Morrowind: The Final Chapter?

Games
1

Its ironic. What people consider to be Daggerfall’s biggest fault, the generic layout of the environment (randomly generated for the most part) was “solved” in Morrowind. Solved with a kind of monstrous attention to detail.

Monstrous can only describe the additional man-hours required to handplace the bowls, and the sheer NUMBER of bowls in the game.

Todd Howard often seemed tired during development, and the Morrowind team seemed close. Like… the closeness of people spending way too much time with each other.

After development it was not clear whether there would be a fourth version, and I hope there is not barring a re-invention of the genre.

Morrowind to me symbolizes the need for the “immersive sim” to be created by a computer program rather than a human. Those kind of games can realistically only be made under such circumstances. Extraneous detail, found in total abundance in traditional reality but little more than a mere chore in the man-made digital reality of single-player games, needs to be a machine function.

I found the game to be not brilliant but rather precisely what the developers set out to produce, an exercise of endurance rather than intelligence.

How much of Morrowind is attributed to the atrocity of Daggerfall? How much of Morrowind is a desire perhaps found within Todd Howard to solve the problem that WAS Daggerfall?

And how tremendous is the link when a game in which however much enjoyment could be found can readily be called a CHORE to produce is also a chore to play?

The bowls demanded my attention, at least as long as to see they were not something more valuable like Limeware and perhaps even more…

But what is this demand, this demand upon me of something valueless? All games of course have this… without the valueless there is no relationship to the valuable. You can find more joy in Limeware after you’ve been disappointed by Clay.

But when I see how much care there is… how much LOGIC there is in the placement of the valueless, how much utter and monstrous specificity there is in Morrowind, I cannot help but think one thing.

Todd Howard solved the problem that is Daggerfall.

And he created many more.

Will there be a time when a computer program is created not as a game, but as a creator OF games?

2

Um. Uh, yeah.

3

I enjoyed Daggerfall, for all its flaws. It was fun as a kind of Monty Haul adventure (“Cool, right daedric pauldron!”).

I enjoyed Morrowind also, but less so, despite very good graphics. The world just felt more sterile. The dungeons were mostly small and uninteresting. And the NPCs were as brain-dead as ever.

I’ve only played a little of Icewind Dale II, a very different sort of game (for an RPG), but… I’m having the same sort of experience there. It’s OK, but it feels flat.

Whereas, I’ve been replaying BG2, and enjoying it more than I did the first time. All the quirky little subplots amuse me.

I think RPGs need a story. This is one of the big problems with MMORPGs to date: the story is “you and your buds kill [fill in the blank] over and over and over and over and…” It can be fun in a sort of Monty Haul way, but it wears on you. Or at least it wore on me.

4

I agree MW went too far in the opposite direction – it’s an RPG in a bottle. It was a shiney, new robot and Daggerfall was a happy, slobbering St. Bernard that couldn’t be housebroken.

MW could have benefited greatly from more random events, more random treasure, and a more realistic world (Vivec, huge city as it was, felt like it was inhabited by about fifty people – half of whom are related to the other half). The faceless drones in Daggerfall kinda gave it more of a “teeming city” feel, mostly because they all looked the same – just like in a real city, everyone begins to just be another bit of humanity scurrying from one place to another.

But I’m still enjoying the game. For the next installment, I don’t want a random dungeon generator like Daggerfall, but a bit more randomness to dungeons, treasure, and NPCs would be a nice addition.

5

Well, you’re right on one thing, they did indeed set out to correct the flaws in Daggerfall. The “what’s wrong with Daggerfall” bullet chart was the basic template for designing Morrowind. While it’s certainly arguable that the cure isn’t completely better than the disease in this case, at least it works. Unlike Daggerfall, which set the all time record for continuous crashes I think.

6

MW has turned into one of those “I’ve got to be missing something” games for me. Like Deus Ex before it, I keep reloading it thinking I’ve missed something, but then every time I start to play it I realize I haven’t and it’s just that I don’t like it.

7

The only problem with Morrowind for me was its relative staticness–a world that was mostly in stasis, waiting around for the player to interact with it. If they’d put NPCs on schedules–even if it was just wandering from home to work and back–it would have given the game more of a sense of life.

NetImmerse does support schedules, but, who knows, tracking the thousands of NPCs might have upped the game’s processor requirements (not to mention to possibilities for bugs).

