A good read,,a/b Morrowinds

[Brevity]

From Freak of Nature (http://forums.xengen.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31718)
Man when I read this I was like wow, and this is somewhere around the 20th time I have had to say this a/b this game. I like the idea of this game I just hope the play is great to.:)

[DZNUTZ]

ya need a password... and that means i'd have to register....damn i wish i wasn't so lazy....only if someone would copy and paste:D

[Brevity]

Dude I would but its really really long, and Dam n it Im lazy too. Maybe some body else ?????

[Crazy Joe]

ya, that was a good read. too bad you are too lazy to register, man was that ever some incredible information. :p

[Bakeman]

I stopped readding only a paragraph in..

I don't want to know all that stuff! I want to find out while I'm playing it. I've read enough for me to want to try it, that's enough :)

But it looked long, and I'm sure it has alot of great stuff, I just want to find it out when I play the game for the first time :)

[datalink7]

why doesn't somebody copy/paste the article over here?

[GokuX]

Here folks, somebody has to do the dirty work around here. Enjoy:D

Part One:

RPGVault .............

To many CRPG fans who played it, Daggerfall, the 1996 release of by Bethesda Softworks, represents the pinnacle of the open-ended roleplaying. Second in the Elder Scrolls RPGs series, it featured a sprawling game world filled with thousands of randomly generated dungeons, cities and NPCs as well as the ability adventure indefinitely. Indeed, some fans boast that they are still wandering the lands of Tamriel and honing their characters' skills to this day. Although the third chapter of the Elder Scrolls focuses upon only a small corner of the Tamrielic Empire - the province of Morrowind - Bethesda has set out to create no less an epic RPG than its distinguished predecessor, and the eagerly awaited The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is now nearing release for both the PC and Xbox.



The new game takes place on the island of Vvardenfell, the main part of the province of Morrowind, where the developers intend to build upon Daggerfall in every possible way. For example, the graphics are full 3D and boast polygon counts greater than many contemporary games, shooters included. In addition, although the gameworld is geographically smaller, it is completely hand-crafted; to quote Bethesda PR, "every hill, tree, rock, building, dungeon, and creature has been placed by hand". Clearly, the developers are shooting for a depth of experience hitherto unknown in role-playing games, aiming to replicate a living, breathing fantasy world in excruciating detail, with factions, systems and AI that support totally open gameplay. While based on about 20 hands-on hours with an advance build, this Morrowind Preview can only hint at the game's huge potential.




Rather than putting character creation or choice before the gameplay, Morrowind gradually steps a new player through the generation process within the first few minutes playing time. While not an entirely new take on this RPG custom, it is still a refreshing and painless introduction to the skills-based roleplaying system of the world. Taken off a prison ship to the small hamlet of Seyda Neen, the player may choose among three methods of creating a character. These should satisfy players from any backgrounds, be they hardcore role-players or newbies. By the end these processes, which we won't spoil, you will have generated a character with a name, gender, race and appearance backed up by a set of various skills. There are 10 races in Morrowind, some new to the series like the Imperials, and some old favourites like the Redguards and Nords. Your choice in race can run further to the exotic with three available elvish races - Dark, High and Wood - or beast races like the Orc, Argonian and Khajiit. Each has a distinct look and animation with slight predispositions to certain skill sets plus certain resistances, weakness and magical abilities. For example, Orcs are slightly resistant to magic and can Berserk once a day, much to the chagrin of their opponents.



As mentioned, Morrowind's character system is skills-based. Rather than choosing a class that determines your abilities and restrictions from the beginning, the method of play you employ determines how your avatar develops. Class designations merely provide templates of skills that are emphasized over others, and you can also opt to create your own customized class by dictating the skills that your character will emphasize and de-emphasize. However, most players will probably choose one of the 21 pre-set templates that range from Acrobat to Archer, Bard, Battlemage, Knight, Mage, Monk, Nightblade, Scout, Thief, Warrior, Witchhunter and more. All of them, along with the custom ones, fall into three broad types - combat-based, stealth-based and magic-based. Every class has five major and five minor skills that define its capabilities. For example, my Dark Elf Assassin has major skills like Sneak, Short-Bladed Weapons, Marksman and Acrobatics plus minor ones like Athletics, Blocking and Unarmored that are less effective to begin with and more difficult to improve. Lastly, each character has miscellaneous skills that start even lower and are even harder to advance. With some restrictions, raising skills is a simple as using them. Just playing a sneaky, back-stabbing assassin type naturally improves her Assassin's skills and effectiveness.

Underneath the skills, your character has are eight attributes that formulate the three main statistics. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Agility, Speed, Endurance, Personality and Luck determine your Health (damage you can sustain before death), Magicka (amount of magical energy your have available to cast spells) and Fatigue (amount of physical energy you have to devote to running or fighting). Depending on your class choice, your attributes and three main statistics are set and only increase as you level up. In Morrowind, this merely means that you have improved enough of your major and minor skills to warrant an increase in an attribute and consequently, an associated main statistic. For example, as my Breton Spellsword increased his major and minor skills through use a combined ten times, he achieved second level and was allowed to raise any three attributes, which also raised Health, Fatigue and Magicka. Being a Spellsword, there were certain attributes that increased at a faster rate but nothing prevents you from rounding out your character's weaker attributes if you so choose. Practice (and long hours playing) makes perfect.

