much

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
-- MESSAGE w/Key #1 = 'skooma' ----------------
air loftthirtythree boxesbag ratthirty two boxes deliveredsat three oneight boxesfat legtwenty one boxes deliveredill mirfour boxesnay deaneight boxes
 

Gurkog

Erudite
Joined
Oct 7, 2012
Messages
1,373
Location
The Great Northwest
Project: Eternity
Nope, actual ciphertext that can be broken if you know a bit about cryptography. This one here uses Vigenère cipher with key being "SKOOMA". It's additionally obfuscated but lists locations of Camonna Tong hideouts and amount of contraband stored in each.

Additionally, in case of sealed letters, you can attempt to reseal them via security skill roll.

Then you have stuff like inferring location of Mordrin Hanin's tomb from Hanin's Wake and the paper map, or location of Mudan Outpost by following barely identifable remains of a road on the seafloor near Ebonheart.

Fuck, how much I'd like to see that stuff in Skyrim or other games lke that.

Sorry, but BGS learned that they can make shittons of cash without anywhere near the effort by pandering to dudebros.
 
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
1,875,975
Location
Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
Well, what the hell, I got rid of the NPC mod. It was partly because of the reasons I mentioned earlier, and partly because DraQ does make a pretty damn convincing point. He kind of ruined my mood for a while since I started to notice stuff I hadn't even thought of before but which now kind of really pissed me off. Also, even though at the start I wanted to get a different experience than on my earlier playthroughs, the more I play the game the more I really want to go back to vanilla.

So, fuck you DraQ, and thank you, I guess. Just don't get too smug about this.

Same here :( ...still, it's so sad when you ask someone about the High Fane and they tell you the place is visited by hundreds of pilgrims every day. Maybe they're invisible. Like the dragons.
 

Wyrmlord III

Formerly Hot Rod Todd Howard
Joined
Mar 11, 2011
Messages
216
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DarKPenguiN

Arcane
Joined
Oct 6, 2012
Messages
1,323
Location
Inside the Hollow Earth
About ten or twenty hours of playing later (if you aren't particularly adventurous and just stick to questlines and local exploration) you get to see "them" and their towers, as well as accumulate the knowledge to connect "them" and their towers with House Telvanni.

The kicker? Apart from stupid hat the guy who fell from the sky wore Telvanni robe.
He wasn't random lolmage who hasn't thought his experiment through.
He was probably a low to mid ranked Telvanni retainer who accidentally killed himself while trying to prove his worth to sceptical members of the house.
Oh. My. God. Do you realize you just blew my mind?

It sounds like the most obvious thing now that you mention it, and yet I never ever considered it.
Because it *is* an obvious thing, except most of us, especially RPG crowd, are hopelessly conditioned to see stuff in video games as tokens, not actual things.

How a character, location person, garment, weapon or piece of armour looks like is usually just for the sake of identification and setting the mood or looking cool. It means nothing. It does nothing. It isn't supposed to make any sense. Just because it is meaningless to the engine, we are conditioned to see it as something akin to an icon in GUI and just parse out anything that isn't explicitly presented as text or, preferably, as numbers in stat screen.

Well surfuckingprise - MW shits all over our expectations here, at least when it comes to fluff, not the mechanics.

Want more mind blownage?

Ever seen those robes?
MW-npc-Danso_Indules.jpg


They are pretty much Temple exclusive. Ever dismissed the squigglies on those yellow strands as just cool looking gibberish? They can be read and actually mean something - 'Faith is only law' (lower) and 'Learn by serving' (upper) respectively.

Colouring of Temple/Indoril armour and garb - blue and yellow? Ok, this is mere conjecture on my part, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was an explicit reference to the gold of the old Temple (chimers golden skin tone) and blue of new one (dunmer blueish ash colouration).

Trioliths (tribunal altars) having triangular cross-section? Trinity of Dunmer living gods (Almsivi).

Those flags hanging from bridges in Vivec? They tend to quote dunmer religious texts.

Red stone brooch on Morag Tong shirt?
MW-npc-Gragus_Lleran.jpg

Says "I am your death" if you look closely. In daedric glyphs.

Ashlander garbs? Some are tribe-specific and reflect the lifestyle of the wearers rather closely. Ahemmusa common clothes tend to be insulated with bundles of plant fibres laced together (grazelands). Erabenimsun (ashlands) tend to be made of animal skins.

Moreso, outcast ashlanders, despite not being part of any of four major tribes will generally wear the same type of garb as their immediate non-outcast neighbours.

Commoner clothes? At least two shirts (one for Redoran, one for Hlaalu) and one robe (Hlaalu) display house heraldry, in addition to specific colour patterns.
House clothes tend to follow more relaxed rules in general, possibly reflecting either trade (especially clothes worn by common people) or active interest in fashion (as seen in wardrobes of some nobles), but the pattern is still obvious.

