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< Game reviews ~ Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III) |
| dan |
 Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 3:30 pm |
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Joined: 28 Jun 2002
Posts: 8
Location: Sheffield & London, UK
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I rarely play games nowadays... I used to devote my life to them, but have found it increasingly hard to reconcile gaming with any sort of external life (particularly the type of games I like to play... which take a looong time), so after a very long love affair with Doom I gave up games about 9 years ago.
But... from time to time the urge resurfaces. Roughly once a year, for a period of 3 or 4 weeks, something sparks my interest and I go game crazy. Usually it's first-person shoot-em-ups (Doom II, Quake, Quake II, Unreal Tournament), but occasionally I am foolish enough to get drawn into some kind of role-playing or strategy game.
The latest one was Morrowind. In many ways it's the usual D&D-style fantasy schlock, but by far the most fully-featured and freeform example of the genre that I've seen (OK, so the last of this genre that I really played was Ultima Underworld II, but I keen an eye out... and reviews of Morrowind that I've seen seem to rate it).
Like most such games, you start by creating a character - there are various ways of doing this, from leaving it to chance to specifying every aspect. There are about eight races to choose from, none of the usual dwarf/elf etc. although some of the races are quite clearly variations on these themes (oh, and there is an Orc race), and a number of career/skill types and guiding stars. At first I felt like I was sorely lacking in lots of information that must have been there in the previous two Elder Scrolls games, although as I got into the game I felt this less and less.
The best part of the game is its free-form nature, although there is a main thread or story that, ideally, you'll follow at some point, there are a million-and-one other things you can go off and do meantime. The game is played on a large island (with other little islands around it, which you can travel to by boat, teleport, "stilt strider" or even, if you've got a lot of patience, swimming) with cities dotted about it. You can wander from city to city (again various means of travel - walking is the slowest, but always throws up interesting things on the way), into and out of building, and talk to people on the way. At first people will only have one or two topics of conversation, but as you come to know more about the world then the list of things to talk about grows and grows (this is both good and bad - often people repeat the same things when asked about a topic, and it gets quite tiresome clicking through a list of 100 possible conversations looking for the gem that you haven't heard before and that opens up a new world).
In terms of "things to do"... as I mentioned, you get pointed along the lines of a main quest, but you can also join a guild (fighters, magicians, thieves, assassins, ...) who will give you tasks to perform from their bases in different cities, you can wander around the wilderness looking for ancient tombs, mines, outposts or just people in need of help, you can talk to people and they may ask you to do things for them, or you can just go around killing people, stealiing stuff, building up your skills and money.
And there's the rub... like Michael's review of Neverwinter Nights, at the end of the day you're just stashing up more gold, buying nicer goodies, advancing in experience and trying to brush up on the all-important skills. I spent four weeks on and off (far too much on) doing this before getting a little tired of it. There is is a complex world with a detailed and believable historical and political background, where guilds, races, religions and factions all have different reasons for doing what they do, and I found digging deeper into this history fascinating in itself (as you go along, you build up a "journal", an absolute necessity which notes down the outcome of your conversations and separates them into a chronological list and an alphabetical encyclopedia) but at the end of the day not enough to keep me playing.
Oh yeah, it was quite fun just looking at the sky as well... the game world is split into different regions, which blend believably into one another and all have different landscape, wildlife, plantlife and weather, and watching (and listening to) this weather can be quite fun in itself, especially on a clear night when the nearer of the planet's two moons seems close enough to touch and the dust from the volcano in the centre of the island turns the sky red. Really nice little touches in the visuals and sounds which make the gameworld a pleasure to explore (that said, bear in mind that I play very little games so this could all be passé) |
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| Auriea |
| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 12:05 am |
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| dan |
| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 10:34 am |
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Joined: 28 Jun 2002
Posts: 8
Location: Sheffield & London, UK
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Epilogue:
After writing that review, I started thinking of the game again... more and more... until finally I returned to playing it. Another week or two of hopeless addiction, but now I'm within a hair's breadth of completing the main quest, and it does all hot up and become a lot more interesting from a plot point of view at this stage (turns out I'm the reincarnated form of a god. Who'd have thought it? Little old me, a god).
Also as I now have more gold than I could ever need, and pretty much enough experience, I can concentrate more on stuff like plot.
I haven't played it now for a couple of weeks, perhaps I'm reluctant to let it all end, but in the meantime Rowan's been getting quite hooked on it, she mainly just enjoys walking around the towns talking to people. |
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| Michael |
| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 12:00 pm |
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Location: Gent, Belgium
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How do you feel about becoming addicted to a game?