One last aspect of your character is your astrological sign. These thirteen options are akin to racial choice in that they provide certain additional resistances, weaknesses or special abilities, albeit with no visible change in the character's appearance. One example is The Atronach. Individuals born under this sign can resist 50% of the magic thrown at them and absorb them into their magicka pool but suffer from Wombburn, meaning they cannot regenerate magicka naturally over time like everyone else. Another is The Shadow, which gives its holders the Moonshadow ability to become completely invisible for 60 seconds once a day. These signs round out characters and provide an opportunity to tune and enhance role-playing. With Morrowind's flexible character system, I was able to quickly and precisely create an Ascetic Mystic custom character class complete with cool astrological sign and skills template. He was a balding Imperial, skilled in hand-to-hand combat, illusion and restorative magic with a complementary set of minor skills.

Once you are freed from the ship and through character generation process, the game begins in earnest. Starting with only a small package and the name of a person who is expecting you in a faraway town, you are totally free to do what you want. For players used to linear plot and gameplay or dragging about a huge party of characters this may be a shock. It is just you and you alone that determines your actions and activities. In fact, Bethesda encouraged previewers to do whatever they wanted and not follow the expected path - there being no right or wrong way to play. To begin with, I decided to do just that, wander about aimlessly investigating and chatting. The developers had hand-placed everything, so it seemed appropriate to do them the honor of seeing their handiwork in person. Granted this did occasionally mean stumbling upon one of the more than 300 individually designed dungeons that was too difficult to handle, but it was gratifying to find interesting nooks and crannies not on any map. One such adventure involved poking around a ship run ashore during a rainstorm. In the holds lay some booty and a lonely corpse. Eventually (and accidentally) arriving at the original destination, the town of Balmora, almost brought forth a feeling of regret. Suffice it to say that Morrowind seems committed to the free-form, open-ended gameplay ideal. Solve a murder mystery, find someone's secret stash, free slaves from a bandit camp, butcher an unsuspecting citizen in their home for the heck of it, pick mushrooms and flowers, or do nothing of the sort - just in the space of the first village!





Continued: Quests.

[GokuX]

Part 2:

For those who might to follow the main plot and storyline, Bethesda has provided clear-cut goals and quests that are arranged neatly in a handy journal interface as you encounter them. Not only do hand-placed items attest to the care taken in creating the varied environments on the island of Vvardenfell, but you will come across NPC factions and individuals that treat you according to your actions towards them. You will find tomes and tomes with nothing but history and facts that do nothing directly in terms of gameplay, but that do enhance the backstory. There are also various guilds you can join in order to advance their agendas - and yours. Quests, both in the main story and on the side vary in difficulty and type. There is far more variety than just numerous simple Fedex type quests; some of these do exist, but they make sense in the context of the game and story.



For most players, the core of the game will probably be combat. Although it is reportedly possible to play a non-violent character and most if not all of the early game can be approached without violence, this does not look as viable over the longer term. Luckily, practically every skill and attribute you have is useful for the destruction of your enemies. You can play the standard fantasy heavy who specializes in sharp objects and swinging them around, the lurking rogue who sneaks up on a monster and stabs it in the back or the blazing spellcaster who bombards his opponents from the next hilltop - or anything in between. The strength of the Morrowind character system is that you will have a choice and a variation of play based on a blend of combat, stealth or magic skills. My Assassin picked up a few minor Destruction spells and a healing spell to back herself up. My Spellsword got to be proficient with a nice blunt mace in between nuking adversaries. You can also get good at Alchemy and mix up interesting and potent potions, improve your spellcasting skills and create your own spells, or advance your Speechcraft and personality so much you can sweet talk merchants into giving you cut-rate prices on powerful items. Admittedly, 20 hours of playing time thus far has not been nearly enough to do all these things, but it was easily sufficient to envision the great possibilities and potential of this game and world.




Which brings us to the not so good stuff. While blessed with a very good, customizable user interface and graphics that, without a doubt, are some of the best this gamer has seen in a 3D game, RPG or no, the preview build has technical issues. This is of course normal for advance code, but given Daggerfall's legacy of bugs and patches, it's difficult not to be somewhat concerned even though the game and many of the team are new, rendering such fears largely unfair. Naturally, Bethesda is aware of such perceptions and is making a huge effort to make the game as bug-free as possible, so we can hope for the best. On a related note, we also look forward to the release code being optimized so that it's potential is not hampered by excessive system requirements. At present, Morrowind is very much a system hog; if you want to crank up the details and draw distance, you will want a pretty high-end system.




Regardless of current code issues, Bethesda has clearly conceived a fine RPG with the potential for very wide appeal. Here are just some of the interesting facts about the third Elder Scrolls game that should get fans, old and new alike, lining up at their local software stores in a few weeks. There are 3,244 NPCs in, all killable and only one of which you must keep alive if you wish to finish the main quest; there is enough text to fill six standard-size novels; the team has hand-placed 316,042 objects in the world; there are 480 billion different combinations of characters you can play; there are 150 billion additional spells you can create; and Wonder Woman Lynda Carter is a voice actor! Finally there is one thing we have yet to touch upon. While The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind seems set to provide a huge game world and enough open-ended gameplay to satisfy even its most rabid fans, the PC version will ship with The Elder Scrolls Construction Set - the actual editor used by the developers during development - to extend the replayability of this great-looking game even further.

-Fin:cool:

[Nato King]

Thanks GokuX you are the guy. That was some very interesting information on the Morrowind. I love it. Thanks again.:) :)

[Brevity]

Originally posted by Serg_w
Thanks GokuX you are the guy. That was some very interesting information on the Morrowind. I love it. Thanks again.:) :) Ya thanks. It was very good of you to do that. I would like to say that The Freak got to go one on one with this game every since that meeting he want to CDG or something, where he first told us about it. I posted that too, along time ago......lol to be him...I wish I had a job closer to the gaming industry,,,,other than just buying their ***** and playing it. I just go to college right now. I am working on my Masters, just finished my batchelors. And I am a HIstory/ political science guy not gaming though I do do alot w/ computers.