By Alec Meer on July 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm.
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.
Agentloaf Hear rumours of werewolves on some distant island. Am I tough enough to fight wolfmen? Worth a shot, eh?
4:16 PM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf Decided to rob armour store again to feel better. He never did anything to me, but I hate him for some reason. Buy more skills. /me flexes.
4:01 PM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf After hrs of wandering around like a drunken geriatric, finally found thinger I’m looking for. Was through a door off the first room :(
3:17 PM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf Got an awesome sword from some guy I killed – paralyses people when I smack ‘em, like a magic taser. Great way to deal with wizard-types.
1:58 PM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf Think I’m lost. Been attacked by bandits, clockwork robots, clockwork spiders and ghostly bearded guys. Have a nap in the corner to recover.
1:07 PM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf In dwarf fortress. Take all 7 torches in crate near door, but over-encumbered and can’t move, so leave 3 pairs of trousers on the floor.
11.30 AM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf Angry magician attacks me on a bridge FOR NO REASON. Summons a bloody skeleton! Manage to stab ‘em both in the face, and steal his clothes
11.14 AM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf Fuggit, it’s a job. He sends me to guy in fighter’s guild, who needs me to get some old dwarf loot. Sounds a bit like stealing, so I’m in.
10.02 AM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf Really should do something useful now. Topless old guy asks me to do stuff for the Blades. Don’t like being told what to do by topless men.
9.17 AM Jun 30th from web
Agentloaf I am now significantly better at sneaking, stabbing and I can finally cast heal spells without embarrassing myself. Woo!
10.04 PM Jun 29th from web
Agentloaf Bah. He’s not offering much for it. Oh well, there’s always new stuff to steal, and money’s money. Will spend it all on skill upgrades.
9.40 PM Jun 29th from web
Agentloaf Used new hat to rob armour shop. Found orcish stuff worth 1000s hidden behind the counter! Now to sell it to the thieves’ guild fence…
9.18 PM Jun 29th from web
Agentloaf I bought a hat! It turns me invisible and lets me breathe underwater, but it sucks away all my magic. It’s worth it!
7:24 PM Jun 29th from web
02/07/2009 at 12:25 cullnean says:
i actually tried to find agent loaf on twitter
yes im that sad
02/07/2009 at 13:00 Ian says:
Call me a fussy old traditionalist, but hopefully future installments will be in top-to-bottom order.
Also: A thief going off to take on Werewolves? I don’t see how this can go wrong. :)
02/07/2009 at 13:12 Heliocentric says:
Just remember to steal their teeth, and only fight elderly werewolves. Also, their werezimmer-frames.
02/07/2009 at 13:15 exor6st says:
damnit, now i know what im up to tonight…
02/07/2009 at 13:19 CakeAddict says:
Hehe I can remember playing that mission for the first time, I also spend hours and hours looking for that damn cube.
Only to get almost whacked to death by the guy inside the room.
And good luck with dying at the claws of those werewolves.
02/07/2009 at 13:26 Yargh says:
Agentloaf: In dwarf fortress.
What? No booze, vomit, blood spatters, kitten slaughterhouse or hidden fun stuff?
There should at least have been a mural depicting the end of the fortress because the chief champion’s pet donkey died and he killed everyone in a berserk rage.
02/07/2009 at 13:31 Tei says:
“Don’t like being told what to do by topless men.”
…uh… yea … :-)
02/07/2009 at 13:32 Tei says:
Re: dwarf fortress
That stuff in background looks like miasma to me.
02/07/2009 at 14:11 Noc says:
ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO SAVE SOLSTHEIM FROM WEREWOLVES?
02/07/2009 at 14:25 dan says:
Anyone else notice how all Caius and the other two in the screenshots have the same face?
02/07/2009 at 14:26 dan says:
forget the all in the last comment. my kingdom for an edit function!
02/07/2009 at 14:28 Heliocentric says:
I only have original morrowind so a bunch of mods were blocked to me, I need to pick up the gold box.
02/07/2009 at 14:35 Klaus says:
Damn, now I wanna play Morrowind, and actually get somewhere in it.
*Goes off to look for installation discs.*
02/07/2009 at 14:46 MrBejeebus says:
Sehr gut!
I’m creeping closer to buying it….
02/07/2009 at 15:30 ghor says:
It’s funny to me to see all these comments about how everyone’s reinstalling or thinking about buying Morrowind after reading this series, but not me. I absolutely loved Morrowind a few years ago, but I will never play it again. Because of the combat. Because of a specific experience I had while playing that completely turned me off the game.
