Superiority of certain older games versus their modern counterparts

I've been reading message boards here and there, talking about how modern games compare to some of these older games, and often I've seen others who agree with my recent conclusion that these particular classics are superior in almost every way except graphically (see earlier posts about, for instance, Morrowind being superior to Oblivion, and Baldur's Gate being superior to Dragon Age).

However, I've seen more than once people expressing the sentiment that any such perceived superiority is only nostalgia talking. In other words, the games weren't really superior, we just remember them more fondly.

To that I can simply point at myself. I played the latter games first, and enjoyed them for what they were. I only played the earlier games after getting tired of the newer ones, and it took a good amount of convincing from friends to make me give them a chance. Graphics are important to me, after all. But after I got to know the games, it became clear how much content and gameplay had been removed from the more recent installments, with more emphasis put on unnecessary frills such as big-name actors playing the characters, or sensationalistic gore like the incessant (and time-wasting) slow-motion dismemberments in Fallout 3 or the buckets of blood in Dragon Age. (Here's a note for the developers: I always play with blood and gore turned off when I'm given the option. But I digress.)

At any rate, in these cases, the older games are richer and more complex and nuanced games; no question about it. And I say that as someone who is incapable of looking back on them like glories of the past with rose-coloured lenses (unless I were living backward through time like T.H. White's concept of Merlin), since I'm playing the older ones now for the first time.

I'll have to devote an entire post to exploring the possible underlying reasons why current games just aren't filling these giants' shoes, as well as game design philosophies in general.

Quick update

Given that I've done a lot of Oblivion and Morrowind coverage on this blog, I thought I'd mention that I came across a great sale on various Bethesda games on Steam for this weekend, including those two games, at 66% and 75% off. (No, I'm not getting compensated by anyone for mentioning these things.)

I really need to finish up the three other blog posts that I have in various states of completion, on all the different games I've been playing lately.

Oblivion retrospective

As explained in my introduction, Oblivion was the first of the Elder Scrolls series that I played. As much as I enjoyed it, I now consider Morrowind to be superior in every way except graphically, and even then only in a technical sense, as Morrowind's graphics have much more variety and imagination.

The state of Elder Scrolls modding

Nevertheless, during my time playing it, I produced a number of mods, and I'll list a few of them here. In the event that TES Nexus ever permanently goes offline, and assuming Blogspot survives longer (or whichever blog I may migrate this to in such an event), I should still be able to be contacted here to re-upload my mods elsewhere, should anyone desire them by then. I imagine it's quite possible, considering how many Morrowind mods have become hard to find or lost entirely in the six years since the game debuted (at the time of this writing).

Moreover, although when I came into the modding scene there was already in place a standardised Readme template (thanks to LHammonds), most Morrowind mods I've downloaded have no such standard. The most noticeable absence from many of these old Readme files is a statement of permissions. Being a largely well-mannered community, most Elder Scrolls modders are loath to re-upload lost mods, without being able to ask the author for permission first (and in fact, it's against the rules to do so on TES Nexus). The reason I only use one site to archive my mods is that user comments and responses are my reward for releasing these mods to the public. I'm not doing it to earn any kind of fame or name-recognition; I'm doing it for the sake of hearing from people and occasionally prompting conversation. Thus, I want all my work in one place where I can keep track of it, and read and respond to people's comments.

Lavish Mage Tower of Alchemy Power

I'll begin with my favourite home, my Lavish Mage Tower of Alchemy Power. Knowing this, you can see why I chose the Magus Realm Tower mod for my home in Morrowind. :) My design philosophy was to have a home that was roomy but conveniently arranged, easy to navigate (hence the floor map), aesthetically pleasing, and with an atmosphere I considered appropriate for my kind of character.

A full description, including more background on what I meant to accomplish is available on the Nexus (and in its readme file), so I won't repeat it here. (People seem to hate the name I chose for it, but with all the other mage towers out there, I didn't want anyone to confuse mine for any of the others, and you have to admit, at least the name is memorable!)

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I Wanna Bayou A House!

This, my first house mod, was much humbler than the later tower, though it was tastefully decorated with custom interior textures, and with more of a focus on the house's exterior location. Here, the star of the show was really the location.

During my explorations of the landscape, this swampy area of Blackwood struck me as very pretty and atmospheric, and rather different from most of the forested landscape of Cyrodiil. So, much like one might do in real life, I picked what I thought was the most picturesque area, and built a house there. (And it sank into the swamp.)

