I've been on a real Elder Scrolls kick lately. I've mentioned previously spending some time with Skyrim and Morrowind lately; the latter has given me the slip once again, I'm here to report. Or maybe I'd just rather spend time with its younger, prettier, and more friendly cousins. I think I'll get back around to Skyrim eventually, for the long haul, but in the throes of my recent fascination with the series, I had to check out Daggerfall, the only one of the games I had not played.
It didn't go over so well. I had a better time playing Arena for a short while, as a matter of fact. That's partly on me, though. I didn't RTFM like I knew I should have, and so I completely missed the fact you can look up and down in the game world, and also easily rebind keys. These follies as well as the game's inherent bugginess--my first character spawned knee-deep in the floor, unable to ascend stairs--put me off it sooner than was probably merited. That's OK, though. I have a history of coming back around to this series.
Last, and probably least, I picked up The Elder Scrolls Online in the recent Steam sale. Never was a game less necessary, but that said, there is something compulsive to it's playability. I liken it to junk food, the type of air-injected, sodium-laced carbohydrate empty calorie crap we all know is no good, but can't keep ourselves form engaging with all the same. It's all too easy to just jump right in and grind out some mindless quests and experience points in a bland, non-challenging setting and circumstance, as compared to challenging myself to progress in something requiring thought. I have an Orc Templar who is level 7 or 8, focused on heavy armor and two-handed weapons and healing skills. I guess I'm trying to be a tank, if I ever happen to play with other humans in this game. Since it's subscription-free, I guess that's not entirely implausible.
Jumping into our space ship and engaging our FTL drive, let's get galactic. I'm circling back around to Elite: Dangerous. I've had some podcast listening time free lately, and I still have a long way left to traverse back to inhabited space to unload this wealth of exploration data I've been carrying. I'll have been away so long the game will have shifted around me in my absence. I hope this data is still worth something. There's a new arcade mode to the game called CQC, which they somehow reconcile with your in-galaxy persona via your pilot ranking. I may check that mode out in the next week.
Finally, back to roleplaying, but remaining in the space variety, I'm playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic again. I've never made it more than maybe a third of the way into the game thanks to bugs and attrition, but this attempt is going well, so far.
I'm playing a light side Revan (of course I know the twist), though I have made a mistake or two, most notably proceeding with breaking the law in order to duel to the death with Bendak Starkiller. I was under the impression that killing him was OK, as it was to fulfill a government ordered bounty, but I got dark side points anyway, either due to participating in bloodsport to accomplish the end, or simply for the fact I killed him in cold blood--though wouldn't a hot blooded kill also be giving into the dark side? If killing itself is of the dark side, then why don't I suffer a penalty for all the trash mobs I take down wandering the world? Is it because they are hostile to me before I am to them? Perhaps that's the rationale. Either way, Bendak's blaster is apparently the best in the game, so I'm proceeding with this mistake as part of my character's background. After all, it's the least of black marks in his history.
Showing posts with label Morrowind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morrowind. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Monday, December 21, 2015
RPG Bingo Bango Bongo
I'm not sure what it is about me and ricocheting between roleplaying games at the moment, but I'm having a good time.
I got to thinking about Morrowind for some reason, perhaps in reflection about the recent bouts of Skyrim and Arena I've played. It's always been the one that got away from me. I've taken multiple runs at it, but something always causes them to be aborted. Most recently, on a modded install, I got a good way down the Thieves' Guild quest line before something caused the install to be corrupted, which I guess took the save files with it.
This time, I'm playing vanilla, without even having hacked the resolution. There's something pure about doing so. I created a Redguard Knight, and I'm roleplaying appropriately chivalrously, so far down the main story path. I would love to complete the game at some point, but who knows if that will ever happen?
UnderRail, a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game--one heavily influenced by the first couple of Fallout games--just recently came out of Early Access on Steam. I bit, firstly out of genuine interest, and secondly as a gag to talk about it in place of another game with a similar sounding title on the Game Bytes podcast.
