It's a game of abstractions and endless complexity, but the way those integrate might seem confusing to one unfamiliar. Morrowind, if anything, is the greatest simulator of living in a fictional world ever devised. It might not care as much about the monotonies of day-to-day life in a setting like this, unlike some other games, but it immerses you in the culture and land in a way unlike any other.
Everyone hates you, everywhere pushes you away, everything is too strong to be fought and nothing makes a lick of sense. To successfully integrate into the culture of Morrowind is to basically become a scholar of your own; it's highly advisable to just explore towns, do little errands for people and read books, not only because they provide skill-checks, but often the written information is genuinely useful. What you'll find is one part metaphysical mindfuck once you dig too deep, but another part that's a world that characterizes itself perfectly. Most quests you do are just random tasks you're doing for folks, and you're not typically treated like a legendary figure just for engaging in questlines, but you become more intimately familiar with Morrowind itself, and when you've gone around doing enough quests, reading enough books, plundering enough dungeons and stealing enough herbs (like you should) for the right amount of time, you've breathed in the culture of Vvardenfell. When you fulfill the ancient prophecy, it means something; because you've already learned why and how the ancient prophecy matters. Being able to meet a member of the Tribunal or Sixth House is about as impactful as it should be in the lore, and If it isn't painfully clear already, Morrowind's immersion is excellent and it's the iceing on the exploratory cake of the gameplay. Wandering over a hill and finding something enlightening or just plain fucking weird is great, and the game offers you a million ways to deal with it. It's not a game about dialogue choices per-say, but a game of more general choice. There's nothing the game tells you that you can't do due to your build, just stuff you're not as good at, so preparative thinking before every quest can be essential to make the most of your abilities and minimize the worst. Often, you'll find completely unexpected solutions for quests that came solely as a result of your usage of the mechanics, and it always feels rewarding seeing it happen. There's a point in the game where you'll notice there's buildings that you have to levitate up to, just because: hey, there's genuine wizards in this world! That's Morrowind at its best, and it's up to you to see what will work out... or maybe not, cause you can just go explore elsewhere!
Where it loses people is in muddied abstraction; the game doesn't give many dialogue choices, conversations are treated like browsing wikipedia, it's extremely vague about what some things are supposed to represent in animation terms and, while this is all a flaw of not utilizing the visual part of the medium more, it's easily fixable by letting your mind do the work. Walking up as a newcomer and asking about key-questions to random people in the street, often things they won't know about, feels like the equivalent of asking around in a genuine new place, just scrambling to get clues on the area. Having your character not be visually shown missing hits or dodging them might seem tacky, but mentally fill in the blanks and realize that it serves to convey the dangers of Morrowind, and furthermore, that you can reach a point where you're able to dodge thousands of hits hurdling at you; it's just straight up awesome. There's lots of places that really needed more detail, and the AI can be downright laughable, but by the endgame you're hardly thinking of that because it fed into your growth so well the whole time. For all these abstractions, weirdly complicated mechanics, missed opportunities or immersion-killers, it's incredible that you can still feel perfectly immersed as an outlander at the start being beaten down by shitty insects, and be equally immersed as a CHIM-enlightened Telvanni super-mage who can jump across the continent, blast down fireballs strong enough to eviscerate entire cities and summon armies of otherworldly invaders to do your bidding. It's all immersive, and it all makes perfect canonical sense in Kirkbride's Godhead fever-dream; including console commands! It's an unmatched sense of immersion, it's got unmatched storytelling, it's got an unmatched power curve, the exploration is wonderful, and it has a setting more fascinating than any other fantasy world... well, barring maybe one exception. Praise the Sixth House, and play Morrowind. Try not to view the slow-walking and missing hits as a negative, but as a necessary part of the games mechanically nuanced RPG mechanics; it's all meant to convey the dream, and you're the Nerevarine, not the sharmat. Go forth on your adventure, unless you happen to not be the one, in which case, your time may come again, Moon-and-Star.