Glass weapon to analogous iron/steel weapon weight ratio? Decent approximate of density ratio between RL glass and iron.

Coded messages looking like gibberish?
Sottilde's Code Book said:
SSF ZAFL
DVWDTQDVFQE TYLSE
BSQ FOF
TZSFHK TOY PCJEK NSZUVWBSR
EAL DVFQE GX
SWSHL LCLQS
XKH ZQG
LGSBFY GXS PAXWC RSXINOFSP
IDV AWD
FGEF PAXWC
BOK DWKB
SUGZD PCJEK
Nope, actual ciphertext that can be broken if you know a bit about cryptography. This one here uses Vigenère cipher with key being "SKOOMA". It's additionally obfuscated but lists locations of Camonna Tong hideouts and amount of contraband stored in each.

Additionally, in case of sealed letters, you can attempt to reseal them via security skill roll.

Then you have stuff like inferring location of Mordrin Hanin's tomb from Hanin's Wake and the paper map, or location of Mudan Outpost by following barely identifable remains of a road on the seafloor near Ebonheart.

n5025f396ada91_large.gif


Several dialogues also have small dialogue trees with various stat checks, too bad they are rendered irrelevant by the power of ADMIREBRIBEBRIBEDONE - damn you NWN, damn you to hell! :x

JarlFrank , and I'm not even a history, clothing, or culture sperg. My forte is natural sciences, especially biology. It's just that I am generally obsessed with non-arbitrary patterns and details that can be linked to some context.
:love:
 

ohWOW

Sucking on dicks and being proud of it
Dumbfuck Queued
Joined
Nov 15, 2011
Messages
2,449
Fuck you, you make me want to play this shit again.

For 30th time now, maybe I will finish it for 6th?
And finish those damn expansions.
 

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,566
Codex 2013
I've uninstalled and played Morrowind maybe close to 15 times, yet I've never actually finished it. One day, maybe I will.
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
Nope, actual ciphertext that can be broken if you know a bit about cryptography. This one here uses Vigenère cipher with key being "SKOOMA". It's additionally obfuscated but lists locations of Camonna Tong hideouts and amount of contraband stored in each.

Additionally, in case of sealed letters, you can attempt to reseal them via security skill roll.

Then you have stuff like inferring location of Mordrin Hanin's tomb from Hanin's Wake and the paper map, or location of Mudan Outpost by following barely identifable remains of a road on the seafloor near Ebonheart.

Fuck, how much I'd like to see that stuff in Skyrim or other games lke that.

Sorry, but BGS learned that they can make shittons of cash without anywhere near the effort by pandering to dudebros.
There's at least something, like that "Legend of Red Eagle" quest and the one with the three evil draugr brothers.

Also a nice touch is that dungeon with the Pale Lady. 99% of tards likely fight her, but if you return the sword she disappears without combat.

I don't recall any subtlety at all in Oblivion.
 

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,566
Codex 2013
The Pale Lady quest wasn't exactly subtle, though. The dungeon basically has journal pages lying around telling you 'WE TOOK THE SWORD AND NOW SOME GHOST IS KILLING US.' It would take a moron not to figure it out.
 

Commissar Draco

Codexia Comrade Colonel Commissar
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2011
Messages
20,856
Location
Привислинский край
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
"Legend of Red Eagle" is not subtle at all when the location appears in magic way after reading the book. And Draq has right Morrowind is very well constructed world and any mode aside from some graphic enchanters will ruin the mood. Will try finish next game only using stuff awarded in House Redoran questline for better LARP RP experience and added difficulty. Playing as pro native Dunmer is indeed quite different experience.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
-- MESSAGE w/Key #1 = 'skooma' ----------------
air loftthirtythree boxesbag ratthirty two boxes deliveredsat three oneight boxesfat legtwenty one boxes deliveredill mirfour boxesnay deaneight boxes
:salute:
Correct but add line breaks.

UESP said:
The names in the message are misspelt, but they evidently refer to deliveries to the following Camonna Tong hideouts:
"ILL-MIR" is uncertain but may possibly refer to Ilmiril in Ald'ruhn: he is not a member of any guild, but possesses a key to a non-existent door that is also possessed by Thieves Guild members. It may be that he was originally intended to be part of a quest that was not implemented.
Ilmiril seems to have a chest with some Ebony in his house implicating him in smuggling.

There's at least something, like that "Legend of Red Eagle" quest and the one with the three evil draugr brothers.

Also a nice touch is that dungeon with the Pale Lady. 99% of tards likely fight her, but if you return the sword she disappears without combat.

I don't recall any subtlety at all in Oblivion.
That's not much, but it's at least promising.

