There's no genre like the open world for inducing choice paralysis, so it's fitting that I've been agonising over how to begin this irregular article series on open world games for months. I have a lot of material, oodles of interviews with developers of all shapes and sizes - big shops like Remedy and CD Projekt, smaller studios like Ace Team and Awaceb, all holding forth on such topics as whether Elden Ring or Zelda did bandit camps better, and how you make a forest feel endless. There is so much you could talk about, so many trails heading off in all directions, but perhaps it's best to begin with the more personal and superficial question that inspired this investigation: how did the open world game get so boring?
]]>20 years after leaving Elder Scrolls, Starfield, and Fallout 76 makers Bethesda Game Studios, veteran writer and quest designer Douglas Goodall has returned to classic RPG Morrowind with an expansive new quest mod.
]]>With the Fallout live-action show now out and honestly far better than I was expecting, are Bethesda also brewing an adaptation of their other big RPG series, The Elder Scrolls? Not at present, according to Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard, and he says he'd "probably say no" if approached. Mind you, that was the stance he had until Fallout finally fell into place.
]]>The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be a mixture of new ideas and RPG systems that go all the way back to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, according to Bethesda's former design director Bruce Nesmith, who was lead designer on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and senior designer on Starfield. In particular, Nesmith reckons it will "absolutely" continue with Skyrim's approach to levelling and progression, whereby you improved skills by performing the associated actions. He also thinks the game will "probably" retain elements of the magic system he designed for Skyrim, which broke away from Oblivion and Morrowind in being simpler to understand and more immediately powerful, at the price of flexibility and inventiveness.
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>According to leaked documents, Microsoft are/were remastering Oblivion and Fallout 3. This is boring. The past decade of innumerable remasters has been boring enough, but remastering these two games is particularly boring. When even bother when all Bethesda have made since Oblivion is Oblivion remakes with added spacesuits or yelling? Boring. But while I think the torrent of remasters is a miserable sign of big publishers just giving up, if they're going to do it anyway: why not Morrowind?
]]>You may have noticed a mounting squabble between Starfield fans and detractors concerning the game's planetary maps, triggered by some leaks or fake leaks over the past week. Said skirmish has now escalated to "-gate" status, with "Tilegate" doing the rounds on forums and even creeping into search results, presumably much to the alarm of innocent, unaligned ceramics company Tilegate Trading Llc in Florida. The nub of the dispute seems to be thus: some people claim the procedurally generated tiles that comprise many Starfield environments actually glue together into complete globes, so that you can see and walk from one to the other and, indeed, all around the equator, while others claim they're discrete maps with invisible walls, similar to those of the astonishing "dreamable" space sim Noctis.
Who knows, we might have an under-embargo Starfield review in the works that will lay matters to rest. In the short term, the uncertainty about whether Starfield's planets are actually planets puts me in mind of comparable celestial angst in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games, where planets are more properly described as planes of existence, conjured by immortal beings, which sort of orbit the mortal world of Tamriel. I've been revisiting how Bethesda's mainstay fantasy games thought about outer space in the run-up to Starfield, and while I'm intrigued by the new game's portrayals of celestial mechanics (latest discovery: the Starfield starmap represents stellar and planetary gravity as dimples on a kind of galactic tarpaulin, as in old Stephen Hawking documentaries), I'll be very surprised if it offers anything quite as wonderfully bizarre.
]]>We've been writing about Skywind for nine years. The ambitious modding project aims to import the entirety of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim engine. To celebrate the 21st anniversary of Morrowind, the Skywind team have released a 21 minute video of a single quest in Skywind.
]]>February might be the shortest month, but this year it’s jam-packed with free games for anyone with an Amazon Prime membership. There’s nine games up for keepsies over the course of the month, with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition standing out at the front of the pack from February 2nd. Members will also get to claim the bathhouse management game Onsen Master, futuristic 3D runner Aerial_Knight's Never Yield, and chibi god-brawler Divine Knockout in the first half of the month.