One of the things I’m lookign forward to checking out in Tribunal is whether they’ve done anything along these lines.

Speakign of Tribunal, did anyone hit the software stores late last week? It was a big one: Tribunal, O.R.B., GI Combat (Close Combat in 3D), Arx Fatalis, and Deadly Dozen Pacific Theater, with Project Nomads (Hostile Waters by way of Skies of Arcadia) on tap for Monday. :D

8

I think a combination of the immersive elements - like NPCs with seeming routines not to mention more of them in cities, for example, along with more randomization of storylines would help. As a consumer I don’t care whether the developer is hand arranging bowls or some fuzzy logic generator is figuring out silverware placement or, indeed, whether I can pick up a bowl or not. The only time that matters is if you get into customizing your home and I suppose there are those that do.

To me the key for making a Morrowind I’d stick with and buy supplements for would be a dynamic engine that generates factional quests that occur whether or not the player is involved. I know I’m a broken record on this point but we’ve seen good dynamic generators in flight sims and we see believable factional behavior and tactical decisionmaking in strategy games - the next step is bringing that into a roleplaying game.

The point of roleplaying, for a roleplayer, is making a character with a past and designing goals for that character. There has to be a reactive world around that character that will respond in ways that reinforce the chosen role. In a static game, like Morrowind, no matter how many seeming choices you have very little seems to respond appropriately to who you are or what you’ve done - nor do factions or NPCs react to each other in convincing ways. A scripted story, like the all the side and main stories are in Morrowind, does not allow for the illusion of much free will after you’ve played for even a little while. You can chose branchs of paths but you can’t really strike out on your own limb.

Daggerfall wasn’t perfect but it at least had the ambition of being a truly free-form environment. If everything had worked correctly, and it didn’t, there would have been more dynamic, reactive, factions which combined with randomized quests would have allowed for some real roleplaying freedom. I don’t mean roleplaying in the sense of delivering juicy monologues to your CRT but, rather, not feeling compelled to follow particular paths in particular ways. There wasn’t a finite pool of missions set up in very linear and exclusive scripts, you didn’t feel compelled to parcel time out in order to finish one mission ladder because you didn’t wan’t to ‘spoil’ another one by just doing a few missions you’d never want to repeat.

Frankly, this desire to impose the tyranny of script over the dynamic experience of a game is one of the most wrongheaded trends in game design. The unique strength of gaming as a medium, and as entertainment, is that it allows unique situations and stories to emerge through gameplay. Don’t believe it? Read some after action reports from wargamers, breathless recountings of victories in action games, diaries from simmers, and so on. Linear storytelling is a powerful form in books, theatre and film but as good as it could be, though rarely is, in gaming it’s counterintuitive and immersion breaking when forced upon an environment that exists for a player to control.

9

I agree with everything Brian said.

Hey, didn’t we discuss all this in my “ideas for a non-linear RPG” thread on the old forums? :)

Oh well, I’m a broken record too – RPG’s with a story are good, RPG’s that have world-systems so complex and dynamic they can generate their own stories ad infinitum are better. It may be a pipe dream but I enjoy smoking it, and I look to other genres (Republic! Republic! Republic! Majesty! Majesty! Majesty!) to help point the way for RPGs.

10

It’s a great dream. I don’t see much evidence that it is within reach. So far, I’ll take the strongly scripted, story-driven RPG’s every time.

11

“To me the key for making a Morrowind I’d stick with and buy supplements for would be a dynamic engine that generates factional quests that occur whether or not the player is involved.”

Creating a dynamic scenerio in a flight sime and a good dynamic quest are not the same thing. The quest needs to have some sort of story, and some characters that are interesting behind it etc etc. That requires a human intelligence. Any computer generated quest system will be immediatly recognized as such. They are simple and IMO boring.

12

I guess it’s subjective. I generally find the stories in computer games, especially RPGs (with Torment as a notable exception) to be pretty boring. Killing redundant critters, in redundant ways, in order to unlock rather uninteresting ‘plot twists’ just doesn’t hold me. I’m in the odd position of being a roleplayer who doesn’t like CRPGs - at least as they are now. I can say I like ideas from many different CRPGs but for gameplay I prefer games with some real drama and excitement. Stories that are interesting because they can come out in many different ways.

