Open source game engine 'OpenMW' for Morrowind has been updated

Quotethe AI will now resurface from water to breathe

AIs need to breathe?! ;)

So when are they adding VR. :P Morrowind is still my favorite Elder Scrolls game, and I'd prefer to play that over SkyrimVR.

I have rediscovered Morrowind after about 15 years, and am beginning to see why some people consider it to be the best of the Elder Scrolls games. It does rock!

And a million thanks to the OpenMW developers!

I should play it already! :( I consider TES to be in my top 5 favorite games. Unfortunately, i have never played through morrowind before, but with OpenMW and OpenCS going strong, i think it is high time to do that, also discover the mods (and maybe try a bit of modding). It's really awesome how some developers manage to give a new life to old classics.

Quoting: dvdI should play it already! :( I consider TES to be in my top 5 favorite games. Unfortunately, i have never played through morrowind before, but with OpenMW and OpenCS going strong, i think it is high time to do that, also discover the mods (and maybe try a bit of modding). It's really awesome how some developers manage to give a new life to old classics.

You should give it a go. It's a different experience to what came after.
I started on Oblivion and then played Skyrim before going back to Morrowind.
The experience is much more deep and it does little hand holding. Just be prepared to read a lot and deal with a VERY unwieldy journal.

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: dvdI should play it already! :( I consider TES to be in my top 5 favorite games. Unfortunately, i have never played through morrowind before, but with OpenMW and OpenCS going strong, i think it is high time to do that, also discover the mods (and maybe try a bit of modding). It's really awesome how some developers manage to give a new life to old classics.

You should give it a go. It's a different experience to what came after.
I started on Oblivion and then played Skyrim before going back to Morrowind.
The experience is much more deep and it does little hand holding. Just be prepared to read a lot and deal with a VERY unwieldy journal.

The one major difference between Morrowind and what came after is Morrowind really more like some old school RPGs. Oblivion and newer they added auto-scaling of creatures. So you can go anywhere at the beginning will still have lower level enemies.

In Morrowind, if you go into some of the dungeons where you don't yet belong, you'll get slaughtered quick! The balancing in Oblivion was terribly broken until some mods fixed it. It was so unbalanced that when you get high enough level all of the bandits around would have high level armor, to the point where you end up just leaving all of it behind.

I still need to re-win Morrowind's main campaign so that I can take on the expansions.

Quoting: slaapliedjeOblivion and newer they added auto-scaling of creatures. So you can go anywhere at the beginning will still have lower level enemies.

That is not true, not true at all. Autoscaling was there since maybe Arena, for sure from Dagerfall.

Problem was mostly in design philosophy.

There are basically two branches of design, as seen by people. One is fun roller-coaster, construct system in a way to allow player be constantly challenged.

The other is basically pre-created world.

First can feel a bit artificial and when you screw the balance, it is BAD.

Second can have a lot of boring places, some people don't like when they play the game "incorrectly", become too strong and then complain that they don't have any challenge and game is too easy. This approach is problematic especially when game is very linear. Different builds can have different strengths and without way to get some extra XP, player can become stranded, unable to defeat next encounter, but having a no way to get his character stronger.

Morrowind is the later approach, Oblivion and Skyrim the former. So like Gothic, Morrowind has a plenty of characters premade and put into locations by hand. Characters are generally not levelled dungeons and so on. Still, there are random encounters (in outside as well as in dungeons). Those are leveled. But each creature and each location have some level range. Some creatures will not spawn if you are far away from their level. Some will level you only in their level range, i.e.:

range 8-13. Which means that if you are below 8, monster would be in level 8 (if it spawns at all) and if you are above 13, monster will be on level 13 (if it spawns at all, again).

However generally, unlike Oblivion and Skyrim, Morrowind was "broken" by design. Level didn't mean a lot and Morrowind provided PLENTY of powerful ways (magical items, potions, training and powerful armours and weapons if you know where to find them) how to deal with enemies.

Oblivion on the other hand was broken by balance. The used system is not significantly different than Morrowind. Problem was that they tried to make it more important and provide the roll-coaster feeling for players, but they screwed balance and monsters leveled with player all the time. In addition, their power usually (unless you played super-efficient) grew more quickly than player. Which made game actually easier if you didn't level at all. In addition, all equip was autoleveled as well. This means even the almost-unique armours like ebony, daedric and glass were quite common, glass in particular, as light armour, was present on every single random bandit. Oblivion removed a lot of freedom and "exploits" from Morrowind, so it wasn't that easy to combat those overleveled monsters.