]]>More than 20 years after The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind arrived on PC, one mod has finally given us the option to ignore all the questing and just enjoy capturing the game’s fantastical scenery on canvas. With the Joy Of Painting mod, you can set up your field easel anywhere in Morrowind, daub some brush strokes on a canvas, and even flog the painting to earn a bit of cash.
]]>Back in the day, I could get lost in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for days, when I could get it to stop crashing anyway. There’s loads more Morrowind in 2022 than I could’ve imagined as a teenager though, as the Tamriel Rebuilt mod project has been working for decades to add other areas of the Elder Scrolls’ provincial mainland into the game. Their latest release, 22.11, landed this week, adding a huge one-two punch of expansions. You can see some of one of those, Dominions Of Dust, in the trailer below.
]]>In this job, I expend a lot of effort and care on details no one notices. While this is arguably a poor use of my time, I enjoy the process—and technically it is productive. But perhaps you, reader dear, might enjoy hearing about these small things, or at least find them interesting/weird. So let's talk about the work which went into producing one (1) screenshot and 43 seconds of video for last week's post about the Morrowind modder who added the family cat because their kids were afraid of mudcrabs.
]]>As a dedicated reader of readme files, I am delighted to learn of a Morrowind modder who added the family cat to comfort their children, who were afraid of mudcrabs. Stripes the cat arrives in Bethesda's fantasy RPG as a fierce protector to help fight those horrible creatures, and assure everyone that everything is okay. What a lovely little tale, and a lovely little cat. I downloaded the mod and took Stripes along on my own adventure, have a look.
]]>For a while last year, I started following a long modding guide to update The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to a more modern standard. Then I lost my place and gave up. I’m not joking. The thing is huge, and I forgot what I was doing. That’s why I wear my Skywind badge with pride. The dedicated modders working to bring TES III over to the Skyrim engine are still beavering away at it, and have released an update on their progress. Spoilers: you still can’t play it.
]]>Crikey, it's been a hot minute since we last heard anything about Skywind, hasn't it? Nevertheless, the colossal task of bringing all of Morrowind into Skyrim is still well underway, with the modders behind the project releasing our first look at the ambitious mod in over a year, by way of a spruced-up return to The Battle at Nchurdamz. Hope your arachnophobia doesn't extend to mechanical spiders, readers.
]]>Continuing to impress with a commitment to fanciness and authenticity in remaking The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as a Skyrim mod, a new Skywind trailer has drafted an actual Skyrim voice actor to natter while we see how it's shaping up. Spears are in, levitation is go, and oh god go away cliff racers. Azura there is played by Lani Minella, whose voice spilled forth from the digifaces of Skyrim characters including The Night Mother and several Dunmer folks. Fancy! Authentic! The devs also send word that they're now making it for the fancier Skyrim Special Edition, so it won't hit ye olde originale Skryime.
]]>The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind might have come out 17 years ago, but it is still lauded as one of PC gaming’s greats. Set on the island of Vvardenfell, players were able to create their own character and could choose whether to take on the mantle of the Nerevarine, saving the island from deadly blight storms and false gods. Or just spend hours exploring the world and visiting the numerous factions, guilds, houses, towns and clans, talking to the hundreds of NPCs going about their daily lives, waiting for you to help them with their troubles.
These NPCs are remembered fondly even today, but I feel that some of them were just not done justice in the original game. Here, then, is a list of nine characters from Morrowind (and its two expansions) that deserve their own spin-off games.
]]>Find the story so far here.
I've been in Vvardenfell for so long now, traipsing across its eerie volcanic plains, over its majestic fungal plateaus and through its singular bone cities.
A dream life, really, but the senses can only experience so much wonder before wonder becomes ordinary.
