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Morrowind


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OMG, Morrowind looks unbelievable! It's a bit different than Daggerfall, though. Not quite as deep, but close enough that to most people it won't matter. Consolidated a lot of the DF skills and added some new ones. Mostly armor and combat-related skills (Boo!). Lots and lots of walking and dying. Especially dying. Fighter's guild sics me on some rats for my first foray and then sends me on a suicide mission to kill some poachers the next. Game's crashed twice so far but otherwise seems pretty clean (Bug-wise). Runs a little choppy even on my demi-cray, nothing bad... but then I DO have every option on full with 4XS antialiasing enabled. Not happy with the Forest Elf modifications (Obviously inspired by the goat-legged Pan of mythology). In short, Morrowind is not only the best looking game I have EVER seen, it is going to take the RPG game of the year from every major publication on the planet. Except for the odd boat out that will choose either Soldier of Fortune 2 or Dungeon Siege *snic*.

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This is killing me, I pre-ordered from Amazon.co.uk and I probably won't get it till late May. Then again, I won't be getting my new Vid card till next week (GF4 Ti4400, hopefully) so I'll just be patient...........

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What's killing me is that Scriv here has had the game for at least several hours now and has been too busy immersing himself in it to tease us some more. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!! Gimme some screenshots Scriv!!!

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This game is great, its huge the weather and night sky effects are great. Combat is quite interesting if not different. And anybody playing a thiefly character is going to be on cloud nine. You really can steal pretty much anything or anyone I cannot say enough about it. I can see already how I am going to waste my weekend

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OK, Played it untill 3:00 AM last night.

Overall the game is good. The weather is great, but what really brings out the games graphics the night. You can climb up on a high mountain and overlook a city at night, or look up at the sky and see the moon with stars and the clouds rolling by, it just looked so real the first time I saw it that I actually stoped walking and looked around for a couple of minutes. Also there was a surprise when I was exploring a city and all of a sudden the weather changed, clouds rolled in, it became noticably darker and the rain started pouring. So as you gather from this the graphics are awesome.

Then comes the gameplay. Which is also nice overall but there are some major (or minor to some) let downs. The first dissapointment came when I tried to jump. You see, the character doesn't really jumt, it just kinda gets flinged straight up and you hear a very annoying sound when he comes back down. I mean it just feels like this was just thrown inn at the last moment and is very frustrating and dissapointing considering that it really does come in handy to jump sometimes and considering the ammount of time that was spent on everything else it's a bit of a letdown. Then comes the combat. Again a little bit of a letdown, but it becomes less noticable because you will just get used to it. Let me explain. After playing operation flashpoint and some other FP style games you get used to the fluidic motions of the characters. In Morrowind the combat kinda reminds you of a much older 1995 style game where characters swing like bots and hit the oponent without really hitting him. I know it sounds kinda confusing but imagine this, when you swing your sword and lend a blow there is no satisfying smack nor there any visible damage or penetration of the opponent. You simply smack the air that is between you and your opponent and if you suceed in hitting him you will see some poor animation of what's supposed to be blood and that's about it. So that was my biggest beef with the game.

Anyhow, it's worth getting, but if you haven't waited for it on the edge of whatever you been waiting on then just wait for 6 months or a little longer untill you can either pick up a used copy or get it cheaper. So while some points in this game are just plain incredible, the combat and some of the character movement very much ruin the enjoyment of it, and also forgot to add, if you are playing a mage, the graphics for spells are very well done so that's a good thing. Anyhow it's no Operation Flashpoint, but is worth getting.

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I picked up the official guide today. This game world is HUGE. I mean really really HUGE. It's really worth picking up the official guide for this game just to see what else you can do besides what you have already been doing. The only thing that I can't get off my mind is that all the quests in the game are structured so while it may take you 6 months to get through the game it will still end, I hate it when developers don't make a persistent universe with unlimited randomly generated quests, it would be really awesome if Morrowind included that with it's immense pre-written quests, I mean in this day and age it should be a given in any game.

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Me overlooking Sedya Need from it's lighthouse

Guess what race I am playing

Me with the helmet off

Climbing a treeactually improves your acrobatic skill.

That big insect looking thing is a silt rider that you can use like a taxi between cities.

This is a drowned guy I found in an underwater cave.

That's him again.

And this is the night sky that I was talking about in my review.

Ok guys, with my persistence I learned how to upload pics so that other people on the net can see them. If you want to see more and really cool places just say so, also if there's any requests I am thinking of creating the same type thread for BCM so that people can post their pics. This is great.

[ 05-07-2002, 02:48: Message edited by: Soback ]

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I can take you on anytime. Doh, there is no multiplayer.

And get this, their stupid excuse is that it would detract from the single player. Why can't they tell the truth and just say that they didn't want to put extra time in it.

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My first impressions after 2 hours of game play.

It runs fine at any setting with all the options maxed on a P4 1.8G, 512mb ram, Geforce 3 TI 200.