Day 5: Morroblivion, Enchanting

Looks like I was right about Morroblivion (the fan-made conversion of Morrowind into the Oblivion engine). According to their FAQ:

"Morroblivion is currently in beta and quests and dialogue do not work yet. As of now, you can't do much more than explore the land and cities, and kill creatures and stuff. Quests are scheduled to be added eventually somehow."

Sounds pretty indefinite. It may look beautiful, and is clearly a faithful visual reproduction, but the reason I stopped playing Oblivion was that I had run out of quests! So there's really no point in me dealing with it unless (or until) they add them all. I see there is (or was) an effort to add some of the quests, which is nice, but it's very few of them, and I need a fully functional game. Morroblivion would only be good for me if I had already played the original, and just wanted to explore the place with better graphics, for nostalgia's sake.

Another thing is that there are a lot of gameplay mechanics that are different between the games, and others that exist in Morrowind, but not in Oblivion. In short, Morroblivion is not a game at all right now, and even if they add all the quests and dialogue topics, it won't be the same game without a lot more work on the gameplay mechanics. So, I'm sticking with the genuine Morrowind.

Enchanting

One of the gameplay mechanics I'm still trying to get used to is the much more extensive enchanting system in Morrowind. Mainly that unlike Oblivion, almost any item can be either constant effect, cast when used, or (for weapons) cast on strike, rather than weapons always being cast on strike and clothing always being constant effect. Also, that unlike Oblivion, these items essentially have their own mana pools that slowly regenerate on their own, without the need to recharge them. One thing not mentioned in the Morrowind Guide for Oblivion Players is found on the page for Enchanting. Namely, that paper and notes can be enchanted as well, creating one-use spell scrolls like you find throughout the game. The use for these being that while normal spellcasting can fail depending on your skill or fatigue, enchanted items (including scrolls) are instant-cast and never fail. Though I think rings would be more useful to enchant, since they don't disappear. Perhaps I'll try enchanting a pair of rings with "restore health" and "fortify magicka" spells, so I can keep myself healed and full of mana when I run out during a fight... Might work!

Day 2: Seyda Neen

About the too-dark MGE settings. I figured out how to use the shader chain in MGE, and downloaded a shader called "Dungeon HDR", which ended up giving exactly the contrast and brightness I wanted. That's what I'm using for my screenshots.

So, for the entire day, I explored the area around Seyda Neen, the tiny port village where you start the game. Note that I mean "tiny" in Morrowind terms, not Oblivion terms (where a "village" consists of 2 or 3 houses and an inn). I happened to meet a guy who was familiar with Morrowind earlier, when I had freshly installed it (before I put mods on it), and he walked me through the basic interface and showed me an interesting little exploit to get some extra money and gear at the very start. This might be common knowledge, but I didn't see it in the "Getting Started" guide on UESP.net. Before you exit the Census office, you will not be arrested or attacked for anything you do. So you can, for example, kill Sellus Gravius* and take his Imperial Legion armour and sword. Just be sure to talk to him, turn in your release papers, and obtain the first quest from him before you do. He won't even attack you as you hit him over and over with your basic fireball (though he will complain loudly each time). After killing him (but not looting him), you return to the first room with Socucius Ergalla in it, and wait for the guard to approach you and issue you a warning for your murderous misdemeanour, before clearing you of all charges. Don't make the same mistake that I did, leaving through the wrong door out into town, where the guards promptly arrested me. This room also has a key to the warehouse across the street, with much more loot for the stealing.

Of course, this is definitely a cheat and an exploit, so it doesn't even fall under the rubric of "role playing". It'll just take a few days to settle into my character for my usual kind and generous nature takes over. But for now, I'm fighting tooth and nail to earn enough money to purchase the spells I'll need to survive in this dangerous world!

* In retrospect, I regret having done this. I advise against it. There are other, much better ways of making money that I describe in detail in later posts. If nothing else, you want Sellus Gravius alive for one of the official free plugins, Siege at Firemoth.

Mana issue

Playing as a mage in this game is no fun at all with the vanilla settings. In Oblivion, mana slowly regenerated over time, as it does in WoW. Here in Morrowind, mana (well, "magicka", but I'm going to call it by the name everyone else uses) does not regenerate unless you sleep, which seems very silly. So naturally I installed a mod that allows my mana to regenerate over time. I tried several, and several didn't work at all, but Regional Mana worked, and adds a little variety to it. It's a very slow regeneration, but at least it's based on intelligence and willpower, and as a bonus, certain regions and weather patterns have a higher or lower rate of regeneration.

