After writing a lot about it referencing my last playthroughs, I started it once again via OpenMW with official expansions and nude mode only, for it became kind of a habit.
So, initially it looks like an RPG, and we see these stacks of numbers in a character sheet affecting our speaking capabilities or our impotency to kill a crab, okay. If we dive more into it, we’d learn our ways not only around that, but also to become the most potent mass killer Nirn ever had. Alchemy loops to boost your intelligence and brew a better potion of intelligence are known for 20 years already, even in Skyrim, and the ways this game is completely broken are meta-knowledge making us love it even more.
But is it only an RPG?
More, than in other TES games, I encountered a lot of NSFL content. No, I don’t talk about Suran’s harlots, but about customs of danmers and the Sixth House.
We can go back to the Planescape: Torment, the game that starts in a morgue that people don’t play these days (sorrely), russian Pathologic that hbomberguy praised and where kids with dog heads exchange stuff for razors and drugs, or that cringe project called Hatred, but non of them combined have the same amount of what is now considered non-publishable.
Besides encountering racism and cop’s attention at any step (even if you are a dunmer, because you are still not a native), we have stories of imperials coming from Ilunibi and dying horribly due to corprus, that seems like a radiation poisoning. We have a cult that eats flesh and is one second from overthrowing the government, killing everyone who doesn’t meet their criteria. We have all dunmers having dreams that make them insane and irrate, one step from starting a murder spree. We have gods, who by a treachery took their powers, and the center of the island being guarded by their weakening powers and literal bone ash from local funerals. We have a real gestapo from local officials, and we can participate in glory kills that are a custom of this wicked land, with us still be a member of churches and guilds. And don’t even start talkimg about Fyr cloning himself into daughers, fucking them, and having a whole dungeon for adventurers to find either their award or a sudden death. Or that one quest when you search for a sex slave. And that all continues in a completely corrupt world where a duel or a bribe can significantly change the political landscape.
There’s so much I can put Horror, Thriller, Grindhouse lables on, or those I don’t even know. I’m glad it happened in my life and I can replay it now on any system, even on mobile phone. But it’s even more vile than Fallout and it’s one of the reasons it clicked with me. Morrowind is very russian, and it’s popularity on our 4chan clones cements this. If your friend ever get vocal about moving here, get them Morrowind as a testing experience and then ask, if they still want that. Guess, they wouldn’t, for their own good.
I would love to hear your stories about how beautiful or grim this game is.
The world building in Morrowind is what makes it my favorite TES game, it’s so distinct to any other fantasy game. One of my favorite aspects is how Vvanderfell has its own versions of the mainland guilds AND the mainland guilds themselves competing with their Dunmer counterparts, there’s an Imperial cult presence but the Temple also exists… It’s a very insular world with a very distinct culture and everyone just fucking hates you for no reason. It’s great.
Even the main quest is kind of bonkers when you think about it, the end goal is basically overthrowing the government and installing a Dunmer ethno state… And the Emperor is fine with it lol.
I mean… You just have to do all that in order to kill the very real threat of Dagoth Ur which is what the emperor wants because he has seen the future that happens if the prophecy doesn’t come true. If you could have just walked into the volcano and bitch slapped him just like that, he probably would have just done so with his army and not use the reincarnated Neravarine.
the end goal is basically overthrowing the government and installing a Dunmer ethno state… And the Emperor is fine with it lol.
Red Year is coming in 3… 2… 1…
I’d disagree with you saying you are building the ethnostate since your end goal is to kill the one who tried to do that, and also to use Akhulakhan (big godly mecha) to undo the Empire, like it’s some Metal Gear Solid game lol. You kill the most dissenting party here, and whatever your choices were before, you still build this province as a more tolerant place than Dagoth Ur envisioned. Even Redoran’s ultraconservative pov is vanilla compared to what could’ve happened if he won. So it’s a win for Empire even if they didn’t know that wouldn’t last.
I’m referencing the Nerevarine prophecy which states that the reincarnated Nerevar would restore the worship of the original gods and drive out the outlanders from Morrowind, it’s basically an ethnostate by that point. What I find most bizarre is the fact that the player is basically responsible for destroying Vvanderfell after killing Vivec (or at least making him mortal again) and causing the Red Year, I don’t remember if it’s ever implied in the game that that’s going to happen, but in retrospect you’re not really the hero of the story, you basically killed everyone post-credits lol.
