Cliff racers flyyyyy soooo hiiiiiigh
Before I'd become incapacitated, I'd been playing a lot of Oblivion. Unfortunately, that involves my desktop, which is both upstairs and does not exactly facilitate elevating my b0rked limb. So I decided to install good ol' Morrowind - which devoured so many hours when I was a senior in college - on my Macbook Pro under a Parallels WinXP VM. I figured it might run better in emulation then its more up-to-date cousin. I installed all the patches up to 1.6.0.1820, and then installed the unofficial patch, and then installed the unofficial code patch. And yet still--
Damn. How did I ever play this game? Next to Oblivion it feels almost unplayable. Some of it is just UI differences between the two games; like getting used to using right-click instead of tab to bring up my menus. There's also some slowdown when I change areas, pick plants, etc, which could be due to it running in emulation. I'm not sure how to tweak that appropriately, really. Virtual memory on the VM, video effects, yeah, but it's going to take a while to tweak.
But there are things like... you could fail at making potions and casting spells. You wanted to make a cure poison potion? Oops, you just whiffed with your only usable ingredients. There's also the fact that many alchemy ingredients have negative effects, despite the fact there's no poison system in Morrowind. So lots of alchemy ingredients have effects like drain fatigue or paralyze, just to fuck you up, as far as I can tell. The fact that you can combine potions with effects you can't see at your alchemy level seemed like a nice feature back when I was playing in college, but now it just feels like I need to try every possible combination because there could be ones I'm not seeing just by flicking through my inventory.
You do a lot of failing at first, in general, in Morrowind. I spent a lot of time walking around the outskirts of Seyda Neen, nearly failing at killing scribs and kwama and mudcrabs, because half of my attacks just missed. Then I spent forever finding a place to sleep in Seyda Neen, because you can't regain health, magicka, etc, just by waiting, and since I have Tribunal installed, if I try to rest in the wilderness the Dark Brotherhood will come and fuck me up. (But Mr. Lachance, we were such good friends in Oblivion! You gave me a sword and everything!)
The Persuasion system is worse than useless. It seems like half the time if you admire or bribe someone, they end up liking you *less*. Elone, the Redguard on the second floor of Arrille's Tradinghouse, for example, clearly has some training to offer, but I can't get her to offer it to me, no matter how I try to persuade her. I didn't like the Persuasian mini-game in Oblivion, but it seems vastly preferable to this.
It seems like there are a lot more clipping/collision issues in Morrowind than in Oblivion, too... I feel like I spent a lot more time getting caught on the scenery. And seriously, did I always have to hold down shift *before* I hit 'W' to run? As in, W + shift doesn't work, just shift + W? And I swear there wasn't a toggle for Sneak in vanilla Morrowind; is this something the code patch has "fixed"? (An erratically working toggle, I've found. This is how I ended up accidentally pickpocketing a Khajiit slave in the the baby dungeon right outside Seyda Neen).
Also, the sheer number of skills in Morrowind! In addition to Light and Heavy Armor, there's Medium armor, which is basically useless, because there's no high level Medium armor equivalent to Ebony or Glass armor. (Daedric armor is a lot harder to find in Morrowind than in Oblivion, so I'm not counting it). There's also a Spear skill, long blades AND short blades, an Enchant skill, etc. As far as I can tell Spear is only useful for increasing Endurance. And don't get me started on the fact that you have to buy your left and right gauntlets and pauldrons separately...
Lighting enhancements just... don't work. Like, you can pick up and equip a torch, but it may or may not actually light your way, and it will just disappear, without a trace, after a while (Without even the benefit of the snuffing out animation you get in Oblivion). I remembered closing all my drapes and turning off all my lights to explore dungeons in Morrowind, but I didn't recall that it was because everything in this game was so, so bloody dark, and there was no effective way to fix that. Okay, well, you can turn up the gamma to hell, but that's about it, and the effect is minimal. (Oblivion is dark, too, but we're talking levels of magnitude difference here).
And augh, having to equip lockpicks to use them! Now I remember the number of times I accidentally went into battle with a lockpick in hand.
Worst of all, if you talk to the NPCs about daedra, they classify Sheogorath as one of the "bad daedra", in the same category as Molag Bal and Mehrunes Dagon. Sorry, I don't classify the daedric prince of madness as in the same category as the daedric princes of torture and the bloody scourge, even if his role in Morrowind is to send you to kill a bull netch with a fork. But maybe that's just because Shivering Isles Sheogorath is adorkable.
