morrowind

morrowind is the greatest game ever. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. alternately: via CHIM, morrowind is the only role playing game.

Outline is a grandiose term

• this should be after the hidden metaplot episode, so I can turn and look at the camera and talk about "and now I give you CHIM." also points about how the ENTIRE CHANNEL has lead up to this moment.
• console commands are CHIM
• more on CHIM, go on and on
• before talking about CHIM, lead up to it talking about the extremely DENSE theology in the game
• before that, talk about how much WORLD there is.
• when I say "lots of world", at the time, that did mean square meters. check release order for Grand Theft Auto series, mention later open-world games; GTA 3? or vice city? fallout 3, witcher 1, screed 1 and thus The Ubisoft Game was later, minecraft had to wait for borderlands which was later, etc.
• but I mean there's more world. Skyrim started gaming's obsession with viking settings. Skyrim feels like it takes place in a different country. But morrowind felt like it takes place on a different planet. So many video games in the 00's loved to say "enter a world where..." - morrowing lets you enter a world. other games let you kind of tour one. Fortnite isn't one. Mortal Kombat was one, but NRS is hellbent on burning whatever good will they may have left.
• compare to red dead redemption 2. RDR is so highly extremely detailed that they had to grind their developers into dust. But it's... the american frontier. It has polish that no other game before it could have hoped to dream for. and given the crunch it took, no other game after it should hope for again. But polish isn't depth - in red dead redemption, the horse's testicles shrivel when you gallop over snow. but WHYYY, who gives a shiiiit? In morrowind, [explain the lore of how a silt strider works].
• also on RDR2 - rdr2 didn't have to be open world. Assassin's creed sort of did. morrowind had to be.
• i have to find that video of the guy saying "persona is great because it forces you to pay for travel". I think it's in my notes.
• you can make your own story. Like actually though. As long as you free yourself from the need to see credits roll. talk about that - XCOM will roll credits when you die, and we're happy to not count that. Nier Automata has lots of endings, but we add our own assertions about which are more "real" than others.
• here's my "primary", here after the end of all things: z'app. He'll do the main quest.
• here's my murderhobo: Not Important. Goal: murder every NPC. or at least, every NPC in a cell that has a square.
• with murderhobo, bring up "Persist in the doomed world you've created"
• here's my coveter. (tbd). Goal: 1 million gold. also, fuck it, i have 2 dudes so this one's a girl. (note to self, as far as names: roman girls just take the family names and feminize it. e.g. vicky would just be "daughter of Grey". so sisters all shared a name. (according to reddit). so, not useful. Morrowind imperial females just kinda sound latin-y. so... Avaricia? bruh stop overthinking it, look at your other chars' names)
• compare to skyrim. Listen. Skyrim does have better combat. Morrowind has more interesting shit going on because you need something to think about while you JUST TRY TO FUCKING LAND A HIT ON THIS FUCKING MUDCRAB FUCKING FUCK. ok. Morrowind isn't a perfect game, it has a typo that has been HAUTNING MY DREAMS FOR 20 YEARS: "your have trapped a soul". Skyrim is much more cinematic, I'll give it that. and skyrim's dark brotherhood quest is much better. ...i should flesh this out.
• lost art of moddability
• tarhiel. (mage with scrolls of icarian flight)
• let's read a magic scroll. (first talk about "oh, you can" then talk about daedric font, then talk about the translation - iirc it's "to the aether! and back")
• abelle chriditte gave me the "aaahhhh it's a celebrity" moment
• herbalism. there's 4 kinds of mushrooms, all alien. and it makes sense where they grow!
• BOOKS. how much written text is there in baldur's gate? or the witcher? what other game lets you boot up and read a book? arguably Disco Elysium, with the world's greatest voice narrating.
• factions: how many factions are there in your favorite game? how many have overlap? and what kind of overlap? how different are they? and let me take this time to talk about how much i FUCKING HATE the thieves guild quest line in skyrim.
