Does Morrowind hold up?

[Starke]

The weird thing about that post was that you said "put gameplay before graphics", then when someone said that the gameplay was crap you said that the world compensates for it. Having a good world is good and all, but when everything feels stiff and artificial (like in Morrowind) experiencing the world will always be hindered by the crap gameplay.

Whoa there buddy, you just made the cardinal mistake of conflating gameplay and combat, they are not the same thing, a game with no combat at all still has gameplay.

Then again, given this IS Morrowind, we're looking at a breakdown of gameplay around:

Combat: 55% (By game content), 15% (by time consumed)
Exploration (Also known as: getting lost due to deliberately vague quest directions): 25%, 75%
Building your character: 5%, 5%
Engaging in other interactions (reading books, talking to NPCs, completing quests, picking locks) 15%, 5%

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

I'd just like to point out that a good RPG doesnt stand on its combat so combat alone should never be a reason to disregard an RPG. Too many gamers these days are weaned on bastard (in the literal sense) action-RPG hybrids (thanks Bioware) that they unfairly expect all RPGs to have a solid action core... thats just not what RPG is about.

But then i'm a crusty old-school gamer so just get off my lawn and all that...

Not really (strictly from a gameplay perspective). It's still great, and I prefer it to Oblivion, but the combat is absolutely terrible.

*Sigh. Please, could you possibly read the highlighted sections of my post, instead of giving me a lecture on RPGs "back in your days".

 

[Agayek]

I'm not talking about graphics as they don't matter too much to me, but is Morrowind so highly praised in a Deus Ex kinda way where it's mostly nostalgia holding it up, or a Painkiller kinda way where it actually is fun compared to modern games?

EDIT: OH GOD I'm not saying Deus Ex isn't fun!

Morrowind still holds up great. I would say Skyrim is slightly better, but not by a whole hell of a lot. The whole world is huge and there's all sorts of goodies with it, especially if you get into modding it a bit.

The only thing in Morrowind that doesn't hold up is the quest log/journal. That thing is incredibly confusing. If you can get used to that, the game is amazing.

 

[Deacon Cole]

All I can tell you is I didn't like it. I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, the combat. I really didn't like it. I can't even remember what it was like anymore and I count that as a blessing. I had gotten it a year or two ago when Steam was having one of their sales. The graphic, particularly the character models and animation, were kind of primitive, but I can dig it. It's an old game. It was also a bit talky, but aren't they all? No big deal. So I finally got a mission to go to the next town or something. I really didn't care. I was just happy to finally be playing the damned game after all that pointless dialog. I was digging on the forest environments and beginning to realize why the game gets so much praise when some monster wandered up to me. I forget what. A blood worm or something and I found the combat to be horrible. I was actually taken aback at how much I hated it. But I soldiered on for a bit and another thing attacked me and the combat wasn't getting any better. I came to the realization that this was going to be the bulk of my playing experience. Wordy dialog and ass combat. The first I can handle, but I found the second to be no fun at all. It was a deal breaker, so I uninstalled and don't give it any thought except whenever this topic comes up every now and again. I understand there is a mod that makes the combat more tolerable, but nothing short of a complete rewrite of the entire game could make it good. Why should I play a game I didn't find fun?

So, that's my two cents. Take it for what it may be worth.

 

[TheCrapMaster]

Well morrowind will hold it place as among the best games i played when i first lay my youthfull eyes upon it. BUT gameplay wise i can say it is abit dated and probably its because of nostalgia i keep returning to it. But if you want to know what the fuzz is about and graphics arent important it sure is worth a try .

 

[DanielBrown]

I tried replaying it a few years ago when I got hooked again on Oblivion, but found it unbearable.
The outdated graphics(sorry, I'm a graphics whore), the entire world freezing when you spoke to someone and the lack of spoken dialogue was annoying enough, but I had also completely forgotten about the awful combat system. Magic might work great, but I've only played with one handed weapons and a shield in the Elder Scrolls games. The one time I actually got anywhere in Morrowind was when I cheated myself to awesome weapons and armor to be able to kill stuff.
If you want to go retro I think Oblivion would be the better choice.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I can understand why people wouldn't like Morrowind if they played it today for the first time. It's a very old school RPG. The combat is shit and it depends completely on your stats. Graphics are bad, there is no fast travel and the world is bigger than Skyrim and Oblivion. You can actually get lost in Morrowind. It's a hostile land. And you have to read everything.

