So, what're you playing?

[Ironwood]

You could be right.  Tried again and two of them were unarmed spellcasters.  Still got buttfucked tho.

 

[WindupAtheist]

Ducked out on Morrowind again as soon as I hit Balmora. Christ what an ugly game.

[Paelos]

Graphics whore. 

[trias_e]

Regarding making Oblivion fun, Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul was all I needed.  No scaling, alot of improvements to weapons/combat/economy/leveling.  Put in a good 120 hours after installing that mod.  Good times.

http://www.oscurogamedesign.com/oscurosoblivionoverhaul-desc-high.html

[WindupAtheist]

Graphics whore. 

Daggerfall was so much easier to look at. I can handle some simple honest "Hey it was the nineties" pixelization. But whoever was responsible for the aesthetics of Morrowind ought to have been shot. Everything is plain, and brown, and dirty. Everyone is horribly ugly. The animals are all ridiculous and alien and terrible looking. They tried so hard to be different and it's just nauseating what they came up with.

[K9]

I guess it's personal preference; I quite liked the Morrowind aesthetic. Across the whole continent there was a variety of landscapes; admittedly most were bleak, but it at least felt coherent. It's really no more offensive than Oblivions endless fucking forests. I rather liked the idea of being a hero to a bunch of dirt farmers who eke out an existence in a beige hell-hole.

[tgr]

I honestly don't think of morrowind as all that bad, graphically, but how much of that do you think is because it's early 3d models, vs daggerfall's sprites?

[Rasix]

The environment graphics aren't that bad in Morrowind, but the characters, even with appropriate mods, look terrible and move even worse.

[Paelos]

Morrowind's character models are by far the worst. It's one of things you don't remember until you reload it. Sort of like how absolutely terrible KOTOR 1 looks.

[Minvaren]

Morrowind's character models are by far the worst. It's one of things you don't remember until you reload it. Sort of like how absolutely terrible KOTOR 1 looks.

You come to idolize KotOR after reloading Dark Forces...   

[Rasix]

Morrowind's character models are by far the worst. It's one of things you don't remember until you reload it. Sort of like how absolutely terrible KOTOR 1 looks.

I'm not quite ready to destroy my memories of KOTOR 1 yet.  It stays on the shelf. 

[Ingmar]

I think I have it installed from Steam from some sale. Now I'm curious...

[Minvaren]

Oh hey, a KotOR2 content restoration mod got released.  Already got the hi-res video and music.  Just when I needed another RPG...   

Obsidian, if you ever finished anything, you'd be a force to be reckoned with.

[Sheepherder]

Not to be a prick (honest), but are you REALLY SURE ?

I hadn't levelled, but I gave myself a bunch of Elvish and Mithril shit.  When I went back into the dungeon, they were all tooled up with enchanted flaming blades.  They really, really, really didn't have that shit first time around when I killed four of the five of them.  This time I got my ass handed to me by the first one.

I'm staggered if that's a coincidence.  This was the Azura vampire dungeon.  

I have the latest patch, but the game is still WRONG on a variety of levels.  I require some nice mods to make it all better, but it would seem that time has moved on without me and I have no idea which of the fifteen thousand are actually any cop.

Positive.  Bethesda isn't clever enough to calculate what type of armour they should wear based on what you are wearing.

If you are certain that two are unarmored spellcasters they have been modded.  Two are supposed to be wearing partial gear, one is supposed to be unarmored, one is supposed to be light armour, and one is supposed to be heavy armour.  They all have a 50% chance of an enchanted weapon.

Regarding making Oblivion fun, Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul was all I needed.  No scaling...

This is incorrect.

[tgr]

Morrowind's character models are by far the worst. It's one of things you don't remember until you reload it. Sort of like how absolutely terrible KOTOR 1 looks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiO5QkxoFcw

What's so terrible about KOTOR?

[Ironwood]

Regarding making Oblivion fun, Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul was all I needed.  No scaling...

This is incorrect.

Having now read the Overhaul notes, I can see what he meant.

[Merusk]

Morrowind's character models are by far the worst. It's one of things you don't remember until you reload it. Sort of like how absolutely terrible KOTOR 1 looks.

You come to idolize KotOR after reloading Dark Forces...   

Hm I haven't tried Dark Forces, but I've been playing Jedi Knight II again.  It looks and controls horribly in some places, but I had such fond memories of it being awesome.  How weird.

[trias_e]

Regarding making Oblivion fun, Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul was all I needed.  No scaling...

This is incorrect.

Having now read the Overhaul notes, I can see what he meant.