Everyone hates you, everywhere pushes you away, everything is too strong to be fought and nothing makes a lick of sense. To successfully integrate into the culture of Morrowind is to basically become a scholar of your own; it's highly advisable to just explore towns, do little errands for people and read books, not only because they provide skill-checks, but often the written information is genuinely useful. What you'll find is one part metaphysical mindfuck once you dig too deep, but another part that's a world that characterizes itself perfectly. Most quests you do are just random tasks you're doing for folks, and you're not typically treated like a legendary figure just for engaging in questlines, but you become more intimately familiar with Morrowind itself, and when you've gone around doing enough quests, reading enough books, plundering enough dungeons and stealing enough herbs (like you should) for the right amount of time, you've breathed in the culture of Vvardenfell. When you fulfill the ancient prophecy, it means something; because you've already learned why and how the ancient prophecy matters. Being able to meet a member of the Tribunal or Sixth House is about as impactful as it should be in the lore, and If it isn't painfully clear already, Morrowind's immersion is excellent and it's the iceing on the exploratory cake of the gameplay. Wandering over a hill and finding something enlightening or just plain fucking weird is great, and the game offers you a million ways to deal with it. It's not a game about dialogue choices per-say, but a game of more general choice. There's nothing the game tells you that you can't do due to your build, just stuff you're not as good at, so preparative thinking before every quest can be essential to make the most of your abilities and minimize the worst. Often, you'll find completely unexpected solutions for quests that came solely as a result of your usage of the mechanics, and it always feels rewarding seeing it happen. There's a point in the game where you'll notice there's buildings that you have to levitate up to, just because: hey, there's genuine wizards in this world! That's Morrowind at its best, and it's up to you to see what will work out... or maybe not, cause you can just go explore elsewhere!
Where it loses people is in muddied abstraction; the game doesn't give many dialogue choices, conversations are treated like browsing wikipedia, it's extremely vague about what some things are supposed to represent in animation terms and, while this is all a flaw of not utilizing the visual part of the medium more, it's easily fixable by letting your mind do the work. Walking up as a newcomer and asking about key-questions to random people in the street, often things they won't know about, feels like the equivalent of asking around in a genuine new place, just scrambling to get clues on the area. Having your character not be visually shown missing hits or dodging them might seem tacky, but mentally fill in the blanks and realize that it serves to convey the dangers of Morrowind, and furthermore, that you can reach a point where you're able to dodge thousands of hits hurdling at you; it's just straight up awesome. There's lots of places that really needed more detail, and the AI can be downright laughable, but by the endgame you're hardly thinking of that because it fed into your growth so well the whole time. For all these abstractions, weirdly complicated mechanics, missed opportunities or immersion-killers, it's incredible that you can still feel perfectly immersed as an outlander at the start being beaten down by shitty insects, and be equally immersed as a CHIM-enlightened Telvanni super-mage who can jump across the continent, blast down fireballs strong enough to eviscerate entire cities and summon armies of otherworldly invaders to do your bidding. It's all immersive, and it all makes perfect canonical sense in Kirkbride's Godhead fever-dream; including console commands! It's an unmatched sense of immersion, it's got unmatched storytelling, it's got an unmatched power curve, the exploration is wonderful, and it has a setting more fascinating than any other fantasy world... well, barring maybe one exception. Praise the Sixth House, and play Morrowind. Try not to view the slow-walking and missing hits as a negative, but as a necessary part of the games mechanically nuanced RPG mechanics; it's all meant to convey the dream, and you're the Nerevarine, not the sharmat. Go forth on your adventure, unless you happen to not be the one, in which case, your time may come again, Moon-and-Star.
9 Comments
Wow PERFECTLY put - morrowind is one of my favorite games of all time and you nailed so much of it in one review.
@Dalaamclouds Thank you! I found not many of the Morrowind reviews (although tons are great stoy analysis) put forth the exact reason the game is just... so damn engrossing to play, so I was hoping I put it well as one of the weirdos who thinks this game is crazy fun and not dull at all.
Currently playing this, and it's interesting that you chose to call it a "game of abstractions", when I'd argue that there is so much abstraction, that there is no game at all, actually. I find it hard to suss out what the actual "gameplay" is. I think calling it a "simulator"---as you did---is more accurate. It might seem pedantic to distinguish something you play with as not strictly a "game", but I think it's telling that they later further gamified the series probably due to some of the criticism they got at the time.
Anyway, thanks, something for me to think about when I write my review.
Anyway, thanks, something for me to think about when I write my review.
