Fatcat said:
What do you mean it didn't have any of that? I'll admit Morrowind had it's problems, but it had the completely non-linear quest system, the ability to go anywhere and do anything you wanted, lots of quests, sercrets, and an incredible plot. I palyed Morrowind more than any of the Wc games!
Being as huge a Morrowind fan as Eder is (and that's not sarcasm - we've both spent hundreds of hours playing the damn thing), I gotta agree with him. Morrowind was many things, but it sure wasn't revolutionary.
First, a word about non-linear quest systems. So very non-linear, they all ended the same way, and most only allowed one path to completion
. How shall I put it? Well, StarCraft: Brood War had a few branches in the missions... but that's not what most people remember it for. It's the same with Morrowind - of all the hundreds of quests in the game, there was perhaps a dozen non-linear quests, of which most were in the add-ons (which
were more revolutionary in that sense than the original... though not much more). As for the rest, it was mostly a matter of offering the player multiple linear stories to choose from (extremely shameless plug: my
master's thesis talks about that aspect of Morrowind
), which isn't all that revolutionary.
Now, the things that Eder talked about Morrowind not having, that you were surprised about. Well, let's go through the list and see which of them Morrowind does have...
1. Dynamic game world. Can I wipe out the damn cliff racers if I kill every one of them I ever see? Alas, no
. Can I influence the game world in any way at all? Yes... I can build a mansion and stuff. Except that it's not really dynamic - the few ways in which you can influence the game world are all pre-scripted. There's really nothing else you can do - as is perhaps best demonstrated by going on a killing spree. Yes, you can kill anyone you like in the game, and yes, it's exciting to think about the possibilities of that... but then you suddenly notice that none of it makes any difference. You can wipe out an entire city, pay the fine, and nobody will even remember what you did.
2. Rich characters. Yep, about as rich as the characters in Ultima 6. Because that's exactly what they were.
3. Complex player-NPC/faction relations. Yes, indeed, people could like you or hate you... but the only difference it made was the price for which you could sell stuff. Oh, and some unimportant NPCs would stop talking to you if they hated you... too bad you had no need to talk to them
.
4. Dynamic economic model? Eh, I'm sure you weren't surprised by Eder's suggestion that this one was missing, so I'll skip it.
5. Innovative character building system, levelling system, etc. Well, I love this stuff in Morrowind. It's all neato. But it's certainly not innovative, given that it's all been done before
.
A year or so ago, while discussing Morrowind on ICQ, I suddenly realised that Morrowind is Ultima 6 with really, really, really great graphics and sound. Now, Ultima 6 was a wonderful game, so that's certainly no insult to Morrowind - but it's true nonetheless. There was nothing in Morrowind that had not been done before in Ultima 6 (and Daggerfall, in the case of the character/levelling systems). More disturbing is the fact that Ultima 6 was in some aspects
better that Morrowind - you know, being able to ride horses and sail boats, having NPCs with schedules more complex than 'stand for 24 hours in one spot', and so on.
As for Oblivion... well, as a TES fan I'm certain it will be really great, really fun, and altogether neato. But somehow, I doubt it will be especially innovative. At best, it's gonna be Ultima 9 (which, IIRC, was the one where Origin was really excited about how the NPCs finally had complex daily schedules and stuff... kinda like all that AI stuff Bethesda's trumpeting about)... hopefully minus the bugs.
