According to Extended Play today, Morrowind is the best selling console game out there for all systems. It’s ahead of number 2 Eternal Darkness, and number 3 GTA3 (amazing how it is still selling so well…who doesn’t have it?). That’s a good sign. It sold well for the PC as well. I think being in the top ten for even a couple of months is great actually.
Personally, it’s the best game I have played in a long time. I completely disagree with Qenan. Of course, neither of our opinions matter much as far as sales go. Whether or not the two of us liked it won’t mean much to Bethesda ;). But I would say that it has already sold well enough to warrant a sequel, and that’s great news for me. I wish more people would try it. If you give it time (the beginning of the game is very disorienting and in many ways boring) I think you will learn to really appreciate it. I like it much better than Daggerfall, which I never got into because of the random dungeons and repitition.
If nothing else, I hope Morrowind is a sign to other developers that this sort of game will work. It’s ambitious and open-ended, which is great. If it were combined with the attention to detail and NPC interaction of games like Planescape, I think it would be much better.
Maybe the world can get chemo or something before the cancer spreads any more. I like reading their ads, but their prices are unremarkable for anything that is not an advertised special.[/quote]
That’s being kind. I enjoy walking around and looking at their stuff, but their prices are generally uncompetitive with shopping around for the same item on the internet. I really only use them for small items where the price isn’t much of a factor.
I’m curious, what exactly do you like about it? I enjoyed the non-linearity, but after a while I felt like I was living in a land full of zombies. And as I said, the dungeons weren’t very impressive. Daggerfall’s were too big and crazy, but even that would be better than the endless caves thing. (There are a few big ones, but not nearly enough.)
And the game is really, really easy – at least with a fighter.
I didn’t end up hating the game, I just got so bored I stopped playing. I played Daggerfall for many, many months, so by comparison I find Morrowind lacking.
Yeah, OK, I didn’t give much detail. The average dungeon in Daggerfall was much bigger, and much scarier – I remember being on pins and needles every time I turned a corner. The dungeons in Morrowind tend to be small and not very scary. As the game went on they also became very easy, for the most part. (That didn’t happen in Daggerfall because the mobs were scaled to the strength of your character.)
" I just got so bored I stopped playing. I played Daggerfall for many, many months, so by comparison I find Morrowind lacking."
How was Daggerfall with its repetative randomly generated dungeons and NPC’s not just as boring?
Fair question. The NPC’s in Daggerfall were also terrible; you’d think that with the improvements in CPU power, etc. there could be some improvement, but there really wasn’t any.
I liked the random dungeons in Daggerfall better because they were bigger and looked more like dungeons to me. Yes, they were random and kind of crappy for that reason – the dungeons in a game like MM6 were much better. But in Morrowind most of the dungeons were quite small, and mostly they looked like caves – with the result that 1) they were also repetitious, and 2) hand-designed or not, they weren’t impressive.
I remember the whole Monty Haul loot aspect as being a big part of Daggerfall. It was less of a factor in Morrowind, in part because I didn’t have a cart to haul everything back with. That omission also made the game a little flatter for me.
I’ve played about every RPG since 1990 and Morrowind has given me the most enjoyable game experience yet. I particularly liked the M&M, Ultima, and Wizardry series, Fallout 2, Betrayal at Krondor, BG 1&2, Planescape, Icewind Dale, and especially Ultima IX because of the graphics (but not the story). Most other games I did not finish due to boredom or something better came along and this includes Daggerfall: the dungeons, story and NPC’s became more of the same very quickly.
I probably have 200 or more hours in Morrowind mainly because I love the visuals, plus the story and quests are not boring to me; I also find the mods keep my interest alive and add to the gameplay.
I’m in no hurry to play Neverwinter Nights because I’m having so much fun with Morrowind, and, for me, this is highly unusual as I usually buy and try every RPG the day it comes out.
I particularly liked [snip] and especially Ultima IX because of the graphics
So, you’re the other guy who liked Ultima IX?? Don’t say that too loud around these guys…They’re brutal about that game!! :)
Oh, and I think I’m the last guy here who doesn’t have Morrowind yet. I’ll be getting it soon, but I’m in the middle of the Computer Upgrade from Hell (it’s been months!! Aaaargh!!), and until that’s done, I don’t think I can run it, anyway. I’ll be getting it soon, but I’m loving NWN.
