Morrowind is just a plain bad game

Click here and disable ads!

You realize the concept of a savior existed before jesus right? Just because a hero shows up to save everyone doesn't mean he's fucking jesus. Since when the fuck would jesus travel to hell and stab satan in the face anyways?

That would make for an interesting twist on the Christian religion.

http://pocm.info/getting_started_pocm.html
It even goes beyond that.

I was also 'limiting' it to what you yourself can do in the world which boils down to hit/miss things with a thing and reading walls of text. I've embarrassed myself before on this forum talking about Morrowind, but though I've played it further since then I'm afraid my notions on the game remain sadly unshaken. The game did not have an economy, a static economy is not an economy, they're just stores, and the 'political structure' and the 'cultural tradition' well surely those are just fancy terms for lore. What you liked doesn't explain why you liked it, your experiences can lie to you and so can you yourself, but that is too hard to track when it is left around the memory for a while; question is, what did the world present? I read everything I could find in that game, talked to everyone I could find, at least tried to do most quests and the game, its world and its lore came across to me as shallow and standard fantasy rubbish (which I'm not necessarily averse to). What is the 'abstract world' or the linkages between this abstract world and the game world, and what does that have to do with exploration? Is reading a type of exploration in this argument? Because the world was not presented or explained outside of exposition text.

I suppose I am coming off as rather hostile, and that is entirely correct as I fail, much to my obvious dismay, to understand why Morrowind could ever be considered to possess a quality of any kind, and it seems no one ever ventures to explain themselves in this matter. It is fine if you like the game, sometimes that is a mysterious thing, but to defend its quality with such loose arguments and terms is nugatory, and nugentry inflames the ardour.

I actually agree with most Codexer's criticisms of Skyrim, but a significant number of Codexers still actually enjoy the game somewhat (Serious Business, Metro, and even Vault Dweller). It's not some precious game to me. I am pretty sure I spent far more time on Medieval 2 Total War last year, which itself I don't hold that dearly.

All these things I said about Morrowind stand one way or another, because the same criticisms have been made by people at the time of Morrowind's release.

I took the other way around, found that shipwreck with a silver sword, a dozen ash statues and a diamond, then the tomb with the Mentor's ring in it. Feeling badass as all fuck out, I raided another nearby tomb, which has a ghost that would fuck me up despite my new weapon because I couldn't resist his spells. Butthurt, I retreated, promising to come back later.
Reminds me of a guy's comment. (paraphrased) "Fresh out of the boat, there was a huge world to explore. I took a dive in the nearby lake, and was promptly eaten alive by a slaughterfish. Welcome to Morrowind."

Fixed it for you, you lazy bum.

Not to get cute, but if you don't like reading walls of text, then you're not going to like a lot of this game. To make a comparison to PS:T: people who don't enjoy that much exposition and dialogue, those walls of text, aren't going to like the game because the combat sucks, it's ultimately rather linear, you can only use a pre-generated character, etc., etc. Getting into the walls of text is an important part of the exploration in Morrowind. How much nerdy discussion of TES lore has occurred in this thread alone? If you can't get into that, then you're right.

Of course, the lore is maybe the 'abstract world,' not necessarily present in the game. So let's talk about what does happen in the game world:
If you don't like obsessing over what happened to the extinct Dwemer and then shit yourself because OH MY GOD I GET TO MEET ONE! then I don't know--I don't think I can get further than 'this game is not for you.' Morrowind can be faulted for its presentation and the long tedious bits between the highlights, but I'm saying those things make up for it to me.

Let me stop myself from getting too wall-of-text like myself. The pleasure of Morrowind is answering 'who are these people and what the fuck is going on?' You talk to people, you read books, you visit the ruins, the farms, the mines, the cities, the temples of this place, and you learn the answers to some questions and some questions without answers. Is it perfect? No, it can be inconsistent, clichéd, and poorly presented and executed at times. I'm having trouble thinking of a single game that really rewarded exploring the world that much, in the anthropological, sociological kind of exploration. If I could reduce the appeal to a phrase, it's "the exploration of an as of yet unmatched portrait of a fantasy society."