]]>Morrowind, the third and greatest instalment in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, has been back in the news this week. It was briefly free to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series, and then made a brief return to Steam's top sellers, thanks to discounts and coverage. Which is lovely: it shows its age in many, many painful ways, but its imagination, ambition and wonderfully weird visual design to this day makes Oblivion and Skyrim seem so terribly ordinary.
Gun it up today, for the very first time, and you'll think me completely mad to say that, however. It's basically a world of fog and people who look like they were whittled from fallen branches. But, thanks to 17 years of mods, it now only takes a couple of installations and a tiny amount of work to make it stunning in the ways that most count. If you're about to play, quickly do these things first.
]]>To celebrate a quarter-century of Elves, Daedra and cat-people with bafflingly complex lore, Bethesda are giving away The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind today (March 25th) only, so snap it up quickly here. You'll need a Bethesda.net account and their launcher to grab the game, too. A bit of a hassle, but you're getting a sprawling adventure through a deeply alien corner of Tamriel, filled with giant insects, inscrutable demigods and enough Cliff Racers to drive any adventurer to distraction. If you've never played what many consider the best Elder Scrolls game, now's the time.
]]>"2002's Morrowind is the best Elder Scrolls!" or so the popular refrain goes. Popular if you're as old as I am, at least. I agree, obviously I agree.
But I'm also wrong.
]]>Skywind - a grand mod project to rebuild Morrowind using Skyrim's slightly more contemporary tech - may be shooting for the moon, but those stars feel almost within reach thanks to its latest trailer, released yesterday. Taking us on an ominously (and professionally) narrated tour of House Dagoth's volcano-side properties, it's a testament to what a small team can achieve with the right tools, enough time and a lot of dedication. Check out the video below, and its official TES Renewal Project page here.
]]>A new video of Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind, a wildly ambitious upcoming mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, gives a look at its version of lands from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. This isn't one of those mods remaking Morrowind, mind. The wider Beyond Skyrim project wants to revisit lands from older Elder Scrolls games, exploring how they've changed in the hundreds of years since through new stories which are contemporaneous with the events of Skyrim. How is Morrowind looking after all these years? Not that great, what with the devastating volcanic activity and all. Observe:
]]>Multiplayer has arrived in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind thanks to a project based on the fan-made replacement engine OpenMW [official site]. Earlier versions of the TES3MP side-project previously only supported PvP, as NPCs wouldn't synchronise between players, but now you and your pals can roam the land, messing with NPCs and questing and murdering and whatever else you might fancy. This is a huge step. TES3MP also supports scripting so people can fiddle with the game and even make custom modes; one alpha tester already made a Battle Royale mode.
]]>I will admit to a certain wateriness in my eyes when I heard the music. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was and is, I believe, almost more a state of mind than it is a roleplaying game. A strange and desolate place, built upon a foundation of distrust, it is almost aggressively lonely. As an RPG, the precursor to Oblivion and Skyrim is all over the shop, but that never mattered because it was a place to disappear into. The mist, the mushrooms, the menace. The music. Elder Scrolls games since have been playgrounds first and Other Places second, and I don’t know how they can go back now.
Going back is exactly the plan. Morrowind is a standalone expansion-cum-relaunch of The Elder Scrolls Online [official site] (ESO), Bethesda’s massively multiplayer spin-off of the series that gave us Skyrim. It's due for release this June and I've taken a look.
]]>Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of one of the greatest roleplaying games ever made. Set in a world so vast that you could combine almost every open world game released since and cram them all into one of its regions, and allowing the freedom to buy real estate within that world, it remains one of the grandest games of its type.
It is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall [official site] and I have loved it for two decades.
]]>I used to like total conversions not only for those few which were released, but for watching the development process in action. Untextured weapon models get a bad rap, but I like watching a plan come together or even partially together.
Skywind, then. It's an attempt to re-build Morrowind within Skyrim's engine, with re-build environments, textures, models and more. The latest update video shows just how far the project has come, while aiming to recruit more members to help finish it.
