Reader Mailbag: Morrowind in 2022

The one that got away

I was having a conversation over email with ‘Achy Blitz,’ one of my subscribers, who mentioned discovering Morrowind over the last couple of years and falling in love with it.

The full exchange got rather detailed and put a smile on my face, even though Morrowind is one of the few games I regret passing by when it was new.

Below is the full conversation, including a final comment from another subscriber, Alex, who was talking with me about Breath of the Wild when I brought up the idea of diving into Morrowind.

Let us know if you have fond memories of Morrowind, or if you discovered it later, or if you’re in my boat and wonder if maybe you should get around to it one day. Would you recommend Morrowind in 2022?

J Ellis:

I have very few 'gaming regrets' but Morrowind is one of them (easily the biggest of them). When that came out I was in the perfect context to play it - friends had it, it was trivial for me to get ahold of it, everyone I knew had typical desktop PC setups, some of us were getting a little bit into level mods for things like Neverwinter Nights, etc. I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with a friend who was a huge Morrowind fan.

And it just very stupidly didn't happen.

I became such a huge fan of Skyrim about a decade later. It's so obvious that Morrowind was a phenomenon, easily one of the most important 'wRPGs' ever. I feel like: "wow, you really could have participated in all of that when it was happening!"

What was it like for you getting into it this past year or so? Do people still play something that resembles the original release or has it been extensively reshaped via endless fan-mods?

Achy Blitz:

Most people seem to use something called OpenMW, which is very easy to install and does away with many of the outdated quirks like resolution issues, as well as allows you to change settings that can give quality of life improvements, such as town NPCs moving aside if they're in your way, which was especially helpful in narrow pathways. My first full playthrough was done without any mods because I was worried any changes might hurt the intended experience in some way. I don't regret doing it that way since it kept me from taking OpenMW's improvements for granted once I started using it, but I have no plans to return to vanilla Morrowind since it doesn't take away from the experience in any way.

I wasn't really into open world games for a long time, and even tried Skyrim on and off again since its release. But just before and during the pandemic I got more into DnD, and Skyrim had it's billionth re-release that brought it back to my attention, so I gave it another try and ended up really enjoying it. I then went back to play Morrowind after hearing a few good things, and it's now my favorite game ever. Forgive me for this following essay but I can gush about this game for a long time.

It definitely has its divisive elements. For starters, the game uses a hit-chance system for its combat. It was easy for me to adjust to having some experience with tabletop RPGs, but the game is admittedly not that great at demonstrating why attacks miss, or that they're even technically missing in the first place, so many people hate the combat system. I for one find a fun sense of tension in it, and especially with hotkeys it can actually have the most dynamic and fast paced gameplay in the whole series. The movement speed of the character is also really slow, but I think it fits the flow of the gameplay and there are enough areas and incentives to explore that I don't think the slow movement speed is that much of an issue, especially because there are multiple ways to overcome it, and you'll naturally come across those methods even if playing blind.

The main draw, and what kept me engaged, was the lore and tone. The voice acting and dialogue still hold up to this day, but has a cheesy older-game charm that I find hard to articulate, but I frequently have out of context quotes play in my head from that game. There are funny quirks like the main quest giver of the first portion of the game having drug pipes in his bedroom, or a wizard falling to his death from the sky, who you can loot for few scrolls that you can use to jump really high, only to fall to your death if you don't have something to break your fall. The main quest also revolves heavily around the Dunmer's religion, and the way that that's presented in religious texts, and the effects that it has on characters in the universe, was really interesting to me.

Also, being able to superjump, levitate, and teleport are things that were removed from Oblivion and Skyrim due to engine limitations, but are very much missed. In Morrowind, you can't fast travel with the map, and transportation systems you do have are limited in where they can go, so Silt Strider transportation can only take you to adjacent cities, which means you may have to hitch a couple of rides to get where you need to go. It forces you to familiarize yourself with cities locations in relation to each other to figure out how to get around. There is also two spells called "mark" and "recall" that allow you to mark a place and teleport back to it later, as well as a spell called "Almsivi intervention" which brings you to the closest temple, which are almost all located in cities. So if you plan your outing, you're never too far from safety. When you're out exploring it's pretty handy to be able to mark wherever you're at so you can return to a city, sell/buy equipment, and then recall and pick up right where you left off. You don't even have to be trained in the magic class to cast these spells because there are mark and recall potions, as well as almsivi intervention scrolls sold by merchants early on in the game. Even Skyrim allowing you to fast travel with the map doesn't have quite as much control being able to mark the middle of a dungeon to return to later.