^tldr

The question of 'who are these people and what the fuck is going on?' is one asked by the brain under almost all circumstances. The appeal of Morrowind can't possibly be the fact that the player is sentient. In a story, or world, having to repeatedly ask who anyone is and what is going on is not a good thing. It is true, I agree, that when playing Morrowind one is prone to repeat this question because the player is usually faced with words, let alone what they represent, that he/she does not understand. This is fine, it is the case in most fantasy, but usually things are established and worked from to the telling of a story. Morrowind has a great deal of lore packed into it, and the story is almost solely concerned with retracing the backstory and re-doing the work of Nerevarine and cleaning up the mess made by the tribunal; however, there is no true account of the backstory, there are contradicting accounts and sketchy accounts, not to mention that you never drive out the imperials, which I suppose is also another sketchy account. The reason the lore can be talked about is because no one really knows what happened, and probably because Morrowind is not a story about the protagonist it is the story of tying up some old lore. Of course ambiguity can be a fine tool for telling a story, but the story ends up being a heap of lore about a world that no longer is or can be little but read about; the game itself is theoretical, the fact that you walk from this place to the next is not used to tell a story, the fact that you chose to speak to someone only gives you a node for lore text--not even a character or person is behind it, characters are often used to reveal exposition in a way that enlivens the world and makes it feel it is actually populated by people. I don't mind walls of text, but Morrowind is an example of how not to use it, for good examples of how it is used well the aforementioned Torment stands out and so does Albion, if only for being driven by motivations (the Goodall interview showed that Morrowind was not written with motivations in mind, or integrity of lore, so the question is begged: for what was Morrowind written?).


"the exploration of an as of yet unmatched portrait of a fantasy society." is an opinion, and that is all you've written out: a series of opinions under flattering phraseology. I've read your opinion many times by many other people who fancy Morrowind a right solid sort of game and your justification and your argument for you opinion seems to be that you like certain things in the game because. That remains fine, we can't always put our finger on why we like something, but if the enjoyment of Morrowind lies in reading about how the society and people of Morrowind function then that is not exploration, that is called reading.

Yay, atheism for nine-year-olds.

There is one true account of what happened, but it is hidden in Sermon 29.

Hello.

Or rather I don't scale to your level.

Not for very long if the only answer is XP/loot/gay romance waiting to happen/lame Tolkien rip-off.

Which is the whole point of in-character lore.

I trusted one of those fantasy novels once. The Redemption of Althalus by David and Leigh Eddings was probably not the best of choices but the cover flap summary actually sounded good. I've grown bitter with it in the years after reading as well as most other supposedly "high" fantasy. My core experience with Morrowind began long before I read that book, but the stories in Morrowind never really stuck with me. Perhaps TES in-game books are just too fantasy for me (like real-world fantasy novels), all wrapped up within itself and giving me the feeling the author is probably having more fun reading his own work than I am trying to relate to it. Sorry if I came off the same (being uninteresting to you guys), but I have the darnedest time trying to understand why I can't just like the high fantasy-themed CRPGs like Morrowind and be able to hold interest when talking about awesome lore like the rest of you guys.

Oh, well, reading your guys comments about the lore allows me to enjoy it somewhat through your own views, which is a bit more fun for me than reading through it all anyway.

Do you mean the player characters backstory, or that the lore is seen from the perspective of the player character?

The lore being seen *exclusively* from in-universe PoV, without reliable word of god information.

Isn't that the way of most games? If not nearly all fiction?

And really DraQ you can't throw these dodgy terms around, 'in-universe PoV', 'in-character lore'. How do you see lore, if you read the lore does that count as seeing it? And what PoV is not inside of a universe? And if lore was discovered in-character surely that term implies the lore is discovered from the perspective of an actual character not a usually earth-bound blank extension of the player. I don't know what's with you Morrowind fanciers but clarity is not it.

What DraQ and the other morrowind fanciers like is exactly the lack of clarity. Clarity means Word of God, which means history book, which means "these are the facts, suck it up". Morrowind goes the other way and has conflicting points of view, neither one necessarily being more or less legit than the other.

edit: oops, I thought you meant "I don't know what you morrowind fanciers like but clarity is not it". My point still stands, though.

I think what Draq is talking about for out of character lore is stuff like lore written in the manual or things like that. Though sometimes such things are written as copies of a game world account, they are also often written as a god's eye view of history to establish the setting exactly as the author imagined it.

Did anyone here read The Infernal City?

Judging by the synopsis, the idea is interesting and original, but it tends to slump down into the general fantasy soap opera thingies.

What do you guys think?

Yes, I was referring to clarity of argument, just to lay that down clearly. Though I still don't get this in-character lore nonsense, so for now I'll call it nonsense. If we are talking about lore written in a manual or such--the Arcanum manual made some historical remarks about the races and so on, not sure if that could be found out in the game but it was of no actual consequence to the game and story, just side-things in that lovely manual. Older RPG's were of course nearly required to put all their lore in manuals and books on the side because the games themselves could not hold all that information due to size restrictions, but that situation is hardly relevant.

The only thing that's been ascertained so far is that Morrowind fanciers find every aspect of Morrowind rubbish besides early looting and reading lore.

My favourite Daggerfall in-game book was the Jokes book.