And it's hard to be threatened by anyone who says that clouds taste like butter and tears.
Dunno. Maybe I'll feel better when I get to the guar. Or... the cliff racers.
*gulp* Nevermind.
Damn. How did I ever play this game? Next to Oblivion it feels almost unplayable. Some of it is just UI differences between the two games; like getting used to using right-click instead of tab to bring up my menus. There's also some slowdown when I change areas, pick plants, etc, which could be due to it running in emulation. I'm not sure how to tweak that appropriately, really. Virtual memory on the VM, video effects, yeah, but it's going to take a while to tweak.
But there are things like... you could fail at making potions and casting spells. You wanted to make a cure poison potion? Oops, you just whiffed with your only usable ingredients. There's also the fact that many alchemy ingredients have negative effects, despite the fact there's no poison system in Morrowind. So lots of alchemy ingredients have effects like drain fatigue or paralyze, just to fuck you up, as far as I can tell. The fact that you can combine potions with effects you can't see at your alchemy level seemed like a nice feature back when I was playing in college, but now it just feels like I need to try every possible combination because there could be ones I'm not seeing just by flicking through my inventory.
You do a lot of failing at first, in general, in Morrowind. I spent a lot of time walking around the outskirts of Seyda Neen, nearly failing at killing scribs and kwama and mudcrabs, because half of my attacks just missed. Then I spent forever finding a place to sleep in Seyda Neen, because you can't regain health, magicka, etc, just by waiting, and since I have Tribunal installed, if I try to rest in the wilderness the Dark Brotherhood will come and fuck me up. (But Mr. Lachance, we were such good friends in Oblivion! You gave me a sword and everything!)
The Persuasion system is worse than useless. It seems like half the time if you admire or bribe someone, they end up liking you *less*. Elone, the Redguard on the second floor of Arrille's Tradinghouse, for example, clearly has some training to offer, but I can't get her to offer it to me, no matter how I try to persuade her. I didn't like the Persuasian mini-game in Oblivion, but it seems vastly preferable to this.
It seems like there are a lot more clipping/collision issues in Morrowind than in Oblivion, too... I feel like I spent a lot more time getting caught on the scenery. And seriously, did I always have to hold down shift *before* I hit 'W' to run? As in, W + shift doesn't work, just shift + W? And I swear there wasn't a toggle for Sneak in vanilla Morrowind; is this something the code patch has "fixed"? (An erratically working toggle, I've found. This is how I ended up accidentally pickpocketing a Khajiit slave in the the baby dungeon right outside Seyda Neen).
Also, the sheer number of skills in Morrowind! In addition to Light and Heavy Armor, there's Medium armor, which is basically useless, because there's no high level Medium armor equivalent to Ebony or Glass armor. (Daedric armor is a lot harder to find in Morrowind than in Oblivion, so I'm not counting it). There's also a Spear skill, long blades AND short blades, an Enchant skill, etc. As far as I can tell Spear is only useful for increasing Endurance. And don't get me started on the fact that you have to buy your left and right gauntlets and pauldrons separately...
Lighting enhancements just... don't work. Like, you can pick up and equip a torch, but it may or may not actually light your way, and it will just disappear, without a trace, after a while (Without even the benefit of the snuffing out animation you get in Oblivion). I remembered closing all my drapes and turning off all my lights to explore dungeons in Morrowind, but I didn't recall that it was because everything in this game was so, so bloody dark, and there was no effective way to fix that. Okay, well, you can turn up the gamma to hell, but that's about it, and the effect is minimal. (Oblivion is dark, too, but we're talking levels of magnitude difference here).
And augh, having to equip lockpicks to use them! Now I remember the number of times I accidentally went into battle with a lockpick in hand.
Worst of all, if you talk to the NPCs about daedra, they classify Sheogorath as one of the "bad daedra", in the same category as Molag Bal and Mehrunes Dagon. Sorry, I don't classify the daedric prince of madness as in the same category as the daedric princes of torture and the bloody scourge, even if his role in Morrowind is to send you to kill a bull netch with a fork. But maybe that's just because Shivering Isles Sheogorath is adorkable.
And it's hard to be threatened by anyone who says that clouds taste like butter and tears.
Dunno. Maybe I'll feel better when I get to the guar. Or... the cliff racers.
*gulp* Nevermind.