It feels like a not-that-distant cousin of Fallout. It has a very similar isometric point of view, combat uses the same turn-based action point system, and much of the game is presented in a similar fashion. I'm not far enough in to really speak for the writing, but the setup seems interesting thus far. That I'd describe as Metro 2033. So, Fallout 1/2 mechanics and play meet Metro's setting, though it's not apparent where on Earth (if it is Earth) the game is set, at least to this point.
The one very interesting innovation I've seen so far is in it's optional (you can choose a more traditional variant at the game's outset) experience system, called the oddity experience system. Under these rules, experience points are awarded not for combat, but for discovering odd artifacts and effects throughout the world. I only need 4 xp to level up to level 2, and I have three now, one from completing an early quest and two from finding interesting objects in seemingly random locations. Both objects were written documents providing further background on the world's factions, which is also an interesting choice. It seems like a cool idea with potential to heighten the roleplaying experience.
I got to thinking about Morrowind for some reason, perhaps in reflection about the recent bouts of Skyrim and Arena I've played. It's always been the one that got away from me. I've taken multiple runs at it, but something always causes them to be aborted. Most recently, on a modded install, I got a good way down the Thieves' Guild quest line before something caused the install to be corrupted, which I guess took the save files with it.
This time, I'm playing vanilla, without even having hacked the resolution. There's something pure about doing so. I created a Redguard Knight, and I'm roleplaying appropriately chivalrously, so far down the main story path. I would love to complete the game at some point, but who knows if that will ever happen?
UnderRail, a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game--one heavily influenced by the first couple of Fallout games--just recently came out of Early Access on Steam. I bit, firstly out of genuine interest, and secondly as a gag to talk about it in place of another game with a similar sounding title on the Game Bytes podcast.
It feels like a not-that-distant cousin of Fallout. It has a very similar isometric point of view, combat uses the same turn-based action point system, and much of the game is presented in a similar fashion. I'm not far enough in to really speak for the writing, but the setup seems interesting thus far. That I'd describe as Metro 2033. So, Fallout 1/2 mechanics and play meet Metro's setting, though it's not apparent where on Earth (if it is Earth) the game is set, at least to this point.
The one very interesting innovation I've seen so far is in it's optional (you can choose a more traditional variant at the game's outset) experience system, called the oddity experience system. Under these rules, experience points are awarded not for combat, but for discovering odd artifacts and effects throughout the world. I only need 4 xp to level up to level 2, and I have three now, one from completing an early quest and two from finding interesting objects in seemingly random locations. Both objects were written documents providing further background on the world's factions, which is also an interesting choice. It seems like a cool idea with potential to heighten the roleplaying experience.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Where the Wind Takes Me
I've been kind of flitting from thing to thing for the past three weeks, not really committed to any one game, but dabbling in quite a few, some even for more extended periods.
Super Mario 3D Land saw a few minutes' play, as did my replay of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on the PC.
I wanted to play a little more Morrowind, but the install was corrupted, so I ditched that once more, and instead started Skyrim. The fifth Elder Scrolls game feels a whole lot like the fourth, but with some quality of life improvements. This is my first time really focusing on a bow-wielding in this series, though, and together with stealth, it's working out pretty well, so far. I would guess Skyrim would see a lot of play time, but to be honest, that is scarce these days, so I'm not too sure about that.
I've spent a little time with Shogun 2, trying to crack that game, somewhat half-heartedly. I've got it in me to give it a few more honest tries, when the wind is right. It was right for Dota 2 last week. I played three or four matches, the first in quite a while. It's still great fun.
I caught a not-so-fresh whiff of Terraria, though. It just strikes me as a flat Minecraft. I don't care for the way it handles, and I feel no motivation to build or explore as a consequence of that. I know it has dissimilarities to Minecraft, but I can't help but feel like I'd rather play the latter, and spend that time in game with a world with more depth, if you will. Rather than play Terraria any more, maybe I'll check out Starbound sometime in the future. The space exploration angle has caught my eye.