]]>The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was released in 2002, but it's on the verge of experiencing new life through multiple revival projects. One of those is OpenMW, which aims to port the game to a new open source engine optimised for modern computers, with robust editing tools, and as of the first early test shown in a video below, multiplayer.
]]>There are thousands and thousands and thousands and oh God help thousands of games discounted in the current Steam Winter sale. Honestly, it's ridiculous. Where do you start? Where do you end? How many will you ever really play? How many do you have to buy in order to discover the secret Half-Life 3 release date? Well, we can't help with the more existential aspects of that, but if you're entirely stuck on what to get, what we can do is tell you which single game each member of the RPS staff would pick from the vast and endless digital discount shelves.
These, as far as we're concerned, are the games you must must must pick up in the sale if you don't have 'em already.
]]>The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind [official site] was released in 2002. It's testament to how highly regarded the now 13-year-old game is that folks are still determined to keep it alive. OpenMW is one such effort: an open source "engine re-implementation" of Morrowind. It's still some ways from being finished, but the released build has just received an extensive update.
]]>Bethesda have a press conference planned for this year's E3 - their first ever - which means it's likely they've got more to talk about than merely some new DLC for The Evil Within or a new trailer for Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. What will it be: Fallout 4? Elder Scrolls 6? Wet 2? I hope it's Wet 2.
And not solely because I don't want all the hard work of the Skywind mod team to go to waste. Come see their latest trailer, which shows some of the most recent modelling and environment work that's happened in their efforts to port Morrowind to the same engine as Skyrim.
]]>Ah, Morrowind's Sheogorad region, famed for its mushroom trees, its frigid waters, its, uh, rocks of Dela'thur and the brutish, erm, winds of Velopis. And elves. I bet it's got elves in.
Look, so, Morrowind is one of those games I never really played. RPGs are my blind spot, especially anything pre-2005, so my posting this has nothing to do with residual affection for Bethesda's weirdest world. Instead, it's because a remake of it might prompt me to go back to it, and because whenever I post a video of Morrowind-in-the-Skyrim-engine mod Skywind, you all make such lovely cooing noises about the old game. So watch, coo, and stoke the fires of my, er, uh... Karapór?
]]>When I last wrote about Skywind, it was to cover the game's 'Slough' trailer, which showed Morrowind's Bitter Coast brought to life within the Skyrim engine. In the comments, what followed was an interesting conversation about the etymological root of the word "Slough", and its geographical uses in the UK and in America.
Anyway, the latest Skywind trailer shows off the West Gash region.
]]>Skywind's latest trailer is titled 'Slough', but it does not, as every British reader just hoped, mark the inclusion of Berkshire's much maligned city in the game. Instead it's the first look at the remake of Morrowind's Bitter Coast inside the Skyrim engine, and it's as pretty as every other chunk we've seen of the ambitious mod project so far.
]]>BUT NOT SOON ENOUGH, etc. Skywind, the total rebuild of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in Skyrim's engine, continues to play sweet melodies on my heart strings. They're nostalgic tunes that lull me like the most charming of snake charmers. There's a new trailer out, and I can practically feel the Balmoran cliff racers pecking at my back, making me invent new deities just so I can use their names as curse words (There is a god named Fuckthulhu now. You're welcome). Ahhh, happy memories. Watch below, and revel in the good news that a public test is right around the corner.
]]>Rob Sherman, author of interactive fiction project Black Crown, asked if he could write about videogame inventories. We were powerless against the result, which pairs a personal journey through the English countryside with a treatise on the power of possessions and the reasons videogames must do better in representing them.
There was once, and still is, a boy and a man called me, and one summer, two summers ago, I could be found tiptoeing along a main road in southern England, my boots full of dusty blood.