Also, since you can levitate, some dungeons are designed with secret areas, or outright require you to levitate in order to progress through them. There is even a powerful house in Morrowind called the Telvanni, the members of which are spellcasters. They live in many areas of the world in overgrown mushroom houses. Most of them have areas of their homes that are only accessible through levitation, so the Telvanni house has a class system based around being able to levitate. I feel a bit bad spoiling that, because discovering that in a blind playthrough was very memorable, but I just love how the inclusion of something like levitation effected exploration, dungeon design, lore, and how characters intertact with each other. They did a great job bringing the world to life.

It has its drawbacks, and it also suffered from some development hell since Bethesda nearly went bankrupt before its release, so there's cut content that would've been great to see completed. But after playing it, I frequently find myself pretty disappointed with open world games, even popular ones like The Witcher 3 and Elden Ring, simply because I miss certain elements from Morrowind. If you ever have a chance and decide to give it another try, I'd be more than happy to answer questions without giving too much information. I like to think of myself as someone that's pretty capable of introducing my interests to others so they don't feel overwhelmed, but I only scratched the surface of the themes and mechanics Morrowind has to offer. It's a very special game to me, and I think it's still very much worth getting into even these days.

The Morrowind subreddit as well as the Steam discussions are still pretty active, with a good mixture of vanilla players and modded players alike. It may not have the following it did on its release, but there's still a dedicated community around this game.

J.

Wow!

That makes me really want to play it. Can you tell me more about the hardware experience? Did you play on a laptop or desktop or maybe a Pi or other SBC? Did you purchase the game on a specific client like Steam or GoG? How does OpenMW work?

I am not sure I've got quite the right machine (in terms of convenience¹) but I could easily be in the market for new hardware soon. I am tempted by the Steam Deck, for instance.

Anyway great recommendation. I remember how into it everyone was that May (in 2002). Just little bit and pieces that I saw.

AB:

I played it on my desktop, which is a pretty good one capable of running even modern games, but I'm fairly sure I've seen people in online communities mention running it on much older computers, and I don't think OpenMW changes that. I can send my specs if you'd like.

I purchased the game on Steam and it ran pretty well, but in 300 hours of playing it on Steam it's crashed about 2 or 3 times. I got in the habit of autosaving frequently, so these crashes never set me back much. I don't know how many hours I've had on OpenMW since it also acts as a launcher and leaves Steam out of the equation, but it has been a much smoother experience and hasn't crashed on me at all. I'll also mention that the vanilla version had the occasionally tendency for the character to get stuck in the geometry, which was easily fixed by typign "fixme" in the console, but OpenMW changes collision in a subtle way that keeps that problem from happening.

OpenMW is very easy to use. Once you download it it'll prompt you to locate the executable for the game itself in your computer, and Steam makes it very easy to find the file path to locate it. After which OpenMW itself prompts everything you need in order to set up the game to your liking. After which you use it as a launcher. At the moment I'm not that computer literate and even I was surprised at how straight forward it was.

One minor recommendation whenever you get a chance to play it, the Steam version comes with both expansion packs that were released, but as good as the expansion packs are, one of them wasn't particularly well implemented. The main quest for one of them involves a storyline about the Dark Brotherhood targeting you, and the game introduces you to this questline by having Dark Brotherhood assassins occasionally ambushing you during rests. They're pretty powerful (though most builds should be capable of killing them at level 1 with some skill), but your experience with them will usually be dying quickly just to load the autosave created automatically before you started your rest.

It only sets you back few seconds, and I've often found their ambushes pretty comedic, but I can imagine it being annoying for a first timer who doesn't know what's going on. One benefit of having them attack you is, should you manage to kill them, they drop some armor that sells for a good price for the early game. I've seen some people talk about how they feel it's kinda cheap to get such an early game economic boost, but Morrowind itself is not really about balance, and I personally enjoy being able to get early game money to train/buy equipment and get my character's build off the ground a little faster. I play it on the highest difficulty, and while it's my preferred way to play, the first few levels can be tough for a first timer. You can disable the expansion packs in OpenMW, but I have yet to test if creating a save file would prevent you from re-enabling the expansions for that particular character.

Alex:

Finished Elden Ring last night! Overall it was fantastic. I've been reading your thoughts on BotW and as I do see some similarities (in terms of an open world that is mostly hands-off and still structured to shape player experiences in a particular way), I'll be curious what you think of it should you end up playing it.

...I can't imagine what it'd be like trying Morrowind for the first time now. I thought it was amazing twenty years ago, but mostly because I enjoyed breaking the alchemy and enchanting systems wide open in ways they've prevented in subsequent games (and I think part of why I disliked Oblivion was there was nothing quite like that to do). It was neat, but I don't know how well it'd hold up without nostalgia. But I don't remember the UI as being problematic, so it could still work. I remember thinking it was absolutely stunning, aesthetically.

1. Extra context for readers: the main issue here is that my wife and I have maintained a laptop-only home for a while, as far as computing, and I’m generally disinclined to do gaming on a laptop even when the specs are in place for it.