I got a quest in which there was a Nord I had to “teach a lesson”. This meant punching him in the face with my bare fists a few times, I think five times. So I found the guy, he was standing outside of a house, and I proceeded to pummel him. Except things didn’t really go as planned. This guy was the perfect target, he was standing motionless on his post while I was punching, but since I had the lowest possible amount of hand-to-hand skill (5) I only landed about 1 punch out of 100. That’s right. I was standing right next to a guy who was completely ignoring me, flailing my fists around madly without hitting anything.
Eventually after about 600 air punches I managed to land my fifth and quest-ending punch and sense had been beaten into the Nord.
I thought Oblivion was pretty bad, but at least in that game if it looked like my sword hit a dude, then it fucking hit the dude. It’s really ridiculous to have a dice roll determine whether you hit something or not in a 3d rpg where you can clearly see what’s going on.
This was a bit of a side-track, but I just remembered this and in retrospect the mental image of me flailing madly at the unfliching Nord is quite amusing, even if it was incredibly frustrating at the time. But no more Morrowind for me again. Ever.
02/07/2009 at 15:38 CakeAddict says:
@ Ghor
Yeah that can be a bit annoying if you have to do something like that.
At that quest I just cheated my handtohand skill to max for just a few seconds.
But overall I don’t have problems with it you usually use the same type of weapon anyway (well I do anyway) and in a few hours of play you rarely miss ever again. (unless you use something you don’t have skill with of course)
02/07/2009 at 15:40 Kieron Gillen says:
Ghor: One of the reasons why I have to eye-roll at people who hail Morrowind as better in all possible ways than Oblivion.
KG
02/07/2009 at 15:40 MrBejeebus says:
I can remember that ghor, and while I have good memories of morrowind, I’ve also got terrible 1′s, however for the moment the good outweighs the bad.
I don’t know whether I would be able to find the environment ANY where near as engrossing as I did when I 1st played the game though, that was like 6 years ago.. and the rest
02/07/2009 at 15:49 Alec Meer says:
Yeah, mechanically-speaking Morrowind is a significantly inferior game to Oblivion. It’s a much more fun world to explore, however.
02/07/2009 at 16:04 Ian says:
@ KG: You have clearly taken a BACKHANDER from THE MAN.
You swine.
02/07/2009 at 16:08 Ninja Dodo says:
This Dwarven fortress quest made me give up on Morrowind. Nigh impossible to find if you don’t already know what you’re looking for.
Trying out Oblivion at the moment. I have to agree on the blandness. The art direction and general atmosphere in Oblivion is painfully generic, characters especially. Though honestly using the Better Heads mod in Morrowind actually makes it more like Oblivion in that respect.
I’ll probably roam around a bit though just to see those stand-out quests every keeps ranting about…. Dark brotherhood and there was something about a painting?
02/07/2009 at 16:15 Nick says:
Eh, the only thing Oblivion did better was combat and graphics (and even then, the humanoid races all looked utterly dreadful), everything else was either the same, slightly inferior, or equally badly done. Or, indeed, removed for no apparent reason.
Not a bad game, but I know which I’d rather play.
02/07/2009 at 16:24 Jonathan says:
Ghor, I remember that and I had mentioned that awful sequence a few posts back. I remember having to spend hours punching him. The whole thing was totally pointless, and it was a good example of how the massive world with non-linear mission structures can get totally screwed up. The collision detection was absolutely horrible throughout the game, even when your stats were high enough to get a good “dice roll” on your hits.
02/07/2009 at 16:29 Bhazor says:
Another improvement in Oblivion was the dialogue. It may of been badly written and terribly performed (though the actors tried their darndest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlRClpaqEo). But at least you weren’t given two dozen identical dialogue options for every character with big blocks of text for every answer.
But yeah, Morrowind is more fun to explore. But with utterly gash combat.
02/07/2009 at 16:57 cullnean says:
Bhazor says:
“Morrowind is more fun to explore. But with utterly gash combat.”
can you complete the main quest with out combat?
if not ill avoid
02/07/2009 at 17:02 Theoban says:
Morrowind had a more compelling world, and I do prefer the just ‘here’s a load of text, read it’ approach to conversations instead of voice acted little snippets of dialogue.
And whilst the combat doesn’t make sense in any useful way, at least I wasn’t totally shit at it like in Oblivion. I don’t know why but I found Oblivion a much, much harder game to play. DAMN OGRES
Mind you I can’t go back to Morrowind now. I spent too much time with it, I know where everything is and which quests to do when and what factions to join. I ruined the game for myself.
02/07/2009 at 17:03 MrBejeebus says:
Ok I gave in, I am now downloading Morrowind GOTY…
Damn you Meer!
02/07/2009 at 17:04 MrBejeebus says:
Just to say – when I originally owned it, my pc was so totally rubbish that I sold it, so I never got past the 1st 2 hours
02/07/2009 at 17:07 Tei says:
Yea, you start as a puny weak worm, you can almost not move, probably any grandmother npc’s on the starting city can kill you.