I had only taken them off once in the last day, and at that point I had nearly wilted from the sight and smell. I took my diagnosis on top of a chalk escarpment, a widow’s peak, a combover of woodland. The couple on the bench next to me were after-work drinking from cans, and looking at the wealds rolling away from them. They must have thought that some medieval leper had staggered out of the local hospitalers, holidaying on his stumps.
]]>Oh Skywind, let me count the ways. For those not in the know, Skywind is a Skyrim mod that aims to transplant the entirety of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (aka, the best Elder Scrolls) into Skyrim's more modern engine while maintaining the former's gorgeously bizarre sense of style. Locations, NPCs, quests, the mudcrab merchant who essentially functioned as my best friend in middle school - everything's going in. It's an absurdly colossal undertaking, and yet unlike just about every other total conversion mod out there, it's actually going places. INCREDIBLY NOSTALGIA-PROVOKING video of Morrowind's re-envisioned first areas below.
]]>It was only December that Craig last came scampering along on the back of a Silt Strider, bouncily telling us all about Skywind, a mod project to port the world, creatures and mechanics of Morrowind to Skyrim's fancier engine. Now there's a new trailer showing features for the next update, and a thought occurs: maybe they're going to pull this off.
]]>There are a lot of attempts to save Morrowind from the ravages of time, but while it's not the prettiest, OpenMW somehow seems the most ambitious. It's a complete "engine reimplementation" for the old RPG, replacing what was there before with a modern, cross-platform and open source core. If Skywind is a shallow attempt to replace the body of Morrowind with something new, shiny and gold-plated, then OpenMW is the equivalent project designed to augment the game's withered guts.
A new video outlines the progress of the project as of v.0.28.
]]>If someone is keeping a Big List Of Inevitable Things somewhere, they can cross out 'modders remaking Morrowind in the Skyrim engine'. For it is no longer inevitable, but is in fact, er, evitable? No, that's not right. Though I guess you could avoid it, but that would make the modders of Skywind very sad indeed, because all their hard work in rebuilding Morrowind is worth looking at. Even if you just coo over the videos below, because cooing over the scenery is pretty much all that's possible right now.
]]>Remember Morrowind Overhaul 3.0, the mega-graphical mod intended to make the bestest of the Elder Scrolls bester still? Of course you don't, because of all those drugs you took when you were young. That's why you can never go into politics. That and all the embezzling you did.
Look, Mister/Mrs/Ms Short-Term Memory Loss, here's the last time we posted about it, so go read that, watch the trailer and remind yourself, then you can report back and be given your download link for the mod, which is now out at last.
]]>Truly impressive mod projects make me want to defy physics. For example, try as I might, I cannot - even with the assistance of a truly formidable thesaurus - recreate the pure magic of an authentic standing ovation in post form. And yet, that's what the legions of folks who've spent five years continuously tidying up each and every inch of Morrowind deserve. Meanwhile, Morrowind Overhaul 2.0 was quite the looker, but I want to frame Overhaul 3.0's trailer and hang in it on my wall - something that's also probably outside the orc-and-elf-free realm of possibility. Even bare walls and pin-drop silence, however, won't dampen my excitement for really pretty videogame snow. I mean, just look at that stuff. Well, go on now. Do it.
]]>The RPS Hivemind is still recharging, the major nodes soldered directly into the towering soul-capacitors necessary to sustain their thin simulacrum of consciousness for another 12 months. Fortunately, an errant pustule has attained basic mobility, and opted to present you with artifacts from the Shotgun archives to help see you through until our resurrection. First up, a return to the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, with a haphazard diary series written by Alec back in Summer 2009 during a obsessive revisit of the game that many still feel is Bethesda's finest hour. It's a tale of hats, spider-dwarves, assassin-besieged home ownership, grand burglary, poorly-designed forts and existential crisis, in a land far, far stranger than Skyrim.
]]>More sites should interview mod-makers, I feel. If one of this week's picks is anything to go by, they can have some interesting things to say. Modding might not usually be quite as huge a process as making a full-on indie game, but as a modder you face your own unique problems, ones we don't always get to hear about. Maybe we should take note of that at RPS. Either way, read on for this week's roundup.