The world graphics and atmosphere are excellent, the combat and character movement are the worst of any game of this type! There is no strategy to fighting, you just stand in one place and click like crazy until the thing dies, or your finger gets so worn out that you have to stop playing. You can't even tell if you are hitting the enemy or not. I am really disappointed in this part. I hope they fix it in a patch, because this and the poor AI are all that is stopping this game from being great!

The AI is terrible from what I've seen, for example, I had a pack of rats start chasing me and since my health was low I decided to run back to town for help from the town guards. The rats chased me all the way back to town where they got stuck running in place behind a pair of guards who just stood there and did absolutley nothing. These rats had it in for me though, I decided to hide in side a building until they went away, no matter where I went or what I did, they were always waiting, they didn't go after anyone else in town and no one seemed to even notice them, especially the guards.

Besides the rats and crab like creatures around in the woods, I had one sequence where I went into an old ladies house and decided to steal something. She saw me take it, then went nuts and started punching me. I pulled out my dagger and tried to fight her off, but she beat me to death with her fists. I was clicking away frantically and I'm not sure if I even hit her once during the whole fight. Thats not right! An armed warrior can't even take out an unarmed old woman! That and everything else turned me off so much I quit the game and turned on the TV. Maybe I'll give it another chance this weekend. Great graphics are nice, but they don't make up for poor game play.

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quote:

My first impressions after 2 hours of game play.

2 hours? Heh, considering the sheer size of this game, that's not much time to get aquainted with it.

quote:

It runs fine at any setting with all the options maxed on a P4 1.8G, 512mb ram, Geforce 3 TI 200.

Define "fine". I'm hearing a lot of reports from people that have it run horribly almost all the time on their high-end rigs.. myself, with my 1.1Ghz Thunderbird w/ GeForce 3 can barely push 20 FPS on average, and that's with the visibility sliced in half. Maxing out the visibility turns the game into an interactive slideshow. Though perhaps that 1.8Ghz rig is making all the difference...

quote:

The world graphics and atmosphere are excellent, the combat and character movement are the worst of any game of this type! There is no strategy to fighting, you just stand in one place and click like crazy until the thing dies, or your finger gets so worn out that you have to stop playing. You can't even tell if you are hitting the enemy or not. I am really disappointed in this part. I hope they fix it in a patch, because this and the poor AI are all that is stopping this game from being great!

The character movements looked fine to me (although the animations look extremely choppy when I look at something from far away for some reason). Combat is a lot more than just standing there swinging your weapon. You get different damage (and accuracy, I think) values based off of what kind of swing you throw. Alternately you can click the button for a quick swing, or hold it down to wind up and get a real meaty push. On top of that you've got a large variety of scrolls and weaponry to play with, including bows. Sure, combat's relatively simple, but saying it's little more than standing there "clicking like crazy" is a grossly inaccurate statement. And if you miss a guy, you miss. If you hit him, you get a blood splat, he reels back a little, and occasionally lets out a cry. Hitting him hard enough even sends him to his knees. What more of an indication do you need, exactly? Ths isn't Final Fantasy.

quote:

The AI is terrible from what I've seen, for example, I had a pack of rats start chasing me and since my health was low I decided to run back to town for help from the town guards. The rats chased me all the way back to town where they got stuck running in place behind a pair of guards who just stood there and did absolutley nothing. These rats had it in for me though, I decided to hide in side a building until they went away, no matter where I went or what I did, they were always waiting, they didn't go after anyone else in town and no one seemed to even notice them, especially the guards.

This is the one thing I concur with. I was able to take down an extremely high level NPC (and get his extremely expensive armour, to boot) just by summoning a skeleton and using an AI loophole to beat him over the head with my axe while he ran in place against a wall untill he went down. The pathfinding for the AI is sometimes impressive, but mostly stupid, and they get stuck easily.

quote:

Besides the rats and crab like creatures around in the woods, I had one sequence where I went into an old ladies house and decided to steal something. She saw me take it, then went nuts and started punching me. I pulled out my dagger and tried to fight her off, but she beat me to death with her fists. I was clicking away frantically and I'm not sure if I even hit her once during the whole fight. Thats not right! An armed warrior can't even take out an unarmed old woman! That and everything else turned me off so much I quit the game and turned on the TV. Maybe I'll give it another chance this weekend. Great graphics are nice, but they don't make up for poor game play.

See above. If you just stand there clicking, you'll only deal out a series of quick strikes that do one, maybe two points of damage. The power of your impact depends on what swing you do and how long you hold the button down beforehand. If you don't want to die, don't swing your weapon around like you're just playing Quake. Put some effort into your attacks and you'll get some decent results.

The game's really great, but not if you try to play it like a standard fare FPS game, because it's not.

Heh, actually true on what they were saying Soback.. the world itself is rather open-ended and large, but the way the game mechanics work (pauses when you go into your inventory, you can rest and advance the game world any time you want, etc) make implementation for multiplayer difficult. Never mind that, getting the technical aspects down would be a challenge too I'd imagine...