Even with regenerating mana, it's tough to survive as a pure mage, because the regen is so slow, I might as well rest between fights to get it all back, and health too. I can only survive 1 fight at a time this way, and my skill is apparently too low to cast the invisibility spell I bought yet.

I also installed Abot's Water Life, which adds lots of underwater stuff to the game, as well as shells and sea stars on the beaches, which are alchemical ingredients. It also gives you a fishing pole you can use to fish, as long as you have the appropriate bait. It also says there are some underwater palaces added, but I haven't found any of those yet.

I think I played all the quests available in Seyda Neen that day, though it was primarily occupied with running back and forth to my only available bed with its nearby containers to stash my meagre loot and rest. The tax collector quest took the longest (which is where I got that nice-looking robe you see on my Day 1 post), because with the MGE grass installed I couldn't find the body anywhere, after wandering the whole area several times, even after viewing a Youtube guide. I finally found him after turning off the grass temporarily. I was impressed by the twists and turns that quest took, assuming you're honest enough to return the gold to Socucius Ergalla. That quest alone has more difficult moral choices with shades of grey than the whole Mr Burke questline in Fallout 3.

So finally, after doing just about everything I could do in Seyda Neen (including a dungeon crawl in a smuggler's cave, but not including a couple of tombs with creatures too strong for me), I headed out to the town the delivery quest pointed me toward. The place where better money is to be made, and my new home for a while -- Balmora!

But that's for another post.

Day 1: Setting up

Morrowind arrived, and it's the Game of the Year edition, with Tribunal and Bloodmoon. I'm not sure if it also includes the free official plugins, which I already downloaded. I saw a mod to "delay Tribunal assassins", which stated that assassins start showing up even if you're a new character, if you install Tribunal, but I did it anyway because so many nice-looking mods require it. I can always use the "delay" mod if it's a problem. [Edit: it will not be a problem, because the assassins don't show up until level 5 or 6.]

So, I've got it working, with a number of basic graphic improvement mods. Better bodies, vanilla clothes pack for BB, various custom clothes for BB, and "THE" Facepack Compilation, along with its companion THE Morrowind NPC Makeover. The improvement is huge. Next I need to try to find an animation replacer to fix those silly walks.

I also installed the Morrowind Code Patch, for various fixes, and the Unofficial Morrowind Patch, though I see there's a newer one that succeeds that one that I should probably replace it with, Morrowind Patch Project.

MGE works great, and adds animated clumps of grass like in Oblivion if you follow these directions.

However, MGE seems to make the gamma dark, and the in-game gamma control doesn't affect it anymore. At least, it's dark in windowed mode, how I prefer to play it (for easy switching between game and other things).

I got ENBseries running with it, too, just for the ambient occlusion effect (I didn't try the bloom, but I hear that re-lightens up the place), but I had to disable it because it made the character selection screen black. I'll try it again now that I have a nice character done and saved (I played through that beginning area many times trying out mods before I got to the part that lets you save!) [Edit: Nope, ENB slows things down to a crawl, makes things so dark I can't see, and the ambient occlusion is visible through walls. Will wait for improvements on that.]

One thing I can't seem to find is an interface mod to make the inventory easier to deal with. I want to be able to sort my items by weight (so I know what to drop when I'm encumbered) or value (choose what to drop or sell first), etc. And not have to hover the mouse over each item to see that. It's the same kind of icon-based inventory interface I had to deal with in WoW, except at least in Morrowind I don't need to place things in "inventory slots" like WoW and System Shock 2. I want a list instead, with columns for weight, value, etc., like Oblivion had. And a bigger font, please! This font is tiny at this resolution.

For my character, I went with a Breton mage. No surprise, given my history. I would have probably picked an elf if I could find a custom race like the mystic elves for Oblivion. This is Milly, with THE Facepack Compilation, and Hurdy Gurdy's robe replacer.

Anyway, just getting everything installed and working properly took all my time on the first day, so I wasn't able to start playing until Day 2.

Morrowind diary introduction

I started playing Morrowind only just recently, here in the spring of 2009, and I like to talk about my experiences, but rarely know anyone who is as interested in these things as I am. The forums are nice for some kinds of discussion, but (aside from being rather dead for this older title) they're a little too volatile and disorderly for the kind of in-depth coverage I like to do, so I decided to start a blog instead.