My bad.  There is still scaling in OOO, but it clearly has been toned down a ton, with most dungeons in particular being static difficulty.  To be honest, when I was playing with OOO, I didn't notice any scaling.  I guess I didn't read the readme very carefully so I thought there was simply no scaling at all.  Anyways, OOO outperforms vanilla Oblivion massively in this regard.  I certainly never ran into bandits in daedric armor after a level up in OOO, and there's plenty of stuff that's just way out of your character's league (or way below it if you're fairly advanced).

[bhodi]

Hm I haven't tried Dark Forces, but I've been playing Jedi Knight II again.  It looks and controls horribly in some places, but I had such fond memories of it being awesome.  How weird.

I found this to be the case as well. I really had fond memories, but when I bought it on the steam sale, I couldn't bear to play it at all.

[Yegolev]

Hm I haven't tried Dark Forces, but I've been playing Jedi Knight II again.  It looks and controls horribly in some places, but I had such fond memories of it being awesome.  How weird.

I found this to be the case as well. I really had fond memories, but when I bought it on the steam sale, I couldn't bear to play it at all.

This is what happened to me with several games, including Final Fantasy.  Nostalgia belongs inside your brain.

[Rasix]

I find NES/SNES era sprites to be a lot easier to deal with than really old 2.5D tech.

[Ironwood]

Only in most cases.  In some instances, Nostalgia is just as good as you remember it.

If you go back far enough, that is.

[Merusk]

I find NES/SNES era sprites to be a lot easier to deal with than really old 2.5D tech.

Yeah that's what I'm realizing.  I can still hook-up the SNES and enjoy Super Star Wars or ROTJ on consoles.  Or even load-up X-com, Eye of the Beholder or MoM and have a great game, but it doesn't work for the old 3d games.  All you see are blocks and really horrible texture maps.

[Jeff Kelly]

It entirely depends. I recently replayed Fallout 1 and 2 and found them as brilliant as I remembered them. Other games didn#t hold up to the test of time as well.

[Ingmar]

It entirely depends. I recently replayed Fallout 1 and 2 and found them as brilliant as I remembered them. Other games didn#t hold up to the test of time as well.

I really had a very hard time with the graphics/interface when I tried to go back and play these recently. I wish there was a way to play these in the Fallout Tactics engine the way you can play BG1 in the BG2/Throne of Bhaal engine.

[Sheepherder]

I really don't mind Morrowind.  You can't be Jesus to a bunch of dirt farmers living in front of a Hellmouth without there being a lot of brown.

[Yegolev]

Speaking of old graphics, today I decided to play some WoW instead of working constantly (only working intermittently but I can't get any project work done due to needy goobers).  So far I have managed to determine that the goblin starting town is not really connected to the main world and that exploration achievements are not triggered yet.  I'm thinking it might also be true for the shipwreck area.  Maybe I can get to the real game before the afternoon time burglars arrive.

[Ingmar]

The new starting areas don't have exploration achievements because they're not accessible to non-goblin/worgen characters, yeah.

[Sheepherder]

You can get into the Worgen one.  I did so as soon as 4.0.1 went live.

Speaking of WoW graphics, I'd attribute all of the people who don't mind them to the fact that it's animations are consistently of very high quality.

[Ingmar]

Well, you can get into one unpopulated phase of it yeah.

[apocrypha]

Speaking of WoW graphics, I'd attribute all of the people who don't mind them to the fact that it's animations are consistently of very high quality.

Not just the animations. The graphical design is excellent and they way the cartoony style is used has an amazing attention to detail. I think this is particularly evident now that you can fly in the old world. Fly over, for instance, The Barrens and look at the way things like trees, bushes and rocks are placed in relation to hills and towns. Things aren't just plopped down randomly, they're very, very carefully placed in a way that works visually and conceptually.

Anyway, in my continued search for good bargain basement PS3 titles I've found myself playing God of War 3 today. I think I may be too old/slow/stupid for this game. After I died countless times on the first boss the game offered me the option to drop down a difficulty level. And I still died repeatedly.    Not only did the game mock me but I couldn't even retort with a victory. Sigh.

[Teleku]

Morrowind's character models are by far the worst. It's one of things you don't remember until you reload it. Sort of like how absolutely terrible KOTOR 1 looks.

Ok, I don't get this.  I still think KOTOR looks great, the character models look great, and the game is still fun.  What was your issue with it?

[jakonovski]

I just finished Dead Space 2. Much improved over the first one, but there's still the problem of gameplay interfering with the atmosphere.

[Paelos]

Morrowind's character models are by far the worst. It's one of things you don't remember until you reload it. Sort of like how absolutely terrible KOTOR 1 looks.

Ok, I don't get this.  I still think KOTOR looks great, the character models look great, and the game is still fun.  What was your issue with it?

For starters, I hated the inventory screens:

Second I think the models suck like Morrowind:
v.

[Ironwood]

Wow, is that Morrowind on the Amstrad CPC ?