Morrowind is certainly a product of its time, so with the weird weapon hit chance mechanic and without voice acting, I can definitely understand why some people might not be able to get into it. But Morrowind has the best world design by a long shot and offers a lot more player freedom, too.
I loved Morrowind, but I was like 15 when I was playing it. I have a bad memory, so I don’t remember everything about it very well, but I just remember thinking that Skyrim was that plus dragons and better graphics. Please don’t hate me for that opinion because I don’t really stand behind it lol
Nah, I can definitely see that you wouldn’t know the difference, if you don’t remember the details. World design is kind of all about the details. And I also wasn’t really able to appreciate how cool the Morrowind game world is, when I played it at a similarly young age. I thought, all video games would have similarly interesting worlds, which I was unfortunately very wrong about.
Morrowind just had lots of cool ideas, for example some communities live in mushroom tree houses and you’ve got oversized, mind-controlled fleas to travel around the island. In terms of biomes, you’ve got for example swamps, isles, deserts, a volcano with ash storms, as well as a region with lava lakes.
That’s just so much more variation than they had in Oblivion and Skyrim. Well, Oblivion’s Shivering Isles DLC deserves a separate mention. That did have an interesting game world, too.
Maybe I’ll play Morrowind again some day! I don’t think I actually finished it but I did play it quite a bit. Those various environments you mentioned sound awesome and definitely only partially familiar.
I thought, all video games would have similarly interesting worlds
This is super interesting to me. I cut my teeth on NES games so most games I played impressed me on some level. I didn’t like most games out there honestly but when games provided the right mix of things I was so in. I remember being very impressed with Morrowind and thinking it was more advanced and deep than any game I’d seen at that point!
If you do play it again, there’s a cool community rewrite of the engine: https://openmw.org/
It makes it more easily playable on modern operating systems and has various quality-of-life improvements, like greater rendering distance and practically no loading times.
And well, Morrowind was kind of my first ‘proper’ game. Beforehand, the best thing I played was a Diablo clone, which came in a box set with 9 other games. So, Morrowind definitely blew me away, but it did also set me up for some unrealistic expectations… 🫠
Yes, you do need the original game files. Personally, I ripped my CD from way-back-when and have it pointed to that, but I’m pretty sure, you can also point it at the game files for Steam and other launchers.
Morrowind is certainly a product of its time, so with the weird weapon hit chance mechanic and without voice acting, I can definitely understand why some people might not be able to get into it. But Morrowind has the best world design by a long shot and offers a lot more player freedom, too.
I loved Morrowind, but I was like 15 when I was playing it. I have a bad memory, so I don’t remember everything about it very well, but I just remember thinking that Skyrim was that plus dragons and better graphics. Please don’t hate me for that opinion because I don’t really stand behind it lol
Nah, I can definitely see that you wouldn’t know the difference, if you don’t remember the details. World design is kind of all about the details. And I also wasn’t really able to appreciate how cool the Morrowind game world is, when I played it at a similarly young age. I thought, all video games would have similarly interesting worlds, which I was unfortunately very wrong about.
Morrowind just had lots of cool ideas, for example some communities live in mushroom tree houses and you’ve got oversized, mind-controlled fleas to travel around the island. In terms of biomes, you’ve got for example swamps, isles, deserts, a volcano with ash storms, as well as a region with lava lakes.
That’s just so much more variation than they had in Oblivion and Skyrim. Well, Oblivion’s Shivering Isles DLC deserves a separate mention. That did have an interesting game world, too.
Maybe I’ll play Morrowind again some day! I don’t think I actually finished it but I did play it quite a bit. Those various environments you mentioned sound awesome and definitely only partially familiar.
This is super interesting to me. I cut my teeth on NES games so most games I played impressed me on some level. I didn’t like most games out there honestly but when games provided the right mix of things I was so in. I remember being very impressed with Morrowind and thinking it was more advanced and deep than any game I’d seen at that point!
If you do play it again, there’s a cool community rewrite of the engine: https://openmw.org/
It makes it more easily playable on modern operating systems and has various quality-of-life improvements, like greater rendering distance and practically no loading times.
And well, Morrowind was kind of my first ‘proper’ game. Beforehand, the best thing I played was a Diablo clone, which came in a box set with 9 other games. So, Morrowind definitely blew me away, but it did also set me up for some unrealistic expectations… 🫠
Neat! I assume you still need to have the original game files for that engine rewrite to run?
Haha yeah that is a crazy game to get started with.
Yes, you do need the original game files. Personally, I ripped my CD from way-back-when and have it pointed to that, but I’m pretty sure, you can also point it at the game files for Steam and other launchers.
Nice. Thanks for your responses!