@KKGlider I partly agree but I think this is, at the end of the day, a philosophical argument that more depends on your own perspective. So much of gameplay in a game is interpreting signals that, we have to remember it wouldn't mean anything without interpretation. Reaching the flag in Mario is an act of "play" because you accomplish the goal of finishing the level, but if you aren't really playing along then it's just a bunch of flashing lights.
Anyways, a lot of Morrowind is extremely abstract systems and interpretation, but only about as much as say... Myst, I guess, with its puzzles that don't involve much (if any) physical progression and it's mostly screen-clicking. If you get down to it, there's a lot of non-rigid things in a game we still define as playing along, so it's about how your mind contextualizes things. Coining it as a simulator is probably the best route, because regardless of struggle to define the act of playing along with Morrowind, it's pretty clear that there's still a psychological effect working on the player when they're doing the mere act of walking around and the like. I think what you're tapping into is an interesting discussion though; Morrowind does still suffer from not visualizing much of what it should, but since it's all interpretation, it's questionable if that'd add to the gameplay significantly, or merely the illusion of play more. Glad I gave you something to think about with my post, by the way!
Anyways, a lot of Morrowind is extremely abstract systems and interpretation, but only about as much as say... Myst, I guess, with its puzzles that don't involve much (if any) physical progression and it's mostly screen-clicking. If you get down to it, there's a lot of non-rigid things in a game we still define as playing along, so it's about how your mind contextualizes things. Coining it as a simulator is probably the best route, because regardless of struggle to define the act of playing along with Morrowind, it's pretty clear that there's still a psychological effect working on the player when they're doing the mere act of walking around and the like. I think what you're tapping into is an interesting discussion though; Morrowind does still suffer from not visualizing much of what it should, but since it's all interpretation, it's questionable if that'd add to the gameplay significantly, or merely the illusion of play more. Glad I gave you something to think about with my post, by the way!
I like that you brought up the flag in Mario; in a strict definition, a "game" requires an objective and a set of rules---that's not so much philosophy as it is language, I think. So, like, while you can "play" by tossing a football around, it's not until you introduce a set of rules and objectives that you have a football "game".
To support my idea, I'd point out that in the GOTY edition of the manual, the first sentence in the second paragraph, the developers tackle with the frequent question: "What do I do in this game?"
Anyway, I don't mean to say that having no strict gameplay is a negative. In fact, the thing I'm discovering---especially when compared to later entries in the series---the lack of strict gameplay may be one of the reasons Morrowind is uniquely beloved.
To support my idea, I'd point out that in the GOTY edition of the manual, the first sentence in the second paragraph, the developers tackle with the frequent question: "What do I do in this game?"
Anyway, I don't mean to say that having no strict gameplay is a negative. In fact, the thing I'm discovering---especially when compared to later entries in the series---the lack of strict gameplay may be one of the reasons Morrowind is uniquely beloved.
@KKGlider Language is definitely a better term for the core idea I was trying to get across, but the philosophical element is still there IMO, more so coming in the form of interpreting I guess what actually is language in this case.
Definitely agree it's part of the appeal; this is inherent to Morrowind feeling free-form. I think the weirdly intricate traces of content amongst mostly vague "play" are what give it the great immersive quality it does no matter what route you take. Oblivion/Skyrim's overt gameyness are downsides off of my memory, even if I don't dislike those games really, and I think it's because you mentally take in everything you're doing as "video game quest" rather than as being apart of a sincere adventure, unlike Morrowind. Might be a lackluster response; I think you raise extremely interesting ideas, it's something I've thought about a lot while playing myself too but didn't want to focus the review entirely on it.
Definitely agree it's part of the appeal; this is inherent to Morrowind feeling free-form. I think the weirdly intricate traces of content amongst mostly vague "play" are what give it the great immersive quality it does no matter what route you take. Oblivion/Skyrim's overt gameyness are downsides off of my memory, even if I don't dislike those games really, and I think it's because you mentally take in everything you're doing as "video game quest" rather than as being apart of a sincere adventure, unlike Morrowind. Might be a lackluster response; I think you raise extremely interesting ideas, it's something I've thought about a lot while playing myself too but didn't want to focus the review entirely on it.
Beautiful review. You really brought the weird but alluring qualities of Morrowind to life.
chandler
3 months ago