Plus Skyrim does have *some* structure. It has forsworn, civil war, opressed minorities, Thalmor, etc.
Mechanically it's dumbed down, exploration-wise it's dumbed down, it's never really that subtle, but at least there is some point to all this shit taking space on the disc.

And yeah, Oblivious had no subtlety whatsoever.
It had a handful of individual pieces that were well constructed (like Whodunit quest), but never the context - those pieces just hung there in vacuum.

For me that's precisely the difference between a good-for-what-it-is, actually enjoyable slasher set in TES universe, and please-god-make-it-stop-make-it-end disgrace to the series.

Oblivious is effectively a bit like MyFirstMorrowindMod someone threw a lot of cash at.

Yup, I can tell you if I can read that.
:smug:

The Pale Lady quest wasn't exactly subtle, though. The dungeon basically has journal pages lying around telling you 'WE TOOK THE SWORD AND NOW SOME GHOST IS KILLING US.' It would take a moron not to figure it out.
:troll:
You don't say?

Yet it's still no worse than what Bioware of old would do (undead wanting dagger in BG1, empathic demon or whatever was that shit in BG2).
 

Sul

Savant
Joined
Nov 25, 2011
Messages
487
Location
brbr?
Posting some theories about Dagoth Ur.

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And now an overview of the current Kalpa's structure.

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Now some newer thesis that people started to belive after Skyrim where it was revealed that kalpa/dream is cyclical.

2guh4y8.jpg
 

Jasede

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
24,793
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
Well, no, because this breaks one of the things the game did awesomely right.
In this case it also fixes one thing that the game got wrong, the static game world where the PC is the only person who ever actually does anything while everyone else either stands in one place or walks the same small circle for an eternity. It's a tradeoff I can accept.
Games are not made awesome by doing nothing horribly wrong. They are made awesome by doing something horribly right.

Ask a codexer about their favourite RPG and I can guarantee that no matter the answer, it will be a game containing some horribly broken shit.
But that's not important because it does something else superbly.
OTOH a game that is lukewarm all around is not going to be such a legend, even if on average it's of about the same quality.
It's like with adventuring party in an RPG - it's better to have int 18 str 6 mage and str 18 int 6 fighter than both mage and fighter with both stats at 12.

Fixing something wrong at the expense of stripping away something extremely right is inevitably a net loss. It fixes something you've already accepted and no longer care about by breaking something that has you playing in the first place.

and that is if I stop and actually examine what he's wearing.
I don't understand, are you walking around with your eyes closed?

Also, dialogue is filtered by many factors - race, region, faction, class. You won't really encounter anything as jarring. Besides, dialogue at least has to be initiated manually. Seeing NPCs doesn't.

Excellent post.
 

Cosmo

Arcane
Joined
Nov 6, 2010
Messages
1,387
Project: Eternity
Thank you guys for reminding me how much i love this fucking game... :love:
 

Sul

Savant
Joined
Nov 25, 2011
Messages
487
Location
brbr?
Well, no, because this breaks one of the things the game did awesomely right.
In this case it also fixes one thing that the game got wrong, the static game world where the PC is the only person who ever actually does anything while everyone else either stands in one place or walks the same small circle for an eternity. It's a tradeoff I can accept.
Games are not made awesome by doing nothing horribly wrong. They are made awesome by doing something horribly right.

Ask a codexer about their favourite RPG and I can guarantee that no matter the answer, it will be a game containing some horribly broken shit.
But that's not important because it does something else superbly.
OTOH a game that is lukewarm all around is not going to be such a legend, even if on average it's of about the same quality.
It's like with adventuring party in an RPG - it's better to have int 18 str 6 mage and str 18 int 6 fighter than both mage and fighter with both stats at 12.

Fixing something wrong at the expense of stripping away something extremely right is inevitably a net loss. It fixes something you've already accepted and no longer care about by breaking something that has you playing in the first place.

and that is if I stop and actually examine what he's wearing.
I don't understand, are you walking around with your eyes closed?

Also, dialogue is filtered by many factors - race, region, faction, class. You won't really encounter anything as jarring. Besides, dialogue at least has to be initiated manually. Seeing NPCs doesn't.

Excellent post.
Ninja edit, uh?
 

Harold

Arcane
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
785
Location
a shack in the hub
It's amazing how Bethesda had one good writer, Kirkbride, and instead of making him creative lead they gave that job to that Emil Pagliarulo retard. Or is Kirkbride still working on that Elder Scrolls Online shit? Can't remember. If so, talk about waste of talent.
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
It's actually huge:decline: that Skyrim only contains five volumes of his Songs of the Return when there should've been 56. Ancient Nord lore is actually interesting.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
What did you expect? They made the awesome concept of greybeards who had such powerful voices that they usually wore a gag as to not accidentally cause shit to hit the fan into the gimmicky DRAGON SHOUTS.
 

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