I don’t think that the driving the empire from Morrowind ever happens in game, but maybe it technically comes true as a concequence of the Red Year which in turn is a concequence of the Tribunal losing their power because of the ending of the main quest. It’s interesting that Uriel Septim sets the prophecy in motion knowing that this is part of it.
The Tribunal where losing their power anyway, but I suppose that Dagoth Ur could have kept Bar Dau in its place if he’d won, but then everyone would have been transformed into a corpus zombie instead.
The Red Year isn’t part of Morrowind lore, but “what is going to happen with Bar Dau now?” is kind of an open question at the end of the game so it is an event that absolutely builds on things set up in Morrowind
AlMSIVI are losing their powers at this point, so unlike Daggerfall with it’s 6 endings, whatever you do, the star that Molag Bal launched and Vivek slowed down would eventually crush into the capital even if you leave Vivek alive. The one thing they could do is releasing slaves and establishing good relations with argonians, who are happy to pillage the province in the distress, but they didn’t. So they ate the cake they baked.
I’m pissed that most of that was designed when they did the OG game, but we come to know that through books in Oblivion and poorly-written published fanfics.
I bought a Radeon 9800 Pro for my 13th birthday.
I tell you, people kept telling me that I was wasting my life in front of a computer – but I lived an entire fucking lifetime in Morrowind, to the age of 92.
I must have walked every single square meter or Vvardenfell, and this was before major walkthroughs existed.
What’s your favorite place in here then? I’m pretty basic so I’d pick Molag Mar for how one canton of Vivek looks weird placed in the wilderness, and I’m curious what would be your loved one.
I’m somewhat partial to the Telvanni Mushroom kingdom (the idea of, hey, here’s an acorn, go GROW your house) but Balmora has always held a special piece in my heart for being the first “big city” I’ve felt in a video game.
The transition to the Ashland and seeing a different biome entirely / grasslands / plains was also pretty incredible.
Ald’ruhn’s Capitol was also novel in design with the redundant rope bridges built on the inside of the shell of a gigantic upturned horseshoe crab.
Vivec’s cool but it’s only possible because of a demi-god’s literal meddling around with the terrain, and it’s too easy to get lost.
Caldera’s also nice, as well as Pelagiad.
I know I just named like ten places but Morrowind’s got a lot of diversity and biomes.
You are cool. I felt something similar to these places.
That place stands out in my memory too as really ominous. That and the plains in the northeast where I first defeated a golden saint, the astroid prison frozen above Vivek City, and the libraries and book stores.
I remember buying a 4400 Ti just for Morrowind
I’ve never played this game. Is this stuff you’re describing coming from mods or the original game??
The actual vanilla game has some really fucked up shit going on in the lore. There’s a book in the game that describes a female dunmer having sex with a khajit in excruciating detail about the barbs on the khajit penis tearing her vaginal walls. And that’s one of the more tame things I can think of.
Kirkbride is a sick, demented man.
Kirkbride is a sick, demented man.
A beloved one at that. It’s a shame we don’t see games inspired by him anymore. Someone like Supergiant could’ve pulled it off.
Baseline. One of the houses you can side with sells slaves and has slaves in game.
That’s all vanilla game, baby!
You should play it. That’s vanilla, and the mods are amazing, even just the hd texture packs will make the game very playable today.
I’m guessing there’s a mod community somewhere to learn what mods to use? Like with Skyrim, I’d probably start with things that improve the overall look but sticks to vanilla for the story
Yeah I think if you go to the tomorrow and community here there’s even a sticky for them.
But I like to just go to Nexus mods and browse through what I think can add to the game without compromising the story.
The Morrowind community is very devoted to the world itself and is very good in that respect, so it isn’t a huge concern.
There are also several YouTube videos that will instruct you exactly how to install every configuration of mods in every way possible, but after you install one, you’ll see how simple it is to install any of the ones you want.