]]>Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Todd Howard, lead blokey on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has fessed up that last game Oblivion ditched a bit of the wonderful oddness of its marvellous predecessor Morrowind - and that this is something Bethesda hopes to correct in Skyrim.
]]>While we all settle in for the torturous wait for Skyrim, why not return to Bethesda's finest hour, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind? I spent a good chunk of 2009 knee-deep in its bleak, strange, often crazed world for the Fool In Morrowind diary series - something I dearly wish I could have continued, but the need to make a real-life living rather got in the way. The news that there's an updated compendium of graphically mondernising mods for this deep'n'dark RPG threatens to bring me back, however.
]]>Game endings, then. They’re crap, aren’t they? Even games that tell engaging and creative stories have a habit of foundering abruptly instead of providing a satisfying finale. Maybe it’s because statistically, developers know less people will see the ending than any other part of their game, and a finale is a lot of work. Maybe it’s because creating closure is an entirely different discipline to holding someone’s attention.
We could have sat theorising in the RPS chatroom all day, but instead we collaborated on something far more proactive and arrogant: rewriting the endings of five of our favourite games. Check out our maddened riffing on Borderlands, Half-life, The Longest Journey, Morrowind and System Shock 2 after the jump.
]]>Agent Loaf returns, after a brief hiatus so RPS could spend some quality time documenting its own history. Now, my plan with this series had been to avoid the core narrative for as long as possible (even though it's something I never got around to the first time I played Morrowind.) Then a funny thing happened. It became compelling. Based on how unsatisfactory I'd found Oblivion and Fallout 3's main plotlines to be, this was not something I'd been expecting. It also puts me in the unusual position of narrativising someone else's narrative -a starkly different prospect to diarising my own haphazard experiences. If you've not ever played Morrowind and still intend to, be aware that here be spoilers...
]]>Find the story so far here.
It's an unfortunate reality of Vvardenfell that very few traders can afford to pay anywhere near the worth of the kind of loot that seasoned adventurers bring to them. Stands to reason, really - after all, if they did have several hundred thousand gold to spare, they probably wouldn't spend their days running grotty shops on a cursed island. It is, however, a source of great annoyance to me. Here I am, pockets laden with brutally effective Daedric weaponry from a hell dimension and lavish Indoril armour worth tens of thousands apiece, but I can only get a couple of thousand gold maximum for anything, if I'm lucky. The traders quickly grew to love me, much as I suspect they were all talking behind my back about how gullible I was. I suppose I'm helping to support local businesses, but frankly I'd never intended to be a philanthropic master thief.
]]>Let me tell you about my hat.
- It is the first thing in I've paid for in this land, bar some skill training and a few lockpicks.
- It cost me 1500 gold pieces, which is more than most shopkeepers even carry. Easily obtained and replaced by a man of my stealthy means, frankly.
- It's around a foot and a half tall, made of what appears to be brass, and masks my features entirely with a cold, machine-like visage. Yes, it does appear as though I'm wearing a giant, metal vegetable on my face, but I like the look.
Today in my ongoing series (going on to where, I still don't know) of wanders through the wondrous land of Morrowind: postcards from the edge. The edge of irrelevancy. Apologies for the lack of an instalment yesterday, by the way: can't guarantee these will always happen daily, but they'll remain pretty regular.
Oh - you need to read this one from the bottom up.
]]>The Diamond Job
The armed guard wasn’t the problem. The child was. I’d successfully lockpicked my way through the upstairs door, sneaking into this alchemist’s store from their unwatched balcony. The guard, I knew, was downstairs, watching the front door. If I stuck to the shadows, I should be able to get past him to the storeroom, where the jewel awaited. Easy. Straight in, straight out, cash reward, and if I was lucky a spare diamond for myself.
But the child almost ruined it.