Related to what most folks think about story is having memorable, well written, characters but I tend to get attached more to entities that display some behavior, a tested campaign veteran with a number of close calls and heroic moments in Close Combat for example, whether or not they have great lines to say. I felt more for characters in X-Com than Baldur’s Gate because the fates of the former were so much more up to chance and because the game would go on with or without any of them. That’s, to me, more dramatic than a designer telling me what’s going to happen and a story without some drama isn’t much of a story.

13

“Frankly, this desire to impose the tyranny of script over the dynamic experience of a game is one of the most wrongheaded trends in game design. The unique strength of gaming as a medium, and as entertainment, is that it allows unique situations and stories to emerge through gameplay. Don’t believe it? Read some after action reports from wargamers, breathless recountings of victories in action games, diaries from simmers, and so on. Linear storytelling is a powerful form in books, theatre and film but as good as it could be, though rarely is, in gaming it’s counterintuitive and immersion breaking when forced upon an environment that exists for a player to control.”

I agree wholeheartedly with the above Brian paragraph. My favorite games are of the openended variety… I hate all things linear and scripted (or I think there should be alternatives). I think the stealth levels in NOLF2 are a great start to something new for openendeded approach fps games (like a sneaker but more action). WBC2 leaves the battles of an RTS to non linearity wiuth developing a character being a focus. JA2 allows the player to take on Arulco in many different ways. yup. I like em that way! many more to come i hope.

etc

14

The problem with open-ended games is that the more they emulate real life, the less likely they get to a dramatic moment where there is a real payoff for the player.

If you think about other forms of narrative, the dramatic points are always arrived at in totally unlikely ways. If you plunk a player down in a world that proceeds under normal rules without scripting, there is only an infinitesimal chance that they’ll get to a real dramatic moment where they can change the fate of the world. You can still have them “win” such a game, but you will have to make the world very accessible and able to be brute-forced through–you end up with games that feel like Angband.

Scripted games get their appeal by repeatedly forcing the player into such moments–they won’t occur by chance. The best RPG’s are the ones that force you into such moments, but are non-linear enough that you don’t feel like you are being forced.

15

True, but when you do see the man behind the curtain it can take some of the wind out of your sails, and you realize you’re just triggering one plot event after another. Of course this to some extent is true of any game – you have to be a willing participant in the illusion. And that depends in part on the skill with which the illusion is maintained.

I agree that nonlinear gaming is at this point not sophisticated enough to arrive at moments of real drama with much success. But I still hope designers try to break new ground in that direction, as the old style of story-based RPG (linear mainquest plus a bag of nonlinear side quests) hasn’t changed much in the past decade or so. I’d be willing to shell out cash for a few false starts, just to see some new things attempted.

edited to add: As for “changing the fate of the world,” well, if you became powerful enough you could do that, scripted or no. And the world would react to what you’ve done. There wouldn’t be a specific “foozle battle” that you were being geared toward, and NPC’s wouldn’t all be saying “hail to you Neverarirverine,” but you might be able to see your actions impact a dynamic world. That to me would be very interesting. For instance if you work as a pirate and raid all shipments of food coming into an isolated island town – which leads the town to suffer starvation, which leads all the NPC inhabitants to become restless and overthrow their local Baron, etc. Yes, this all would require a world-engine of far greater sophistication than anything we’ve seen yet, but it would be pretty interesting.

16

Personally, MW is one of the best RPGs I have ever played. I have logged more hours into it than possibly any other game, except perhaps Master of Magic. Morrowind sucked me into what I found to be a lovingly crafted world, rather than an exercise in logic. Actually, I thought DF was more like a logic game, since the “randomness” meant that the machine decided everything in rather unrealistic ways. Morrowind had more warmth as far as details and crafting go. I do think it could have used A LOT more color. The incessant grays and browns get old quick. But I really did feel that each town was different and each area of the world new in its own way. Of course the dungeons were tedious because many looked the same (with a few variations of type, but not anything more).

I can certainly see why someone would think it is a flawed game. At first, I did too, but as I played it more, it just really sucked me in and I have never felt so much a part of my character as I did in that game. I felt like I had total control over my destiny and I grew with the character. It was a brilliant experience that I won’t soon forget. I’m not sure I will ever play it again, though I may with a different character type and lots of add-ons. However, I don’t replay games very often anyway, especially RPGs. I would LOVE to see a sequel to Morrowind, with the same attention to detail, but with the additions many people are mentioning above. The world needs to be a lot less static, but without losing the charm that some degree of permanence gives the game.

