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Post by kyouki on Dec 18, 2014 12:05:29 GMT -5
I grew up playing old C64/PC RPGs, where the worlds were often gigantic but pretty empty, but you often had a map and a bunch of clues to help you figure out where to head, and they felt more like adventures than hundreds of empty screens.
Having said that, the Elder Scroll games (with exception of Morrowind) just bore the hell out of me. The worlds may not be random, but they feel like they were sketched out by someone and then some algorithm placed everything else. Combined with the fact that you need to rely on quest markers/quest compasses/quest logs, and you can just quick travel all around, you feel like you are just checking stuff off of a list.
If you actually try to walk around in Oblivion or Skyrim, the worlds definitely feel waaaaay too big for me. (Arena and Daggerfall might as well not have worlds outside of towns and dungeons since you can pretty much ignore them)
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Post by Gentlegamer on Dec 18, 2014 16:49:01 GMT -5
I grew up playing old C64/PC RPGs, where the worlds were often gigantic but pretty empty, but you often had a map and a bunch of clues to help you figure out where to head, and they felt more like adventures than hundreds of empty screens. Having said that, the Elder Scroll games (with exception of Morrowind) just bore the hell out of me. The worlds may not be random, but they feel like they were sketched out by someone and then some algorithm placed everything else. Combined with the fact that you need to rely on quest markers/quest compasses/quest logs, and you can just quick travel all around, you feel like you are just checking stuff off of a list. If you actually try to walk around in Oblivion or Skyrim, the worlds definitely feel waaaaay too big for me. (Arena and Daggerfall might as well not have worlds outside of towns and dungeons since you can pretty much ignore them) And it's not just the size, it's the lack of variety and interesting locations that aren't quest related. Morrowind has ash land deserts, volcanic wastes, giant mushroom forests, coastal swamps, graze lands, a city built into the carapace of a colossal extinct crab, etc. When you're given a quest in Morrowind, it tells you "exit through the west gate and head toward the hill, at its foot turn north to the tree with a forked trunk. Look east and you should see the cave entrance." You're constantly engaged with the terrain in a "realistic" and meaningful way. In Oblivion and Skyrim, "fast travel to the GPS marker on your magic hub map."
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Post by kyouki on Dec 18, 2014 22:03:13 GMT -5
And it's not just the size, it's the lack of variety and interesting locations that aren't quest related. Morrowind has ash land deserts, volcanic wastes, giant mushroom forests, coastal swamps, graze lands, a city built into the carapace of a colossal extinct crab, etc. When you're given a quest in Morrowind, it tells you "exit through the west gate and head toward the hill, at its foot turn north to the tree with a forked trunk. Look east and you should see the cave entrance." You're constantly engaged with the terrain in a "realistic" and meaningful way. In Oblivion and Skyrim, "fast travel to the GPS marker on your magic hub map." Good point! I was pretty dismayed when I tried turning off all the quest marks etc. in Skyrim and the NPCs were giving me quests like "Go to Dragon Tooth Cave and find blah blah blah" but no indication where the cave is at all. I guess there is a mod that rewrites NPC text for major quests so that you are given actual directions, but I don't see why Bethesda doesn't get that the fun of exploration is actually having to explore interesting places.
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Post by thoothan on Dec 18, 2014 23:42:06 GMT -5
Getting actual directions from npcs in morrowind is one of the reasons i'm still able to love the hell out of it, despite it not aging super well.
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Post by voltagecontrol on Dec 19, 2014 6:15:16 GMT -5
Xenoblade.
Bionis and Mechonis seem to go on forever.
However, it's such a unique, captivating setting it's not as annoying as the Bethesda games can be.
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Post by Scylla on Dec 19, 2014 18:49:52 GMT -5
Most worlds that can be explored since, like, the PS2 era (and some before). I'm all about streamlined games. I'm not interested in wasting my time trudging through big open spaces, and even if a large area is filled with plenty to do, I don't care for that either because then I'm stuck there for a long ass time (I'm not the sort to just skip stuff). I've never cared about realism in games, so it doesn't bother me in the slightest if an area or town or whatever is unrealistically small or if there are very few houses/NPCs or anything along those lines. And I've never really craved any game to be longer. I can blow through Crystalis in a couple days of casual playing, and yet I still feel like I went on a grand adventure. SNES RPGs that I can beat in around 20 hours are plenty lengthy to me. If a game I like is really short, all it means is that I'll be all the more inclined to replay it now and then, and that's a good thing in my book.
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Post by hashin on Dec 19, 2014 19:05:06 GMT -5
You guys are almost convincing me to play Morrowind. I just need to find a patch to make the combat similar to Dragon's Dogma.
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Post by Gentlegamer on Dec 19, 2014 19:14:42 GMT -5
You guys are almost convincing me to play Morrowind. I just need to find a patch to make the combat similar to Dragon's Dogma. Enjoy the stats based RPG combat. Dragon's Dogma is more of a beat em up than RPG.
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Post by llj on Dec 19, 2014 19:25:03 GMT -5
Faery Tale Adventure is an old school example of a lot of nothing screens.
