5.4 KiB
morrowind
Morrowind is the greatest game ever. The. Singular. Greatest game ever. Full stop.
Alright I do have to admit some subjectivity - I need stuff to think about. I can't turn my brain off. That's why I'm addicted to a constant stream of content. And I fixate, afflicting me with a tolerance for a... slow burn. That's why I think assassin's creed took the wrong direction between number 1 and 2. Alright, disclaimers done, on with it.
shallow description - it's possible to roleplay
Morrowind is a roleplaying game. these days, "roleplaying game" just means you have a storyline and you gain XP. In morrowind's day, it meant that the way you played the game was to run the program and immerse yourself in a role in the game world. Soulless business husks have co-opted the concepts of "telling your own story" and "immersion" - but the reason they do is that they want you to believe you can achieve those great concepts by purchasing whatever crap they're hawking in the moment.
In morrowind it's actually possible to immerse yourself in your own story.
Let's contrast with Dishonored. You cannot tell your own story within dishonored. You can choose between a binary moral choice system - here called "high chaos" and "low chaos". But nevertheless you will stand there in silence while the empress gets stabbed, you will be marked by the outsider, you will be broken out of prison by the resistance for the old monarchal lineage, you will sleep there between missions to put Emily on the throne, you will get betrayed by them, and you will put emily on the throne. None of that is condemnation. Dishonored is quite good. It's a fun game that tells you an interesting story.
Consider XCOM. If you fail to fight off the invasion, rather than a game over screen, the credits roll. It's effectively the same, theoretically you still want to load a save and try again. but canonically, that's how that story ended. And the only difference is that they rolled the credits.
Consider Nier: Automata. It famously has lots of endings. Most would consider ending T to be less "real" than the others, though. [show: getting ending T]
Now let's consider morrowind. [Footage of samael] Here's my primary file, Samael. His goal is to seek new experiences. he did the main quest. [//TODO: double check] In morrowind, the way to get the credits to roll is to select them in the menu. The game doesn't privilege the main quest as more real than any other quest line. Or whatever else you do. the game says "you're on your own now, good luck", and it means it. [Footage of cementha] Let's look at another file. I forget why I named her Cementha. Her goal is to make 1 million gold. she came out of the census and excise office, dropped her "orders" on the ground, and started making money moves. Turns out, ra'virr restocks his fiend/devil weaponry, so you buy what he has, get sent to caldera, do a quick creeper shuffle, back to balmora to do it all again. So that file is basically solved, and I'm bored with it. Guess she didn't achieve CHIM. (we'll come back to CHIM later.)
Let me harp on assassin's creed again: number 2 was almost comically generous with the money it gave you. Altair, as a murder-monk, did not take part in economy in any way. Ezio swam across Italy on a wave of gold. Screed 2 did not balance its economy such that money mattered. Morrowind does. Money makes the world go 'round. So building up a lot of it does actually matter. Unfortunately I know too much, maybe I should restart that file with a clause that I can't use creeper. or the mudcrab. (I think I remember a 3rd creature merchant somewhere?)
[character creation in mw] How about another quest. Check out this orc. [Jiub] now, what's your name? [from the opening cinematic of Hatred] My name is not important. [show Not Important's character sheet for a beat] His goal is to kill every NPC in the game. But we'll let him train, and build up some money first - so he starts in the imperial legion. Otherwise, the first town guard will just one-shot you, game over. [show exactly that]
morrowind will let you be bad at it
for a while there was a trend of "i want to play a game like dark souls, but...". as well as "the dark souls of video games". Other than soulslikes, the only games that will let you be bad at them are "retro". 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. the way to be bad about morrowind is to refuse to engage with it, to not listen, to shut off your brain. For someone who approaches video games that way, perhaps they'd prefer heroin. [note] disclaimer: this is a joke
[on screen note, show up starting at "it's not", until end of sentence]
If you're a certified, card-carrying morroboomer, you've heard people's number one complaint about morrowind: "navigation is hard". It's not. Those people are stupid.
[note] it's fine; they can't hear me, we're minutes in,
and I've used a few 4-syllable words.
Let's look at an example quest: kogoruhn. The Ashkahn wants us to prove our worth by clearing kogoruhn out.
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.