But despite those flaws it's a damn good game. Best one in the series in my opinion. The world just feels so strange and real. You really get that "stranger in a strange land" vibe. It's the most atmospheric games I've ever played. And the rich history of Morrowind is captivating. I was a kid when I first played it, and I didn't mind that I had to read everything. In fact, I think it's a lot better. For some reason it adds to the immersion. It's better to have no voices than to have voices that break immersion when they repeat themselves. When you read NPC's lines you can imagine their personality and tone of what they said for yourself. That just adds to the freedom.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

It generally does, the only major problem is that you have to keep reading your diary for quest info and find places based on directions.

Also, Cliff racers!

 

[Custard_Angel]

The environments and story of Morrowind are still good and the variety is better, but graphics are pretty dated.

It's still fun, but I agree that alot of people may just give up on it.

 

[Zhukov]

No, not really.

Yeah, it's massive, but the minute-to-minute gameplay is balls, the interface looks like a parody of bad interfaces and the dialogue system is quite possibly the worst I have ever seen.

 

[Robert Ewing]

Hmm, if Morrowind was released today, the setting would be vastly new and different, it would be revolutionary.

The interface... Dear god, if there is rage at the Skyrim UI, then this will be sacrificed to the god of death.

Graphics, still sort of hold up to a niché market, but it's really not good enough. The only aspects of the graphics that could still be found impressive is the water shaders, they in my opinion are on par with skyrims water.

Story, wasn't much there if i'm honest, most of the story can be broken, or exploited, so the story, and the code that makes the story isn't very tight.

So no, Morrowind doesn't really hold up today, but it'd still be a damn good game.

 

[Jakub324]

In gameplay, not a chance. In setting, I don't know.

 

[mlbslugger06]

I would definitely say it holds up. I would play the game straight, without breaking the law, until anyone called me outlander. After that I would go on a killing spree starting with the fool who called me that.

It happens more than you would think.

 

[Continuity]

I'd just like to point out that a good RPG doesnt stand on its combat so combat alone should never be a reason to disregard an RPG. Too many gamers these days are weaned on bastard (in the literal sense) action-RPG hybrids (thanks Bioware) that they unfairly expect all RPGs to have a solid action core... thats just not what RPG is about.

But then i'm a crusty old-school gamer so just get off my lawn and all that...

Not really (strictly from a gameplay perspective). It's still great, and I prefer it to Oblivion, but the combat is absolutely terrible.

*Sigh. Please, could you possibly read the highlighted sections of my post, instead of giving me a lecture on RPGs "back in your days".

I may have quoted you but I wasnt really directing my comments at you. At any rate the combat in Morrowind is poor, and yeah the gamplay does leave a lot to be desired in many respects. I dont disagree with you at all, I was just making a point about the RPG genre in general that I thought was worth making in the context of this thread.

 

[rayen020]

Morrowind still holds up in the way that good books hold up. There are maybe two places where they use dialogue instead of text boxes so if you're one of those thickos born in the 90s who reading level is still in 3rd grade while you're 17, and never read the harry potter books because you can just watch the movie it probably isn't for you.

As a setting though, i feel it holds up, yes it does have a few graphical problems. it suffers very much from that realism binge back in the mid 2000s where everything wanted to be realistic but the graphics weren't quite there yet so everything just looked dirty. Also during long hikes you will probably spot a couple of terrain stitches. and if you play 3rd person there will be clipping and collision issues like where you stand on a box 6 inches above the box, and your legs get lost in the ground on stairs.
However the world map is vast, huge and big, contains jungles, swamps, plains, tropical island desert landscapes and an absolutely awesome volcano area. storms and rain are real enough to make you forget what the actual weather is outside, and the flora and fauna are so unlike anything else it's a real trip to somewhere else. Although there are way to many cliff racers and you'll tire of fighting them before you're even halfway through the game.

tl;dr. yes yes it does.

 

[Continuity]

The weird thing about that post was that you said "put gameplay before graphics", then when someone said that the gameplay was crap you said that the world compensates for it. Having a good world is good and all, but when everything feels stiff and artificial (like in Morrowind) experiencing the world will always be hindered by the crap gameplay.