Personally I feel any addiction is bad, addictions to games included. I disapprove of addicting games. I realize that "addictive" is often a word that is just used by marketing people to promote a game. But I know from experience (Black& White e.g.) that games can be addictive. And I didn't like finding myself addicted. |
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| dan |
| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 12:18 pm |
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Joined: 28 Jun 2002
Posts: 8
Location: Sheffield & London, UK
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I agree, it's bad, it distracts from more important things. With me I think it's partly down to an addictive personality, although certain games do demand a lot more time from you if you want to get anywhere with them (and I just re-discovered Black & White as well... or rather, I got a pirate copy to replace the CD that my kids smashed a couple of years ago... it's also addictive). But yes, addiction is bad and that is why, as I mentioned, I largely gave up gaming about 9 years ago.
I was thinking recently about other effects that games have on peoples' "real world" lives. I know that if I play a game for a long time (maybe 8 hours without a break) then it very much affects my perception when I come away from the computer - everything appears very odd, I find myself having to re-adapt to the real world.
I was wondering whether there had been any research into this or similar phenomena related to long-term game playing. Then I read in the newspaper this week that a study has found increased visual skills among long-term games players. I'm more interested in how such people adapt/maladapt to real life though. |
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| Hoborg |
| Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 5:35 pm |
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Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 73
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Morrowind has so much potential at first.. but then you realise that everything in the game is pointless. There is no character development and no story aside from the rather short main quest, and in that case it's still linear and boring. There are hundreds of side quests, some are straightforward, some are fun, but none of them are worth doing in the context of the game. The only thing that gets you anywhere is killing people/monsters and taking their stuff. Stealing expensive things and selling them gets you enough money to increase all your stats really quickly, and then the game loses all its challenge. Finally, when you complete the main quest, there is no reason to play the game anymore. You could still do all the little side quests or the expansion main quests, but they aren't going to get your character anywhere and you're already disproportionatly powerful.
The absolutely amazing thing about this game, though, is the GIGANTIC size of the world, especially with the expansion packs. It has to be the biggest game world ever created. You could play this game for 100 hours and you probably wouldn't have time to explore HALF of the world. There was just so much pleasure in traveling the world, spending 10 minutes going from one city to another with nothing to do but look at the scenery and look out for random enemies. The size of the world and the number of cities and places to go is probably the only reason i continued to play that game beyond a few hours, and if a world that massive could be used in a game with a better concept and execution behind it... |
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| Michael |
| Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 8:06 pm |
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I often think that the world in which the game takes place, is the most important thing. I would like to see (or make) a game that only consists of a virtual world. The time saved by not having to come up with gameplay or quests, would be spent on make the world more alive and interesting. The whole experience would simply be about spending some time in a virtual world, a world where everything is nice and beautiful.
People like taking walks through nature, e.g. But nature is often disappointing. There's bugs and other people. It can be too cold or too warm. Your feet hurt after a while. Often nature itself is disappointing because there's too much human stuff in it or it's simply not pretty enough. Or it stinks. And all the animals are scared of you and run away. Or they attack you.
In my game, everything would be perfect. There would be nice forests and open spaces, little rivers and waterfalls. The weather would always be nice and even if it rains it would be pretty. Animals would come and greet you as you pass by and there would be no other people or any signs of their existence even. |
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| Hoborg |
| Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 11:42 pm |
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Joined: 05 May 2005
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I completely agree that, usually, the world of a game is its most important part. It's not so much what you're doing in this world that's important its the feeling you get as you do it. The atmosphere created by the world is a huge part of your emotional reaction to it. The Silent Hill series would be terrible if it was just shooting monsters in a generic setting.
The idea of a game that consists of only a world and nothing else is interesting. There would have to be something the user can do to interact with the world in order to keep interest with it and to feel like you are actually there. If it's just a pretty world on a screen but you can't do anything to it, you will not feel as a part of it, so it would be a lot harder to grasp any sort of emotion from it. The settings of Silent Hill games are creepy, but if there is no sense of danger that a monster might come out of nowhere at you or that you could fall into some trap, a lot of that feeling would be lost. I mean, we're not talking about Silent Hill here, but regardless of the setting, something would have to be done to make the user feel grounded in it rather than like they are just watching a screen. Some form of communication or some way of altering things in this world.
Umm.. take Animal Crossing for instance. I havent played much of it, but I know it is pretty much just a world, but you can make your place in it - a house, belongings, interacting with other animals, etc. There isn't really anything you have to DO, you still only have to exist, but there are ways to interact with the world to make it how you like. The world itself in animal crossing is a bit boring, but I'd like to see that concept applied to a more detailed and alive world. |
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| Michael |
| Posted: Fri May 06, 2005 9:05 am |
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| I often think of the things you do in a virtual world as just an excuse to make you stay there. But I agree with you that the fact that you can do something that affects the world in some way, greatly increases the immersion. I don't think, however, that the thing you do in the virtual world, needs to be a game. I can imagine all sorts of other interactions, interactions that support the fiction rather than conflicting with it as in so many games. |
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I've been planning to play Marrowind...