Perhaps if I share my experiences with the larger world, it might lead to some interesting discussions. (hint, hint)

I changed my mind about making this post always on top, because it may create the illusion that I'm not writing anything new, as long as it remains there. So I've placed it back in the normal chronology. As this is a blog, the postings show in reverse order, which isn't the most logical way to read a linear diary, but I'm sure most blog readers are familiar with it. Aside from the date posted, I'll also be sure to put numbers in my post titles so you know which order to read in.

This blog won't be entirely about Morrowind, of course, since I do play other games. But all Morrowind posts will be tagged as such, as any other games will be tagged with their names, so you can just click on the appropriate tag to see posts about the game of your choice. (Some, however, contain tags of other games because I happen to mention these other games to compare them with Morrowind.)

My gaming history

So, a little background on what led me to this place and time. My gaming history goes back quite a long time, so I'll just name off a few games first. LucasArts adventure games like Monkey Island. The Thief series for stealth and atmosphere. The Silent Hill series for story and atmosphere. Racing games. Action FPS like Half-Life II. Hybrid games like Bioshock and its predecessor System Shock II. Turn based Strategy games like Galactic Civilizations II. Etc. The first game I believe I played which used the open-ended, relatively non-linear "quest" style of gameplay was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (and later San Andreas). I liked this freedom, different from the linear games, since I could go anywhere, and there were all kinds of things that I could do, in any order I chose, at my leisure, instead of being stuck in a level with only one way to go, or tiresome tasks between me and the place I wanted to be.

World of Warcraft was the first major RPG I played for any length of time (as warlock, druid, and mage). I have very few complaints about that game. Aside from chunky polygons, low resolution textures, too much grinding, legions of assholes, unnecessarily long flight paths, a monthly fee, inability to drop items (on the ground or on a countertop), and no player housing, it's nevertheless a very fun game, that even now I'm tempted to return to, if only I had the time.

After I quit WoW, I decided to look for a single-player RPG that I could play without a monthly fee. Oblivion was the game I chose, the fourth installment in the Elder Scrolls series, of which I had no previous experience. I had heard of Morrowind here and there, but that was all I knew.

Oblivion was great. I spent a lot of time playing it (as a mage/thief), though I avoided the main quest as long as possible, because I didn't want those pesky Oblivion gates opening up all over the land and wrecking the scenery. I was familiar with mods from many other games I've played, so I delved deeply into the world of Oblivion mods, to the point where my Oblivion folder was about 20GB in size. Eventually, I ventured into the TES Construction Set to edit some of the mods to better suit me (lighting, furniture placement, etc.) and ultimately started making my own mods. I started with some simple retextures, and moved on to creating some companion NPCs, and a couple of house mods which became my main homes. Alas, eventually I ran out of things to do, things had gotten a bit boring, and even quest mods couldn't keep my eye from straying, and Fallout 3 had just been released, so out of curiosity I took a look.

Fallout 3 held my interest for a while, even though in many ways it was a large step backwards from Oblivion. The construction set for it (called GECK) eventually was released, after a month or two of pessimism from the community, and I proceeded to mod the hell out of Fallout 3. Ultimately I made a couple of mods of my own for it, most notably another house mod.

Alas, it held my interest for much less time than Oblivion did. Compared to Oblivion, Fallout 3 falls short in many areas. But this isn't the time or place to get into that. The result was that I wanted another open-ended fantasy game with plenty to do and explore, variety in play style, and a healthy mod community. I looked at Fable 2, and The Witcher, and some others, but ultimately I was swayed to give Morrowind a try despite its inferior graphics.

My approach to Morrowind

Now, I've played and enjoyed my fair share of older games with inferior graphics. WoW, System Shock 2, Thief 1 and 2, and others. But a large appeal of games like this is getting to explore unique and beautiful landscapes, and "beautiful" isn't the word for what I had seen of Morrowind. However, some videos I saw on Youtube showed me what it could look like with mods like MGE (Morrowind Graphic Extender), as well as some city expansions, NPC makeovers and addittions, and texture replacers. It changed my mind! Also, being an older game, it was very cheap.

Some people have recommended Morroblivion instead. Morrowind's models imported into the Oblivion engine, with NPCs, creatures, items, and presumably quests recreated. But now, writing from having played Morrowind for a few days, I think there are some fundamental aspects of Morrowind that would be lost in porting it to the Oblivion engine. For instance the very extensive dialogue trees. And is it complete? I got the impression that it isn't. And what about the thousands of mods there are for Morrowind? They wouldn't work in Oblivion. No, I think it's better to play Morrowind with the Morrowind engine, improving what can be improved from there.

So, I think that's enough introduction. On to my first impressions of the game!