And the game progress from that, and is soo ….exploitable… that you end with something in hands much like a demigod.
It takes a bit to progress enough to be decent enough to defend yourself.
I have never understand the criticism against Morrowind for the combat.
02/07/2009 at 17:08 Wulf says:
@Heliocentric
Manzimmer?
o.O
O.o
Manzimmer friends??
Gods, so many bizarre mental images.
(Since were quite literally does mean ‘man’.)
02/07/2009 at 17:08 ghor says:
@Jonathan
Oops, I completely missed that. I knew I should have levelled up in Thread Comment Skimming instead of Stealth Nose Picking.
02/07/2009 at 17:19 CrazedPenguin says:
I finally got all the mods I picked out to work (almost 40 of them), and I’ll be trying to do the same quests you are.
I have to say though, I liked the style you used in the second diary entry the best.
Not too fond of this twitter stuff. Isn’t exactly the type of read I’m looking for when I go to RPS, if you know what I mean.
02/07/2009 at 17:24 Serondal says:
I did the same thing. I looked through the entire dwarf fortress looking for that thing , gave up. came back and found it in the first room and about had a mental break down
02/07/2009 at 17:26 Serondal says:
Tei @ You actaully ARE a demi-god in Morrowind so it makes sense that you have the powers of one by the . . . well lets be honest after the first fourth of the game if you play it right you never have a challenge again. That is without mods ect.
02/07/2009 at 17:30 Klaus says:
I have explored Oblivion to death and I always quit Morrowind soon after the boat, like within the first 3 hours. Something about the first trek bothers me.
02/07/2009 at 17:37 Serondal says:
@ghor – you just have to realize that at the time Morrowind came out the engine didn’t have the ability to display hits or misses with animations. If you expect to be able to walk up to someone and punch them when you have NO Idea what you’re doing and the guy you’re punching is A NORD who obvious knew how to fist fight then there in lies your problem. It may have seemed as if he was just standing there but in reality he was dodging your punches and yawning at how horrible you are at fist fighting ;P
I dunno what is worse to be honest, the mad flailing at people in Morrowind (yes I admit it was a bit strange I’m just giving you a hard time) or the mad flailing in Oblivion where you hit the monster 20 times and it hardly hurts them.
02/07/2009 at 17:46 Klaus says:
Oh Serondal, I don’t think I knew you were a demi-god in the game. SPOILERS!!
I probably knew this at one time, but my brain is muddled with fantasy trivia. Demi-gods, alchemy, elves, deities, etc.
02/07/2009 at 17:49 Serondal says:
yah I guess that is a bit of a spolier but at this point if you don’t know your character in Morrowind is a demi-god and you’ve actaully PLAYED Oblivion where it talks about your previous character in Morrowind I think you deserve to be spoiled :P For those new people playing the game for the first time I’m just kidding you’re not a demi-god you’re just some random prison that is not the reincarnation of a god one killed by Vivec.
02/07/2009 at 17:53 Serondal says:
Or Dagoth Ur, I can’t remember, it doesn’t matter it didn’t happen and I just made it all up.
02/07/2009 at 17:58 Klaus says:
I don’t read too much in Oblivion unless it has something to do with the quest at hand. Lot’s o’ books in that game, there is.
02/07/2009 at 18:00 Serondal says:
People actaully talk about it out loud with each other, you have no excuse ! ! ! ! lol I’m just kidding mate ;) It is easy to miss and honestly you’d have no idea what they’re talking about if you don’t remember it from Morrowind. They calll him the Naravar or something crazy I can’t never pronounce or spell.
02/07/2009 at 18:04 drewski says:
I love how powerful you are in Morrowind after the first part of the game.
SMACK everything dies.
Although even once you’re beefy, getting the Umbra sword is a pain in the buttocks unless you buff and heal like crazy. Worth it, though.
02/07/2009 at 18:31 Serondal says:
I used to enchant a weapon that would steal health every strike and for some reason it never seemed to run out of magical charge because my enchant ability was so freaking high (i wish it was like that in Oblivion actaully) It made me unkillable and was WAY better than Umbra.
02/07/2009 at 18:32 Unlucky Irish says:
The combat in Morrowind never bothered me, as I always thought of it as a “sort-of old school” RPG rather than an action RPG with battles being decided by die rolls rather than actual skills. I find this a much more practical system than Oblivion’s, which basically punishes you with eternal arse-kickings if you don’t level your character exactly right.
02/07/2009 at 18:49 Serondal says:
i disagree Unlucky Irish, I never took any care of how I was leveling my character in Oblivion and I honestly can’t remember dieing more than one time (and that was because I went into a quest dungeon at level 2 and faught a non-leveled lich that blasted me and I ALMOST killed it before that too!)