Jokes was written by a Breton from High Rock, so it made fun of Redguards. Most jokes concerned the cowardice and weakness of Redguards - the thinnest book in the world was the list of Redguard war heroes, or that the only tactic Redguards know is retreating. (Some other jokes included those about how the only Wood Elf who doesn't lie, cheat, or steal is a dead Wood Elf). The Breton notion of Redguards being weak and cowardly runs entirely counter to the Redguard reputation as a fierce warlike peoples.

Perusing the Mages Guild library, I found another book by a Redguard author, who explained that Redguards believed in straightforward battle, never using trickery, never living in paranoid suspicion and never punishing an enemy in vengeance. It defends the Redguard defeat in the War of Betony as having been caused by Redguards being too pragmatic and too mild-tempered as a people. It had less to do with "Bretons Brave, Redguards Cowardly" and more to do with "Bretons Malicious, Redguards Honest".

That's what I like about the Elder Scrolls series, and it's the one persisting feature of exploring the game's world that remains enjoyable throughout all the five games. How any single person describes a past event is largely based on his racial, ethnic, and provincial loyalties. Nobody ever sheds the whole truth. It is for this reason that various guild librarians and guild members risk their lives in dungeons and abandoned castles to find rare books that could shed more light on what once happened.

It's a shame that the games have increasingly become about destroying gods/demi-gods under flimsy pretences. The Elder Scrolls lore may at times be rather good--when I read the in-game books of Morrowind I kept wishing the stuff I was reading in the game was actually in the game and not in what amounts to an included text file--but the fact that it remains explained only in reading of in-game books is a good example of how the games are not about its own world; for instance, the bit about the Redguards not believeing in trickery I believe is used only once in the entirety of Oblivion, when a Redguard mage in the mage's (mages'?) guild can be made to tell you about how Redguards don't dig illusion magic but he totally does; otherwise, Redguards don't really exhibit their national philosophy. It has always bothered me that in a fantasy game with so many races, one of which is a reptilian race and the other a walking cat, they barely did anything with their diversity except for rare, harmless racism.

I'm saying it's a game that keeps setting that question up as something to be explored. It's a game where if you ask why are these people here and why are they doing what they're doing, you can get an answer--they lost a power struggle, so they're living in this shit hole. There are valuable resources to be extracted. This place holds strategic value for military/economic purposes. This place has cultural significance. They're living according to their beliefs, to their history, to their political allegiances.

It makes Morrowind stand out among cRPGs, because often people are there because. "These are peasants, they're here to wallow in mud. They wallow in mud because they're peasants. This is a knight, he lives in a castle, because he's a knight. He's a knight because. He's a good guy, because he's a knight. This is a wizard, he lives in a tower because he's a wizard. Also, he's evil. Because he's a wizard who lives in a tower." In other words, games where you just take the setting and play the game. The setting is secondary. In Morrowind, the setting is a big part of the game.

In this, I think it's a lot like Deus Ex. The conspiracy stuff was kind of derp, objectively speaking P), but reading into the articles and the history of the game was awesome. People had some sort of ideology driving them. The world was the way it was because of the history of the world. I literally laughed for joy talking to the AI the first time in some dude's pad. That part of the game was pleasurable.

It was written for fun. As was a great deal of what was in PS:T. Does anything having to do with the githzerai matter in that game? Do the Dustmen's beliefs add anything but pure story and lore? The Lady of Pain? What does her take over of the city matter? What does it matter meeting people who got stranded in the planes? Who cares what the fuck a Modron is? Just let me get to the goddamned dungeon crawling. Stop telling me about stuff that's tangential to the gameplay and irrelevant to the main storyline!

I think it matters a lot and really increased my enjoyment of the game. There are people and places in Morrowind and knowing more about them adds to the fun of being there, talking to those people.

Damn straight it's an opinion. I like certain things in the game because. I'm pointing to those things rather than trying to get abstract and pseudo-intellectual about a game. I'm saying I enjoy them because they reward playing the game. You talk to people, you learn more. You learn about a place in Morrowind, you can visit. You visit a place, you can see its history and culture in its architecture, its location, the people in it. I can't do that in a book or just by reading--simulation of visiting a place. That's the difference I'm drawing between reading and exploration in a simulated world.

I like certain things in a game because. I don't know how else to be more explicit--that might be my limitation--but I don't think this is different from saying "shooting people in FPS is fun; figuring out puzzles in adventure games is fun; planning and executing tactical manoeuvres in strategy games is fun." Enjoyment of Morrowind lies in exploring the simulated world. Yes, it involves reading, but reading all the text in Morrowind and playing the game are two different experiences.

It seems like you're asking here and in past threads 'why don't I like this game? Argue me into liking it.' I can only tell you the parts I like and why I liked them. Saying 'but that's not enough to make me like it!' may be valid criticism of the game, especially if coupled with insights about its design, but don't be a dick and pretend like I'm not talking about the game's appeal.