The Spelunky daily challenge is still part of my routine, and doesn't show any signs of fading from it. I keep getting further and collecting more treasure; I think I might complete it at some point--through the temple, anyway. Another game I might complete at some point, because it really is very interesting, is Dark Souls. I've gotten back around to my quest there, and made some good progress in the last week or so. Namely, getting through the Depths and the Gaping Dragon, and on into Blighttown, on my way to wherever that second bell is. I doubt I'll be done with this game by the time the sequel is out, but I'm not too concerned with that.
Another very challenging and interesting game I've dipped into is La-Mulana. It's got a fun look and feel, and great music, too. Imagine if the combination of Metroid and Castlevania occurred on the SNES rather than the PSX, and now dress that in an Indiana-Jones-by-way-of-Japan style, that is about what you're looking at with La-Mulana. It is known for difficult bosses and even more difficult puzzles. I'm drawn to explore its ruins some more.
It would be remiss for me to not mention The Banner Saga here. I'm a few hours in, and have been really very impressed with all aspects of the game. It's a war story set in a frozen Nordic fantasy land where you play the leaders of two refugee caravans traveling the land in search of safety and salvation, and it's very well done. It makes an interesting companion piece to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It shares many themes and motifs with those, though the execution is quite different.
On the book front, I'm about 365 pages into Red Storm Rising now; still under the half-way point, but it's pretty good, so far. It's wild seeing a presumably realistic take on how World War III might have played out in the mid-eighties.
Super Mario 3D Land saw a few minutes' play, as did my replay of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on the PC.
I wanted to play a little more Morrowind, but the install was corrupted, so I ditched that once more, and instead started Skyrim. The fifth Elder Scrolls game feels a whole lot like the fourth, but with some quality of life improvements. This is my first time really focusing on a bow-wielding in this series, though, and together with stealth, it's working out pretty well, so far. I would guess Skyrim would see a lot of play time, but to be honest, that is scarce these days, so I'm not too sure about that.
I've spent a little time with Shogun 2, trying to crack that game, somewhat half-heartedly. I've got it in me to give it a few more honest tries, when the wind is right. It was right for Dota 2 last week. I played three or four matches, the first in quite a while. It's still great fun.
I caught a not-so-fresh whiff of Terraria, though. It just strikes me as a flat Minecraft. I don't care for the way it handles, and I feel no motivation to build or explore as a consequence of that. I know it has dissimilarities to Minecraft, but I can't help but feel like I'd rather play the latter, and spend that time in game with a world with more depth, if you will. Rather than play Terraria any more, maybe I'll check out Starbound sometime in the future. The space exploration angle has caught my eye.
The Spelunky daily challenge is still part of my routine, and doesn't show any signs of fading from it. I keep getting further and collecting more treasure; I think I might complete it at some point--through the temple, anyway. Another game I might complete at some point, because it really is very interesting, is Dark Souls. I've gotten back around to my quest there, and made some good progress in the last week or so. Namely, getting through the Depths and the Gaping Dragon, and on into Blighttown, on my way to wherever that second bell is. I doubt I'll be done with this game by the time the sequel is out, but I'm not too concerned with that.
Another very challenging and interesting game I've dipped into is La-Mulana. It's got a fun look and feel, and great music, too. Imagine if the combination of Metroid and Castlevania occurred on the SNES rather than the PSX, and now dress that in an Indiana-Jones-by-way-of-Japan style, that is about what you're looking at with La-Mulana. It is known for difficult bosses and even more difficult puzzles. I'm drawn to explore its ruins some more.
It would be remiss for me to not mention The Banner Saga here. I'm a few hours in, and have been really very impressed with all aspects of the game. It's a war story set in a frozen Nordic fantasy land where you play the leaders of two refugee caravans traveling the land in search of safety and salvation, and it's very well done. It makes an interesting companion piece to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It shares many themes and motifs with those, though the execution is quite different.