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Post by hashin on Dec 19, 2014 19:49:59 GMT -5
Enjoy the stats based RPG combat. Dragon's Dogma is more of a beat em up than RPG. I think TES just isn't for me. I prefer turn based for stat RPGs, or games that make it possible to brute force my way through like Dragon's Dogma and the Souls series.
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Post by Gentlegamer on Dec 20, 2014 0:01:00 GMT -5
Enjoy the stats based RPG combat. Dragon's Dogma is more of a beat em up than RPG. I think TES just isn't for me. I prefer turn based for stat RPGs, or games that make it possible to brute force my way through like Dragon's Dogma and the Souls series. May I share the story of how I fell in love with Morrowind? In 2006, I bought a PS2 and Xbox after being a lapsed gamer for several years. I had heard the hype about Oblivion, but I knew nothing about the game or The Elder Scrolls. As I was looking for games to play on my new consoles, I came across Morrowind GotY at GameStop. I knew Oblivion was Elder Scrolls IV, and since Morrowind was Elder Scrolls III, I figured I would try it. I flipped through the game manual, and thought it was neat how there was 'piecemeal' armor, but the races presented didn't initially make an impression... I was looking for traditional dwarves, elves, etc. I made an Imperial Warrior named Tarl Cabot (heh) and began my adventures in Morrowind. I went through character gen, received the package from Sellus Gravius and stepped out of the Imperial Excise Office. The message gave me a hint to seek Caius Cosades in Balmora but otherwise, I was free to do as I wanted. This appealed to me since I'm an old school pencil and paper veteran of D&D. So Tarl started exploring Seyda Neen. Although I had been a lapsed gamer, I immediately noticed that the graphics looked kinda... poor. Tarl ran super slow and would lose all his fatigue doing so. Hmm, I thought. This is pretty janky. I slowly learned you could talk to everyone about a variety of topics and could steal from and attack ANYONE. Woah. This is interesting. I started committing crimes, not because I was role-playing a criminal, but I was exploring what the game would let me do. I learned I couldn't pick locks in sight of the guards (cool!) and had to be careful about having stolen property on me if I got caught (cool!). Somehow, though, the overall game wasn't really impressing me and I was close to stopping playing and moving on to something else in my new stack of games for Xbox or PS2. Then it happened. The magical moment. I had burglarized the Imperial Warehouse, and had armor and weapons to sell to the local trader, Arille. However, Arille wouldn't do business with me because I had illegal drugs (skooma and moonsugar) in my inventory. So I had to stash my contraband in the hut of some fisherman I had killed earlier as part of a quest... wow! That's awesome. That little touch of 'realism' grabbed me and spoke to the role-player in me. I soon had to stop speaking to anyone because they would great me with YOU'RE THE NOTORIOUS OUTLAW TARL CABOT! My Notoriety had climbed as I committed crimes. So I made my way to Balmora on foot (I avoided the Silt Strider for some reason). When I arrived at Balmora, I had to figure out a way to climb over the walls to avoid the guards and sneak to the Thieves' Guild so I could get my bounty taken care of. The game just snowballed for me from there. I was hooked! I continued playing and learned about the warring factions, the Neverarine prophesies, the culture of the Dunmer, etc. I was in love. No game has ever presented such a world, rich in background, flavor, and freedom. When it comes to Elder Scrolls, make mine Morrowind!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2014 0:15:06 GMT -5
CABOT!
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Post by kyouki on Dec 20, 2014 12:51:57 GMT -5
I think if you want to appreciate Morrowind, and the hand-crafted world, unique stuff hidden all over the place to reward exploration, complicated lore that is written in-universe by characters who do not have all the facts and contradict each other do not appeal due to the combat, it is best to just think of the combat as 100% RPG stat-based combat in real time, like active battle in FF4-9.
It honestly did bother me when I first played Morrowind and I swung a sword and it obviously looked like it hit some mudcrab but it didn't register as a hit, and I kept trying to find mods to improve it... but better to just enjoy the combat for what it is and have more fun with the more interesting stuff about the game.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2014 20:41:26 GMT -5
Games like Elder Scrolls are also easier to get through if you just accept one simple fact: You aren't exploring every inch of the map to find anything that actually matters. You're just doing it for the sake of having done it.
102% of every Elder Scrolls game is filled with useless shit. It's a really inane school of game design, but Bethesda will never change it.
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Post by Colonel Kurtz on Dec 21, 2014 11:42:22 GMT -5
They're all too big! No but seriously, the novelty of big open worlds has kinda worn off. As a kid it was my dream, but now I rarely find any reason to explore. Some sandbox worlds feel very lifeless, more so than even linear, smaller games, which is the exact opposite of what the developers had in mind. I am still really excited for stuff like Witcher 3, but I know already that I won't see every nook and cranny cause it will most likely exhaust and overwhelm me without really being worth it. I wanna follow the story and do a couple of sidequests, but that's it for me. On topic: One game that isn't even "open world" but still felt way too big was Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. They should've shrunk it by 30-40%. Those levels goes on FOREVER and are mindnumbingly dull and empty. Bingo. The concept is a dream, the games often barren wastelands. And happy holidays.
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