this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Every Bethesda RPG since Morrowind is less interesting than the last. I think Starfield is incredibly bland in my experience so far. At its core, its got all the systems of any Bethesda game in the past two decades, but you can't even get the experience of finding cool things on the path to a mission because most of the exploration is done through a menu with planets and when you land on the planet, the only interesting thing around is your objective. It does a lot of things No Man's Sky does to pad out the typical Bethesda stuff, but it does all of that worse than No Man's Sky. I'm having an... okay time with it, but it's probably my least favorite game they've put out. Which has been true every time they'd put out a game since Morrowind.
What makes Morrowind good? It is a bit dated but I wanna try playing it someday.
It's well written and the world feels truly alien. There's a lot of freedom in what you're capable of if you put your mind to it. Like you can cast spells that will let you jump across the entire map in one go. You can levitate over mountains. You can enchant a pair of daedric gauntlets that have a single fireball charge that will engulf an entire town. The world is full of mysteries and NPCs. The guilds feel more fleshed out, because they actually are in conflict with one another. For instance, a thieves guild mission could lock you out of another guild entirely. Joining one of the three great houses will lock you out of the other two. There's a much greater variety in equipment. Quests can have a lot more text, because every line doesn't have to be voiced. There's wild stuff like literal Gods roaming around some of the cities.
It just feels more fully realized for me.
I'm sure it's hard to pick it up for the first time these days, because the combat is odd. It's first person, but every attack is also still a dice roll under the hood. Just because you were close and your cursor was on an enemy doesn't mean they'll be hit. I think that's the primary thing that will turn off newcomers. Sorry about the rambling post, I'm not great at describing why I enjoy something and I also fully acknowledge there's an element of nostalgia with me and Morrowind.
Let me tell you when you booted that game up back in 2003 as a kid there was nothing else like it. The graphics especially were incredible for the time, nothing had ever come close. Stepping off that ship and into a murky town where you instantly were left to your own devices to do whatever the heck you wanted to... it's difficult to recapture this.
Atmosphere, writing, characters, and freedom to completely break the game with your character's abilities if you choose to.
The writing is what makes it good.