It does give you eternal arse-kickings if you don’t have any actual skill at fighting in the game though. If you never figure out how to fight you’re never going to do any good even if your skills actaully raise. Blocking and attacking at the right moment, using spells if you’re a wizard or hitting people with arrows ect are skllls you as a player have to learn.
02/07/2009 at 19:08 Gravey says:
Alec played Morrowind from 9am to 4pm on Tuesday? Reminds me of myself when I was younger… finished last exam, no job yet, time for some 10-hour Morrowind sessions. I am not proud, but nor am I unproud. Ashamed I guess is the word. Wouldn’t do it again though. Hats off to you, Mr. Meer.
02/07/2009 at 19:28 mrmelons says:
If there is one skill that you should get right off the bat, its hand to hand. It is pretty much the best combat skill in the game. This is because it takes peoples endurance away and leaves them a crumbled mess on the ground that you can just lay into while they are helpless.
@KG yes combat may have been better somewhat in oblivion but that was all a wash considering that after 3 swings of a weapon it lost damage cause of their infernal repair system that caused weapons to do less damage as their endurance went down. I had to carry 5 swords if i wanted to make it through a dungeon. God forbid if it was a rare sword.
02/07/2009 at 19:33 Serondal says:
Or you could just carry 1 sword and some repair hammers which were extremly cheep and easy to find and anyone could use them :P
02/07/2009 at 20:51 Rocky says:
The first picture looks like John Locke…
02/07/2009 at 21:03 Serondal says:
Omfg Rocky you’re right!
02/07/2009 at 21:24 Mighty Florist says:
There’s an agentloaf on twitter now, sans all of the updates from the article. Is that the real deal?
02/07/2009 at 21:31 Joe says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JohnLocke.png
Uncanny!
02/07/2009 at 22:11 Sartoris says:
I don’t prefer the style of this diary post either. Give us more story, good sir.
02/07/2009 at 23:59 Aorawn says:
Everybody gets lost in Arkngthand the first time, and nobody finds the cube until their third time, even though subsequent times you will realise it was practically staring you in the face.
03/07/2009 at 00:09 Serondal says:
See if that quest had been Oblivion the green arrow would have been pointing right at it and it would have lit up and floated in the air with a giant icon over it with a hand asking you to grab it and everyone would have said “What as shitty easy quest it is right there in the entrance!”
I think they way they did it tricks you into exploring more fully.
03/07/2009 at 01:23 autogunner says:
I demand flowing prose! as for the dodgy combat, couldnt that be fixed by messing about in the game guts, changing all hits to automatic and assigning damage bonus for increased skill levels? Surely someone must have done that.
03/07/2009 at 02:19 Trithemius says:
Play as a wizard with cheaty magical items and you can pretend it is a fairly wobbly FPS?
And I think that everyone missed that damn cube the first time around. I recall using a precious Icarian Flight scroll to navigate to the topmost tier at the very bottom of that damn dungeon and swearing blisteringly when the cube wasn’t there.
Had a bloody great time though.
03/07/2009 at 02:36 tugboats! says:
Now it’s been a while since I played but I was under the impression that while the widget is indeed right up front, the key to the door it’s behind is way down in the bottom. Or did I misremember?
Regardless, I do like the way they did it – hated the green arrows, and the real fun is in exploring. After all if any old random passer by could walk in and steal it out from under a neon sign saying HEY GUYS TREASURE HERE do you think it’d still be there?
03/07/2009 at 02:38 tugboats! says:
no edit :|
but I was convinced for hours the cube was behind that broken bridge over a lava pool and also wasted an icarian flight to hop two extra feet (and proceeded to stick to the ceiling for 30 sec :D)
05/07/2009 at 10:51 Dcybele says:
I’m just so glad I’m not the only one who couldn’t find the frickin thing the first (few) times :-P
05/07/2009 at 22:46 DebiDalio says:
I absolutely love the Dwemer ruins in Morrowind. They’re my favorite part of the game. I like using the robots for archery target practice.
As with everyone else, the cube room was the last one I went in. I was both annoyed and amused.
I generally prefer the combat system in Oblivion, but I think Morrowind is a much more interesting game. I prefer text over voice since it’s easier to add a lot of color and story in text. I think recorded voices are very limiting in general, though I do like the random phrases that come out of the characters in Morrowind. (“The blue plates are nice, but the brown ones seem to last longer.”)
12/08/2009 at 18:40 Wrigleyvillain says:
Yeah, but by the 50th time I’m like “Screw your damn boots and just kill the freaking Guar N’wah!” :D
I am using a mod that cuts down on NPC utterances but still…