On the book front, I'm about 365 pages into Red Storm Rising now; still under the half-way point, but it's pretty good, so far. It's wild seeing a presumably realistic take on how World War III might have played out in the mid-eighties.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Just When I Think I'm Out
Something pulled me back into Fallout: New Vegas this past weekend. I just wanted to get in there and get that Desert Ranger armor, so I played through the Honest Hearts DLC first, and then continued on to finish up some miscellaneous side quests around the Mojave. Honest Hearts had some really great writing, and it wasn't all contained in the primary quests. I felt like the journal entries of the "Father In The Cave" told one of the greatest stories in all of New Vegas. Then, to top it off, I came away from it with his cool Desert Ranger Combat Armor and Survivalist's Rifle, along with a sweet new pistol from the Burned Man, Joshua Graham, called A Light In The Darkness. I really am playing a badass wasteland drifter and gunslinger gal, now. There is still a bunch of content to get to in the game, as well.
Simultaneously, I am also now farther into Morrowind than I have ever been, before. I've climbed a good way up the ladder of the Thieves' Guild, and I've acquired some great weapons and armor even though my character is still only level 2. I still haven't decided my approach to playing through other guild quest lines and the main one, though I am leaning toward multiple characters. I think Elder Scrolls games work best treated as giant worlds to really role play in as though you were a somewhat plausible person, and not the focal point of all the worlds' goings-on--aside from the main quest lines, of course, where you are often The Chosen One.
There is an interesting point of contrast here between Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, which always cast you as the fulcrum of the world's future, and where every choice comes with an opportunity cost. In Fallout, going down one path will close off the other to you, and that is almost never the case in the Elder Scrolls. In Oblivion and Skyrim, they even make it so key NPCs cannot be killed and your reputation is very malleable, meaning that you can at any time go from being head assassin and dread lord to high paladin and mighty savior with relatively little effort.
Here and there, I've also gotten in quick hits of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and even New Super Mario Bros. with my daughter watching. I finally found how to get to that stupid warp pipe in World 1. I've even played a bit of some iOS stuff, though I try to make it a policy not to think too much about that platform of mostly disposable games. I may make exceptions here and there, but not today.
Simultaneously, I am also now farther into Morrowind than I have ever been, before. I've climbed a good way up the ladder of the Thieves' Guild, and I've acquired some great weapons and armor even though my character is still only level 2. I still haven't decided my approach to playing through other guild quest lines and the main one, though I am leaning toward multiple characters. I think Elder Scrolls games work best treated as giant worlds to really role play in as though you were a somewhat plausible person, and not the focal point of all the worlds' goings-on--aside from the main quest lines, of course, where you are often The Chosen One.
There is an interesting point of contrast here between Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, which always cast you as the fulcrum of the world's future, and where every choice comes with an opportunity cost. In Fallout, going down one path will close off the other to you, and that is almost never the case in the Elder Scrolls. In Oblivion and Skyrim, they even make it so key NPCs cannot be killed and your reputation is very malleable, meaning that you can at any time go from being head assassin and dread lord to high paladin and mighty savior with relatively little effort.
Here and there, I've also gotten in quick hits of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and even New Super Mario Bros. with my daughter watching. I finally found how to get to that stupid warp pipe in World 1. I've even played a bit of some iOS stuff, though I try to make it a policy not to think too much about that platform of mostly disposable games. I may make exceptions here and there, but not today.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
I Guess I'm Playing Morrowind Now
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and I go way back. All the way back to 2002, and its release, as a matter of fact. I had just gotten a sweet (for the time) new Sony Vaio laptop--that, get this, you could separate the main section from the base docking station/disc drive--and was looking to explore my favorite gaming genre, the RPG, on this hot new platform. Little did I know, it had next to zero video memory, and the best I could get the game to run was at probably 10 FPS at 400x200 with minimum settings. Needless to say, I didn't get a whole lot of questing done at the time, though not for lack of trying.
I had tried installing the game on subsequent computers I encountered, but always met with either similarly poor performance results or a lack of time to really dig into the game. I even briefly had the game running on my current PC, modded, a few years back, but did not follow through on actually playing it very much probably due to playing WoW or something. I think I did a complete OS update and re-install since then, as well.