]]>Something a little different (and a lot more serious) today, as I attempt a spot of pop psychoanaylsis on my own roleplaying habits. This won't be the end of my now-traditional comedy escapades, however.
I've stolen clothes from corpses. I've made an old woman run up a mountain. I've hidden drugs in the cellar of a religious organisation. I've beaten up adorable animals. So many adorable animals. But.. what am I? As I finally approached the outskirts of Balmora, second-largest city on this hostile island, questions about my purpose and my nature weighed heavy upon me. This much I knew: I was named Loaf, a Dunmer by birth, and an Agent by trade. Beyond that, I was simply a empty cipher at best, a irritating clown at worst. At least, I realised, this was probably why I'd been slowly but intently wending my Machiavellian way to Balmora these past few days - somewhere amidst its hubbub, grime and crime, I hoped to find an answer to that most ultimate of questions. Why am I here?
]]>I'm going to try and keep these diaries a little shorter. This does mean a) varying hilarity, depending on the situations I've genuinely encountered and b) my promised visit to the city is delayed by a day. If it's any consolation, that entry will involve trying to steal diamonds in front of children.
A note to anyone thinking of building a fort: do not build a fort with easy hillside access. It kind of defeats the point.
]]>The story so far is here. I'll admit I'm still honing the tone of this ultro-series, but I suspect anyone turned off by the rambly first part should dig this one more.
I didn't have to wait long to find some new trousers. There's a pretty simple rule if you're looking for trouble (and the cash rewards that usually result from it) in a place like Vvardenfell: find a cave. Nice people don't live in caves, or behind sinister doorways built into the mountainside, or stalactite-chic, or whatever you want to call it. Bandits, skeletons and trolls do, however, and those are all guys I can stab in the face with impunity.
]]>Time for adventures! As you've probably gathered, I'm embarking on a series of diaries documenting my aimless exploits in Morrowind, the third Elder Scrolls game and predecessor to the, ah, divisive Oblivion. Armed only with a bunch of mods* and an entirely cavalier attitude towards lore and saving the world, I finally set off to Vvardenfell. In this first instalment - fighting ducks, plummeting wizards and accidental trouser-loss.
]]>Alright - let's make this precious. Upon my first introduction to my impending Morrowind diary series, the resulting slew of comments threw up two important mistakes on my part. Number one, the Giants mod is a really, really bad idea. Number two, I'd totally overlooked the vitally important (in the beauty stakes, at least) Morrowind Graphics Extender. After a hard day of farting about with ESM files, I've finally got what - I hope - is the ideal Morrowind build for my planned journey of cheerful incompetence. Beneath the cut, a more or less complete list of the frightening number of mods I'm now running, and a fairly stunning before and after comparison. Without a doubt, the goodly men'n'well-let's-be-honest-it's-pretty-much-all-men [oops, apparently there's a ton of female Morrowind modders, and now it appears some people hate me. Sigh.] of the Morrowind modding community have done jawdropping things to this olden RPG.
Gaming diaries: all the rage, eh? Buoyed by the splendidosity of the likes of Roburky's Sims 3 chronicles and Tom Francis' Galactic Civilizations II bible, I'm embarking on something I've had brewing for a while - a diary of my (mis)adventures in Morrowind. I've always maintained it's a far better game than its sequel Oblivion (which was also pretty good), and now's my chance to prove it. I'll commence with the diaries proper in a few days, but ahead of that I thought I'd share the setup.
]]>A mention of this Morrowind mod in another thread reminded me about Tamriel Rebuilt. It's a bold, some would say crazy (others would say impossible) project to extend the noble forerunner to Oblivion into something even bigger than its current mighty girth.
Mad Bethesda-bitching is traditionally reserved for how they did unspeakable things to Fallout and how Oblivion was mindless prolefeed or similar such snobbery, so someone feeling that The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind perhaps cut a corner or two makes a refreshing change.
]]>