They realized it and in Skyrim, they got rid of most of their system completely. Skyrim got rid of all the useless stats and instead put there perks, which can work better for specialization and creation of interesting characters. Unfortunately, they botched it again my making plenty of perks boring. The autolevel was also much better, leveling weapons and armour as well. However, leveling monsters was done in a bit boring way (not that anyone else figured how to make it better), their AI is usually poor and thus monsters have to rise in both HP and DMG. Which makes them bullet sponges. This makes every character slowly approach the master class: archer assassin. Which through sneak attack and hiding back can deal with those bullet sponges. Still, if you don't try to play it on legendary, its fine. Especially if you have immortal followers who can soak some attacks. Or you are summoner.

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: dvdI should play it already! :( I consider TES to be in my top 5 favorite games. Unfortunately, i have never played through morrowind before, but with OpenMW and OpenCS going strong, i think it is high time to do that, also discover the mods (and maybe try a bit of modding). It's really awesome how some developers manage to give a new life to old classics.

You should give it a go. It's a different experience to what came after.
I started on Oblivion and then played Skyrim before going back to Morrowind.
The experience is much more deep and it does little hand holding. Just be prepared to read a lot and deal with a VERY unwieldy journal.

I played them in the same order. I played way more Oblivion though, i kept playing that even after playing Skyrim, to me it always felt like skyrim was mainly a graphical upgrade, which was great for the item mods, but the whole system of play seemed like a dumbed down version of Oblivions. I still feel like it would've been a fuller experience if they integrated perks/new skills into the existing system.

The little i tried from Morrowind in openmw, i liked it, and the fact that lots of mods are now compatible with it makes playing it all the more desirable.

I agree about the assassin/archer combo got way more powerful, especially after Oblivion, in which they were practically useless. The reverse happened to mages, they were enjoyable in Oblivion, but it got worse in Skyrim, where the master spells with their stationary animations are more a hinderance than help. I heard that the new Creation Club idea backfired as well (disclaimer: i haven't actually played skyrim in the last 5 years or so, nor plan on it unless a port magically happens)

Quoting: dvd

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: dvdI should play it already! :( I consider TES to be in my top 5 favorite games. Unfortunately, i have never played through morrowind before, but with OpenMW and OpenCS going strong, i think it is high time to do that, also discover the mods (and maybe try a bit of modding). It's really awesome how some developers manage to give a new life to old classics.

You should give it a go. It's a different experience to what came after.
I started on Oblivion and then played Skyrim before going back to Morrowind.
The experience is much more deep and it does little hand holding. Just be prepared to read a lot and deal with a VERY unwieldy journal.

I played them in the same order. I played way more Oblivion though, i kept playing that even after playing Skyrim, to me it always felt like skyrim was mainly a graphical upgrade, which was great for the item mods, but the whole system of play seemed like a dumbed down version of Oblivions. I still feel like it would've been a fuller experience if they integrated perks/new skills into the existing system.

The little i tried from Morrowind in openmw, i liked it, and the fact that lots of mods are now compatible with it makes playing it all the more desirable.

I agree about the assassin/archer combo got way more powerful, especially after Oblivion, in which they were practically useless. The reverse happened to mages, they were enjoyable in Oblivion, but it got worse in Skyrim, where the master spells with their stationary animations are more a hinderance than help. I heard that the new Creation Club idea backfired as well (disclaimer: i haven't actually played skyrim in the last 5 years or so, nor plan on it unless a port magically happens)

I usually go for a big stupid brutish fighter on my first playthroughs on most Elder Scrolls games and it works out rather ok-ish. I can still be slaughtered by an enemy that's too powerful or if I lack enough skills. Sadly I end up just doing the quests in Oblivion and NEVER feeling the itch to explore.

One recommendation I do have are the sureAI team who make huge overhauls for the Elder Scrolls games. New continents, new combat systems etc. Feels like a new game made in same engine at times.
I highly recommend Nehrim and Enderal. Both fully voiced (though the former only in German) and with really good stories.

i remember trying nehrim, it was good (at least i think it was already around when i played.) One of my go-to mods was FCOM. Also The lost spires, another one i still remember. Iirc OBSE, OBGE did not play very nicely with wine, and Oblivion was horrible under multi-core cpus. I would play/buy it/skyrim if a port happened, so i'll keep dreaming. :)