Fast forward to the present, and having just finished up New Vegas, and not wanting to dive into its DLC just yet, I had almost out of nowhere a hankering to play Morrowind. I couldn't explain why, but I decided to roll with it, found the best suite of modernization overhaul mods, and got started. I decided I wanted to play a stealthy character, and so I created a thief and got started in on the Thieves' Guild quests. So far, so good. I'm five or six quests in, and still level 1, though, so I'm a bit worried about venturing out into the countryside around the town I've found myself in, Al'duruhk or some such, a desert town, by the looks of things. This is by far the deepest I've made it into Morrowind. I think it'll take, this time.
I am enjoying the keyword-centered dialogue system, as well as the greater lengths the player has to go to just to find out where to go and what should be done to best complete the current quest. Later Bethesda games, of course, made it trivialized that process with the ever-present map marker. I'm torn on whether I prefer it to be there or not. I feel like not having it forces the player to invest more in the world to puzzle out where they should go, but at times you don't want to play the guessing game and just want to know what stupid thing in the environment needs to have 'E' pushed on it in order to carry on.
I found, with Oblivion, that I enjoyed the game more if I rolled a new character for each guild's quest line, so that I could tailor their build around what I thought my play style would have to end up being for that part of the game. I may end up doing that for Morrowind, too. Or perhaps use the same character for the equivalent of the Dark Brotherhood as for the Thieves' Guild, and then if I roll up others, pick whichever I like the best to run the main quest line with.
Much remains to be determined about my playing Morrowind. I'm not feeling very antsy about moving on to much else, though, at least not until July 25th, and the release of Shadowrun Returns (which I backed on Kickstarter, and looks really cool). Maybe I'll make this an RPG-focused summer.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Don't Stop Till You Get Enough
I've been going absolutely nuts for role-playing games recently. Almost every game I played over the past week has been one sort of stat grinder.
The first couple of nights last week I spent finishing up Mass Effect. I went through this whole huge rigmarole required to download the Bring Down The Sky DLC, and then off-handedly decided to forgo actually playing it and instead returned to the main storyline and followed that to it's conclusion. I stayed in character as much as possible, finishing up as a truly ruthless renegade. Overall, I thought it was a fantastic game, a solid A in my book.
I'm now faced with the choice of going back and trying to get more achievements and finish more side stuff on the same character, or playing through fresh on another character, presumably with the benefits afforded by the achievements I got on my first playthrough. I may have already bungled the Ally achievements applicable to this playthrough (Liara and Ashley), so maybe I should let go and start my paragon playthrough next, though I kind of want to go tooling around some uncharted worlds without sitting through 2-3 hours of citadel stuff first.
For a long, long while I've had a couple of little sticks stuck in the mud of my mind, both games I purchased a long, long time ago, and was either never able to get into or never able to make run on the weak laptop that I had before my current gaming PC. They are Icewind Dale and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I dug out the discs for both of them this week, and got them both installed and got a bunch of characters rolled up and introductory bits completed, so that now I sit with fresh characters and open roads ahead of me on both games. The two coalesce in my mind into the gaping entrance to a cavern where many, many hours can be lost, and I hesitate to put my foot forward into it, but feel drawn in all the same.
These two games, along with Diablo II, have put me in a spot where I'm playing a lot of old-looking PC games, and knowing what sort of stuff there is out there, I got to looking, and I found mods for Morrowind and Diablo II that let me up the resolution of both games and play them in widescreen. I'm running D2 (single player, not on b.net, which doesn't allow the mod) in 720p widescreen, which I found to be the best in terms of looks and visibility. If you take it to 1080p, items and text are just too tiny for comfort. It's a damned gorgeous game in 720p, though. The 2D art holds up really well. Morrowind mainly just benefits from being in widescreen and taking up the entirety of my 22" monitor, being a 3D game. I'm running it in some crazy thing like 20xx by 1xxx, I don't even know what, but it looks good.