I heart vanilla is a good modlist which has some basic bugfixes and minor but faithful graphical improvements. If you wanna make the game look even better, then Volumetric Clouds, Remiros Groundcover (or some other groundcover mod) and Normal Maps for Everything are some of my top recommendations. If you wanna go crazy then there is also a modlist on the same site called graphical overhaul, but I think that it’s worth sticking to a more vanilla aesthetic for a bit just so you have that as a frame of reference.
OpenMW (or, alternatively MGE XE if you want to use the original engine for whatever reason) already have some nice graphical improvements baked into them though.
The combat kills it for me unfortunately, even with mods. I thought I wouldn’t care but it just feels so bad. I couldn’t stick with it last time I tried.
I’ve heard that before, but even vanilla combat doesn’t bother me.
Let’s playthrough. I did unarmed that was fun as hell, especially
spoiler
punching dagoth ur into the volcano.
I might add some combat mods next time I play, since I play through it every 2 or 3 years, but that world is so big and there’s so many different ways to interact with it that the combat is a non-issue for me.
Especially with monster mods, I feel like you can definitely set up a situation where you can’t just hack and slash, you actually have to use the game mechanics and Dodge monster attacks while you’re fighting, make sure your fatigue is full.
If a minivan sized mud crab attacks you moving faster than a cheetah, haha, you have to make sure you know exactly how to fight back.
I never even realized that people don’t like the combat until stumbling across some reviews years after I played.
Even if you never fight in the game, it’s worth it just to live inside it. Don’t complete the game but go live in Morrowind for a couple weeks and just ignore the combat.
What if I told you that at some point in the game you are to kill a giant flying insect with a fork? Or to find a mass grave or those who thought they are worthy to follow the footsteps you’re yet to make? Or that you can kill two of three dunmeric self-entitled gods while you are at it? These are all in the vanilla GOTY game. It’s just that insane and profoundly hand-crafted by the trinity of the experienced in their field old guard, the new guys with a shine in their eyes and Michael Kirkbride who ate through another mile of acid-laced postmarks. If you are to leave the first tutorial village here, you’d never come back (:
I’m sold
If you’d ever get lost there or in the other TES games, UESP is an old-styled wiki resource not killed by Fandom and still going strong for decades: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page
I’d suggest you to use OpenMW as an engine since it has, if I’m correct, many patches to games’ issues already under the hood. To use it, just install Morrowind+DLCs and then show OpenMW where it all landed. I believe, original english ISO files can be found even on the Internet Archive, but if they aren’t, I can send you a magnet link to a torrent. Lets incentivise Bethesda to make the TES6 already.
Thanks! I’m happy to buy the game. Everyone here is typing me up on it lol And I see that OpenMW be used alongside that
One of the gods made a spear out of another god’s dick and raped a 3rd god with it.
Blasphemy charges speedrun ended well before I said that sentence.
I just finished Morrowind for the first time a few weeks ago, vanilla other than using openmw. It has aged a lot better than I expected it would have. I can definitely see why people say it’s their favorite TES, and I’m not talking with any kind of nostalgia.
I’m happy you did. Of all parts, it’s harder to get into Oblivion now than anything else, surprisingly. I faied at that, but you may win and write another post here. I feel sad about it for Sheoghoraths’ isles were one the best moments in the whole franchise.
I’ve played oblivion and Skyrim before, it was just Morrowind I stayed away from
I’ve been into the elder scrolls since chapter one. My favorite part of the series is that if there is a door, there is something behind it. So many games have doors that do nothing. I wish more games were like that.
I’ve never played the game before but now I want to buy it once I get home
Be aware that it’s wery old and don’t be shy from googling UESP wiki or reaching some player’s PMs if you’d feel lost.
The biggest pain point I see from new players is combat. It’s totally focused on your character, not you as a player. It’s closer to BG3 in combat than modern TES. Every attack rolls dice, and the result is based on that and also your character stats. If your character doesn’t know how to use a sword, you’re not going to hit. If your character is tired (low stamina) you’re not going to hit. The game let’s you pick up a weapon you don’t know how to use and try to use it without warning, but it won’t turn out well.
The most infamous example of this is you can get a dagger early. Then players will run from the first town, using all their stamina, then try to fight an enemy. They will then fail to hit at all and think it’s the fault of the game, but it’s really just a lack of understanding of the systems. The game does fail to explain the consequences of this though.