Well, I can understand the dungeon problem, but I like having smaller, more concise dungeons. The huge sprawling dungeons didn’t do much for me, to be honest. I do like the colors of Daggerfall better, as I get sick of all the greys and browns (I need a tree mod!). And yes, the game is easy if you are a fighter type, though I am a fighter type and I still get killed at 28th level! Go take on some dremora lords or lich king types and you won’t have an easy fight of it. BTW, you can up the difficulty level if you want. Of course, the combat is not good, IMO, and hotkeys do’nt help me manage my inventory as well as I would like. There aren’t enough of them, and they have to cover too much.
But none of that is what impresses me. The game is flawed in a lot of ways. But, it is incredibly immersive. Unlike Daggerfall, I feel like I am in the world. I forgot to take my Indoril helmet off one time and an Ordinator attacked me, so I killed him. Now, every time I see one, they attack me. People remember me, and the things they say to me reflect how they feel toward me and my reputation in the world. Since everything is hand placed, the world has a continuity that is easy to appreciate. I spend lots of times doing quests and such and just soaking up the world, which is VERY detailed compared to Daggerfall.
So I guess in the end, if you want a character developing RPG, with nice combat, Morrowind isn’t going to work very well. However, if you want to live in a world for 80 hours or so, it’s perfect. The graphics are incredible, which helps suck you in. The NPC interaction is still a bit lifeless and I wish there were changes over time to make the world seem more alive. But overall, I really feel like I am out on an island trying to live my character’s life. That’s an experience I have never gotten out of another RPG.
I never played Daggerfall. It came out in the Dark Times, after I’d gotten rid of my defunct Amiga and before I got my first PC. I do agree, however, that the dungeons in Morrowind weren’t so great. Only a few were large – the first Dwemer dungeon where you have to get the puzzle box, and then one of the Ashlander tombs later on. Even the climactic Dagoth Ur fortress wasn’t very big; I think the whole “Final Battle” sequence takes about 20 minutes tops. I guess that’s one advantage to randomly-generated dungeons – though they are completely devoid of personality, they are also as big and numerous as you want them to be. (Since the Morrowind dungeons were mostly small and devoid of personality, maybe the Daggerfall approach is better.)
Seasons. Sigh. I like snow in an RPG, though what weather Morrowind did have was brilliantly done. I played the game for a month solid and have pretty much stopped since then, though I still boot it up from time to time to wander Vvardenfell a bit. I get attached to an RPG’s sense of “place” and like to come back to it even years later.
Though I played Morrowind pretty intensely, and certainly got my money’s worth, I can’t call it the best RPG I’ve played, nor even the best recent one. I consider both Baldur’s Gate II and Avernum II to be superior. Now Avernum II had some real dungeons, although it also had the advantage that they didn’t have to be rendered in full 3D. My problems with Morrowind might have had more to do with unrealistic expectations than anything else.
I’m still waiting for a real “living” world in an RPG. Not just NPC scheduling (which even MW didn’t have), but NPC’s with complex AI routines, and dynamic economies, and dynamic ecologies, dynamic politics/factions/wars, etc., and all the rest of it. Probably a pipe dream but who knows? Maybe some day, when PC game graphics have plateaued and we are no longer rushing to get the next video card or the next RAM upgrade, games can be slowly expanded over a period of years. Then you could lay out the skeleton of an RPG world, and over time, layer by layer, make it ever more complex and subtle.
The next game from Mr. Ego, Peter Molyneux. It’s an RPG. Things that happen to your character affect his looks and makeup, etc. Get a scar early, you’ll have it through the whole game. Chop wood to get strong. Etc. Molyneux will redefine gaming once more, just like he did with Black & White.
I hope Project Ego’s going to have characters that actually poop, like B&W did. I mean, the Sims go to the bathroom, but you don’t get to SEE the results. That’s the genius of Molyneux.