Getting D2 up in such a good-looking fashion prompted me to start another character, since I didn't have any offline previously, and so I did a redux on my Paladin, centering him around the skill Zeal for maximum lethality. I finished the first act of the game last night at level 16. I've got some awesome synchronicity going between Zeal (2 mana for 5 successive hits on whatever is nearby) and a ring that grants 1 mana for every kill. I could, theoretically, spend 2 mana to kill a bunch of guys, and make 5 back, given the right circumstances. It's great.
Last, and least, I bought a couple of iphone games on the cheap and put just a little time into both--Doom Resurrection and Zenonia. The former is a rail-shooter with in a Doom motif where aiming is done by tilting the device. It's not bad, being nothing more than an arcade-like diversion good for a few minutes of shooty shooty here and there. Zenonia, though, appears to be much more. At first brush, it comes off as some sort of western/eastern action-rpg hybrid, some witches' brew of Zelda/16-bit JRPG/Diablo tropes. I've only barely started it, but I've heard good remarks from multiple sources that comment on this type of thing.
The first couple of nights last week I spent finishing up Mass Effect. I went through this whole huge rigmarole required to download the Bring Down The Sky DLC, and then off-handedly decided to forgo actually playing it and instead returned to the main storyline and followed that to it's conclusion. I stayed in character as much as possible, finishing up as a truly ruthless renegade. Overall, I thought it was a fantastic game, a solid A in my book.
I'm now faced with the choice of going back and trying to get more achievements and finish more side stuff on the same character, or playing through fresh on another character, presumably with the benefits afforded by the achievements I got on my first playthrough. I may have already bungled the Ally achievements applicable to this playthrough (Liara and Ashley), so maybe I should let go and start my paragon playthrough next, though I kind of want to go tooling around some uncharted worlds without sitting through 2-3 hours of citadel stuff first.
For a long, long while I've had a couple of little sticks stuck in the mud of my mind, both games I purchased a long, long time ago, and was either never able to get into or never able to make run on the weak laptop that I had before my current gaming PC. They are Icewind Dale and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I dug out the discs for both of them this week, and got them both installed and got a bunch of characters rolled up and introductory bits completed, so that now I sit with fresh characters and open roads ahead of me on both games. The two coalesce in my mind into the gaping entrance to a cavern where many, many hours can be lost, and I hesitate to put my foot forward into it, but feel drawn in all the same.
These two games, along with Diablo II, have put me in a spot where I'm playing a lot of old-looking PC games, and knowing what sort of stuff there is out there, I got to looking, and I found mods for Morrowind and Diablo II that let me up the resolution of both games and play them in widescreen. I'm running D2 (single player, not on b.net, which doesn't allow the mod) in 720p widescreen, which I found to be the best in terms of looks and visibility. If you take it to 1080p, items and text are just too tiny for comfort. It's a damned gorgeous game in 720p, though. The 2D art holds up really well. Morrowind mainly just benefits from being in widescreen and taking up the entirety of my 22" monitor, being a 3D game. I'm running it in some crazy thing like 20xx by 1xxx, I don't even know what, but it looks good.
Getting D2 up in such a good-looking fashion prompted me to start another character, since I didn't have any offline previously, and so I did a redux on my Paladin, centering him around the skill Zeal for maximum lethality. I finished the first act of the game last night at level 16. I've got some awesome synchronicity going between Zeal (2 mana for 5 successive hits on whatever is nearby) and a ring that grants 1 mana for every kill. I could, theoretically, spend 2 mana to kill a bunch of guys, and make 5 back, given the right circumstances. It's great.
Last, and least, I bought a couple of iphone games on the cheap and put just a little time into both--Doom Resurrection and Zenonia. The former is a rail-shooter with in a Doom motif where aiming is done by tilting the device. It's not bad, being nothing more than an arcade-like diversion good for a few minutes of shooty shooty here and there. Zenonia, though, appears to be much more. At first brush, it comes off as some sort of western/eastern action-rpg hybrid, some witches' brew of Zelda/16-bit JRPG/Diablo tropes. I've only barely started it, but I've heard good remarks from multiple sources that comment on this type of thing.
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