• dialog: admittedly, it's sort of a pain that you have to read this entire game. But, that does enable the writers to give each character a voice - notice Divayth Fir going "heh." in his old age. Notice Crassius Curio oozing slime. Notice general darius being a WW2 movie commander. Even though the Imperial Male va has a sort of british voice. Notice the scared pilgrim in the 3rd imperial legion quest having the voice of a scared captive, as opposed to the 1st quest we meet Widow Vabdas, who has the justifiable rage of a fresh widow... even though all dunmer women have Old Lady Voice. I picture Yagrum Bagarn has my voice. You know, voice in text - if you're dumb enough to think AI has obsoleted writers, you can't detect the AI's text "voice". maximally irritating, like the stupidest person you know is striving to meet a word count. question: if you only read closed captioning and muted any other game, what noticeable voices would you hear? Going back to RDR2, dutch would definitely be noticeable. "just one more heist! guatemala!" But if you look at the borderlands movie, and really, most action movies hollywood has been making lately... the characters are generally always "guardians of the galaxy but we don't feel like they're warming up to each other" also sul-matuul (ashkan of the urshilaku) has a distinct voice, hard to describe
• water walking, water breathing. in what other game would that matter?
• mid-step oblivion to skyrim: removal of spellcrafting. todd howard: "spellcrafting makes magic feel spreadsheety". fair, but did skyrim deliver on non-spreadsheety magic?
• having to navigate using your FUCKING BRAIN is a good thing. show Bacola Closcious giving directions "go out the front door - not the upper door to the terrace". show that 3rd imperial legion quest where they point you to the ashlander camp.
• at the point of reading books, talk about history. here's what happened in the past. (wait, was cyrodiil a jungle or what?)
• vivec's city. Man, what is it about megalomaniacs and creating real estate in the ocean? I think there's a book that talks about how ebonheart is because vivec (the guy) looked at a goddamn fortress and said "i want one :)" and what, are you going to look god in the eyes and say "what? no, are you dumb?"
• you can unlock the door to vivec, if you want. meanwhile in certain skyrims, they love their "this lock cannot be picked" doors, which is repulsive, but even worse they have some shitter in that shitty thieves guild quest going "they're easy once you get the hang of it ;) ;)" YOU FUCKER I WILL PULL OUT CONSOLE AND SET YOUR SCALE TO 0.95
• old script has my first morag tong hit. glathiel: hey handsom :). me: guys I am In! assassinates target so glathiel, how you d- glathiel: "aargh!" me: update, i am not in. also the bit with an ordinator running up afterward: "hey that ordinator wants to chat. you know how it's a popular trope in media to have a fraternity of assassins working just under the surface, [MEME: wanted] impossibly skilled, usually with stuff that's magic in all but name [wanted meme: "bend the bullet"], and impossibly well funded [anything from John Wick]? The Morag Tong is an ancient and proud dunmer tradition. it's allowed by law, normalized by society, even corrupted by politics. for gods sake, the grandmaster is Eno Hlaalu! none of this "a man has no name" vague mystical bullshit. a man has a name, but more importantly, an 800 credit rating, and a trust fund! so anyway, [MEME: meet the engineer video, but not audio] how do we stop this big mean motherhubber from tearing us a structurally superfluous new behind? [MEME: ron swanson's permit] Not to worry: I have a permit.
• should talk about corprus 19
• divayth fyr "made 'em myself, from my own flesh." so he cross-sex cloned himself? does that make it incest or masturbation? well, anyway, cure please.
• yagrum bagarn: grotesque, hangs out in a dimly lit basement, talks mad shit about inferior workmanship. Ah, I know a fellow engineer when I see one.
• yagram bagarn describes himself as the last living dwarf. he was once a Master Crafter in service of Lord Kagrenac. he doesn't know what happened to the other dwarves, he was in an Outer Realm at the time. Yagrum thinks that Kagrenac either succeeded in giving the dwarves eternal life but accidentally teleported them all to an Outer Realm, or that kagrenac accidentally wiped out the dwarves. Morrowind never explicitly answers what exactly happened to the dwarves - Yagrum's theories are as good as you're ever going to get. He is confirming for us that the disappearance happened at the pivotal moment of Kagrenac's work. And we do know that the Chimer were changed into the Dunmer, aedra punishing them for Veloth's actions. so I guess we ought to think it's less likely that Nerevar exterminated them all, and more likely that Kagrenac angered the gods. But who knows. You'd have to play the MMO to find out, and I have no intention of that shit. apparently the MMO devs copy-pasted some books in because they forgot the game took place in the past.