Whoa there buddy, you just made the cardinal mistake of conflating gameplay and combat, they are not the same thing, a game with no combat at all still has gameplay.

Then again, given this IS Morrowind, we're looking at a breakdown of gameplay around:

Combat: 55% (By game content), 15% (by time consumed)
Exploration (Also known as: getting lost due to deliberately vague quest directions): 25%, 75%
Building your character: 5%, 5%
Engaging in other interactions (reading books, talking to NPCs, completing quests, picking locks) 15%, 5%

You're not wrong, i'm just saying its possible for an RPG to be great even with poor combat, because regardless of how much time you spend doing it combat is not the focus of the RPG genre. Look at the witcher for example, fantastic RPG and great game, one of the best I've played...

awful combat...

but that just doesn't matter as much as many people make out (in the context of RPG), to hear some people going on about the flaws of RPGs you'd be forgiven for thinking the RPG genre was some sort of action combat game if you didn't know better.

Criticising combat in an RPG is like criticising the story in an FPS, these things complement the game but they are not the focus (there are exceptions of course but then genres aren't really all that clear cut in many cases).

 

[D0WNT0WN]

I am really trying to like Morrowind but the combat is so bad, exploration is fun but not having a decent quest log or a marker system to mark where I need to go is annoying when you want to get on with things. The best thing about Oblivion is exploring and finding something like when you find the town of invisible people.

I have yet to see something like that in Morrowind.

tried morrowind and stopped playing after missing with my sword 99/100 times

Exact same reason I can not get into it. How can I get into a game if I can not survive at all.

I remember getting killed by a rat in a ladies house because I kept on missing.

 

[VladG]

Depends. Morrowind has NO quest indicators, no fast travel, and is probably just as massive as the newer titles. This basically means that quest directions are something like: Go along the road until you reach the purple tree, go left, cross the bridge and keep heading to area x, and if you reach lake y you've gone too far.

Morrowind is not friendly at all to new players.

Now, if you enjoy spending more time trying to find the quest dungeon, walking around the interesting landscape and exploring than actually doing the quest, then yes, Morrowind does hold up.

It is considerably more complex than the newer titles, you have considerably more skills, each piece of armor is separate (as in left glove, right glove, left boot, right boot, left pauldron, right pauldron, breastplate, greaves, pants, shirt, skirt, robe, 2 rings, amulet, and I'm probably leaving some stuff out) you have much greater freedom in designing your enchantments and spells.

On the other hand the combat is much less dinamic, the non regenerating magicka is slightly annoying and frankly I couldn't care less about the main story (but then again, if you only do the main story, than you're not playing it right)

 

[cthulhumythos]

I'm not talking about graphics as they don't matter too much to me, but is Morrowind so highly praised in a Deus Ex kinda way where it's mostly nostalgia holding it up, or a Painkiller kinda way where it actually is fun compared to modern games?

EDIT: OH GOD I'm not saying Deus Ex isn't fun!

don't play it.

this is how it works- played first after oblivion you will never get past it's minor flaws and say the reason that everyone loves it is simply nostalgia.

played BEFORE oblivion however, you could get past the minor flaws and discover an immense land of wonder and possibility. i can still go on that game and go a new path and discover a new place to explore. also, very little randomly generated loot, which is fantastic. no level scaling at all, which is super fantastic. the world is much larger than oblivion and has many more quests.;
honestly, oblivion pales in comparison in every way except the weapon skills. in morrowind, all weapons had a defined damaged that never changed: instead, your weapon skill defined chance to hit. this leads to much annoyance on account of at the beginning of the game, you only have 40% chance to hit if you played your cards right.

its a shame that a few deterrents scare away people from an amazing game. to this day i look at oblivion with mild disdain, and at morrowind with wonder and enjoyment.

 

[Saviordd1]

I'm not talking about graphics as they don't matter too much to me, but is Morrowind so highly praised in a Deus Ex kinda way where it's mostly nostalgia holding it up, or a Painkiller kinda way where it actually is fun compared to modern games?

EDIT: OH GOD I'm not saying Deus Ex isn't fun!

Ehh, not really, the graphics and dice rolling combat kind of kill it for me. BUT It was better then oblivion for simply being more interesting a fantasy setting and plot. But over all Skyrim topples both of them in scope and gameplay.