17

I’m not sure how I would place it. Certainly it has the greatest gameworld of any RPG ever. The sheer number of quests is mind-boggling. I’d love for these sorts of worlds to be able to continue, but you can’t repeat that kind of level of man-hours (such as placing all the bowls), thus that has to be turned over to coding.

And then once you have such a world, other issues arise. Such as others here have spoken, I very much like the idea of having a living world, where you are NOT the center of attention and in any case are not the only thing with an agenda. I honestly belive the “Save the world” mentality has to be destroyed among game developers in order to bring about a more honest world with more realistic and fully fleshed out characters.

Everything EXCEPT your own character’s actions are scripted. How about have the Thieves Guild REALLY attack the Camonna Tong?.. not scripted but within the game engine? Perhaps if you were wise enough you would have uncovered news of the event and could join in, otherwise you get a report on it later. More of the game world being autonomous from the character is key to world dynamism.

The player is NOT the center of the world. Every human has their own motivations and agendas.

How long will it take the industry to produce a game in which both of those things are true?

And of course I do think Republic is very much a step in the right direction. Republic is my kind of game.

18

Republic may be your kind of game, if those young upstarts can pull it off. Let’s hope they peeled away from Molyneux reactively, as a form of rebellion, and not as games design disciples. I love the idea of Republic, but it could very easily be a huge drag. Fingers crossed.

Ever since my extended fascination with MoM and its world generator, I’ve been fixated on a similar idea to the ones you guys are talking about. And given what has been accomplished in 4x and trading games over the years, I really don’t think the dream of a dynamic RPG world is so far out of reach.

The basic idea would be as follows:

  1. World is generated at a coarse level, as in MoM or Civ III, and seeded with various cultures (historical, classic fantasy, or custom user-made, a la Space Empires IV).

  2. Player decides at what point in history he wants to start his character, and the program plays out the growth, development, and conflict of the AI cultures against one another up until the point in history the player has selected.

  3. PC begins in village, town, or city according to selected race/culture.

  4. As the game is played, the cultures continue to grow and evolve in the “background” – the program is basically playing out a game of MoM with all AI players – leading to things like wars, trading relationships, and other events that trickle down to the player level. Everything from effects of supply and demand, religious needs and development, and the interactions of flora and fauna would be modeled and tracked at a very coarse level, then in finer detail in the locale of the PC. Actual locations would be generated as the PC enters them, based on the current state of the world’s variables.

  5. The PC can lead the life of a classic rpg adventurer, recruiting NPC chracters to join his party, but with effort could also attain higher levels of leadership, from mercenary army captain to feudal lord to emperor. The game would have three levels of interface to handle each of tactical (RPG level), strategic (Fantasy General level), and operational (MoM level) management.

Of course, an enormous amount of time and effort would have to be devoted to the various facets of such an engine, but certainly no more than has been devoted to all the bowls and books (my God, the books!!!) in Morrowind.

And I don’t think it would work in full 3D without feeling “empty,” like Daggerfall did, which is a hurdle from a marketing standpoint. It would need to employ a more old-school, less finely-detailed graphic approach, which IMO is more catalytic to the player’s imagination than full 3D.

19

The PC can lead the life of a classic rpg adventurer, recruiting NPC chracters to join his party, but with effort could also attain higher levels of leadership, from mercenary army captain to feudal lord to emperor.

Exactly. And the more ladders there are to climb – the more goals to attain, the more possible ranks to reach, the longer the game will be playable. That is, as long as each role incorporates intriguing gameplay possibilities.

I fear such a game would be an absolute bear to design, even if it is technologically feasible. But I’d like to see devs start small – maybe just model a single town with 50 NPCs, for instance – and try to go further in this dynamic-world style of design.

20

>but certainly no more than has been devoted to all the bowls and books (my God, the books!!!) in Morrowind.

I loved the books, and insanely wrote mini-synopses on them. I was disappointed that there weren’t any new ones in Tribunal.

> fear such a game would be an absolute bear to design, even if it is technologically feasible. But I’d like to see devs start small – maybe just model a single town with 50 NPCs, for instance – and try to go further in this dynamic-world style of design.

I’m definitely with you guys on this point. The only RPG developers who seem to have any interest in moving along these lines are P. Bytes, who did the Gothic games. Speaking of which – hey, Nahr, what’s the reaction in Germany to Gothic 2?