I myself have been playing Morrowind the past few days, and aside from my hideous framerates, it's an excellent game that I'll probably be playing for a long while. W00t!

[ 05-07-2002, 15:42: Message edited by: Parias ]

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Of course getting the multiplayer into this game is difficult, I never said it was easy, but it certainly can be done. Redo the inventory so that the game doesn't pause during MP when you access it, and redo whatever else needs to be changed to play in MP. Look at Derek, he is redoing many aspects of BCM in order for it to work in MP. It's like having 2 modes of play, one SP, one MP, it's not easy, but it can be done, so they just didn't want to put the time into it, what should be done is at least have the MP released later on in a patch, but saying that it would detract from SP is not only plain out lying it's stupid.

Next point, I have to agree with Picaso on the combat part. Yes, the target receives different ammount of damage depending on strenght and style of a swing, but come on. The animation of combat is plain out ridiculous for this day and age, it literally looks like you are swinging at the air and not your opponent. Also when you do score a hit the "blood splat" that you described doesn't even look like it's coming from the target but rather an area around him. It doesn't take a genious to figure out that the game has been very much rushed in it's development and designers concentrated mainly on graphics leaving very little to the gameplay mechanics itself. Granted, there is a storyline, but even that is somewhat poorly done because there is no really measurable rewards for most of the missions and besides all the talk about it being deep, it's not. So while I am captivated by this game for now, I know perfectly well that once the novelty of looking at the scenery wears off, there will be nothing left to make me continue with this game, for it has poor game mechanics (combat, rewards) and only somewhat interesting storyline.

As for running fine. You can check my specs under my signature. I am reporting no lags, the only slow downs I have is during transition from one mission zone to another, after it loads the game runs very smooth with no choppy/laggy graphics.

[ 05-07-2002, 16:13: Message edited by: Soback ]

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By the way, gotta bring this up. Take Diablo and Diablo II for example. They are not very deep games, they don't have very pretty graphics, the only thing that made that game a major hit was it's COMBAT MECHANICS, I mean it was just awesome, the animations, the style, the BASIC FEEL of it just felt right, and that's why people kept coming back and playing it over and over again. MP didn't detract from it's SP and developers didn't try to cut down their work by making up excuses that it would. So just by comparing one RPG to another you can tell what points make a good RPG, and from that you can also tell that Morrowinds combat really leaves A WHOLE LOT to be desired.

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Truth to be told, despite Diablo 2's popularity, I didn't find myself playing it all that much....

It's a good game, aye, and I see it for it's strong suits and sheer fun, but it just wasn't entirely in line with what I enjoyed in a game.

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Diablo and Diablo II: hack, hack, hack... level up... hack, hack, hack... level up...

or cast spell... level up... cast spell... level up. (exaggerated for humor)

I find them both quite boring... for that matter, I've yet to find a good RPG. I'm hoping Morrowind will turn out better.

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I liked the combat system of Heroe's Quest games (i think thats the name.. the one contemporary with Space Quest and King's Quest in which you could be a thief, warrior or magic user).

But so far the greatest fighting system i've seen so far is the one from Black and White. Its just dang FUN to click on the place you want your critter to hit and watch it try to hit it. Or block , etc.

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quote:


Originally posted by Soback:

Of course getting the multiplayer into this game is difficult, I never said it was easy, but it certainly can be done. Redo the inventory so that the game doesn't pause during MP when you access it, and redo whatever else needs to be changed to play in MP.


Its not that simple.

quote:


Look at Derek, he is redoing many aspects of BCM in order for it to work in MP.

No I'm not. BCM was designed to have mp from day one. I just didn't have time to do it right, due to the sheer size and scope of the game, coupled with the many, many ways that someone could find a loophole and kill gameplay. Hell, I found and plugged enough holes in sp.

There is a difference between throwing in multiplayer and putting in multiplayer. The former is what you get when mp doesn't do much for the game to begin with, so wasting time doing proper mp is low priority. Which is why most games which are not properly designed for mp, have mp that sucks.

quote:


It's like having 2 modes of play, one SP, one MP, it's not easy, but it can be done, so they just didn't want to put the time into it, what should be done is at least have the MP released later on in a patch, but saying that it would detract from SP is not only plain out lying it's stupid.

None of the Elderscolls, IIRC, have had mp. In a game like this, you have to design it to have mp from the start.

To improve performance, backup the morrowind.ini file and then look for these settings and change them to the following. The first setting changes the lighting from linear to quadratic. The second setting enables more shadows.

UseLinear=0

LinearMethod=1

LinearValue=3.0

LinearRadiusMult=1.0

;

UseQuadratic=1

QuadraticMethod=2

QuadraticValue=16.0

QuadraticRadiusMult=4.0

If you have a good system, you can enable more shadows

Number of Shadows=32

Maximum Shadows Per Object=4

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