• when you talk about dense theology, talk about 36 lessons of vivec sermon 33, where he sets up the moon as a threat for everyone to love him, and also takes the time to make sodomy illegal.
• i kinda like the old script's bit about the break-out. "who locks a door on a floating moon?!" "oh good, maybe this ordinator's corpse will have a k- ooo she's friendly." "hwat do you want of me, outlander." bitch wtf do you think, this is a rescue! "excellent "fishing". my friend ;), mehra ;) milo ;) says it's her favorite "fishing" spot". "mm yes, let us depart for a standard fish-gathering outing, nothing abnormal" "GOOD I CAN TAKE YOU TO HOLOMAYAN AT ANY TIME". gilvas: "how can I help you?" uh... i've never encountered a quest-vital NPC who jsut goes "sup?"
• more on Navigating with your Brain: finding the cup in kogoruhn. [1:15:34] deep breath cup: check. back to my Treasured Pile Of Crap, and we're recalling home. You may hear that i'm a bit exhausted from backtracking every step of this place since I happened to miss it the first time I was in here. And maybe that makes you think this is bad game design, that it should have been utterly unmissable, like with a quest marker. I disagree. This is exactly the ashkahn's test. He wanted me to comb over this dungeon, and pay attention. I did it wrong, and having to search the entire stronghold is the consequence that teaches me to keep my eyes open. There's a sort of mood out there that video games must give you nothing but happy good feelings at every moment. That's the design philosophy of someone who doesn't really like to play video games. I think it's more clear if we focus on PVP. I'm not great at mortal kombat. But I have some skill. If I play with people who are vastly better than me, It's not fun - I can't do anything, I'm just waiting until the game is over. But imagine approaching it from the other side - imagine setting up a console in an elementary school, and racking up double-flawlesses on children for hours and hours and hours. Wouldn't that also be boring?
• azura wants us to cast out the false gods. But she's just as shit as the tribunal; we destroy the heart of lorkhan, vivec's godhood fades, and baar du crashes into the city.
• while we're in the cavern of the incarnate, we get to meet the failed incarnates. Peakstar gives us pants with levitate 10 for 30. fan fucking tastic! we get into peakstar's pants and we're walking on sunshine! Ane gives us 36 lessons of vivec, sermon 12: imagine the holy bible was almost entirely impenetrable gibberish, but there was one sex scene that was crucial to the plot.
• ESO is non-canon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rDTiQsscA seyda need doesn't exist at that time. there's books that don't exist yet. and don't you fucking say "dragon break" to me or i'll break your face with a dragon.
• i am still discovering new shit. I only noticed whatzisname with the Golden Armor this run. Or that the imperial legion is hanging out in a tradehouse in gnisis, and I only just now went below the bar to see they have a slave in the kitchen.
• more on "stuff to think about while trying to land a hit on a mudcrab" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwMvjwZ2ic at 13:05, musing about the shadowwweave ring
• https://youtu.be/mY_dL70Z0xY?t=2133 tel vos' architecture shows master aryon believes in the value of collaboration
• my hypothetical "quest to 1m gold" file is more or less "solved" - ra'virr restocks his fiend/devil weaponry, sell to creeper for a profit. and JustBackgroundNoise taught us that you can command/frenzy the caldera guild guide to move the mudcrab. or creeper. Or the heart of lorkhan. Is this "cheesing" the game? no, it's chim!
• possible thesis: you could never remake morrowind because the jank is canonical. Oblivion's engine couldn't handle levitation, and merged blunt and axe weapons. Skyrim got rid of spellcrafting. Morrowind's scrolls of icarian flight are a great moment.
• on "all you want is full scale" - the most fun fights are when you and your opponent have high speed (vivec, calvario). see also unreal's Skaarj and Dusk's fight against Jakob
• chim starts when you want to avoid "cheese" - exploiting the jank. Now you're roleplaying.
• there's a lot of ways to make the game easy. All of that comes from knowing the game. People like JustBackgroundNoise, and even me, know the game to well. we are too high level, so our characters rapidly level up.