After writing a lot about it referencing my last playthroughs, I started it once again via OpenMW with official expansions and nude mode only, for it became kind of a habit.
So, initially it looks like an RPG, and we see these stacks of numbers in a character sheet affecting our speaking capabilities or our impotency to kill a crab, okay. If we dive more into it, we’d learn our ways not only around that, but also to become the most potent mass killer Nirn ever had. Alchemy loops to boost your intelligence and brew a better potion of intelligence are known for 20 years already, even in Skyrim, and the ways this game is completely broken are meta-knowledge making us love it even more.
But is it only an RPG?
More, than in other TES games, I encountered a lot of NSFL content. No, I don’t talk about Suran’s harlots, but about customs of danmers and the Sixth House.
We can go back to the Planescape: Torment, the game that starts in a morgue that people don’t play these days (sorrely), russian Pathologic that hbomberguy praised and where kids with dog heads exchange stuff for razors and drugs, or that cringe project called Hatred, but non of them combined have the same amount of what is now considered non-publishable.
Besides encountering racism and cop’s attention at any step (even if you are a dunmer, because you are still not a native), we have stories of imperials coming from Ilunibi and dying horribly due to corprus, that seems like a radiation poisoning. We have a cult that eats flesh and is one second from overthrowing the government, killing everyone who doesn’t meet their criteria. We have all dunmers having dreams that make them insane and irrate, one step from starting a murder spree. We have gods, who by a treachery took their powers, and the center of the island being guarded by their weakening powers and literal bone ash from local funerals. We have a real gestapo from local officials, and we can participate in glory kills that are a custom of this wicked land, with us still be a member of churches and guilds. And don’t even start talkimg about Fyr cloning himself into daughers, fucking them, and having a whole dungeon for adventurers to find either their award or a sudden death. Or that one quest when you search for a sex slave. And that all continues in a completely corrupt world where a duel or a bribe can significantly change the political landscape.
There’s so much I can put Horror, Thriller, Grindhouse lables on, or those I don’t even know. I’m glad it happened in my life and I can replay it now on any system, even on mobile phone. But it’s even more vile than Fallout and it’s one of the reasons it clicked with me. Morrowind is very russian, and it’s popularity on our 4chan clones cements this. If your friend ever get vocal about moving here, get them Morrowind as a testing experience and then ask, if they still want that. Guess, they wouldn’t, for their own good.
I would love to hear your stories about how beautiful or grim this game is.
I’ve never played this game. Is this stuff you’re describing coming from mods or the original game??
The actual vanilla game has some really fucked up shit going on in the lore. There’s a book in the game that describes a female dunmer having sex with a khajit in excruciating detail about the barbs on the khajit penis tearing her vaginal walls. And that’s one of the more tame things I can think of.
Kirkbride is a sick, demented man.
A beloved one at that. It’s a shame we don’t see games inspired by him anymore. Someone like Supergiant could’ve pulled it off.
Baseline. One of the houses you can side with sells slaves and has slaves in game.
You should play it. That’s vanilla, and the mods are amazing, even just the hd texture packs will make the game very playable today.
I’m guessing there’s a mod community somewhere to learn what mods to use? Like with Skyrim, I’d probably start with things that improve the overall look but sticks to vanilla for the story
Yeah I think if you go to the tomorrow and community here there’s even a sticky for them.
But I like to just go to Nexus mods and browse through what I think can add to the game without compromising the story.
The Morrowind community is very devoted to the world itself and is very good in that respect, so it isn’t a huge concern.
There are also several YouTube videos that will instruct you exactly how to install every configuration of mods in every way possible, but after you install one, you’ll see how simple it is to install any of the ones you want.
I heart vanilla is a good modlist which has some basic bugfixes and minor but faithful graphical improvements. If you wanna make the game look even better, then Volumetric Clouds, Remiros Groundcover (or some other groundcover mod) and Normal Maps for Everything are some of my top recommendations. If you wanna go crazy then there is also a modlist on the same site called graphical overhaul, but I think that it’s worth sticking to a more vanilla aesthetic for a bit just so you have that as a frame of reference.
OpenMW (or, alternatively MGE XE if you want to use the original engine for whatever reason) already have some nice graphical improvements baked into them though.
The combat kills it for me unfortunately, even with mods. I thought I wouldn’t care but it just feels so bad. I couldn’t stick with it last time I tried.
I’ve heard that before, but even vanilla combat doesn’t bother me.
Let’s playthrough. I did unarmed that was fun as hell, especially
spoiler
punching dagoth ur into the volcano.
I might add some combat mods next time I play, since I play through it every 2 or 3 years, but that world is so big and there’s so many different ways to interact with it that the combat is a non-issue for me.
Especially with monster mods, I feel like you can definitely set up a situation where you can’t just hack and slash, you actually have to use the game mechanics and Dodge monster attacks while you’re fighting, make sure your fatigue is full.
If a minivan sized mud crab attacks you moving faster than a cheetah, haha, you have to make sure you know exactly how to fight back.
I never even realized that people don’t like the combat until stumbling across some reviews years after I played.
Even if you never fight in the game, it’s worth it just to live inside it. Don’t complete the game but go live in Morrowind for a couple weeks and just ignore the combat.
That’s all vanilla game, baby!
What if I told you that at some point in the game you are to kill a giant flying insect with a fork? Or to find a mass grave or those who thought they are worthy to follow the footsteps you’re yet to make? Or that you can kill two of three dunmeric self-entitled gods while you are at it? These are all in the vanilla GOTY game. It’s just that insane and profoundly hand-crafted by the trinity of the experienced in their field old guard, the new guys with a shine in their eyes and Michael Kirkbride who ate through another mile of acid-laced postmarks. If you are to leave the first tutorial village here, you’d never come back (:
I’m sold
If you’d ever get lost there or in the other TES games, UESP is an old-styled wiki resource not killed by Fandom and still going strong for decades: https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page
I’d suggest you to use OpenMW as an engine since it has, if I’m correct, many patches to games’ issues already under the hood. To use it, just install Morrowind+DLCs and then show OpenMW where it all landed. I believe, original english ISO files can be found even on the Internet Archive, but if they aren’t, I can send you a magnet link to a torrent. Lets incentivise Bethesda to make the TES6 already.
Thanks! I’m happy to buy the game. Everyone here is typing me up on it lol And I see that OpenMW be used alongside that